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Your name is Karkat Vantas and oh for the love of gog.
You’re just going to the market, for grub’s sake, not walking into a war zone. Yet there he is, your gangly bones-and-skin moirail, slouching behind you and glaring at every troll who passes by. You got hit once, it’s not like it’s the end of the world.
Gamzee’s gotten bigger the closer to his final moult, and it irks you that you come to his chest now rather than his shoulder. Your adult moult was almost a perigee ago, and you’ve been careful since to keep your eyes hooded and your blood behind your skin where it belongs. Empress Feferi’s new culling laws and mutant statutes aside, you’re basically still a target and you work hard to not get any “special treatment” one way or the other.
Gamzee does not seem to get the memo. He’s attracting more attention than your little tussle with some idiot blueblood last market day did. You elbow his side.
"Stop growling at the merchants, panleak, you’re gonna get us both in trouble," you mutter. He glances at you and hmphs.
"If any brother or sister here wanna start some trouble, Karbro, they gotta go through me first."
You sigh. No use talking to him when he’s like this. Might as well try to get your shopping done.
Your black eye has faded, more or less, into a safer sort of maroonish-greenish-grey when you approach the booth selling vegetables. You could just go to the ration supplies warehouse, but you like the market. It has more of a rustic feel to it, and people don’t talk nearly as much.
"Mr. Vantas," the merchant nods. She’s a brownblood, burly, protects her wares jealously and treats her regulars fairly. "The usual?"
You nod and plunk down the caegers while she bags up your produce. She passes the bag off to you and nods. “Have a nice day. Try pulping up some carrots for that eye.”
You nod back and put the produce in your basket; then, you hand the basket to Gamzee.
"Don’t drop this," you warn, and he half-grins while eyeing the knot of six-sweep-old punks lurking between a couple of booths ahead.
"You got it, bro."
The rest of your shopping goes by without much of a hitch. You get your fruits, your meats, and some candy for the two of you to gum on while you haggle over the price of nails and scrap wood, and you keep an eye on Gamzee. He’s looming, eyes darting around, and you finish negotiations by settling on the merchant’s higher price (ridiculous, no one should pay that much for some rusty nails and wormy wood, but you need ‘em so whatever) and grab his hand to pull him farther down the street.
Once secluded in an empty by-way you gently take the basket from his arm and pap his cheeks, soothing your thumbs over his cheekbones. He doesn’t relax immediately, but his shoulders slump a little, and he sighs heavily when you stroke a hand through his hair.
"It’s okay, Gamzee," you say softly. "I’m okay. It was just a little tussle, not somebody out to get me. Shoosh."
You jam out a quickie there in the alley and let him kiss your forehead, then step back and pick the basket back up.
"Alright. Let’s get out of here."
Gamzee still looks tense but the smile he gives you is much more genuine.
Your hive is in sight when Gamzee’s paranoia is validated.
You hear a low whir, and then your legs are wrapped up tight in a tangle of rope and heavy weights that crash against your knees, and you fall gracelessly to the ground with a yell. Gamzee honks, startled, and when you clear your head enough to realize what you’re looking at, the two of you are surrounded by a motley crew of trolls, mostly blues, some teals. You recognize the one who gave you your shiner, mostly because you got him good down the face with your claws and his wounds look infected and oozy (good).
"Looky what we got, fellas," he laughs. "The freak decided to leave his hive again! And with another freak, lookit this!"
Gamzee gently sets down the basket of food next to you, and his hand ghosts through your hair and over one of your horns.
"Keep your oculars down," he mumbles, "and up and cut those ropes when I say go. You feel me?"
You nod, readying your sylladex. Really, these morons aren’t very bright. You aren’t going to like what Gamzee is about to do, but you like it a lot better than the alternative.
Gamzee draws club and throws himself at the ring with a wild roar, and you hear cursing and yells of “indigo, Barvek, how did you not—?” while you withdraw your sickle and start working on the ropes. Your knees both feel steady, and you leap up to help, grabbing the other sickle and leaping at the idiots coming towards you with a snarl.
It’s over relatively quickly. You’ve been practicing with sickles since you were a wiggler and Gamzee’s propensity for bloodletting has only gotten more deadly with age. You are going to get in trouble with Feferi for this later, but whatever, she’s not here most of the time and she can go cry to her quadrantmates about it later.
You and Gamzee stumble home with scratches and bloodstained clothes, and you have a hard time getting the food put away and both of you cleaned up when Gamzee keeps trying to curl his length around your limbs. You let him. And then you let him cuddle you for the entire rest of the day, even though you had other things you wanted to do, because. Well. It’s always nice to know he’s as pale for you as you are for him.