Chapter 3 - Chapter 3

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The next day was, as I had predicted, terrible. Not as terrible as I'd expected, but it wasn't the best day I'd ever had, either.

I'd found myself waking up warm and comfortable on John's overstuffed couch, which was pretty much the only highlight of the day.

The thing was, I woke up to a bespectacled, bug-eyed girl grinning in my face.

"Oh, you're awake!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Good morning, Karkat!"

"Get out of my face," I muttered.

John's roommate, who had been introduced to me the previous night as Jade, pulled a childish, pouting face. "Well, that's not nice. And here I was just going to tell you that breakfast was ready."

I heard John laugh from another room. "It's okay, Jade, he is probably just really crabby in the morning!"

In the brief moment of silence that followed John's rather accurate statement, I heard the sizzle of grease on a skillet. As I sat up, Jade grabbed my wrist and dragged me off the couch, obviously done with her mini-pity-fest. I resisted the urge to yell, "Let go, you crazy witch!" as she tugged me toward the kitchen, where a steaming plate of bacon and eggs awaited me. I nearly drooled, but caught myself in time as John handed the plate to me.

"Are you ready to go?" John asked a few minutes later. Jade had left after forcing me out of bed, on her way to wherever she worked.

I looked up at him from what remained of my breakfast, my face blank. "Go where?"

He giggled yet again. "Work," he replied simply. "We could use an extra hand, and you could use the extra money. Don't worry about it," he added, as I opened my mouth to speak. "I already called my manager. She's okay with it."

I gaped. Free food, a place to stay, and now he was giving me a job, too? This guy was way too nice. I didn't complain, though; at least I'd be able to pay off what I felt I owed him.

"Sure," I replied. "Let me get my shoes on."

John and Jade's apartment was about two blocks from the coffee shop, the same distance as from Sollux's but in the opposite direction, so we walked. He was talking animatedly about nothing in particular, way too childish for his age, and I mainly tuned him out.

I did notice the concerned glances he shot at me every now and then, though.

"Oh, did you see the news today?" he was saying now. "That car accident on the southbound freeway? Like, five people di - "

"No, I didn't," I interrupted. "I was too busy choking down your burnt bacon."

He laughed. "Oh, come on! That bacon was cooked to perfection, you know nothing of good food!"

"Yeah, if by 'perfection' you mean 'flambe'."

His laughter increased in decibal, and even I couldn't help but crack a small smile in spite of myself.

)O(

"Okay, so that's a twenty-four-ounce triple white mocha, and a twelve-ounce hot chocolate?" I said, writing down the order with one hand and reaching for the paper cups with the other.

"Yes, with extra milk, please," the girl said. "Is that okay, Equius?"

"You know I have absolutely no aversion to you ordering extra milk. Of course it's okay."

I handed the two their respective beverages and thanked them when they handed me their money, and when I had turned around from putting it in the cash register, they were gone, with a couple of extra bills in the tip jar. I sighed.

Working at a coffee shop was a little harder than I would have expected, but it wasn't intolerable. John's manager was a...little strange. She obsessed over the color red and kept picking at the dough whenever the other guy that worked there was making biscotti. I mean, that chick had one hell of a nose; she'd smell the almond extract before Gamzee even put it in the mixing bowl.

And Gamzee was another story entirely. He seemed doped up out of his mind; with a consistent inability to put a curb on his profanities, Terezi had obviously had to keep him busy in the back room, and had someone keep an eye on him constantly to make sure he never put anything into the dough that didn't belong there. Since I was the new guy, she had me do that job more often than John.

Now, however, Gamzee and Terezi were both gone; Gamzee pushing his friend's wheelchair out the door John was holding for them, and Terezi having shouted something about Christmas shopping on her way out the door. Which left John and me with a bit of peace and quiet. I stepped around the counter and walked back to one of the tables, where John was waiting with his index finger poised on top of his king-side rook and a sly smile on his face.

"Your move, rookie," he said, and I facepalmed after that lame pun.

"'Rookie'? Really?" I said with a sigh, then slightly changed the subject. "I thought it was your turn?"

"I moved while you were taking that order," he replied. "No use in letting an opportunity like that go to waste."

"So that's why you told me to take their order."

His smile grew. "Your turn," he repeated.

I looked down at the chessboard. He'd checked me; his rook was two spaces away from my king, and there was no move I could make that could take him out. "I give."

"You're terrible at chess, Karkat."

"I know. Don't rub it in."

He giggled. "So, that's...ten to none?"

"Twelve. Twelve to none." I sighed again. "I'm sick of this game."

"Well, anyone would be if they'd lost so many. I'll put this away, then."

He put the board and the pieces back in their box and took it back to its shelf behind the counter, and I sat at the table, looking down at the grain of the wood before putting my hands over it.

"You're doing it again."

I looked up at John, who'd just spoken, and his eyes had that concerned look again. "What are you talking about?" I muttered.

"Feeling sorry for yourself," he answered. He sat back down across from me, and through those thick glasses his eyes fixed pointedly on me. "You need to stop doing that, Karkat."

"I'll stop when I feel like it."

"That is the point! You'll never feel like it if you don't stop!" He was glaring at me now, and the expression was so alien on his face that it almost made me laugh. "Look, I understand how you feel, and I know you can't get over it in a day, but if you don't try you never will. If you keep waiting for him to come back, if you keep looking for something that is not there, you will never get over it."

You don't understand, I thought. You think you do, but you really don't.

Only one person does, and she's with him right now.

The bell at the front and the rush of frigid air informed us that someone had entered the shop, and John gave me one more glance before going to the counter to greet the new customers. I remained at the table, staring into the space that unintentionally included what was outside the window.

I noticed the two cars through the light snowfall, and realized after a moment that they were headed right for each other before the drivers of either vehicle did; fortunately, one of them did notice, and swerved out of the way before it was too late. That car skidded for a moment on the ice, but half a second later both cars were on the right sides of the road and neither were in danger of crashing within my line of sight.

I eventually realized that my eyes were wide, my mouth slightly open, and my fingers gripping the side of the table so hard I almost felt splinters enter my skin. I blinked and my mouth came closed, but I couldn't relax enough to release my grip on the wood.

"Are you all right?" A voice came from nearby. "You look like you've seen the ghost of something not very nice."

I took two deep breaths before I looked back up at John, but I could feel my eyes were still slightly wider than usual. "I'm fine."

He gave me a disbelieving look, then sighed and went back to the counter. The most recent customers were sitting at the table across the room; two women, one with blonde hair, the other with a single green highlight in the midst of dark black hair, were sitting across from each other. The blonde laughed at something the other said, and then looked at her with a tenderness I hadn't seen in weeks.

I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself down.

)O(

"Look, Karkat, you don't have to work there if you don't want to. I am sorry for pushing it on you, but - "

"It's not that I don't want to work there. It's that I don't want to have to watch that clown all day again," I retorted, a little snappier than I'd intended.

It was a few days later. John and I were walking back from Buns and Brews, the night air freezing but not unbearable. I'd still had to borrow a jacket from John; the light jacket I usually wore was wearing thin. His glasses glinted in the light of a street lamp as he looked at me again. Those looks were becoming less frequent, but not by much.

"You know, you can tell me to take over whenever Gamzee gets to be too much. We don't have to take it in consistent shifts."

I sighed, watching the vapor of my breath dissolve into nothing. "I know."

"Then what's wrong with it?"

"Why doesn't Terezi fire that lout already?" I said at an even higher volume than before. "All he does is bake biscotti and muffins, and terribly. Yours is way better, and you've said yourself that you hate baking!"

"I don't hate it. I just said that to Jade to get her to stop making me do all the cooking when her friends come over. You know that."

"Whatever. All the more reason to fire him and have you take over the baking shoot."

"You're not actually upset over Gamzee."

I closed my mouth, startled by the sudden statement. "What? Of course I am," I said when I'd regained some composure.

"Yes, but that's not the reason you're upset all the time, is it?" he asked.

I stopped. John took a couple of steps before he noticed I'd fallen behind, and turned to face me, eyes questioning.

"I don't know what to do," I murmured.

John took another step toward me. "Did you say something?" he asked. Then watched, confused, as I fell to my knees and started weeping brokenly. I folded in on myself, not feeling the cold, not feeling anything.

"I don't know what to do!" I repeated, louder, more pleading. I hated this. I hated my life, myself, everything.

I hated constantly searching every face that entered the coffee shop, in hopes that it had all been a dream and I could wake up.

I hated waking up and looking for someone there, only to find no one, the only warmth under the blankets mine, the only thought in my head being how I screwed up so badly.

I hated the way John's arms wrapped around me; I hated how I had to be comforted constantly by the only one who listened.

And I hated how unfaithful I now felt as I cried against his shoulder; knowing that what I still felt for Sollux, I somehow also felt for John. Somehow, in the few days since I'd met him, I'd started to have the feelings for him I felt I should have never had again.

"Sh," I heard him say as he tightened his arms around me slightly. "Sh, it's okay, Karkat. You'll be all right."

The only reply I could muster was another sob, and I felt as he gently coaxed me back to my feet and toward the apartment, half a block away. But I didn't open my eyes. I was too scared to see the expression on his face.

I only opened them when he'd left me on the couch, wrapped in blankets, to go to the kitchen. Jade wasn't there; it was the weekend, and she was at a friend's Christmas party. John and I would have gone if he hadn't insisted on staying until closing every day. Before long, he came back with two steaming mugs in his hands, and passed one to me, which I took gratefully. Most of the tears were gone now, and I wiped the rest away, staring into my cup of hot chocolate before I took a careful sip of it. I set it down on a coaster on the coffee table.

He popped a movie into the DVD player, then sat beside me on the couch, somehow knowing that I wouldn't talk about it until I was ready, and waiting patiently until then. His arm was around my shoulders, and I settled against him as the movie commercials he insisted on not skipping through started playing.

I never found out what movie he'd put in, as I fell asleep before the title screen came on.

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