The first time Karkat did a handstand was on Earth. On Alternia, he had never seen any reason to turn himself upside-down, but after seeing Jade flip herself onto her hands, Feferi joining in, his curiosity was spiked, and he ambled over to see what the meaning of this reversing of posture was.

He didn't understand when he saw it first, and he didn't understand it when Jade explained it. It sounded stupid; why would anyone want to be upside down? He initially declined Jade's offer to spot him on a handstand, but when Dave let out a "What's wrong, oh great leader, are you scared?" he was so eager to get his feet in the air that he nearly kicked Jade in the face in the process.

Once his feet were in the air, held by Jade at arm's length from her face, helping him keep his balance even as his arms began shaking with the unexpected strain, he took note of this new posture. Everything felt…strange. The way his shirt fell up rather than down, gathering in wrinkles around his collarbone, the way the blood rushed to his head, but mostly, how things looked. How the yard about him looked, so different now, even though he had seen it everyday for nearly half a sweep now, how his grey fingers looked, flat and pushing against the earth, and how his feet looked when he peered past his falling-up shirt to see his ankles grasped by Harley, his shoes brushing against the blue, nearly looking as if they were grounded against the clouds.

Nearly looked like he could walk on the sky.

He stayed in the handstand as long as he could, mainly in defiance of the coolkid's accusation, but when he finally tumbled back to sitting right-side-up, face flushed from gravity pulling at his mutant blood and arms shaky from exertion…

Well, he'd be lying if he said he didn't miss the way everything looked upside down.

The next time Karkat did a handstand was with the Alpha kids there. Dirk was standing next to his stupid coolkid brother, with his Prince of Heart shirt on, and when Karkat flipped himself into a unspotted, rather clumsy and quite brief handstand, one of the main things he noticed was how a heart looked upside-down.

Like a spade.

Considering the quadrants, and the immense amount of romcoms he had watched, this stuck with him for quite a long time. He hadn't really considered the quadrants to be anything alike, seeing as one was for hate, the other for pity (or love, as the humans called it). They didn't seem like they could be more different.

But the more he thought about it, the more puzzle pieces he found, and the more he pieced together. Both were forms of obsession; just with different outcomes. When you hate someone, you think about them all the time, about every little smile they make and word they say, and it all makes you angry. When you love someone, you think about them all the time, about every little smile they make and word they say, and it all makes you happy.

Maybe hate and love weren't so different, he thought, glancing at that infuriating, half-evolved, STUPID coolkid from behind his locks falling into his eyes as his feet brushed the sky in another handstand.

Catz: Did you catch the DaveKat? It was subtle, but was supposed to be implied by Karkat talking about how much Dave sucked before going into another handstand. So he'd be seeing it the other way and loving Dave? Maybe?

Shut up it's awesome.

Shut up I'm awesome.

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