['Maybe because my heart didn't get its ass handed to it on a platter by a codpieced piece of shit who was supposed to be my moirail,' Dave thinks but doesn't say.]

I mean, to be fair, I don't really get how fucking human relationships work, either.

[On account of having precisely zero functional human-to-human ones that weren't established over distances measured in hundreds of miles, hahaha okay no let's not talk about that.]

Just...dude, I think that's normal? That we're learning new shit about each other having entered into this relationship thing. It's only been a month, of course you don't know all my goddamn idiosyncratic pathologies, I had seventeen years to develop them. They've got, like, whole character arcs and complex subplots to them, they fucking create themselves at this point, they're like their own whole independent ecology. You map this out, you may as well have earned yourself three human PhD's in one go.

[Agh, stop, pay attention. Dave reins it in, tries to find his place again, rearranges his arms so he's got the other one around Karkat now and the freed hand can stroke his spine.]

I'm shit at telling you things, too, bro. And knowing when to...when not to back off. When you need...when you need someone there.