Chapter Text
People always say it's difficult to quantify how much one can love a person.
But you can.
You can quantify it to the ounce, down to the milligram, of the love you feel for him.
For Dave.
The day he hugged you first, on the roof before the fight with Slick and Jack, you'd flinched. You didn't mean to. You'd been looking forward to this meeting since the moment you learned it was possible. To meet your hero, your role model, who you aspired to be and who's actions guided your actions and moral compass. He was a hero of war, a revolutionary, an artist.
He was a kid.
And he hated you.
Not you. But you. Of course he did.
Of course the person you'd put in a pedestal had received the absolute shittiest version of you. The You you'd feared you could become. All that self-doubt realized in all the things he told you. All that self-loathing validated and solidified. You knew you had that deep inside you and now here it all was. How truly horrendous you could be.
If he asked you to, you'd have leaned forwards and not stopped your descent at all.
There's something so freeing and atoning when he cuts your head off. The brave Knight felling the monstrous Prince.
But he holds your head and your body close, so tenderly, like you might slip away or vanish. Like you'd ever want to leave him.
So when the game ends, you don't. You don't leave him. There's something between you two. You feel it. A connection you can't explain but you can measure.
If he asked you to, you'd let him decapitate you. Again and again. As many times as he needs you to.
He asks you to hang out instead. To watch shitty movies with a respectable distance between the both of you.
And sometimes he touches you.
He bumps shoulders with you, bumps your fist. He doesn't hug you like that. You feel a sharp pang of jealousy that you keep under tight leash when you see him do it to Karkat. But you understand. Why would he hug you again? Or hold you? Or do anything like that? Obviously this is all a subtle way to punish you.
If he asked you to, you'd stay in this eternal limbo. Always close but not enough. You deserve it.
But he doesn't ask that. Slowly, he touches you. Little brushes of your fingers that leave your heart thundering in your chest, with jolts of cold shivers. In the privacy of your room, you stare where he touched you, hovering over the spot like a revered relic. Your fingers touch a little more when you hand him a cup with apple juice, a plate with food. Every time, you feel that touch go from your fingertips up to your chest and your head in a pleasant tingle you become addicted to. Like the disgusting, greedy thing that you are.
You sit besides him and he sits closer and every time, without fail, you become hyper-aware of where you and him connect. His length of his leg against yours. Your shoulder against the tender spot of his side. Or vice-versa. His voice droning on and on, making comments, jabs, jokes, and quips that you respond to in kind
If he asked you to, for these little moments, you'd seppuku. Not in a joking way. In the way that you'd let him watch as you went with the whole ceremony, start to finish. To let him watch as the blade cut into the tender skin of your belly. Slowly. The agony of the steel baring your insides out. Your body falling forwards, legs spread to further shame you. You wouldn't dare ask for his compassion, his pity, in the shape of his sword finally decapitating you for one final time.
But he doesn't ask for that either.
He asks for something harder. For something more difficult that sometimes hurts you worse than any blade or word you've received until now.
He asks you to live.
Brushes of fingers turn to short stints of holdings hands that make your face turn hot. You see it on his soft cheeks as well, the smattering of freckles like constellations on his cheeks that turn darker when he blushes as well.
And the first time you kiss you know you'd do anything for him.
So he asks you to live.
It's hard. Harder than facing your mortality. That's easy. Self-destruction has always come as easy as breathing to you. But it's harder to tell him when you're being self-depreciating. When your jokes of hurting or killing yourself aren't jokes. When you don't eat days at a time or sleep or stay in the shower for hours. It's so fucking hard.
"We can do it together." He says. And you believe him.
You believe him because he's the same. He has a hard time not hoarding food, not going in circles instead of telling you what's wrong. He depreciates in a different way, belittling himself, comparing himself. He flinches. He's so scarred. He looks everywhere and makes sure he knows where the exits are. And just like he does for you, you do for him.
He asks you to care for him. He promises to care for you.
His arms wrap around your neck in an embrace you feel you don't deserve. Your whole body stays frozen, feeling the muscles of your body trying to do the same. You just grip his shirt.
For now, it's good enough. You'll keep learning. He'll catch you and you'll catch him. He steps off the pedestal you placed him on to show you the person he actually is and you'll step off the image of the You that isn't you. You'll take these slow, painful steps towards tomorrow, towards a future you never dared to hope for.
Because he's asked you to.
You will.