Work Text:
Back Then
Somebody changed Gamzee Makara’s Instagram handle while he was passed out, some time back, and he didn’t bother fucking around with it for a while afterward. He wasn’t sure who’d want to call him “Softboi._.Makara,” anyway, but he had a few guesses. One of his little brother Kurloz’s friends, maybe — they were mostly all siblings in faith, likely as fucking not, and they drifted through his dad’s crumbly old manor house all the time.
Actually, Gamzee wasn’t sure what being a “Softboi” could mean until Karkat Vantas texted him some potential definitions a few weeks later, after he realized Gamzee hadn’t chosen his new name himself. Maybe it meant somebody thought he was gentle and might look good in big soft sweaters; maybe it meant somebody thought he was the kinda date who would spill fake deep philosophical shit at you and then forget to call until he wanted to get off. Maybe it meant something else, something completely different. Sometimes it was a fashion movement, sometimes it was a warning about dating habits. Sometimes it was empowering, sometimes it was cruel. Gamzee wasn’t exactly up on the whole Grand Cultural History of the Internet — he was mostly on Instagram because Karkat was.
Karkat would never have touched Gamzee’s Instagram, that much was motherfucking certain. He talked a big show about thinking Gamzee’s horror clown art was derivative, more gore than substance — more shock-factor than talent — but it was kind of weird he’d hung so much of that shit up in his apartment, then, wasn’t it? Made Gamzee’s paintings, like, his phone backgrounds and all, and held Gamzee’s sleeve as if it was something precious, like the fabric might rip apart in his hand. When Karkat learned Gamzee hadn’t set a passcode for his phone — the thing would turn on for absolutely fucking anybody, haha — he’d scolded him. Swatted the phone out of Gamzee’s grip and set a code himself.
“You have to be more careful,” Karkat had spat, waggling Gamzee’s phone around in his face. “There are all kinds of creeps in the world, Gamzee — you don’t want someone buying weird shit with your credit card number, do you? Or the wrong person finding your fucking address? I swear to God, if you get yourself murdered with this thing —”
Gamzee had asked Karkat whether he would ever consider dating him the day before his Instagram handle got mysteriously changed — the day before Gamzee’d gotten drunk out of his mind and passed out on his dad’s living room floor, sprawled partially under the antique coffee table, long, curly hair clinging to the carpet in sticky patches. Karkat had said, “What?! No. Of course not,” at first, but then… the next day… Gamzee woke up to entire essays worth of amendments and flustered backtracking, where Karkat confessed his love… and then took it back, only to confess it again… about seven separate times. Oh, and Gamzee’s Instagram name was changed, plus his icon had been swapped out. Gone from a picture of himself and Kurloz at the latest Gathering of the Juggalos to a glittery butterfly with some rainbow stuff dripping off its wings.
Gamzee didn’t mess with the new name, at first, or the butterfly icon — he just told Karkat not to worry, that he wasn’t ignoring him, no way. He’d down a bottle of Advil and they could meet up. Talk shit out.
“ Not the whole bottle! ” Karkat responded, immediately, in all caps. He knew Gamzee was joking, right? Just meant his head hurt. “Also, I’m at work. Get yourself together and… if you want… I can pick you up for dinner tonight. Not McDonalds again. I have somewhere in mind for our first date.”
Now
Later on, when Gamzee learned “Softboi._.Makara” was on Supreme Honkifex Z’s hit list of “antis,” in this case meaning people who didn’t like her — when he realized the raging clown revolution leader wanted him dead for vague, years-old internet crimes — he felt about the same bafflement as he had when he learned there was a character in a certain incredibly long webcomic with his exact name who also happened to be basically a space Juggalo that wore purple all the time. What the hell?
It should’ve been too motherfucking ridiculous to be true, but that wasn’t to say Gamzee couldn’t believe it. He had a lot of old purple clothes just like he’d said a lot of weird, wandering shit on the internet over the years — some shit he’d take back if he could, honestly, and some shit he probably wouldn’t.
What, exactly, had landed Gamzee on this infamous list of Z’s most hated detractors? What hadn’t he liked, or who had he agreed with, or… or… fuck. Hard to say. The Supreme Honkifex didn’t put clowns on fucking trial before sending out kill orders, apparently. She moved like sharp sour candy lightning, so far as Gamzee could tell — she drew the jagged jester-y “Z”-s on her face without needing to look in the mirror, nowadays, and her assassins smelled like gun powder and greasepaint.
Gamzee was in bed when it happened, a long, gangly leg tangled up with his husband’s under the covers. He’d been sleeping, so Karkat — who was up reading about all the many ways the world was on fire — screamed first.
It was funny, in a way. The Gamzee Makara in that incredibly long webcomic had been a murder clown, for fucking real, instead of just some guy who wore paint to horrorcore rap shows sometimes. He might have been able to fight the Supreme Honkifex’s assassins off; he was that universe’s hero of Rage, and it wasn’t Z’s fury shaking apart that world. Gamzee hadn’t read this particular incredibly long webcomic himself, mind you, but Kurloz’s girlfriend had. Back in the day. He sort of got the gist.
Gamzee fought, anyway, bleary and half-asleep — he shoved one of the clown assassins out his and Karkat’s apartment window, and smashed another one’s head into his easel, ripping straight through an almost-finished canvas. A gory circus-show. It wasn’t enough, just like it wasn’t enough that… so far as Gamzee knew… no one had signed into his old Instagram account for ages.
When Gamzee — the Instagram user formerly known as “Softboi._.Makara,” for whatever reason — died, his name was crossed off Supreme Honkifex Z’s hit list. The clown assassins dripped away back into the blood-soaked night, and when Karkat finally got someone on the phone to call for an ambulance it was already much too late.