All in Time

Chapter 17

  I still had that bruise from Gamzee even though the fight had been a week ago. The guy had a good left hook, I'll give him that. I also still had some black and blue on my nose, but that would probably heal soon. Chances were that the cheek bruise wouldn't heal for a while and I'd be stuck with it for two more weeks before it would be completely gone.

I was still staying at Karkat's house, but Gamzee was long gone. Karkat had gone to work a few hours earlier. I felt like an asshole considering I had no job and I thrived off of his attention. He did so much for me and I did almost nothing in return. I didn't know how to change that, though.

I was still laying on his bed, surrounding myself in his blankets. They smelled sweet, like lavender air freshener and freshly cleaned laundry. That's what Karkat smelled like.

I got up to explore the house. So far I had seen only a few rooms of it and I was curious to see more.

  I opened a door and saw teal walls on the other side. It was a bed with mismatching sheets, tape recorders everywhere, and lavender Febreeze. It was Terezi's room.

  I closed that door and opened the one directly across the hall. The walls in this room weren't painted, but the room itself was fairly clean, save for clothes on the floor and some books. The desk on the opposite side of the room from the bed had a nice looking computer on it. This was definitely Sollux's room. The computer and all the yellow stuff gave it away.

  There weren't any other rooms on the floor, so I wondered where Gamzee stayed. I saw a door at the very end of the hallway and opened it. It led to a staircase.

  Despite my better judgement, I go down the stairs. It smelled awful when I reach the bottom of the stairs. It smelled like drugs. I see a shitty bed, a table with what looks like every drug under the sun, and a few chairs. This was definitely Gamzee's room.

  I considered grabbing the drugs and throwing them all away to spite Gamzee, but decided against it. I wasn't going to do it mostly because I didn't need another fight with him and I have no clue what that fucking mole rat is carrying. He could have AIDS or some other kind of incurable disease.

  I leave the room as quickly as possible, shutting the door behind me. I chose to go take a shower to get the rancid smell of whatever Gamzee was smoking off of me.

  I liked the shower at Karkat's house. It was bigger and the faucet wasn't stationary so I could take it off the hook and clean myself better.

When I finished my shower, I headed back to Karkat's room. I wanted to go through his stuff, but that felt incredibly rude. Then again, I might find out what was in that grey notebook.

I felt guilty when I found myself reaching for the notebook. I wanted to look in it, but at the same time, I didn't. Against my more moral judgement, I opened the ratty old thing to the first page.

On it was a drawing of a boy whom I didn't think knew. He had a lazy smile and warm eyes. The date on it suggested that it was from years ago. I was still in highschool when this was drawn. Junior year to be exact.

I flipped over a few pages that only had dates and what looked like shopping lists on them. They didn't seem as important or as interesting as the other things in the notebook.

I noticed a drawing that looked like it had been halfway finished before being scribbled out and folded. It was of a woman who bore resemblance to Karkat from what I could see. She had been drawn with slightly grotesque features. Her eyes drew me in. They were dilated, sunken in, and veiny, they almost looked like the eyes of an asylum patient.

I skipped to the next few pages. They were notes. Strange, scrambled ones that said things that shook me a little. It hurt knowing that Karkat wrote things like 'I can't live on my own anymore. I'm too desperate for attention' and 'I want it to end'. They were scary to me, too. I calmed down a bit when I found that they had been written a year and a half ago, but I was still nervous for him.

I shut the notebook and sat it back on the bookshelf. I couldn't look at it anymore. From what I could tell, Karkat had a bad suicidal episode a while back. I wanted him to talk to me about it, but after what had happened last night, I didn't think that was very good idea.

When Karkat came home from work, I hugged him. I didn't tell him why, but he didn't ask. He just held me back, smiling against the crook of my neck.

"What are you doing, Dave?" He asked.

"Hugging you." I answered.

"Well that much is obvious, but why?" He guided our two tangled bodies over to the couch so that we weren't in the doorway. When he sat down, I wrapped myself around him and held on tightly.

"Can't a guy hug his boyfriend?" I said. He sighed and gave up on trying to get me to stop hugging. I have him a few kisses that he gladly accepted.

Nothing was going to hurt him. I don't know what caused him to write those notes in his notebook, but whatever it was, I wasn't going to let it get him again.

_____________________________________________

Oh my god, I'm back.

I didn't mean to take a hiatus, but I did it anyways. If you don't follow my story 'Tree in the Forest', then that's the reason I've been missing out on updating this story.

Ps, the next chapter is placed a month or two after this one. We are going to learn a lot more about Karkat and Karkat's past. That ought to be interesting.

I'm also really sorry about this chapter being so short! It's a bit of a filler tbh.

Also, since 'Tree in the Forest' has more chapters that are already written, that story will update faster. Sorry to those who only follow this story! ^_^''

Okay, that's it. Bye!

~Ghostie