#johnkatdave

Karkat Vantas is 27 years old.  He's entirely too young to feel so tired and much to old to be talking to imaginary friends in public, so he avoids making eye contact with the lingering after images of the dearly departed.  Some let him keep his head down and move forward and some moan and beckon towards him like he's a dog they expect to jump at their command.

This is coming up as his third week in this city, and he likes the place enough he plans on staying a few months.  He lucked into a rent free room with an unobtrusive lady as a roommate and there are plenty of small business owners who don't mind hiring him to unload crates and run errands for them.  Most places he stays at aren't so accommodating.

He's headed back towards his room, thinking about stopping and buying some of the tea he knows his roommate enjoys as a thank you for doing his laundry (the whole lot of it! He had to wear the same set of clothes twice, not that he didn't do that anyway, but it's the principal of the thing) the night before.  There were tentative boundaries between the two of them, understandable as she invited a complete stranger into her home after only talking to him for an hour and a half split between a park bench and a warm cafe and he didn't know if that made her altruistic or insane, but Karkat is starting to feel more settled near her.