
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/696414.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage, Major_Character_Death
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Terezi_Pyrope/Dave_Strider, Gamzee_Makara/Terezi_Pyrope, Terezi_Pyrope/
      Vriska_Serket
  Character:
      Gamzee_Makara, Terezi_Pyrope, Dave_Strider
  Additional Tags:
      Caliginous_Romance_|_Kismesis, Break_Up, Dysfunctional_Relationships,
      Sexual_Violence, Blood, Dark
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-02-23 Words: 1198
****** Stick those pins and drive them in ******
by argyle_avatar
Summary
     The problem with hatred is that it's a form of fascination. One
     version of what went down between Gamzee, Terezi, and Dave on the
     meteor.
Notes
     Please note that this is violent and not very nice in a sexualized
     context. A warning for dysfunctional-kismesis consent problems would
     probably not go amiss.
See the end of the work for more notes
The problem with hatred was that it was a form of fascination. The problem with
hatred was that the more Terezi realized what Gamzee was doing, the more she
hated him, and the harder she went after him, and the worse it got.
She was investigating. Criminals required investigation! Perpetrators of
unlawful assasinations could not be allowed to wander the vents of the meteor,
unobserved and unchecked. She also knew full well that she was waxing pitch.
The two were not mutually exclusive. Law was rightly both opposed to and
obsessed with disorder. She told herself this as she crawled through the
ductwork. She barely needed her nose to find him. All she had to do was orient
herself towards the stink of fear that his chucklevoodoos made in the air. The
closer she climbed in the vent, the harder she felt the icy claws of it in her
spine.
When she found him she knocked him around a little - it was certainly the law's
right to poke the accused with a sword until the air smelled like grape in the
name of information-gathering. He would endure it, vacant, a little half-smile
on his face, refuse to tell her anything until she pushed too hard and he
fetched her up against the wall with a single long-armed slap. There was reach
and strength in his bony arms, highblood strength. She was within her rights to
kill him and he was within his to kill her and instead he murmured
counterfactual religious propaganda and she clawed at him until they both wound
up against the metal wall, grinding.
Yes, she knew what kismesiship was, and she knew that it was happening. She'd
always imagined something - better, she supposed. More heroic, more - clean -
something like the desperate clawing anger she'd felt at Vriska, sometimes,
when they were best friends. Something other then this icy, chucklevoodoo-
flavored obsession, better then her clothes covered with dust and scratches and
her head ringing with fear miasma and clown cant. It settled and twisted in her
stomach. It dug in. It was ugly stuff. She smelled her own face in the mirror,
the deep shadows under her eyes, the tealy bruise along her jaw where a
horrible murderclown had seized her by the jaw, his knee between her thighs,
her claws ready on his jugular. She wanted to press in until the blood spurted.
She knew that it was pitch hate because she couldn't actually seem to do it,
though.
When she tried to sleep she saw Vriska's body on the decking. When she carried
her sword through the vents she felt the peculiar give of a body under it,
vivid and immediate in her memory. She hid her face from the others. She
steeled herself to do it this time, to finish the job.
She wrapped her hands around Gamzee's throat until his breath rasped, until his
face went purple under her hands. He writhed under her, claws rending at her
back, and she hated how it made her bulge uncoil even as his stupid clown
voodoo battered at her brain.
He smiled at her, lazy as a night at the beach. His teeth were bloody from
where she'd punched him. He pulled his claws out of her back and traced one
along her throat, dragging so that a little line of teal sprung up after him,
and then he put one hand in her hair, wrapped hard enough to sting, and pulled
her down to press his straining, airless mouth against hers.
She turned her hands loose. She pailed him in the ventilation shaft, her back a
bloody wreck, his neck springing up hand-shaped bruises. It settled in her
stomach, cold and twisting, and for some reason at the moment when she
shouldn't have been thinking at all she thought Vriska, clear as if she'd
spoken. Afterwards she imagined what it would have been like if Vriska had
lived long enough, if Vriska had maybe realized what their old rivalry was
leading up to, in the natural order of troll adolescence. She imagined Vriska's
hands on her, flesh and metal. Her clothes smelled like Faygo and she felt
unutterably sad.
She didn't like remembering that that was the day that she'd gone limping back
down to the main level, back sticking bloody to her shirt, leaning hard on her
cane. The humans had been in the library - they were almost always in the
library - Dave sitting with his head leaned against the arm of Rose's chair.
Smelling the easy way they sat together made her throat tighten. She'd never
wanted a moirail, not really, but if she'd had a moirail she'd have had someone
to help her bandage the hard-to-reach spots on her back. If she'd had a
moirail, she barely, barely thought, touching the words lightly with her mind,
she'd have had someone she could talk to about the way that this all made her
stomach hurt, or about her utter conviction that Gamzee was doing something
dangerous and that she couldn't stop him.
Dave was smiling, head tipped back, as Rose read from the book in her lap.
Terezi almost turned and left them to it. She waited too long. He looked up,
and his face went shuttered when he saw her in the doorway, leaning on her
cane.
Terezi had kissed Dave a time or two before she started crawling around vents,
once gotten a hand up his shirt in an inspired bid for cross-cultural
understanding, spent more time than she could quantify - though not more than
he could - talking with him. She might know him better then she knew Karkat;
better then she knew any of the trolls who were alive, maybe.
He looked at her limp and his face slammed shut and maybe if she'd focused she
would have smelled his lip curl and maybe she wouldn't have, but for the first
time in her entire life she couldn't stand to know something. She couldn't
stand to know if he despised her, standing there with her shirt seeping teal
and her knees bruised from the metal decking.
They would talk about it later - he would be reasonable, for a human, and
horribly offensive for a troll, which she was used to. She would lean both
hands on her cane, shoulders hunched, and tell him that she wasn't planning to
stop. She could have told him how sure she was that Gamzee was still involved
in something dangerous; she could have told him that Gamzee wasn't even always
on the meteor. She could have explained again, in small, human-friendly words,
that she had a perfect right to have a rival. Some part of her would seethe at
the thought that Dave Strider, the human who refused to talk quadrants with
anyone, thought she was such a wreck that he was meddling ashen-ways, like he'd
never kissed her back, like flush had never been on the table. She wouldn't say
any of that. She would keep her face from betraying her thoughts. She would
walk out first.
She would see full well how this helped Gamzee. She would see full well how
that made it harder for her to stop.
End Notes
     Title from "Hole in there middle" by Emily Jane White. Written on a
     phone keypad, so I would be very happy to hear about any typos.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
