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The thing about Karkat, Dove had long ago decided, was that she possessed a skill for locating a crisis in any given moment. It was a talent, really. Where others saw the ever so mundane reality, Karkat saw a blank canvas to paint. This Tuesday morning, the crisis was cereal.
“It is not food,” Karkat declared She held the brightly colored box aloft, her small frame taut. “It's industrially-produced sugar masquerading as sustenance. It's a cynical delivery system for empty calories and regret.. And look at this mascot!” She thrust the box toward Dove. The mascot was a tiger, its grin a wide, chemically-white crescent of corporate cheer.
“Look at those eyes. They’re soulless. This is the face of late-capitalist decay, Dove, and we have willingly installed it in our cupboard.”
Dove leaned against the cool granite of the countertop. She took a slow sip of coffee, letting the bitter heat bloom on her tongue. The morning light, pale and tentative as it strained through the window over the sink, caught the edges of Karkat’s form. She was wearing one of Dove’s old band shirts (a black relic from a tour a decade past, the print so faded it was more of a memory than an actual image) and a pair of her own soft, worn sleep shorts patterned with tiny looking dragons. Her dark hair was cropped to the back of her neck, having recently cut it in a spur of impulsion one random midnight. At the time, Dove told her she would absolutely regret it, and if she could she would kick her past self for ever saying it. The sight of her, like this, never failed to produce in Dove a quiet awe.
“You’re the one who picked it,” she pointed out, her voice its usual flat, droned tone. “You stood in the aisle for like, half an hour. You read the label on the side. You decided it was the least diabetic-inducing out of all of them.”
“I was ambushed!” Karkat cried, slamming the box down on the counter with a thump that made the silverware in the drawer rattle. “Ambushed by clever packaging, a claim of fortified vitamins, and a temporary price reduction strategically placed to prey upon empty pockets! It was a moment of weakness. I'm eating it anyway, obviously,” She crossed her arms, her expression one of profound grievance. “But mark my words, Strider. This is the end of the line. Next week, we're gonna buy oats. You know, the kind that looks like masonry supplies? It's most probably better for our health, not that you care."
This was, usually, the established rhythm of their mornings. Dove loved it. She loved the sheer force of Karkat’s (sometimes unnecessary) care. If she could muster this much fury over a box of corn syrup and food dye, then her love, when she chose to show it, was far from a mild, gentle thing. It was the most undeniable fact of Dove’s life.
“Your coffee's gonna get cold,” Dove observed, nodding at the forgotten mug near Karkat’s elbow.
“Ugh, don’t mother-hen me.” But Karkat picked up the mug anyway, wrapping both hands around its ceramic warmth. She took a sip and made a face, a weird grimace of pleasure and protest. This was like this with coffee; she claimed to hate it, called it “bitter bean swill,” yet consumed it every morning as if it were medicine. Dove had once, months ago, bought a small bottle of expensive vanilla creamer on a whim. Karkat had scoffed, called it too sweet and overpriced. But Dove had found the half-empty bottle in the fridge three days later. She never mentioned it, but she made sure there was always a fresh one tucked behind the gallon of milk since then.
“It's grocery day,” Karkat announced, setting the mug down. “Our fridge is a a complete wasteland, and that goddamn cheese is expired. We need actual nutrients. We must brave the fluorescent purgatory of the supermarket and wrest sustenance from the jaws of commerce.”
In the early, fragile days of their relationship, such an expedition would have been an ordeal of quiet anxiety. Dove would have retreated behind the impregnable fortress of her aviators, awkward replies, and sticky sweat if she dared to uncross her arms from its usual fold across her chest. Karkat would have compensated by ranting about everything, from the store’s painful lighting to her favorite movies. But with little time, they found it an easy thing to do the tedious, mundane errands with eachother.
“I need a minimum of fifteen minutes,” Dove said, placing her empty cup in the sink. “The lighting in that place is a sensory violence.”
“You get ten,” Karkat retorted, already heading for the bedroom to change. “The clock is ticking, Strider!”
*
The supermarket was, as always, overwhelming. It was too bright, the fluorescent tubes overhead humming a flat, white note that vibrated in Dove’s teeth. The air was a potpourri of artificial scents: the cloying sweetness of berry from the yogurt aisle, the sharp, clean sting of citrus cleaner from the recently mopped floors, the underlying odor of spent coffee grounds from the sample station. Muzak, the aural equivalent of beige, seeped from hidden speakers, a tune so bland it felt less like music and more like a mild auditory sedative.
Dove secured a shopping cart, the last one, with a front left wheel that possessed a stubborn wobble, and slid her aviators on. The world instantly softened into a more manageable composition of shadow and muted reflection. Karkat walked at her side, clad in a worn leather jacket that was too big in the shoulders and jeans with a carefully ripped knee. She clutched the grocery list, written in her aggressive, angular script on the back of a expired coupon.
“Produce first.” Karkat commanded. Dove pushed the cart forward, the wheel emitting a rhythmic, protesting thump-whirr, thump-whirr.
Karkat beelined for the produce section, making first for the avocados. Dove parked the cart and leaned against it, watching. Karkat’s entire being seemed to focus down to the task. She picked up one avocado after another, her brows knitting together, her lips moving soundlessly as she conducted a silent interrogation of each. She cradled them in her palms, testing their weight. Her thumbs, with a surprising delicacy, probed the stem ends. The bustling world around them, the tired young mother with a toddler in the cart seat, the stock boy listlessly stacking navel oranges, the elderly man comparing honeydews with a perplexed air, all of it seemed to recede, blur, until there was only Karkat.
Dove was struck, not for the first time, by her beauty. Karkat cared about everything with this same fierce, unvarnished intensity. The narrative logic of B-tier movies, global political injustices, the correct method for loading a dishwasher, the ethical implications of single-source olive oil. It was exhausting. It was magnificent. Dove often felt a form of devotion so pure it was almost religious when it came to her. If she asked her to jump off a bridge, she'd do it with no hesitation.
“Here,” Karkat said finally, turning. In her hand, she held a single, dark green avocado. Her face was alight with the pure satisfaction of a problem solved. “This is the perfect one.” She placed it into the child seat of the cart, nestling it beside her purse.
Dove looked at her. A strand of dark hair, damp from the produce misters, was stuck to the curve of her cheek. Her eyes were dark, the crimson of them like polished slate. In the harsh, ungenerous light, she was the most vivid, most electrically real thing Dove had ever seen.
“What?” Karkat asked, the triumph in her expression shifting swiftly to suspicion.
“Nothing. You just have… lots of opinions on the ontogeny of vegetables.”
“It’s a berry, dumbass. Don’t patronize me, Strider. This is science.” But a faint, telltale blush was rising from the collar of her jacket, creeping up her neck like dawn.
“It’s really hot,” Dove said. “How much you know, I mean. It's nice to hear you talk and stuff.” The words left her mouth quietly, plainly, before the part of her brain that monitored for stupidity could stop her. They were simple, almost stupid words, but they were the truth.
Karkat’s blush deepened to a furious crimson. She turned abruptly away, her shoulders hiking up toward her ears, pretending a sudden deep fascination with a pile of cucumbers. “You are insufferable.”
A small, private smile touched Dove’s lips. “Yeah, sure I am. Tomatoes are next, I guess?”
They moved through the store in their practiced, gravitational orbit. In the dairy aisle, Karkat started on a lengthy critique of yogurt marketing while comparing fat content. Dove used the opportunity to quietly slip the small bottle of vanilla creamer (the specific brand Karkat secretly liked) into the cart, hiding it behind a sack of russet potatoes. In the pasta aisle, the second great engagement of the day commenced.
“This one,” Karkat stated, holding up a box of linguine with an Italian flag on the label. “Straight from the source.”
“It costs two dollars and seventeen cents more than the one next to it,” Dove replied, examining the price tag of the simpler box.
“It's higher quality though. For the ghost of a nonna’s approving nod from the hills of Umbria!”
“My ghost nonna is too conservative,” Dove deadpanned. “She says the cheap stuff is abbastanza buono.”
Karkat glared, but a short, sharp laugh escaped her, a sound she immediately tried to swallow. “You don’t have an Italian nonna. You have a brother who considers spray-cheese a viable dairy product.”
“He’s evolved. He now believes guacamole is a vegetable. It’s a generational leap.”
In the end, they placed the bronze-die linguine in the cart. Dove paid the two-dollar tribute to the ghost of craftsmanship without another word.
Soon, they reached the checkout line. Karkat unloaded the conveyor belt, in a very specific way. Heavy cans and jars first, boxes and packages next, finally, the delicate items (the bread, the eggs, the avocado) placed gently on top. When the teenage bagger, moving with languid pace, reached for the loaf of sourdough to place it at the bottom of a plastic bag, Karkat’s hand shot out, not touching him, but hovering in the air like a stop sign.
“No, no, the bread,” she said, her voice a strained mix of politeness and apocalyptic urgency. “It goes on top. If you don't, it gets all squishy. Seriously, don't they teach you this before you get the job?”
The bagger blinked, nodded slowly, and rearranged the groceries. Dove watched, her shoulders shaking with a silent laughter. She pulled out her wallet, a sleek, black thing, and paid. As they pushed the wobbling cart through the automatic doors into the cool autumn air, the tension seemed to drain from Karkat all at once. She sagged against the cart handle.
“Every time,” she exhaled, a long, world-weary sigh. “It’s like a test of one’s very will to live amidst the bland, consuming horde.”
“You were such a smartass,” Dove said, loading bags into the trunk of her used sedan. “Truly, society has nothing on you.”
“Shut up and drive, you terrible flatterer.”
*
The apartment welcomed them back with its specific, quiet stillness. It wasn’t a large space; a living room with a bank of north-facing windows, a galley kitchen, a bedroom barely big enough for a queen-sized bed and a dresser, but it was theirs. The walls, which Dove had painted a soft, warm grey, were adorned with a few framed concert posters from her brother’s more respectable shows and a single, vibrant, slightly chaotic abstract painting Karkat had done in a community class. Books spilled from shelves and gathered in stacks on the floor like intellectual stalagmites, mostly Karkat’s. A sleek, expensive turntable and a collection of vinyl records, meticulously alphabetized, was Dove’s territory.
Unpacking was another ritual. Dove brought bags to the kitchen island. Karkat, reborn with purpose, became a whirlwind.
“Your system is just chaotic, dude,” Dove observed, handing her a bag of coffee beans. Karkat took them, opened the airtight canister on the counter, and poured them in with a satisfying rustle-gush.
“Chaos,” Karkat stated, as if pronouncing a fundamental law of physics, “is the enemy of a functional domestic ecosystem. Chaos leads to buying three identical jars of capers because you can't find the first one. Chaos is waste, both material and temporal. I am a force of order. I am the anti-chaos.” She aligned all the soup cans in the pantry so their labels faced outward in a perfect, uniform row.
“You’re a force of something alright,” Dove rolled her eyes. She opened the refrigerator to put away the milk and saw the near-empty bottle of vanilla creamer on the door. She made a mental note to buy another the next time she went out.
With the groceries in their proper places, Karkat seemed to finally, fully decompress. She walked into the living room and simply let herself fall backward onto the deep, charcoal sofa, limbs splayed. “Gog, I am spent. Who knew it was so exhausting to buy stuff?”
Dove joined her, settling close enough that their shoulders and thighs pressed together along the length of the couch. The late afternoon sun had shifted, pouring through the windows in a thick, golden syrup that pooled on the hardwood floor and warmed the side of Dove’s face. She lifted her arm, and Karkat shifted immediately, curling into her side, her head finding its designated hollow between Dove’s shoulder and chest. She let out a deep, shuddering breath that seemed to come from the very soles of her feet.
Dove wrapped her arm around Karkat’s shoulders, holding her close. She was a warm, solid weight, anchoring Dove to the earth. “You did good,” Dove murmured into her hair. “We got the avocado of destiny to save the world.”
“It is a good avocado,” Karkat’s voice was muffled against Dove’s shirt, thick with fatigue and satisfaction. “We will honor it with appropriate ceremony on Thursday. With the good chips. And that queso fresco from the tienda.” Dove laughed at this.
They stayed like that for a long time. Dove scrolled through her phone with her free hand, reading inconsequential things. Karkat just breathed, the frantic, buzzing energy that always surrounded her softening into a deep, humming calm. This was a version of Karkat few people ever saw: unguarded, pliant, quiet. A housecat version, all soft fur and dormant purr. Dove pressed her lips to the top of Karkat’s head, inhaling the scent of cherry shampoo and, underneath it, the essential, warm scent of her.
Eventually, Karkat stirred. “Alright, I'm making dinner. And you are gonna help, because your sole contribution cannot be looking tragically gorgeous while leaning on things.”
“I have other skills,” Dove winked, but she followed her into the kitchen.
Dinner was Karkat’s famous stir-fry, made with whatever vegetables they had in the fridge that were nearing their end. Dove was assigned prep duty. She washed a red bell pepper, a head of broccoli, and a knob of ginger. From the knife block, she selected her chef’s knife, the weight and balance of it familiar and comforting in her hand. She began to chop. The pepper fell into satisfying little red squares. The broccoli florets separated into uniform, miniature trees. The ginger was shaved. In the past, in her college days before Karkat taught her anything, she lived off ramen and day-old apples. Which she truly had no issue with, but now she would choose her girlfriend's cooking before anything.
“Show-off,” Karkat muttered from the stove, where she was heating oil in the large cast-iron skillet. “Pass the ginger.”
They moved around each other in the small kitchen without much issue. Karkat would reach for the tamari just as Dove was sliding it across the counter toward her. Dove would have a clean bowl ready for the finished stir-fry the moment Karkat turned off the flame. It was, Dove thought, the easiest and most natural thing she had ever learned to do.
They ate at the small, round table by the window, now dark and reflecting the room back at them, their legs tangled together underneath. Karkat talked between bites, outlining the plot of a notoriously bad zombie film she intended to subject them to later, her hands waving a piece of broccoli for emphasis. Dove listened, adding a dry, succinct commentary every so often that would make Karkat snort or roll her eyes so hard it seemed dangerous.
After dinner, they dealt with the dishes. Dove washed, her hands submerged in hot, soapy water. Karkat dried, polishing each plate and glass with a cotton towel until it squeaked. Dove, who preferred water just short of boiling, would wash. Karkat, who hated the feeling of steam on her skin, would dry, which lead them to agree to this everyday task when it came to dishes.
Karkat hung the towel neatly on the oven handle. “That terrible zombie movie. The one with the CGI so egregious it feels like the director was trying to kill me personally. I need its awfulness again to calibrate my critical faculties. It’s like a shower for my soul.”
“Your hobbies are really weird,” Dove said, drying her hands on her jeans.
“You collect action figures and then imprison them in their packaging for all eternity, like a museum curator for adolescent male power fantasies. You don’t get to lecture anyone on weird hobbies.”
They resettled on the couch. Karkat found the film and, as promised, embarked on a ninety-minute critique as the it went on.
Dove didn’t watch the movie. She watched Karkat. She watched the way her hands carved shapes in the air. The dramatic flourish with which she would throw her head back against the cushions, as if appealing to a higher power for mercy. The way her voice would rise to a fever pitch of indignation, then drop to a whisper. And most of all, she watched for the moments when, during a particularly jarring jump-scare, Karkat’s hand would dart out, blind and seeking, to clutch Dove’s forearm, her fingers tightening like a vice before she realized what she was doing and snatched her hand back, pretending it never happened.
When the credits finally rolled, Karkat let out a long, cathartic sigh, as if she had just completed a strenuous task.
“Satisfied now?” Dove asked.
“Very. Now I need to wash the residue of incompetence from my mind with something of actual merit. Your choice, Strider. Choose something that won’t make my brain cry.”
Dove took the remote. She scrolled past the action films and the comedies and selected an old, quiet romantic movie, a slow-burn about loneliness and first contact. She knew Karkat secretly adored it. Within twenty minutes, the last of Karkat’s energy had melted away. She shifted, curled onto her side, and laid her head in Dove’s lap with a sigh. Dove’s hand went automatically to her hair, her fingers threading through the dark strands, scratching gently at her scalp.
A low, resonant sound began in Karkat’s chest, a steady, contented rumble.
“You are purring,” Dove whispered, the smile evident in her voice.
“I am not purring,” Karkat murmured, her eyes closed, her face smooth and relaxed. “Stop your biological mislabeling. You're awfully racist, you know?”
Dove fell silent. She kept her hand moving through Karkat’s hair, feeling the texture of it, the occasional tiny knot, the incredible softness at the nape of her neck. On the television screen, a solitary spacecraft drifted through the silent, immense beauty of a nebula. In the warm cocoon of their living room, Karkat’s breathing grew slower, deeper, more regular. The purring subsided into the gentle, shallow breaths of sleep.
Dove did not move. Her thigh began to tingle in protest to the weight. A pins-and-needles sensation crept up her foot. She ignored it all. This was her favorite thing in the world: this suspended moment, holding the chaotic, brilliant, furious universe of Karkat Vantas still and safe in the cradle of her lap. This was the peace that passed all her understanding.
*
Later, in the darkness of their bedroom, the world narrowed to the space between them. The ceiling fan above them turned in its slow, endless revolution, chopping the moonlight into fleeting, spinning blades of silver. The distant, ambient groan of the city was a lullaby here, fifteen stories up.
Karkat lay on her side, facing Dove. Her eyes were open, catching the faint light. “You’re thinking loudly,” she whispered into the space between them. “I can practically hear it."
“Just thinking about the avocado,” Dove whispered back.
“Liar.”
Dove turned her head on the pillow. She could just make out the familiar landscape of Karkat’s face in the gloom: the strong line of her nose, the soft curve of her mouth, the dark pools of her eyes. “Okay,” she conceded. “I was thinking… this is good.”
Karkat let out a soft, exasperated huff of air. “More of your famously vague pronouncements. Define your terms, Strider. What is ‘good’?”
“You,” Dove said, because in the intimate democracy of the dark, she could speak in plain truths. “Here. With me. The grocery store wars and the stupid tantrums and the hair-petting. It’s… good.”
Karkat was quiet for a long moment. The only sound was the whisper of the fan and the faint, rhythmic sigh of their breathing. Then she shifted, moving closer, tucking her head beneath Dove’s chin, her forehead pressing against Dove’s collarbone. Her voice, when it came, was small and hushed, stripped of all its defensive armor. “Yeah. It is.” A pause. “For the record, you’re my favorite thing, too. Even when you're the worst sometimes.”
“You ate half the bag of Cool Ranch.”
“I was conducting a quality-control assessment. It’s a thankless task, Dove, but someone has to do it.”
Dove hugged her closer, smiling into the dark, smelling cherry shampoo and sleep-warm skin.
*
The next morning, Dove woke first, as was her habit. The room was grey with pre-dawn light. Karkat was sprawled diagonally across the bed. One arm was flung across Dove’s face, her fingers curled loosely. Gently, Dove lifted the arm, placed a kiss on her knuckles, and slipped out from under the covers.
The kitchen in the early morning dark and quiet. She started the coffee maker, then she opened the refrigerator. The little bottle of vanilla creamer was there, nearly empty, maybe one serving left. She took it out, unscrewed the cap, and poured the last of it into Karkat’s favorite mug. The chunky, hand-thrown ceramic one with a slight glaze flaw she always turned to face her. Then she started a fresh pot of coffee for herself.
She heard the soft pad of bare feet on hardwood. Karkat appeared in the doorway, looking awfully tired. Her hair was messy and she rubbed one eye with a fist, her face soft and puffy with sleep.
“Coffee,” she grumbled.
“It's on the counter,” Dove said, nodding to the waiting mug.
Karkat blinked, her sleep-slowed gaze moving from the steaming mug to Dove’s face. A slow, dawn-breaking smile spread across her face. “You remembered it was almost gone.”
Dove shrugged, pouring the black coffee into her own plain white cup. “It was just sitting there. No big deal.”
Karkat picked up her mug, took a sip, and this time, did not grimace. She closed her eyes for a second, savoring it. “Perfect,” she said. And she was not talking about the coffee.
The sun had finally cleared the building, flooding the kitchen with a sudden, glorious bath of gold. The cereal box sat on the counter, its tiger mascot now looking faintly ridiculous in the morning light. The avocado rested on the windowsill. Dove leaned her hip against the counter. Karkat came to lean beside her, their shoulders and arms pressed together from wrist to elbow as they drank their coffee in the quiet day.
It was not a fairy tale. Fairy tales were about transformation, about becoming something else, about princes and glass slippers. This was better. It was Karkat’s mismatched socks thrown on the floor by the bed and Dove’s sunglasses forever left on the coffee table. It was knowing, with bone-deep certainty, exactly how the other took their coffee, and knowing that the phrase “shut up, I hate you” could, in the right tone, in the right quiet moment, translate directly and unmistakably to you are my entire, beating heart.
It was just them. Dove and Karkat. In their kitchen. In their life. And it was not just enough. It was everything.