"I can't stand you," you whisper in Karkat's ear, pulling him closer to yourself. I can't stand myself, you don't say, though it wraps around your throat, his body, your hands, binding you together. You could never love him. You couldn't ever stop loving him. Your mouth finds his neck and your tongue darts out to trace the scars you've already left there. The tiniest hint of cherry can be seen through his deep grey skin. Your body screams at you to get rid of the anomaly, just as it screams at you to never let go of him.
You pull Karkat closer, press the points of your teeth against his flesh. The marks come quick. You push harder, and they brighten, changing from what could be mistaken for rust beneath deep grey skin to an unmistakable, disgusting, cherry color. You tighten your jaw once more, and the skin pops. Thick cherry red blood travels up the body of your teeth, and Karkat whines, jerking slightly. His movement only pushes his flesh further into your teeth, widening the holes you've made in his skin.
"Fuck you, Eridan," he moans, hooking two fingers directly into your gills, and oh fuck does it hurt, you can't breathe, you can't even unclench your mouth. You bite harder, and he digs in further, the pain unbearable. Finally you wrench your teeth out of his neck, but his fingers don't leave your gills. He shoves a third finger in, the pain reaching a white hot point. Your vision goes blurry, everything is pitch black and blinding white, boiling fingers wrapping around your brain while frozen blood pumps in and out, and just as you think everything is about to end, he releases.
Your body collapses on itself, cardiovascular system on edge as your head finds space between your knees. After a few moments, you regain your composure, sit back up. Your eyes meet, his gorgeous bright irises showing a faint mirror of your own visage, a nightmare in red.
His dripping blood catches your attention - it follows the dips your fingers have trailed many times before, where they will trail again. A puddle so bright as to blind you forms in his collarbone, and you watch yourself swim in it, the red liquid getting pulled up into your gills, breathing it in, it giving you life as you drown in it.
"I've missed you these past few days," Karkat says, almost a whisper. You can see by the way his pointy little ears twitch how nervous he is. You bite your lip to stop from making a snide remark, just stare at the posters on Karkat's walls. After a moment, he grabs your face, pulls it so you're staring eye to eye. "I need you to fucking talk to me when you're going to pull some stupid stunt like that." There's the Karkat you're used to, the one you know how to talk to.
You glance at your wrist, sutures holding puffy violet-tinged skin closed, the wound just beginning to heal. You're told the itchiness is how you know it's getting better, but it just makes you want to rip it back open even more. Finish the job. Be done with all of it. "I wrote you a note."
He pushes you away, stands up from where you had been sitting on the loungeplank together. "Ugh, do you ever think about anyone except yourself?"
"You callin' me selfish while tryin' to talk me out of suicide? Real fuckin' mature, Kar," you shout back, incredulous. All the anger you had within yourself has found its target, and you feel the blood rush into your face, cooling your ears and your nose and cheeks until you're certain you look like a bottle of that disgusting fizzy drink Gamzee always drinks. "How dare you act like you're better than me, you fuckin' disgustin' mutant. I could have you culled in two seconds! If I wanted to, I could drag you outside and kill you myself! And I'd be a fuckin' hero for it. Don't act like I've never done anything for you."
"Oh sure, not killing me so you could fuel your self-hatred and get laid at the same time was so noble of you. Good job, Eridan. You're such a wonderful fucking guy for not turning me in. Let's all go and cheer on Eridan fucking Ampora for keeping his matesprit or kismesis or whatever-the-fuck alive!" He widens his arms, looks around for the applause he's surely imagining coming from the rest of that lot of troll rejects you call friends.
"I should have killed you when I had the fuckin' chance," you yell, though by the time you reach the end of your sentence, you're less than two inches from his face. His neck is no longer gushing, just a few drops continuing to roll down his chest, past his grub scars, about to fall on the floor. It's hypnotizing. You pause, and then sigh. "I love you."
Those words aren't used frequently. Not between most trolls, most certainly not between you and Karkat. You look into each other's eyes. He pulls you close to him, and your head rests upon his shoulder, right next to the marks you previously left. The scent of the drying blood engulfs your senses, and your ears turn cold, coating with just the tiniest bit of venom. Some of it must get on Karkat, because he hisses in pain.
You don't bother acknowledging it. You're right where you started this argument, in Karkat's arms. "I hate you," you mumble into the crusted over lake in his collarbone, and maybe you're talking more to his blood than to him, as if putting gills, fins, and purple blood into him would fix all of this. Maybe it would. Maybe in another world, another universe, loving Karkat wouldn't make you hate yourself. But this isn't that life, this isn't that universe. This is the here and now, and as you lick up the remnants of his blood, you have to concede that fact.
You'll never be able to love both Karkat and yourself. "I hate you so much," you whisper again into Karkat, and this time you're talking to the world, to your inner being, to your inability to get over him. You love him. You need him. Right now you'd be finishing the job you started last week if it weren't for him. That disgustingly redrom thought sends more venom leaking out of your fins; the purple liquid touches Karkat's skin, and it must be too much because he immediately jerks away. You watch as it seeps into his cheek, leaving a mark in the shape of your fin on his skin.
Part of you feels glad that the skin holds the violet venom in, instead of sending his cherry blood to the surface. The other part wishes you could see the red, to truly know and understand that what your body does is to keep you on top. It's your responsibility and honor to be above the lowbloods in every way, and you've thrown it away for what? This?
How you wish Feferi hadn't found you on her daily hunt, that you'd been left to bleed out, to be fed to Gl'bgolyb like the others. So you wouldn't have to face the truth of your feelings for him, the depth of them.
Karkat wordlessly stands up, and you follow him. You enter the meal block together, and he washes his neck and torso with water from the tap. "Hungry?" he asks, gesturing vaguely around.
"No." You're not in the mood for talk, not in the mood to eat. You do take the glass of water he offers you, though, and chug it down. "I'm not sure I'm meant to be here," you say, waving the empty glass. The dim yellow light coming from above the cooking plank casts shadows around, obscuring the true shape of Karkat's face, but you can still see him make eye contact, raising a scarred eyebrow.
"Neither am I. I mean, seriously." He rubs a thumb along one of the bright red grub scars just below his pecs, clearly thinking back to before he got them, when he was still just a grub. "But that's what we do, right? We just fucking fight, no matter what. It's what got us out of the brooding caverns, and it's what keeps us alive now. You'd have to be a fucking idiot to give up at this point."
But I am a fucking idiot, aren't I?
The thought swirls in your brain, lingers on your tongue. Instead of saying it though, you breathe it out, let it fly into someone else's hive. Someone else who needs it. Someone who deserves it more, though you'd be hard pressed at this point to think of a troll that would fit that bill. You refill your water, take a sip, say, "You've never wanted to end it?"
The laugh Karkat lets out sends his head flying back. "Seriously? What about life doesn't make a guy wanna off himself? But fuck, I have my reasons for staying." He looks away, turning to the shadow so you can't read his face as he says, "Like your dumb ass."
And you know it's the truth. As much as you want to kill each other, you know without him you'd just kill yourself, channeling all that rage outward into love and lust and hate and passion keeps you from turning it inward. Maybe that would be for the best, though. Maybe you should both just take some pills and be gone forever.
That doesn't look like it's in the cards though. Not tonight. Tonight you'll just continue to tear each other apart, to hold each other together. Every bite and bruise and scratch and scar that rips open your flesh stitches up a piece of your soul. Maybe someday, when all that's left of your body is a violet pulp on the floor of Karkat's hive, maybe then your troubles will be gone. Your soul will be fixed, you'll finally be free.