this is my first time writing dialogue for them with not much practice. does anyone have any fic recs of tavros dealing with his disability id kill to read. read this on ao3 too
It’s been several seasons since your accident and you are in need of a pick-me-up.
At least, that’s what GAMZEE MAKARA has been insisting, with all of his endless invitations to his hive lately. He swears that some time with him by the beachside, spitting slam poetry rhymes that go nowhere, and listening to Troll Esham and Troll ABK for hours on end will do you some good. You’ve been so cooped up in your own respiteblock that even the walk— er, sorry, roll— to his humble hive will get you feeling some type of better. You know, miracle style. Or however he said it.
You’re not entirely sure why you decide to actually follow up on this invitation. It would be the longest trip you’ve made on your own ever since Aradia fished up this four wheel device for you. Those who bother to see you in person now usually come to visit your hive, including Gamzee himself. He must have gained an unfounded faith in your rolling abilities, after you foolishly bragged to him that you can now consistently pop wheelies without scaring yourself half to death or tipping over. You almost regret telling him.
See, you two don’t actually live that far apart, space-wise. Except you’ve got a giant cliff to carefully roll down without falling down, and a sandy beach that you struggled to traverse through even when you could walk. It’s a trip that was enough of a hassle in the past to make your first in-person meeting with Gamzee kind of a big deal. It’s a trip you have to relearn for a friend who probably zoned out immediately after asking you to come over.
But you do it, even if you’re not entirely sure why.
You’re panting extremely hard by the time you make it to the back door of Gamzee’s hive. The back one specifically, since the front “door” is facing the ocean, and you just don’t have the energy to push yourself around his hive. He must have anticipated this outcome, as he so kindly placed some solid wooden boards leading up to his back door as a makeshift path. It is too bumpy and rickety to really be comfortable. You smile anyway because I guess, it works well enough, and it beats having to push through sand for even a second longer.
You knock on his door, and his trip is enviably easier, as he reaches you in about a minute with minimal bumps or flat tire scares. He swings open the door and overestimates your eyeline before groggily shifting his eyes down to your new height. You wonder how long it’s going to take for people to stop doing that. “Heyyy, Tavros,” he slumps against the doorway as he drawls, “you up and came in here way the motherfucking early.”
“Haaahh, yeah, I guess I did,” you say, as if you didn’t plan to do exactly that. You had to leave your hive pretty much as soon as the last rays of sunlight disappeared from the horizon, to get a good gauge on just how long the travel would be with your four wheel device. At least you know you don’t have to leave this early next time. “You’re, uh, up early, too.”
“I motherfuckin’ gotta be, to welcome my wicked bro,” Gamzee says. He steps out of the way and holds his door open for you. You make your way inside, surprised to find the floor clear of any stray horns. They were absolutely everywhere last time you visited. “You really gotta come more often. My doors are always open to a motherfucking splendid brother such as you. Even when way motherfucking early.”
Another one of his invitations. He always invites you over. You’re still not sure why, out of all these invitations, you took up this one. And here he is, offering you another one, when you’ve just started hanging out! “Hah, well, okay! Thanks, Gamzee,” you say. When you turn back to him, he’s smiling at you without saying a word.
Gamzee kicks the door up behind him and leads you into his living-meal-respiteblock. It is somehow all three, which you used to find odd, but the convenience sounds more enticing to you than ever before. You could do without the scent of baked sopor lingering in the air, though. “So, uhhh, what are we… planning on doing?” you ask.
“Huwuh…?” Gamzee… asks? Says? If that noise he made could even be considered coherent language. “Motherfuck, what did I tell you we were doing?”
You shrug and fidget with your hands in your lap. “You had told me that I needed a ‘pick-me-up.’ Word for word. Remember? You did not really tell me anything other than that, so, I guess I was expecting a plan, but maybe you forgot?”
Nothing. Not even a flash of recognition in Gamzee’s dark grey eyes. You ponder over that sentence, and after a nanosecond of thinking it over with yourself, you wave it off. “Uh, not that I was expecting anything, really! Just you inviting me over is, maybe the awesomest thing you can do. And I’m really happy you even invited me, even knowing that I can’t really do a lot of fun things anymore, and, I’m just kind of like, sitting here being some sad loser in your respiteblock with nothing to off—”
“Awwww, brother. Pick-me-motherfucking-up. Fuck yeah, you needed to be picked the motherfucking up yesterday,” Gamzee interrupts you. He walks around you in slow circles, dragging his hand across the body of your four wheel device. “You’ve been all so down in the delirious dump, you couldn’t even slam at me last time I struck the beats. Beats got all dead and decrepit without you. So. I had to get you over here to be chill in the the fuckin’ flesh.”
Gamzee keeps circling you as you speak, so you don’t bother to keep your eye on him. You only catch his eye when he makes his way in front of you, over and over again. He looks… well, high as always, but there’s something else to his expression. His face is all knitted together as he speaks. “Do not worry your pretty motherfucking thinkpan, Pupa Pan. I know just the thing a bro needs in this time of tenuous convalescence.”
You are too busy trying to still your bloodpusher from beating out of your chest after someone other than your own reflection just called you Pupa Pan to realize that Gamzee has planted himself firmly behind you. It is impossible to not notice the fact that you are moving without pushing, and your entire body locks up. “G-Gamzee?!”
“It’s bitchin’ beach time, bro!” Gamzee howls from behind you. He’s pushing you out of his hive through the front hole of his hive, swerving you through random clubs and pie tins scattered across the ground. You think you’re about to get whiplash. “The sand’s just fuckin’ perfect after the sun has done its setting. As warm as a woolbeast surrounded by a fuck ton of other woolbeasts. Just what some best buds are needing bad-style on an early night.”
You dig your claws into your armrests. “Oh, okay. That sounds cool,” you say. You’re being honest, but you slump your back on your four wheel device. “Don’t, uh, move me anywhere without telling me first, though. Please. If that’s okay with you?”
Gamzee stops so suddenly at the lip of his front doorway that you jerk forward. You’re clawing onto your armrests for dear life. “Motherfuuuuuck. Sorry, my brother. I’ll tell you next time.”
You laugh anxiously. “Yeah. It’s fine, really.”
“I think I get it,” Gamzee laughs. “Getting whipped around to another location without even knowing a little fucking thing and having no way of stoppin’ the motherfucker driving you is pretty wicked scary, yeah?”
“Hah, exactly. So, uh, it’d be nice to tell me…” You think over your sentence with a little help from Rufio. That ‘tell’ in that sentence isn’t really what you mean. Bad sentence. “A-actually, no, you should ask—”
“Then we’re travelling to my favouritest shore!” Gamzee says, then he resumes pushing you again without warning. He tilts you into a perma-wheelie at the lip of his doorway and you thump into the sand. You instinctively cringe at the prospect of your wheels spinning out fruitlessly under the treacherous beach material, but Gamzee actually doesn’t seem to have any problems maneuvering you around. He makes a beeline for the water, while you’re left half-horizontal, feeling the least in control of your body since the days before you got your four wheel device.
You almost complain to him that he didn’t actually listen to you, but you let the words die in your mouth. Why should you complain? He’s doing all this for you. He invited you to his hive, he’s only trying to help you, and you don’t even have to deal with the sand that you hate with a passion. The whole “moving your body to a new location without asking” isn’t even that bad coming from him. Gamzee wouldn’t hurt a fly, even at his dumbest, soporific self. You’re being stupid for wanting to complain.
You lean back in your four wheel device and let Gamzee push you towards the sea. Your head is tilted back enough for you to look up at him, upside down, smiling ahead with the stupidest, toothiest grin you’ve maybe ever seen on his face. He’s making wooshing sounds as the two of you fly to where water meets land, and you have to admit, that’s a little cute. Your laughter fills the air just as his wooshes do, and the sea breeze caresses through your mohawk and the skin of your cheeks, and you catch that he’s finally noticed that you’re staring at him when you’ve reached the water.
Gamzee lets out one big ‘HONK’ as he comes to a stop. He tilts you back onto your castors with such a force you would’ve described it as a slam, but it doesn’t hurt, so that’s probably fine. “We motherfuckin’ made it. Trust me, a few hours just kickin it in the after-morning beach does wonders for the thinkpan. Miracle,” he preaches. You can hear him shuffling behind you, and soon see his purple shoes kicked beside your rear wheel. “Nothin’ better than toes in the sand, motherfucker.”
Oh. Right. Of course. The classic feeling that all troll musicians sing about. The most basic romance movie shot that you wouldn’t need Karkat to explain to you. You stare out into the shifting waters and feel lost in your chair. “Uhhh. I’m, yeah, I'm sure I can achieve something somewhat similar with my fingers instead, hah,” you say. It comes off half-hearted and just a little cruel. You think you maybe said that to get a reaction out of him. You’re not sure why, though.
“Fuuuuck, right…”
You’re not sure why you’re here.
“...sorry I keep forgetting, brother…”
You aren’t sure why you’re doing anything.
“...really don’t mean to bunk it all up—”
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” you say a little louder than you usually would. “You, uh, don’t have to kick yourself down. And treat me like you’d never treat anyone else.”
Gamzee doesn’t respond to that. You can’t see or hear him when he's behind you like this. You can’t bring yourself to turn around either.
“It’s just, I— I get it. I do and I say all the things that I can’t do anymore. And when I say and do them, I get upset. I get really upset. Which, yeah, sooo typical. We’ve all seen the movies before, hah, right?” you say, wringing your hands together. You feel the calluses on your thumbs that were never there before. You think you can feel another blister coming on from your journey here. To him.
“But I can get over it. I can, I think. Or at least I can pretend like I’m not having those thoughts at all and I can go back to doing my stuff. But when you or Aradia trip over yourselves, ha-hah, that, uh, gets real bad! It’s like you guys just don’t, um, see me as Tavros anymore? You start talking like I’m some random broken troll you just knocked over. You treat me so differently. But not the different I need? Because I know, things are different now. You have to look down at me more, you have to move your feet out of the way when I’m around. You— but you just— you don’t need to drag me when you’d never do that to me before, you don’t have to cry, a-and whine when you’re forced to remember I’m different now and we all need to protect the fragile, stupid cripple’s feelings—”
Your chair is being tipped forward, and you don’t even have time to scream before your face hits the warm sand.
It doesn’t hurt. Your stomach is all in knots from the sudden fall, but no part of your body hurts. You just feel the steady warmth of the sun-kissed sand enveloping your upper body like a comforting hug.
“I wouldn’t up and motherfuckin’ do that disrespectful shit to any ol’ cripple,” Gamzee states. His voice is lower than it typically is. Low and serious. You feel the thump-thumping of his feet on the sand, walking around your chair, standing around you. “But you can handle it. You like gettin’ roughed sometimes, don’t you, my good friend?”
Your bloodpusher aches. The warmth from the sand beneath you soothes it through your shirt, and through your skin. “Yeah,” you admit, voice cracking and muffled by sand. Good friend. He’s never called you those words specifically before. It feels more blunt than any of his other names, -a little foreign coming from his lips.
“Do I have your motherfuckin’ permission to be movin’ you around?”
You close your eyes tight. You nuzzle your head into the sand. “Um. Sure.”
You feel Gamzee’s hands on your back. You tense up, and you think he hesitates a little bit, but after a moment you feel him clawing at your shirt and hooking an arm under your chest to roll you onto your back. He has to lift your torso up higher to turn you so your horns don’t get in the way. You try and help him without hitting him in the head, and it works just fine as he pushes your back into the sand. Now you can see that he’s crouched above you, your body in between his legs. He’s focused on your own pair at the moment, adjusting them to lay flat along with your torso. You don’t feel his hands on them, but considering his look of deep concentration on his usually dopey face, you get the feeling he’s trying his hardest to be really gentle with you.
Even with your face out of the sand, your face still feels entirely too warm. That dang sun sure is hot, Rufio offers an excuse. You take it without thinking much more about it.
Gamzee sits on your legs. Er, well, your hips. Straddling feels like too strong a word, when your hips have thinned out considerably, and his lanky legs sprawl around you like a weird limp puppet’s, but he sure is on top of you and your body. Your body sinks into the sand a little, the only physical confirmation you have of your bodies connecting. “I didn’t think my flagrant apologies were hurting a brother like this. You gotta learn to look me in the motherfuckin’ eyes and tell a dude what’s the problem in the future.”
You groan and throw your arms over your face. “I… I know. I’m, really sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that,” you say.
Gamzee laughs. You can’t help but peek through your arms to see him laugh again. He did look cute, when he was upside down, and… oh wait, he’s saying something now, “Nah, bro. I get it. It’s hard, being sassed to like you don’t got as much goin’ on in your tenacious brain like everyone else.”
Oh. Right.
Gamzee looks down at you and flashes a cheesy grin. “I think that’d make me snap even harder if I kept getting talked at like that.”
Oh. Well.
You take a deep breath and sigh. “I just… wish everyone knew how to talk to me. And act around me. That I didn’t have to tell anyone, um, anything. They could do it right the first time. I know it’s impossible, but I still want it. Maybe then I could… feel less weird.”
Gamzee looks down at you and tilts his head. He leans forward, planting his hands on either side of your head, between your horns, digging his fingers in the sand. He’s really. Uh. Close to you now. “Can’t promise I’ll do nothin’ right the first time. Or second. Or even like, fifth,” he admits. “But I gotta try, for my best bro, so we can be happy, right? Make a miracle between us.”
Your body suddenly feels hotter than the sand. No, maybe even the Alternian sun itself. “U-uh. Right.”
“And you gotta try pickin’ it up. Pick-me-up. Dig your hand toes in the sand.”
You snort. “Hand toes.”
“Yup.”
“Hand toes?”
“Yup times two.”
“You mean fingers?”
“Shit, bro, is that what we call ‘em now?”
You laugh. He laughs. You’re both laughing really hard against each other. You move your arms out of the way of your face and you do what your best friend tells you to do and dig your hand toes in the motherfucking sand next to you. It’s still so warm. How is it so warm? You hadn’t realized just how warm the beach is. It’s so much warmer than the windswept cliffs you call your home. Maybe Gamzee’s hive is worth the journey more often.
Gamzee looks down at you with the widest eyes you’ve ever seen from him. You can’t decide whether it’s cute or a little scary. His right hand moves down from beside your head, closer to your left. “Let’s motherfuckin’ kick it here. ‘Til it gets cold, and we move you back to your sicktits wheel device, and kick it cozy style in my hive. Maybe you’ll get to meet my lusus this time? Who fuckin’ knows, bro. We can talk more, if you really want. But chill time is premium. No need for tears. Deal?” he says.
Tears? Have you been crying? You’re not sure if the wet trickling down your face is from your eyes or the sea spray. You’re not sure if you meant for your pinkie to graze, then clumsily wrap around Gamzee’s index finger. You are even more unsure if Gamzee meant to fully grab your hand and trap it in a crushing grip. You’re not sure why he would do such a thing, anyway.
Your name is TAVROS NITRAM, and you’ve never been more unsure of everything at this point in your life. But with a friend like GAMZEE MAKARA, who might not be perfect but is trying his best to deal with the mess that you have become, maybe you don’t need to be so sure of everything. Maybe sitting on a warm shoreline is really all you need right now.
