Chapter 3
With this much pale attention focused on you, you kind of lose all ability to pay attention to anything. Fuck, after maybe a minute you're limp and relaxed in Dirk's arms, completely oblivious to anything that isn't directly touching you, probably making the whole fucking chair vibrate with how hard and deep you're purring.
The worry is still there. Even though you've been told, you've been promised that your Dave will be okay, the concern doesn't just fucking evaporate. But it's pretty damn hard to focus on it when your body's trying to tell you that now is the safest and best time that you'll ever have to relax.
It's right, anyway. You might as well calm the fuck down.
So you do. You stop thinking, keep your eyes closed, don't quite fall asleep because you know yourself well enough to know that you can and will have catastrophic nightmares if you even think about passing out right now, and stop even trying to mark time in your head.
This means that you have no fucking clue how long it is between the humans' first attempts to calm you, and the moment when a gloved hand comes down on your shoulder and Wade says, "Guess who woke up?"
"Fuck off." That's automatic, as you reluctantly raise your head and bat Rose's hand away from your horns, scowling up at him. Fucking mask, shielding him from the full effect of your death glare. "Do I fucking look like I was asleep?"
The rusty bastard has the temerity to laugh. "You guessed wrong, don't bite my head off over it. Growing that back would suck."
"What."
"It's Dave. Dave's awake—whoah there, kiddo!" Wade grabs your arm as you whine and try to launch yourself off Dirk's lap, holding you steady like he's a full-grown indigo. "Ca—
"If you tell me to calm down I will rip your fingers off and make you eat them." You punctuate that with a snarl, which makes the confident bastard laugh again.
But he does let you go. That victory is overshadowed by the fact that Hal grabs your wrist on one side, Roxy on the other, so you can't immediately follow through on your threat when Wade continues his sentence.
"Calm down for like, one minute. Two minutes." (Fucker.) "Dave's awake. The doctors are kind of upset about that, since he should have enough drugs in his system to keep him out for a couple more hours at least, but hey, mutant powers are fun! Painkillers are working even if sedatives aren't, so he's not feeling the holes in him, which is nice; the holes are actually closing faster than I expected, also nice. He wants Karkat."
Yes, you hear your name there. No, you do not actually connect that to what just got said for a couple seconds. Even then, you get it through your thick skull only because Roxy and Hal let go of your wrists, and Rose gives you a gentle push towards Wade.
He holds out his hand. You fail to take it, or do anything more constructive than just staring blankly at the appendage offered to you.
"Me."
"Yep, you!"
"Not his fucking siblings? Not D? Not you?"
Wade huffs under his breath and gives up on waiting for you to actually take his hand, instead wrapping that arm around your shoulders and using that to steer you where he wants you to go. "Technically, D doesn't know about any of this, and while I feel like someone going to spill their guts soon, it's not going to be me and it's not currently going to be Dave. He knows I'm fine, he trusts me to tell him if the other kids aren't fine, he really doesn't think you're fine."
"I'm fucking fine, dumbass." Not a goddamn scratch.
"Then maybe he just wants you. Or he knows you need him." Wade shrugs and glances at the room number, then pulls the door open and pushes you through.
He probably follows you in, too. You assume he closes the door. All that shit's guesswork, though, because once you step into the fucking room there's only one thing you have ganderbulbs for.
Dave. It's Dave. Of course it's fucking Dave; he's laid out on a sleep platform that looks complicated enough that you almost want to worry that it'll hurt him somehow, on his side and facing you and attached to a shitload of wires that make you think of how a helmsman would be hooked into a living ship. They've taken his shirt, which you guess makes sense because how the fuck else would they get foreign objects out of him, but they haven't put any kind of covering on the wounds on his chest.
There's two of them: one high up on his shoulder, right at the corner of the hollow his collarbone makes with his throat, and one lower and to the left, maybe a third of the way up his ribs. For a moment you think there's a third wound, one that's still fresh and bleeding and not half-healed like the two you're seeing; then you take two shaky steps forward and realize that the dark stain across the left side of Dave's chest is something else. Art, feathers and gears and blades inked into his skin in red and black, completely obscuring the mess of scars under it.
"Karkat," Dave mumbles, eyes just barely half open and still grinning at you like there isn't multiple holes in him that shouldn't fucking be there, "c'mere. Bed."
"I'm pretty sure that's not allowed, Dave." You take the last couple steps and sit down anyway, balancing yourself on the very edge. You can't actually look anywhere but his face, not without feeling your place in the universe start to spin and shift and go tilted. "...fuck."
"Yeah. 's kinda messy." Dave rolls his eyes and stretches his arms out towards you, wincing either from the effort or because moving like that puts more stress on the not-quite-healed scars he's just picked up.
It doesn't really matter which it is, because you immediately grab for his hands and he immediately laces his fingers through yours and squeezes and fuck this is something like a quadrant. This is a reason for you to panic, because you're Feeling Things for a half-dead alien and this isn't how shit's supposed to go. This isn't what you ever wanted, if you were going to survive long enough to do the romantic bullshit you were damn well going to do the romantic bullshit, have it be with moonlight confessions and passionate dates and—
"Wanna go back to sleep," Dave tells you, and fuck, you're never going to see anything better than the way he rolls his head to the side, forces his mutant red eyes open enough to really look at you, smiles like everything's always going to be okay. "Lie down wi' me?"
"I'm very fucking sure that's not allowed." Like that's going to stop you. Wade might stop you, but you very deliberately don't look over your shoulder to see what he thinks; you just gently pull your hands free of Dave's, kick at the stupid fucking tennis shoes that Dirk picked out for you (what the hell is a tennis, anyway?) until they give up their hold on your feet, swing your legs up so you can settle down facing him, your back to the door, one arm pinned under you and the other coming up to hunt for horns that aren't there in hair that's the exact opposite color it should be.
Dave seems to be happy with the contact even if he lacks the appendages needed to really appreciate it, though. His eyes close again, and he shifts to drape one half-limp arm over your shoulders, tangle his fingers up in the hair at the nape of your neck and tug until you get the message on what he wants, shift forward until he's satisfied.
You get nervous the closer you get, of course. What if you hurt him? He's already hurt, what if you make that shit worse? What if— "Dave..."
"You're good. Great." Your forehead bumps against Dave's, and his grip on your hair loosens. He doesn't quite let go, though, just relaxes enough that he can't be said to be holding you in place. "Doesn't hurt, y'know."
"Wade said that." Now you begin to believe it.
"Mmm. 's okay, man."
"I know." You realize that you're mirroring Dave, your arm draped over his bare shoulders and fingers carefully twined in his hair. Your palm's pressed flat against the side of his neck; you can feel the steady beat of his blood making its way to or from his heart.
" 'm okay. You okay?"
"Scared as fuck, for a while there." There's other shit you could say—I thought I fucking lost you or don't ever do that to me again or don't ever make me leave you—but you settle on something else. "Weren't you tired?"
"Yeah." He's so fucking close. You can feel him smile. "Stay here."
"That's the plan, Dave." Stay here. Go to sleep. Stay with him.
You can handle that.