caughtinanetwork | 045 ♋ [DREAM → rising sun]

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045 ♋ [DREAM → rising sun]

[By the time Karkat's dreaming, he can't remember having fallen asleep, the pain in his side makes the unreality of it fall from mind.]

Ow, shit--

[He's been stabbed. The wound's in his right side, and without even bothering to look he clamps his hand over it. But it's bleeding still, the feel hot on his hand, warmer than blood ever should be for a troll.]

[Before him stands the man responsible: a black-shelled being with narrowed, beady eyes. Some might recognize him as an iteration of Jack Noir, or by the name Spades Slick, dressed in some kind of court-styled coat with a black and white collar. He holds a knife in his hand.]

DON'T LOOK!

[That's Karkat, clamping his hand down tighter to try and stem the bleeding, making him hiss at the pain of it. He dares a glance down, and fleetingly he thinks the shirt must be ruined. His other hand is raised as if to ward away vision.]

Just please, don't, don't look at it. It's freakish anyway, you don't want to see, just look away--

[Jack looks anyway. The blood on the knife is red.]

--Fuck.

[Karkat looks at him now, hand lowered, though the other doesn't leave his wound.]

I swear I'm being taunted with this stupid planet.

[Above stretches a sky of streaky reddish grey, dotted here and there with purple clouds. If there are stars above they can't be seen, nor anything like a sun; indeed, the air's too murky to see what might beyond this planet at all. All land is formed of black stone, poking out in jagged islands or castle-like portions of buildings. They stand on a sort of hill made of the two combined.]

[It's not the planet he came from. Alternia, for all its violent history, never had literal seas of blood - nor hearts embedded in its structures, beating more of it.]

Why else would I get stuck here? Oceans of mutant candy-red everywhere. Ha ha! Poor little mutant! No one else has this color, so of course the outcast has to get put in the Land of Pulse and Haze, like some punishment for--for I don't even know what--

[Jack's eyes narrow further at his blabbering, but when he moves, his motions are smooth and easy. He draws his knife neatly across his palm. When he holds it up, the cut bleeds the same red.]

[Karkat stares, and his mouth drops open. He'd wonder how his eyes haven't fallen out of their sockets if not for the shock of what he's seeing. How? How? How could somebody else have it? But the hand holds out in an offering of peace. Even though he's the one who stabbed him - that thought's far and away from his mind right now - he crosses over to take hold with his own bloody palm.]

[Then Karkat wakes.]

(OOC: Note! This dream is non-interactive, meaning responses should come via the network after the dream itself. This has been mod OK'd.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[When Gamzee starts, Karkat wants to argue on grounds of blood colors occurring in nature and how the Signless's followers are the only reason he ever had a lusus waiting for him, but the metaphor cuts him off. Not just for the length and rambling nature, but for the content. Even if it's dumb, even if it's about his favorite liquid sugar beverage, there's still the meaning behind it that reaches through. By the end his posture has lost much of its tenseness.]

[He pulls back, gently, arms loosening and head easing from under his chin. He doesn't fully break away, if Gamzee wants to keep his arms around him, but he does back up enough that he can look him in the face. He puts his hands to his neck, just below the line of his paint.]

Things like this are why I keep you around, you gangly, grease painted disaster. I love you with such pale pity that the color white itself would be envious that something has it beat. I'm never going to stop being your moirail, you know that? This is troll serendipity.

Now get the frying pan out. This calls for grilled cheese, and I always burn it when I make it.

[No he doesn't, actually, but no one ever makes it as good as Gamzee in his opinion.]

I know. Pale for you until the day I die. There isn't a motherfuckin' thing what could pull me away from you.

[His hands rising, mirroring Karkat's hands on his neck as he leans in, mostly on impulse, to press his lips to Karkat's forehead for a moment. He lingers there for a moment but before this scene can turn into the type generally found in triple P rated pale porn --the p stands for paps-- Karkat distracts him with that latter comment.

He pulls back rather excitedly, and if he had the sleeves to roll back, he'd be rolling those suckers back right the fuck now.]

That's the motherfuckin' spirit, bro. Shit, lemme all fuckin' whip you some stuff up. No way you can feel sad when you got your foodsack filled the whole way up.

[Karkat holds still from the moment Gamzee places his hands to the movement they leave his neck, taking in words and gesture both with the meaning behind them. His own hands lower back to his side then.]

There's paint on my forehead, isn't there?

[He motions back at the kitchen itself.]

But I'm sure you know where the frying pan is by now. I'll get the plates.

[Gamzee laughs a little, shrugging.]

Chill. You know you'd all up and fuckin' rock it if you had a proper face a paint on your nug.

[But yes, he certainly does know where the frying pan is around here, moving to whip it out and set it on the stove, before he heads for the fridge to collect the ingredients he'll need.]

[Karkat pauses at the sink to wipe off his forehead real quick. No use for grey smudges up there.]

The only thing I would accomplish by wearing "proper" face paint is looking like a faithless douchebag. Which I pretty much am, so mission accomplished in that hypothetical scenario.

[Hands and face dried with a hand towel, he then gets the plates from the appropriate cabinet.]

[Gamzee chuckles a little as he dumps the butter in the pan to heat.]

I got a feelin' like you'd look like a right proper motherfucker.

[Time to grab the bread and the cheese and whatever else how does one grilled cheese sandwiches, really.]

You never got your wonderment on for how you'd fuckin' look like with a proper face?

[Gamzee sure remembers wondering a bunch about that before he had made the decision to go full time on the whole bullshit clown religion thing. Maybe it was just a signal on how it had resonated with him, but honestly, the first time he had seen another brother with paint on his snout, he had gotten this little wonder in his pan over how all that grey black and white would look at him.]

[Karkat turns to watch Gamzee now, leaning against the counter as he does. This is a good conversation, for all it has little importance on the scale of things. It's nice and relaxed. Good for keeping his mind off other concerns.]

No, not really. Why would I? Even if I did, I have no clue what kind of pattern you'd put on there, or how those designs even work. How do you even go about selecting an ugly clown face to wear?

That's easy, man.

[He halts in his sandwich making process for a moment to lean over, giving Karkat one of his dopey sort of grins, before he lightly raps his knuckles against his chest, over Karkat's pump bisquit.]

It's all being in here. You get to heeding the Messiahs' mirthful call and you learn ain't nothing what be all as fuckin' important as putting trust at your faith and what your heart speak to you about. They put that motherfucker to be there for a fuckin' reason. You just gotta allow it to fuckin' guide you.

[Karkat gives him a bit of a frown, but doesn't stop him from thumping his chest.]

Gamzee, you know as well as I do that the only gods I believe in are the ones I have personally seen, and Faygo-drinking rap clown Messiahs do not number among them. My heart does not particularly speak about face paint to me, either.

You sure? Maybe you just never got down at getting your proper listen on.

[He smiles, obviously pretty pleased with the conversation topic at hand here. Even if Karkat does keep insulting it, but that's cool, every motherfucker is entitled to their own opinions.]

I am sure. Highly sure. How about you tell me instead what kind of paint you would pick if you did a face for me?

Huh.

[He tilts his head, staring at Karkat's face as if he had never seen it before. Thing is people might expect Gamzee to answer any sort of question without thinking, --and he does most of the time!-- but this is different. While it might be bullshit to everybody else, to Gamzee this is a Big Fucking Deal. Big enough that he actually allows it some thought.

Which is perfect cause it was about time to dump those sandwiches he was preparing in the pan anyway.

While he does so, he lets the question roll around in his pan. What sorta paint would look right on Karkat's snout? There's the traditional elements, of course. Plenty of his brothers and sisters what start their faces off as a homage to any one of the jokers, to previous cult leaders, but shit, Karkat wouldn't be much of a motherfuckin' traditionalist, would he? Naw, he just can't imagine Karkat rolling like that even if he did got all down with the clown. The designs belonging to the specialist ranks are right out, of course. Karkat ain't a laughsassin, ninjester or anything of the sort. He's just Karkat.

Well... he's got something niggling at the back of his skull. No reason not to go with that, right? Gotta go with what you heart tells you is right.]

Seems to me, brother, like you already got you a fuckin' pattern grant at you by divinity.

[Aw yes, sandwiches cooking. Now he just has to wait for them to be done so they can partake of their cheesy goodness. You cannot beat grilled cheese in a comfort food-off, it is simply ~~a shoehorned meme~~ the best there is.]

[There's still the conversation, though. Karkat waits, wondering what he must be considering in spite of his lack of knowledge on clown faces. He's not going to space out on him, is he? Should he prompt him? But Gamzee answers on his own, with something that brings its own question.]

Granted by divinity? What are you talking about?

Remember the time shit got all spiritual up in here and you, my brother, were fuckin' center piece of it?

[well, okay, not just him. Couple of other motherfuckers what had gotten powers then too. But Karkat was the one he had really gotten to see in action.]

[Karkat's hand meets his face. It is a comfortable and familiar reunion of friends.]

Why did I not realize that? I went all white and red like Ammy and Kabegami, but it failed to reach my notice that maybe I got the funny face marks like they had, too.

[Karkat's hand/Karkat's face is the truest OTP of all ages. Truly they have a love that goes beyond the quadrants.]

Truest goddamn miracle what I ever did see.

[Alas, it is a fleeting love snatched in times of conflict and turmoil, never to last for more than moments, but those moments are all the sweeter for it. Karkat's palm slides free of its warm-cheeked lover, to hang alone, but never forgetting.]

Okay, fine. If on the occasion I ever did allow you to subject my face to full painted madness, I would be alright with that pattern, because it's cool by association with what happened then. But only that pattern, okay?

[Gamzee doesn't even respond to that. Well, not verbally at least. But the look he sends Karkat should be enough. The sheer amount of dopey glee on his nug is downright impressive. Why, Karkat could've told him that turning the living room into a giant ball and horn pit was a terrific idea and even then that reaction would pale somewhat to how excited Gamzee seems at the (possible) prospect of painting Karkat's face up fine some time (maybe).]

[It's an expected reaction, really.]

Yes, yes, great for you. What a happy occasion. I don't care. Just keep an eye on the sandwiches so they don't burn, will you?

[Wouldn't dream of it. And in the event of accidental burning, he would definitely not make Karkat eat the charcoal-y one. Cause that is true love.

In face, here, he flips the one grilled cheese sandwich currently cooking so the other side can brown too.]

It is. Getting all to see my best brother made up as if he was all in the acceptance of that truth what be. Touches a motherfucker deep, you know?

Gamzee, even if I did allow it to happen, I wouldn't have converted to your weird clown religion. I know it's important to you, and as ridiculous as it all seems to me, I'm not going to take that from you. But it's just not going to happen for me.

[He moves now, heading to the kitchen table to take a seat.]

Just be glad I've found it in me to believe in any gods at all. Which, as stated, was through actually seeing them.

[Hmmm, that sandwich seems about done. Gamzee scoops it up, depositing it on a plate for Karkat, even as he starts grilling up a second one for himself.]

I know, man, I know.

[With his sandwich grilling in the pan, it's a small favour to carry the plate with Karkat's on it over to the table.]

But no fuckin' harm done on me getting my fuckin' imagining on for what if we was sharing that kind of faith, right? You know, just thinking on amazing shit what could've all been. Like, if there was any motherfucker I could have my fuckin' pick off for sharing that miracle of faith with, it'd be you, my brother.

[Imagining what if? Karkat takes the plate once it's handed over--]

Thanks.

[--and taking a bite gives him a good moment to think it over. Also to appreciate the warm, melty cheese goodness on perfectly browned bread. This is a wonder food. It is amazing. But beyond the face paint, a crippling Faygo addiction, and sparkles where they don't belong...]

I'm not even sure what all your religion is about, now that I think on it. Is there even anything to it beyond Mirthful Messiahs and a stubborn rejection of all things scientific?

Edited 2013-02-25 09:04 (UTC)

[It truly is a gift from the glorious clown gods.

Gamzee turns a little to look at Karkat, waiting until it is time to flip his own sandwich.]

There's the Vast Honk.

The Vast Honk?

[Sounds like more ridiculous clown nonsense, but hey, he's asking still. He takes another bite while giving Gamzee room to answer.]

045 ♋ [DREAM → rising sun]

action; damnit now I'm hungry

action; yeah, damn, i might have to make some grilled cheese myself here.

action; weeps gently over canon

action; there is no canon, only vath

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