milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Lately, Alex's dreams have stopped being the normal sort of schoolboy forgotten homework, underwear-in-class, everyone-I-know-thinks-I'm-a-freak type and switched over to the kind where people die, graphically, and he wakes up unsure if he's even still alive or not. Which is why, at what is (relative to his body, anyway) about three in the morning, he wandered downstairs to the bar proper, where at least he doesn't have to be alone.

He's found his way to the couches again, this time wrapped up in an extra-comfy gray sweatshirt that sort of hides the bruises around his neck and probably would cover up the bandage on his wrist if he didn't keep picking at it. He could use some distraction. ~~And incentive to eat.~~

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"HEY, HAVE YOU SEEN A CRAB AROUND HERE?"

The question comes from someone who looks like a thirteen year old kid, if thirteen year old kids were usually grey. And there are horns, and sharp teeth. Karkat is the kind of thing that, if you saw him at 3 am, you might wonder if you were still awake.

He sounds irritated, with overtones of concern, and extra irritation at being forced to feel concern.

He blinks.

Then he glances at the fire, as if the fish will somehow provide him with answers.

"Was I supposed to?"

With aggravated patience: "IDEALLY."

"I AM LOOKING FOR MY CRAB, SOME FUCKING JACKASS DROPPED A TRAY FULL OF SHIT RIGHT ON TOP OF US AND SCARED HIM. HE SCUTTLED OFF IN A RANDOM DIRECTION LIKE A DUMB NOOKSNIFFER AND NOW I HAVE TO FIND HIM BEFORE SOME ASSHOLE STEPS ON HIM OR EATS HIM OR HE JUST DEHYDRATES."

Well. Okay. Even if this is a dream, it's at least better than any of the ones he's been having.

"I haven't seen any crabs."

Karkat's face says, very eloquently, that it figures, and that he personally wouldn't expect Alex to notice a lost crab if tapdanced across his face singing the Lost Crab aria from the operatic masterpiece The Dumbass on the Couch.

All his squawkblister emits, though, is: "CAN I LOOK UNDER YOUR COUCH."

"Sure."

Though he's fairly certain that if Karkat's crab is there, it was there before Alex, personally, sat down at it.

It's quite possible. Although it is also, in essence and despite Karkat's grumpy prejudices, a two-inch-wide black spot scuttling from cover to cover.

He sprawls on the ground in front of the couch and squints under it; his he has excellent night vision, but it is fairly blunted by the lights in here, even this late. He makes an irritable grunt, then shoots one arm under the couch, followed by a yet more irritable squawk. He withdraws the hand, dragging with it a handsome black-and-orange crab clamping onto it with both claws.

"LET GO, YOU ASSHOLE," he says, with fairly obvious fondness, despite teeth gritted against the pinching.

...Well.

All right. That works. He eyes the crab somewhat dubiously, but to everyone their choice of pet (or something like that). He would say something like I'm glad you found him, but something tells him Karkat isn't really one for niceties.

Karkat shoots him a look that suggests he suspects him of intentional crabtheft, so it would probably be lost on him, yeah.

"LET GO, YOU SHITHEAD." He growls to himself in exasperation, and resorts to captchalogging the crab; it vanishes, flattening into a small card that splits into red and blue halves, which Karkat stuffs around his person as he picks himself up and dusts off. Grudging: "THANKS."

What. Did he. Just do.

"It was a... fake crab?"

"WHAT?! NO, WHY THE HELL WOULD I HAVE A FAKE CRAB?" Karkat has the chutzpah to ask this as if it doesn't invite the obvious rejoinder why would you have a real crab??

"Most people," Alex points out helpfully, "don't have any kind of crab."

"I'M NOT MOST PEOPLE," Karkat says. QED. "I LIKE CRABS."

"Then what did you do to it?"

"I JUST CAPTCHALOGUED HIM IN MY SYLLADEX," he says, rolling his eyes a little. And then, on the assumption this won't be understood: "I STUCK HIM IN MY INVENTORY STORAGE UTILITY, NOTHING CAN HAPPEN TO HIM WHILE HE'S IN THERE."

His eyes might have gone just a tad glazed over while listening to that. It's not that he doesn't have the faintest idea what Karat is talking about, it's just... well, that, actually.

Karkat judges him silently, and revises downward. "I PUT HIM IN A MAGIC CARD FOR SAFEKEEPING."

Alex judges him right back. "I've met wizards here," he points out. "That's probably something they could do."

Just, you know. He doesn't like to be talked down to, okay.

"COME ON, YOU CANNOT GAPE AT ME LIKE A POLEAXED HOOFBEAST WHEN I GIVE YOU THE REAL EXPLANATION AND THEN BRIDLE LIKE A SECOND, UNRELATED HOOFBEAST AT BEING SCHOOLFED A SIMPLIFIED ANSWER. HOW PRECISELY DO YOU EXPECT ME TO CALIBRATE MY RESPONSES TO YOUR EXACT LEVEL OF IGNORANCE?"

"AND IT ISN'T REALLY MAGIC, IT'S A BASIC APPLICATION OF EMPIRICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE."

Okay, maybe it's not that much weirder than meeting an antivirus programme in real space. But still.

"Is captchalogue really a word, or did you make it up?"

He's kind of dubious. But computer science isn't actually his thing, so...

"OF COURSE IT IS A REAL WORD, IT IS THE WORD FOR PUTTING SOMETHING INTO YOUR SYLLADEX."

Karkat is doing his best to be tolerant, as befits someone being asked if you really can "cook" meat on a "stove" by someone who has yet to get past the "rub two sticks together and hope" phase.

After a moment, he shakes his head. He didn't really want to know that much about it, anyway.

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