The year is 2009. The Great Recession is biting, and the honey on the Captor farm has gone sour.
When a tragic accident fractures his brother Mituna’s mind forever, programmer Sollux Captor does the only logical thing left to fight medical ruin: he trades his keyboard for a rifle and deploys to Afghanistan. He leaves behind a failing family business and a simple axiom: there is no way his loudmouthed best friend and his quiet fiancée will ever get along.
But Karkat Vantas, an irascible misfit hiding from reality behind late-night cinema, and Aradia Megido, an archaeology student whose soul already dwells among Egyptian ruins, soon find themselves drowning in the suffocating silence of the farm. Between stings, awkward Adam Sandler movie marathons, and the agonizing dread of a distant war, a dark, carnal shelter is built from their shared loneliness.
As the lines between loyalty and desperate desire blur in the dark, one question haunts every stolen night: Can you build a future with someone else when you are both wearing the chains of a living ghost?
Words: 2936, Chapters: 2/35, Language: English
Fandoms: Homestuck, Humanstuck - Fandom
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Categories: F/M, Gen, M/M, Other, F/F
Characters: Aradia Megido, Karkat Vantas, Sollux Captor, Mituna Captor, Latula Pyrope, Dave Strider, Terezi Pyrope, Rose Lalonde, Kanaya Maryam, Meenah Peixes, Vriska Serket, Feferi Peixes, Sollux Captor's Bees, Barack Obama, Adam Sandler, Kathleen MartÃnez
Relationships: Aradia Megido/Karkat Vantas, Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido, karkat vantas/dave strider (unrequited love), Terezi Pyrope/Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Meenah Peixes/Vriska Serket, Sollux Captor/Feferi Peixes, Mituna Captor/Latula Pyrope
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Humanstuck (Homestuck), Cheating, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Military Service, join the army usa, join the army, Mental Retardation, TBI | Traumatic Brain Injury, Brain Damage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Afghanistan, 2009s, romcoms, Breaking Objects, injuries from breaking objects, Blindness, explosion blindness, Taliban - Freeform, Panic Attacks, Eye Injuries, Left at the Altar, Egyptology, cleopatra tomb, Cleopatra - Freeform, cheating sex, Missing in Action, Infidelity, Consensual Infidelity, Emotional Infidelity, Past Infidelity, Angst with a Happy Ending, Disability, Adam Sandler Movies as Plot Devices, Mariachi Band Singing in English, Archaeology in Egypt, Slow Burn Comfort after Drama, Forgiveness
