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For the thousandth time he runs gentle fingers over you, tracing the lines of old scars. They’re not as obvious as his, which are white on grey rather than white on white. You’re both covered in them. His are like old friends, you know each of them without even looking. You run a thumb over one on his shoulder, a place where an imp caught him off-guard. He started this process, this teasing out of your inner pain through your outer imperfections. It’s been working OK, making him feel more empowered to help you fight the demons in your head. He was wrong about one thing, though; he believes they can’t hurt you anymore.
Most of Karkat’s scars are from teaching himself to use one of the most impractical weapons in existence. Who the hell decides that sickles are the ultimate in badassery? You guess it’s a troll thing. He doesn’t like it when you make fun of how unwieldy they are, even though the evidence stares back at him from the mirror every morning.
“Game?” His voice has that concerned purr to it. It melts you a little.
You nod, shuddering a little as he ghosts a finger over the puckered indentation of a bullet wound. He nods in reply. He knows the score on the marks peppering your torso, delivered by the girl you thought you were in stupid teenage love with. You can still see the tears in her eyes sometimes, the betrayal at the fact that she knew you knew it would happen.
“Yeah. One of Jade’s. I thought she was gonna kill me all over again for making her corpse-smooch me back to life.”
He smiles at you, pleased you’re finally opening up. In the years after the game ended, you’ve been a fountain of cheerful babble for the most part, at least when you’re around other people. The only subject you’ve stayed tight-lipped on has been your past and the damage it’s done to you. You’ve kept a high fence around all of that, warning signs in big letters to keep Karkat from falling into the sucking pit at the core of you. The emptiness that’s been there for as long as you can remember.
He finds another mark, a long, shallow cut. That’s a pre-game one, and he knows it. He leaves it be for now, moving on to a pale, hairless patch on your arm. He looks at you expectantly, waiting to see if you want to talk about it.
“LOHAC, dude. I leant on a piece of red-hot metal when I first got there. Didn’t realise how much heat was coming off all that lava.”
Karkat nods, before placing a kiss on the spot.
“Thank you for telling me.” He sounds so sincere, so caring. It’s almost too much.
He continues his explorations, moving past the unmarked skin of your stomach and down to your legs. He doesn’t touch the pinkish lines at the top of your thigh, the parallel stripes of careful, uniform cuts. You thought he might leave you when he saw those, red and angry after a particularly bad month of withdrawing deeper and deeper into your own head. The pain in your leg had brought you out again, but the pain in Karkat’s eyes had hurt more, and deeper. The tears and the yelling and the questions had been almost as bad. You’ve never picked up a razor again, except to shave. You can’t risk hurting him.
An ugly scar at the top of your other leg catches his attention, a deep cut that Bro would have had trouble explaining to a doctor or nurse. Luckily (ha) for you, he knew how to sew it up. You’d watched through the wobbling veil of pain as he brought the sides of the wound together with a curved needle. When it was done, he’d ruffled your hair and told you that you did good, kid. That next time you’d be able to dodge the blow, no problem. He’d gone out for a few hours once you were bandaged up, and had returned with a pint of your favourite ice-cream and a crutch for you to use. He couldn’t have you missing school, after all.
Karkat isn’t moving, his fingers gently stroking at the scar. He looks at you expectantly, the love in his eyes making your heart ache. You need to do this for him. You know he loves you, all of you, even the parts that are shitty and broken and fucked up. He’s told you time and time again while he’s held your stupid shaking body. Each and every time things have been too much for you, he’s been there. He needs this. You try and choke out as many words as you can.
“Strife.” You swallow, determined that a constricting throat won’t conquer you.
“I wasn’t fast enough, got caught with the tip of the blade. It looks kinda shitty because Bro sucked at stitches. It didn’t heal right.”
He comes back up from resting his head on your knee and wraps his arms around you. You can feel his pulse racing through his skin, the way his arms are quivering with tension. You know he’s thinking about little-kid Dave, his leg a bloody mess under the Houston sun. This might actually be harder for him, you realise; you’ve built a hard shell around each and every painful memory, turning each into a blackened little pearl in the back of your mind. They’re terrible, but they’re all you have. Stroking his hair makes both of you feel better, and the warm press of his body against yours continues to be the best feeling in the known Universe.
“S’Okay, Karkat. It was a long time ago. It’s actually good to talk to someone about it.”
It does actually feel slightly better, although the knowledge that the feeling was won by pushing some of your pain onto Karkat immediately makes you feel worse again. His cheeks are pink with the ghosts of tears when he rolls you over to face him, but his ruby eyes are sparkling with joy. His mouth is a crescent of razors, and your troll has never been more adorabloodthirsty than when he’s grinning like an idiot. You ask him what he’s so happy about, and he cuffs you on the shoulder.
“Dumbass. You’ve never told me anything about your fucked-up wigglerhood. It sounds like it was the shittiest shit imaginable, Dave, I’m not going to lie. But I’m so glad you finally feel like you can talk to me about it. I don’t want you to carry all that crap around on your own anymore.”
You smile. Your heart feels lighter. Maybe this wasn’t such a terrible idea, after all. Even so, you aren’t sure how much you can take in one go, how much you feel comfortable dumping on him.
“Thanks, man. I think it’s helping, not that I want to admit you were right or anything. I kinda need to stop now though, if that’s OK with you. Gotta work my way up to it.”
He snorts with amusement and pulls your forehead against his. His soft hair brushes against your eyelids as you relax into him.
“Of course, idiot. Tell me as much as you want, I’m just happy you’re telling me anything. I can’t handle not knowing what stupid knots you’re tying your mind into. Sometimes I feel like I managed to get your fucking shades off, but there’s another pair inside your head to keep the rest of the world out. Fuck those imaginary accessories, Strider. I’m going to do to them what I did to your other pair.”
You laugh, remembering the insistence with which he’d put his foot down about the shades.
“What, you’re going to forbid me to wear them in the house? Look, it’s not my fault if the coolness goes all the way to the core, dude. I’m just drawn that way.”
He squeezes you tightly, arms around your broad shoulders. You like the way you look, scars aside. You’re taller and stronger than you thought you’d be, even if your frame is still slender rather than muscular. Karkat is built like a wiry little brick wall, and you can’t help but be envious of the way his arms are currently crushing you. You kiss him, feeling his grip slacken into a normal, wonderful hug. When you’re like this, lips and bodies pressed together, you feel as though you're flying. As though there’s no reason why you shouldn’t just lift off into space and spend the rest of your lives in an enraptured orbit around one another. Or maybe you could just stay here instead, listening to the rain of the world that you helped create drumming on the roof, holding on to the one person who promised to never let you go.
For the first time in years, you believe him down to the bottom of your soul.