Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s two o’clock in the morning when your phone wakes you up. Despite being on silent, the vibration of an incoming notification rattles several things on your bedside table and the light from the screen illuminates the majority of your room. You groan, flinging your arm out and rooting around on the table, trying to find the device with your eyes closed. You knock over a pill bottle and send a box of tissues to the floor in the process.

You’re hoping the notification is just a stray Facebook comment or junk email so you can go back to sleep but when you unlock your phone and stare into the brightness of your home screen you see a message from John.

Sighing, you let the phone fall face down onto your chest. You’re not in the mood to entertain John tonight; he’s a few hours behind you in Seattle and sometimes he forgets about the time difference, messaging you at an ungodly hour for something stupid. You’re just going to go back to sleep.

But then, you think, what if something’s wrong? He’s not always in the best place mentally, emotionally, and sometimes he just needs someone to talk to. What if he needs you?

You peel your eyes open again despite how much you just want to go back to sleep and open his message.

-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 02:13 --
EB: karkat!
EB: my good buddy!
EB: my best pal karkat!
EB: always reliable and there for me when i need him!

This doesn’t sound like an emotional emergency but the message still doesn’t make any sense. You figure he’s about to tell you something annoying and useless about some fucking movie he’s watching. You plan on entertaining him for a maximum of five minutes and then going the fuck back to sleep.

CG: WHAT IN THE ASS BLISTERING FUCK DO YOU WANT EGBERT?
CG: DO YOU REALIZE WHAT TIME IT IS?
CG: I’LL GIVE YOU A HINT: TOO FUCKING LATE FOR YOU TO BE BOTHERING ME O’CLOCK.
EB: okay look i know it’s late and you’re probably going to be really mad at me...
CG: I’M ALREADY REALLY MAD AT YOU.
CG: IN FACT, I’M ALWAYS MAD AT YOU.
CG: THERE HAS NEVER ONCE BEEN A SINGLE MOMENT IN OUR ENTIRE TWO YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP THAT I HAVEN’T WANTED TO SHIT ONTO A SILVER PLATTER AND PRESENT IT TO YOU LIKE THE HUMBLE SHIT BUTLER I AM AS A PHYSICAL REMINDER OF HOW MUCH I FUCKING HATE YOU.
EB: okay but can you shut up for a second?
CG: EXCUSE ME?
EB: i need your help with a thing.
EB: well, my friend needs your help with a thing.
EB: kind of a big thing.
CG: NO.
EB: you haven’t even heard what the thing is yet!!
CG: SORRY, IT’S A NO FROM ME.
CG: THE JUDGES HAVE MADE THEIR DECISION AND YOU’VE BEEN ELIMINATED FROM DICKFUCK IDOL.
CG: GOODBYE JOHN, I HOPE SOMEONE SLIPS PEANUTS INTO YOUR FOOD AND YOU FUCKING DIE.
EB: wow harsh much?
CG: FUCK YOU, IT’S TOO LATE FOR THIS BULLSHIT.
EB: oh my god would you just listen?
EB: this is actually kind of serious.
CG: JESUS CHRIST
CG: OKAY FINE.
EB: okay so you know about my friend dave right?
CG: UNFORTUNATELY.
EB: well things aren’t so good for him like… at his house.
EB: so he left, just a few hours ago.
EB: but he doesn’t have anywhere to go so i thought maybe he could stay with you for a day or two? since he obviously can’t come to my house.
CG: AND DOES THIS BRILLIANT PLAN OF YOURS INCLUDE A WAY FOR HIM TO MIRACULOUSLY GET TO MY HOUSE?
EB: he lives right outside of the city!
EB: and he said he has enough money to take a cab into houston if he needs to, he’s just waiting for me to tell him whether or not that’s gonna be alright with you.
CG: FUCK, JOHN.
CG: I DON’T KNOW.
CG: I’VE NEVER EVEN MET THIS GUY.
EB: well i’ve met him before and i can assure you he’s not a total weirdo or anything.
EB: i mean he’s a little bit of a weirdo but not in a serial killer way just in a memey kind of way.
CG: WOW EXCELLENT JOB BEING CONVINCING THERE JOHN, I’M SO REASSURED BY THE FACT THAT YOUR IDIOT FRIEND WHO I’VE NEVER MET BEFORE IS *PROBABLY* NOT GOING TO KILL ME.
CG: YOU’VE FULLY CONVINCED ME THAT THIS IS A GOOD IDEA, CONGRATULATIONS.
EB: come on karkat!
EB: you’ve never met me before either but i know you’d help me out if i really needed you to.
EB: when you’re not yelling and being a dickhead you’re actually a good guy.
EB: just deep down.
EB: really deep down.
CG: FLATTERY WILL GET YOU NOWHERE.
EB: please just think about it okay? dave really needs some help right now.

You sigh again, staring at your phone until the screen shuts off. You have no idea what John is talking about when it comes to Dave, you know nothing about the guy except that he and John have been friends since they were twelve years old. Other than that you’re completely in the dark.

And what’s this about stuff being bad for Dave? That could mean a number of things, from homelessness to poverty to abuse. Does he even want your help?

After another minute of thinking it over you eventually concede. John wouldn’t be asking unless it was a seriously dire situation.

CG: ALRIGHT FINE, TELL HIM HE CAN COME.
CG: BUT I CAN’T PROMISE HE’LL BE ABLE TO STAY HERE FOR LONG. I’VE GOT SHIT TO DO AND BILLS TO PAY AND I CAN’T AFFORD ANOTHER MOUTH TO FEED.
EB: thank you so much karkat!
EB: i totally owe you a solid.
EB: a huge solid.
EB: the biggest solid anyone has ever owed anyone basically ever.
CG: YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT.

You send John your address and he tells you Dave should be there in about twenty minutes, give or take a few minutes depending on traffic. You sit up with a groan, body begging to be horizontal again, comfortable and warm underneath the blankets. You ignore every functioning brain cell in your head telling you that this whole thing is a terrible idea and get out of bed.

The apartment isn’t too messy, but it could use some work. You spend the few minutes you have until Dave arrives tidying up a bit and grabbing a snack just to keep you awake for a little while longer. You realize after a while that you should also put a shirt on.

There’s a knock on the door right as you’re pulling a t-shirt over your head. A jolt of nervousness shoots through your stomach at the thought of meeting a total stranger, in the middle of the night, looking like an absolute mess and knowing he’s going to be sleeping in your house. You exhale a sharp, anxious breath and open the front door.

With the way John talks about Dave sometimes, you half expected him to look like some kind of model, but he’s exceptionally… average. Save for the fact that he’s wearing sunglasses at night, but you figure that’s part of some sort of ironic stunt, if you’re to believe what John says about him.

“Hey,” he says, voice a bit unsteady. His own nervousness makes you relax, just a little bit. “You’re Karkat, right?”

“Yeah.” You hold out a hand like an idiot, like this is a job interview or some shit, and he shakes it awkwardly. You step aside to let him in and he hovers around the space by the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

You get a better look at him as you close and lock the door. He looks normal from a glance but close up you can see how pale his skin is, how disheveled his clothes are. There’s a dark, wet patch on the side of his red t-shirt, though you have no idea what it’s from.

“I know this is like, super fucking weird,” he says with a small southern accent, adjusting a bag over his shoulder. “Letting a dude you’ve never met before into your house and all. I swear I’m not like… the fucking Zodiac Killer or anythin’ like that.”

“I don’t really care,” you say honestly, overly tired. “Even if you are a murderer as long as you clean up all the blood you’re good in my book.”

Dave breathes out a small laugh, exhaling once through his nose. “The bar is too low, dude.”

You shrug one shoulder and realize something suddenly. “You’re bleeding.” The wet spot on his shirt is blood, you just couldn’t tell until now, the fluid camouflaged by the red cotton of his t-shirt.

“Huh?” Dave looks down at himself, as if he had no idea. “Oh, that’s nothin’, just a scratch. All good.” He gives you an unconvincing thumbs up.

“Scratches don’t bleed that much,” you point out.

“Yeah, well, it was fine until I sneezed in the cab,” he explains. “And then it just kinda…” He trails off, closing and opening his hand in an explosive motion.

“I can clean it up if you want,” you say, moving closer. You reach out a hand, fingers grazing the very bottom of his shirt for a moment.

Dave recoils as if he’s been slapped, taking almost a full step away from you. “That’s fine,” he says, voice high. “It’s fine.”

You’ve clearly overstepped a boundary here; you guess you should’ve been more conservative with invading his personal space. You take half a step back, trying to show that you’re not a threat to him by
giving him more space. If Dave’s behavior is any indication of what things were like in his house, you think it must’ve been pretty bad.

“It’s clearly not fine,” you say pointedly. “You’re kind of bleeding a lot. Just let me clean it up for you.”

“I’m really okay,” he says again. He presses a hand to the wound, trying to pretend like it’s not a big deal, but his fingers come back red. He quickly hides them in a fist.

“Look, I’m a nurse,” you say. That’s not even remotely true. You’re pre-med, training to be a nurse, and you’ve got at least a few years left of school before you’re legally certified. But it makes your argument seem a little more legitimate. “I just want to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

Dave stares at you, hesitant. He understandably doesn’t seem to believe the bullshit about you being a nurse.

“I mean what I said about not getting blood everywhere,” you add as a joke.

“Fine,” Dave agrees, deflating after another few moments of hesitation. His shoulders slump under the weight of the bag and his sighs a little, torso curling in on itself most likely from pain.

“You can put down your bag wherever,” you say, gesturing vaguely to your entire living room and kitchen. “Let me just get the first aid kit.”

When you come back, first aid kit in hand, Dave has perched himself awkwardly on one of the barstools by your kitchen island. His bag sits on the couch in a heap, and you realize how small it is, how little he’s brought with him.

“Okay,” you say, kneeling in front of him. “Can you lift your shirt up?”

He pauses for a bit, unsure, then eventually does as you say, pulling up the bottom edge of his shirt so you can look at the wound. The fabric sticks to the blood and the open cut in his stomach, peeling off with an uncomfortably sticky sound.

It is not a scratch.

“Jesus Christ,” you say, incredulous.

There is a significant tear in his stomach, deeper than you thought, breaking up his even brown skin with a large, red gash. It rips up his stomach from the top of his right hip, turning the skin around the wound a blotted yellowish purple, and is dripping with blood. You don’t miss the countless other scars marring his skin.

“Yeah,” you hear Dave say. He almost sounds embarrassed.

“God,” you say, grabbing a cloth to clean up the blood. “Hold still,” you warn.

Dave visibly holds his breath when you first brush the cloth up against the wound, gently sweeping it around the outer edge to sop up some of the blood so you can see better. Once the blood is mostly cleared you take a closer look at the wound, deep and aggravated. He probably needs stitches.

“You probably need stitches,” you voice. “It’s… pretty bad.”

“I’m fine,” he says again, like a mantra. You don’t even kind of believe him.

“I’m gonna clean it out a bit,” you say, ignoring him. “Then numb you and stitch it up. If that’s alright.”

Dave smirks. “And you just have all that shit lying around?”

“I’m a nursing student,” you remind him, recalling your mild bluff from earlier. “I have to practice giving people stitches pretty much all the time. And as for the numbing you can buy a tube of numbing cream for three dollars at CVS.”

“So you’re a discount nurse,” he says. “A DIY nurse. Sorry, murse.”

“A fucking what?” you ask.

“Male nurse,” he clarifies.

You roll your eyes. You guess he’s technically right but that’s such a stupid fucking word that you never use it. Why differentiate between a male nurse and a female nurse? Sounds like bullshit to you.

You let it slide this time and, given the situation, repress the rant building up inside you about unnecessarily gendered words. Instead you grab some antiseptic and move a bit closer, hand poised above the wound to start cleaning.

“This is gonna sting,” you say.

“Oh I know,” Dave assures you. You wonder how many times he’s done this.

Dave barely flinches when you apply the antiseptic, showing no sign of pain beyond a slight crease in between his brows. You clean the cut as thoroughly as you can and then apply the numbing cream around the outer edge to make the stitches easier. You stand, moving behind Dave and around the island to wash your hands at the sink before you stitch him up, scrubbing off excess blood around your fingers. Something occurs to you.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” you start, “what exactly cut you?”

You hear Dave laugh behind you, then stop short. His voice is pained. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

You rejoin him at the other side of the island and he’s begun to lean his weight on the counter behind him, hand lazily keeping a corner of his shirt held up. The wound already looks worlds better now that you’ve cleaned it out.

“I hear a lot of crazy shit,” you say. “You’d be surprised how much I’m willing to believe.”

Dave looks you in the eyes from behind his sunglasses, a challenge. “It was a sword.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You’re fucking with me,” you say.

“Nope.” Dave holds up a hand. “Swear.”

“Who the fuck cut you with a sword?” You regret asking as soon as you say it; of course it was someone in his household, why else would he leave to come stay with a stranger? Dave doesn’t answer you, giving you nothing but a blank look, and you wish you had even an ounce of social tact.

“Well,” you start, recovering from your blunder. “Was this… sword at least a clean blade? Not rusty?”

“Jesus, dude, I don’t know,” Dave says with a tired laugh. “I didn’t stop to ask whether or not the fucking thing washes its hands after it pisses or whatever, y’know? It looked clean enough I guess.”

“You probably don’t have tetanus then, so that’s something to look forward to.”

“I’m thrilled,” he deadpans.

The numbing cream should have kicked in by now. You poke around the wound where you applied it and ask if he feels anything. When he answers in the negative you gather up your needle and thread and get to work on stitching up the wound, starting at the end where it meets his hip. He hardly responds the entire time you sew the cut, neither physically nor vocally. You finish within a few minutes and cover the whole thing with a large bandage, standing up afterwards to stretch your back.

“I want you to give to to me straight, doc,” Dave says when you’ve finished. “How long have I got to live? A week? A month? How am I supposed to tell my wife and kids? Who’s going to provide for them now? How will my eldest daughter pursue her dream to go to art school if I’m not there to support her?”

God what the fuck is he talking about.

“You’re gonna be fine,” you say, ignoring his weird rant. “Just keep it covered for a couple weeks and try not to sneeze again. And don’t do any strenuous activities until it’s healed or you’re gonna tear it open again and it’ll be even worse.”

“Damn.” Dave snaps his fingers. “There goes my parkour career.”

“A tragedy,” you say, packing your supplies back into the first aid kit. Dave follows you into the living room.

“Thanks for the tune up,” he says, referring to the stitches you just gave him. “I don’t know what kind of higher beings there might be up there but I’m glad they stopped fucking with me long enough to bring me a nurse. Like what the fuck are the odds of that? The day I need to stay over at someone’s house is the same day I need medical assistance and the universe was just like hey sorry for making the last twenty years really fucking annoying and difficult, here’s a medical professional to help you with your sword wound.”

“Yeah,” you say, a little confused. This guy spouts more ridiculous shit than you do. “Guess you lucked out.”

“Guess so,” he agrees.

You both watch each other uncomfortably for a minute. It’s almost three o’clock in the morning.

“Anyways, I’m gonna go to bed,” you say to break the awkward silence. “The couch is all yours, there’s some extra blankets in the hall closet. TV’s got Netflix so go crazy. I’ve got work in the morning though so don’t be loud or I’ll rip those stitches out.”

Dave laughs, quiet and a little pained. You feel bad for a second. “Got it,” he says with a nod. “Thanks. For letting me stay and all.”

You just wave a noncommittal hand at him as a sort of you’re welcome; gratitude makes you uncomfortable. “I’m serious about the stitches,” you remind him.

He makes a zipping gesture across his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “You won’t hear a peep out of me. Promise not to watch porn real loud at the early hours of the morning, cross my heart.”

“Good,” you say. And then, “Well, goodnight.”

“‘Night,” Dave calls back, a little quiet compared to his more boisterous tone a few moments ago.

You head to your room and try to settle back into bed, heart racing at the prospect of a stranger sleeping in your living room. A stranger with a huge wound in his stomach from what he insisted was a sword and what is most likely a completely broken household. You sigh, letting out a breath you feel like you’ve been holding all night, and try to go to sleep.

You only sleep for about three more hours before you have to get up for work. It’s even worse than waking up in the middle of the night to let a stranger into your house and you feel a tidal wave of annoyance wash over you, destroying an island nation inside of you and wrecking the ecosystem. There are no survivors.

You take a shower and shamble into the kitchen, forgetting for a second that Dave is on your couch. You almost give yourself a heart attack when you see him, your sleep-addled brain providing you with a ridiculous scenario about a stranger breaking into your apartment just to sleep on your fucking couch.

You begin to sigh at your own stupidity, but stop halfway when you get a closer look at Dave’s face. He’s still asleep, breath quiet, face soft. Except his sunglasses are off, folded up on the coffee table, and a harsh black eye reveals itself to you after being hidden all night.

You swallow, brows furrowing at the sight of another injury on his body. Whoever did this to him must be seriously fucked up.

You grab a bottle of painkillers along with a stale bowl of cereal and write out a note to Dave to put some goddamn ice on his eye and take some Tylenol to help with the swelling. You can’t believe he didn’t say anything about this when you had the first aid kit right there but you guess you can kind of understand why; he probably already feels like a massive intrusion staying over at your house and you don’t exactly think you made him feel as welcome as you could have. You blame sleep deprivation.

Dave doesn’t stir as you eat your cereal. You watch him for a bit from your spot in the kitchen, panicking for a brief moment when you think he’s stopped breathing. A second look and you’re reassured that he is, in fact, still alive.

The cereal is way too stale and fucking disgusting so you throw it out along with the rest of your patience and will to live. You still have a few minutes before you have to go to work and overwhelming curiosity leads you to messaging John.

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 7:36 --
CG: JOHN WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF HOUSEHOLD DOES THIS STRIDER KID LIVE IN?
CG: BECAUSE WHOEVER IS SUPPOSED TO BE WATCHING HIM IS DOING A FUCKALL JOB AT IT.
CG: I’VE SEEN PEOPLE RAISED BY WILD ANIMALS WHO ARE IN BETTER SHAPE THAN HIM.
CG: CASE IN POINT: TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE.
CG: RAISED BY LITERAL APES AND STILL LESS COMPLETELY FUCKED UP THAN STRIDER HIMSELF.
CG: IN FACT, BEING TRAMPLED BY A HOARD OF ANGRY SHIT-THROWING PRIMATES WOULD RESULT IN STRIDER HAVING FEWER INJURIES THAN HE HAS AT THIS CURRENT MOMENT.
CG: HE SHOWED UP AT MY HOUSE BLEEDING PROFUSELY AND LOOKING GENERALLY FUCKED UP AND BAD.

John doesn’t answer, likely still asleep because of the time difference. You continue, knowing you won’t have time to talk to him while you’re at work.

CG: YOU WANNA KNOW WHY HE WAS BLEEDING, JOHN?
CG: WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW WHAT HE TOLD ME?
CG: HE TOLD ME THAT HE WAS CUT BY A FUCKING SWORD.
CG: AND WHILE THAT’S ABSOLUTE HORSESHIT AND I DON’T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT I ALSO TOTALLY BELIEVE HIM BECAUSE IT WAS A MASSIVE WOUND AND IT WAS BLEEDING A LOT.
CG: BUT THE WHOLE TIME HE WAS PRETENDING LIKE EVERYTHING WAS FINE? FOR SOME FUCKING REASON?
CG: HE WAS ALL “NAH I’M FINE, JUST BLEEDING A WHOLE LOT AND PROBABLY IN NEED OF A BLOOD TRANSFUSION, HAHA WHATEVER, NO BIG DEAL.”
CG: THAT’S VERBATIM, JOHN.
CG: THAT IS A DIRECT QUOTE.
EB: karkat, man, why the hell did you message me like thirty times?
EB: it’s so early, what are you even
EB: wait what about dave bleeding?
EB: holy shit is he okay???
CG: YEAH HE’S ALRIGHT. I CLEANED OUT THE WOUND AND HAD TO GIVE HIM STITCHES. BUT HE’S FINE, I GUESS, TECHNICALLY.
EB: jeez...
EB: and you said it was a sword?
CG: YES.
CG: DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT?
EB: well he told me his bro is really into anime or something?
EB: and he keeps replicas of shitty anime swords in their house.
EB: but i always thought they were just tacky decorations, not like, real actual swords.
CG: WHAT KIND OF DERANGED ASSHOLE HAS SWORDS IN THEIR HOUSE?
CG: AND WHERE THE HELL ARE THEIR PARENTS?
CG: SHOULDN’T THEY BE SUPERVISING THEM SPECIFICALLY SO THEY DON’T ACCIDENTALLY KILL EACH OTHER WITH POORLY MADE SWORDS?
EB: uh yknow i’ve actually never heard dave talk about his parents now that you mention it.
EB: i think it’s just him and his bro.
CG: WELL HIS BROTHER IS DOING A REAL GREAT JOB, THAT’S FOR SURE.
CG: GOOD BROTHERS ARE KNOWN FOR LETTING THEIR YOUNGER SIBLING RUN AWAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO A STRANGER'S HOUSE.
CG: BONUS POINTS IF THE YOUNGER SIBLING HAS AN ENORMOUS CUT IN HIS SIDE AND A BLACK EYE.
EB: god, he has a black eye too?
CG: OH.
CG: YEAH. HE DOES.
EB: :(
EB: oh man, i didn’t know it was that bad.
EB: what’s he doing now?
CG: SLEEPING.
EB: oh, good i guess.
CG: YEAH...
CG: ANYWAYS.
CG: DUE TO SEVERAL UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES I HAVE TO LEAVE FOR WORK.
CG: I’LL LET YOU KNOW IF HE’S SUSTAINED ANYMORE LIFE-THREATENING INJURIES WHEN I GET HOME.
EB: thanks karkat. i’ll message him later and see if i can figure out anything else about what happened.

You sigh and get up from the counter, reeling a bit from the new info John provided you with. Dave doesn’t have parents, as far as the two of you know. It must have been his brother who did this to him. An alarm on your phone goes off, telling you you’re going to be late for work if you don’t leave right now immediately. You let out a sound that’s partly a sigh and partly a suppressed groan and get ready for a long day of pretending to be nice to customers while simultaneously worrying about the beat up stranger on your couch.

Chapter Text

You wake up really late. Like two in the afternoon late. You haven’t slept this well in years, too on edge at your apartment to fall asleep until the early hours of the morning when you’re sure Dirk has passed out. Not having that kind of tension building up in your body for the first time in years was such a huge relief that you fell asleep immediately and then continued to sleep for ten hours.

You sit up, groggy and dazed, then immediately lie back down as a sharp pain tears through your abdomen. In the hours since you fell asleep, you’ve forgotten that just yesterday you had your stomach torn open by a fucking sword. Again.

Dirk had been drunk, as always. He gets into strange moods when he drinks, then challenges you to strifes, telling you you need to train for something. When you were younger you didn’t mind roughhousing, but the older you got the more you realized this was something more than that.

This isn’t the first time he’s really hurt you. You’ve had to walk yourself to the emergency room before, and when you didn’t have the money for that you learned to fix things yourself. YouTube is more than just conspiracy videos and life hacks, you learned how to disinfect a wound from that damn website. That, and other things.

You know how to give yourself stitches, but you decided not to tell Karkat that. He seemed so insistent on helping you, and you were tired, so tired, that you just let him. He did a better job than you ever could anyways.

You take a deep breath and try to sit up again, holding in a groan of pain. The numbing cream Karkat used has definitely worn off now and the pain in your eye isn’t making the pain in your stomach feel any better. It’s like they’re playing off of each other, getting worse together.

With a lot of effort, and a lot of noise, you manage to get off of the couch in mostly one piece. You look around the house for a second, poking your head into the open door of Karkat’s room to check if he’s still there. You remember him saying something about going to work, and you let out a small breath you’d been holding. You’re not really planning on staying long, and not having him here to try and convince you to stay will just make things easier.

When you wander into the kitchen for something to eat, you find a note under a bottle of Tylenol. It reads, in all caps, “PUT SOME ICE ON YOUR EYE AND TAKE TWO PAINKILLERS TO HELP WITH THE SWELLING. DON’T DO ANYTHING STRENUOUS OR YOU’LL HURT YOURSELF. YOU CAN EAT WHATEVER’S IN THE KITCHEN. BE BACK THIS AFTERNOON.”

You find his reminder to avoid physically demanding activities kind of hilarious, as if he didn’t already make that abundantly clear last night. The note also makes you realize that you’re fucking starving; you haven’t had a proper meal in a little over a day.

There’s a leftover tray of lasagna in the fridge and your stomach absolutely lusts for it, growling incessantly as you consider eating it. Karkat did say you can have whatever was in the kitchen but you already feel like a fucking freeloader staying in his house when you don’t even know the guy, you can’t bring yourself to eat his food. He said he was in nursing school so he probably has tuition and student loan payments out his ass; you can’t justify taking his food.

You get a granola bar for breakfast/lunch despite how hungry you are, slam down the painkillers with a glass of water, and start gathering your things. You can’t stay here; even if Karkat is cool with you staying over for a night or two it’s ultimately going to be temporary. You’ll eventually have to either go back to the apartment or go out on the street. You’d rather die than go back to the apartment, and being there for any longer will probably kill you anyways. You have just enough money from commissions to get a motel for a couple days, and if you really kick up your work drive, maybe ask for a donation here and there, you could stay for a week or two. You just can’t stay here.

You put your shades and shoes back on, then change into the only other shirt you bought so you don’t look suspicious walking into a motel with blood on your clothes. Just as you’re about to open the door, it flings open and nearly hits you in the face. Behind it Karkat is saying something along the lines of, “Stupid fucking piece of shit door always fucking sticks.” He notices you immediately when he enters the apartment, closing the door behind him and trying to cool his temper.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he says. “How’s your stomach? Stitches holding up?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” you say, a little too quickly. You take half a step back, readjusting your bag.

“What are you doing?” he asks, looking at your bag.

“Leaving.”

“Woah, woah, the fuck you are not,” Karkat exclaims. He takes a step forward, and you take another step back. “You’re not seriously going to go back to your house, are you? After someone did this to you? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“No,” you say defensively. “I’ve got money, gonna get a hotel for a while.”

“And what happens when you run out of money?” Karkat challenges. You don’t see why he cares. You don’t even know each other.

“I’ll figure it out,” you say. “Look dude, I appreciate you helping me and everything, but you’re a college student, y’know? You’re wearing a fucking Chick-fil-A uniform right now, it’s not like you’ve got enough money to let me stay here.”

“Do you have a job?” he asks suddenly, catching you off guard.

“What?”

“Do you have a job?” he repeats. “A place where you go to complete a task and they give you money that you can then exchange for goods and services?”

“Yeah, I mean… kind of.” When Karkat just looks at you, you continue, “I do art commissions, comics and shit. Sometimes photographs.”

“So you have a way to make money then, yeah?”

You swallow. “Yeah?”

“Great!” Karkat walks past you and into the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge for a snack. “You can stay with me, then. Help pay rent.”

“Look, I can’t just-”

Karkat holds up a hand, “I’m gonna stop you right there.” He opens up a bottle of juice from the fridge and takes a long swig before addressing you again. “I know we’re strangers and everything, and I don’t mean to be a dickhead and butt into your personal life, but you showed up on my front step with a sword wound and a black eye and if you think I’m the kind of asshole who will let you live out of a hotel until you have to go back to wherever you live, wherever this shit happened to you, then you’re sorely fucking mistaken.”

When you don’t answer, stunned, he continues. “I hate to break this to you, but you’re John’s friend so, by association, you’re also my friend. You’re stuck with me now, sorry, hope you were ready to have a new best fucking friend because I already made us bracelets and bought those necklaces with the stupid little hearts on them.”

“I don’t have any of my things,” you say as a counterpoint.

“Not sure if you’ve heard of this,” Karkat starts. “But they’ve invented this crazy new device with four wheels and an engine that can get you from one place to another! It’s called a car. And I have one.”  

You don’t know what to say. He’s right, really. Even if you get a hotel it’ll eventually become unsustainable and you’ll have to go back home, where your brother will be even more furious at you for leaving. There’s really no alternative, except staying with Karkat, but you’re not willing to drag another person so deep into the steaming pile of bullshit that is your life.

You open your mouth to say something, but then your vision goes blurry and you grab onto the side of the counter to keep yourself from falling over as a wave of dizziness washes over you. Losing as much blood as you did and then not eating for a day and a half have definitely taken a toll on your body. Karkat’s hands shoot out to steady you, grabbing at your waist as a worried expression takes over his face.

“Okay, yeah, you’re definitely staying with me,” he says, leading you to the couch. You lean an embarrassing amount of your weight on him. “Fuck if I’m gonna let you leave when you’re like this.”

You want to tell him no, that you’re fine, but you’re afraid you’ll puke if you open your mouth. You let him put you on the couch where you let out a sigh that’s half a groan, letting your head fall onto the back of the sofa.

“Did you take those meds without eating anything?” he asks in a chastising tone.

You nod, holding your abdomen with your forearm as it gives a dull throb. The granola bar you ate earlier was clearly not enough to absorb the painkillers, and they swirl together uncomfortably in your stomach, a cocktail of pain and nausea.

Karkat huffs at you, “For fuck’s sake,” and goes back to the kitchen. You hear him opening and closing the fridge, then the sound of the microwave going for a few minutes. The smell of that lasagna you’d seen reaches your nostrils, and your gut spasms with hunger and nausea when he brings you a hefty, steaming portion of it on a plate.

You take the plate and the fork he brought for you, swallowing down bile to let out a croaking, “Thanks.”

“Don’t eat that too fast, you’ll make yourself sick,” Karkat says, sitting on the couch next to you. “And I’m really not in the mood to clean up vomit right now.”

“Please don’t say vomit,” you request, sitting up straighter in order to eat properly.

You take a small bite of the lasagna, testing your tolerance for eating food after not having any for twenty-four straight hours. It’s probably the best thing you’ve had in your life, despite being leftover and reheated in the microwave. When you don’t immediately feel like you’re going to puke after chewing and swallowing, your first instinct is to scarf down as much of it as possible. Karkat is right, though. If you eat too fast you’ll regret it. You pick at it instead, taking small bites.

“Once you start feeling better we’ll head back to your place and pick up some of your stuff,” Karkat says. He turns on the TV, flipping through channels impatiently. “And please, for the love of God, don’t try and argue with me about it anymore. I’ve been ass deep in chicken and people asking to speak to my manager today so don’t fucking push it.”

You want to tell him no so badly. You don’t want him to take you to your house, help you get your things, not if it means he might interact with your brother. Despite his temper, Karkat seems like a good person, letting you stay and all. You don’t think you’d ever forgive yourself if you let him get in the way of you brother, get hurt. Maybe you can convince him not to come inside with you, to wait in the car while you get your stuff from inside.

Of course, that’s not how it works out. Karkat absolutely insists on coming in with you when you get to your apartment.

“You have a massive fucking hole in your stomach and you almost passed out earlier,” he’s griping at you in the lobby. “Quit being so fucking stubborn and just let me help you!”

“God, okay, Jesus,” you say, holding up your hands in a placating matter. “It’s just that - my brother is -”

Karkat takes a deep breath. “Okay, look,” he starts, lowering his voice. “We can get more stuff faster with the two of us. We’ll be in and out before your brother even notices.”

“Fine,” you say tightly.

In the elevator your stomach starts to turn again. It’s a long ride, you live on the top floor of a massive apartment complex, and the rattling of the hold elevator isn’t helping your nerves.

“How’s your stomach?” Karkat asks conversationally, referring to your cut.

“Fucking hurts,” you say, tired of lying. “Really fuckin’ hurts.”

“I’ll take a look at it when we get back,” he mutters to himself.

The elevator dings, doors opening with a loud creak. Karkat moves before you do, traipsing down the hallway with steely determination. You follow him more hesitantly and have to call him back to you when he storms past your door.

You take a deep breath before unlocking the door and pushing it open as quietly as you can. The lights are off and you can’t see anyone around, Dirk likely passed out in his room. You step inside.

There’s shit all over the living room as usual; disturbing plush puppets, random sharp metal things, cans of soda and bottles of beer. A pizza box in the middle of the floor, closed but probably filled with a bunch of rotten food, almost trips you on you way to your room. It smells like shit, whatever, you step over it.

“Be careful,” you say behind you to Karkat, who’s looking around incredulously. You catch his eye and he gives you a look that you’ve seen a million times before, whenever friends came over to your house during grade school, whenever social workers came to check on you, when neighbors knocked on your door after hearing him hurt you. It’s a look full of pity and a very sudden, very harsh understanding.

You lead Karkat to your room and grab a couple bags from your closet, an old backpack from when you were still in school and your laptop bag. You hand the backpack to Karkat.

“Put whatever you can fit from my closet in here,” you instruct him. He nods, and gets to work.

You grab your laptop, drawing tablet, and charger cords and shove them in your bag, along with as many CD’s as you fit. You stuff your camera in there too, forgoing some of the bigger lense attachments. You’re not going to be able to take your records with you; you can probably only fit one in the bag unless you wanna crush something. You spend only a moment looking through your records and picking which one to keep, the Midnight Crew soundtrack that John mailed you for your birthday a few years back. The others, well… you can always buy them again somewhere else.

You’re gonna have to abandon your DJ mixing stuff. The giant turntables and subsequent mess of speakers and wires aren’t going to fit in your bag and you don’t want to risk wasting time picking them up and taking them to Karkat’s car. You’re not even sure they’ll fit in there.

Karkat’s finished emptying out most of your closet. You don’t really own a lot of clothes, so they fit in the backpack decently well.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“Um.” You look around for a second, then yank your blanket off your bed, balling it up into a wad and holding it under you arm. There are a few pictures attached to a string with clothespins above your bed that you grab as well, memories from the few times you met up with John, Rose, and Jade over the years.

You think that’s everything, for now. You’ll have to leave a lot of things, like your posters and the preserved animals you have.

“I think that’s it,” you say to Karkat, heading back to the living room. “Maybe some other day I can get my-”

“Hey,” a voice in the living room says.

Every nerve in your body screams at you to leave, and only partly relaxes when you see it’s just Dirk’s friend Roxy, looking all kinds of strung out. You release your hold on the shoulder of Karkat’s shirt, having wrenched your fist into the fabric, trying to put him behind you and out of harm’s way.

“Where’re you going?” Roxy asks. She must’ve come out of the bathroom when you weren’t looking, surprising you.

“Away,” you answer shortly, adjusting your bag.

“Like… forever?” she slurs.

“Yeah, forever.” You don’t have a whole lot against Roxy; you think she was a good person before she met your brother, and she’s tried to intervene in the past when he’s gotten particularly violent. But she has her own vices.

“Good,” she answers slowly, collapsing onto the couch in a quick, sharp motion.

“Dave,” comes another voice from the hallway, unnaturally calm and cold. “Where have you been?”

“Go,” you say thickly, pushing at Karkat’s back until he moves forward, uncertain. “Go!”

He walks quickly out of the apartment, not quite running, and doesn’t slow down until you reach the elevator. He’s quiet for a moment as the elevator starts and you catch your breath, trying to slow down your racing heart.

“Who was that woman?” he asks quietly.

“Her name’s Roxy,” you explain, holding your stomach in pain. “She’s his friend.”

Karkat opens and closes his mouth a few times before finally saying, “She looks like… uh…”

“A drug addict?” you finish for him. “Yeah.”

You can tell he wants to ask more, and are thankful when he doesn’t.

“You can put your stuff in here,” Karkat tells you when you get back to his place, showing you his spare bedroom. It’s more of a closet, but it’s better than your apartment by far. “I’ve got an air mattress you can use for now, until we can buy an actual bed.”

“Thanks,” you say, setting your stuff down on a desk, the only piece of furniture in the room other than the chair that goes with it. “I really can’t… I owe you one.”

Karkat shrugs, like it’s no big deal he’s letting a complete stranger live with him for an indeterminate amount of time.

“I don’t really have much to give you in return,” you say as you look around at your few belongings. “But if you ever want a weird comic or a poorly shot photograph or something, I’m your guy.”

“All I want from you is a portion of the rent in three weeks,” he says with a good-natured smile. “And to let me look at your cut.”

“I can do that,” you say.

You lean against the desk, lifting up your shirt for him to see, and he slowly peels away the bandage covering your stitches. You grimace at the sensation; while the painkillers have helped, it still doesn’t exactly feel good .

“It looks good,” he says.

When you look down, the wound is black and blue, mottled blood gathering around the stitches and bruises blotting the skin surrounding it. It doesn’t look very good to you.

“Really?” you ask. “Feels like shit to me.”

“Well, it’s not infected,” he says. “So that’s a bonus.”

“Lucky me,” you mumble.

“Anyways, I’ve got class in a few hours so you’re on your own for dinner,” Karkat says, letting you put your shirt back down. “You better not be a dumbass and not eat again, because you’ll only get away with that for so long before you body starts to freak out. And put some damn ice on your eye, okay?”

“Thanks mom, I’ve got it,” you joke.

He rolls his eyes and leaves the room, closing the door behind him. You sit down in the chair with a sigh, trying not to focus on how itchy your stitches are getting.

You feel like shit. It’s been a long day, and between not eating and nearly encountering your brother you’re kind of exhausted. And you haven’t showered in over a day, leaving your hair and skin in pools of grease and oil. You run a hand through your hair and grimace, grossed out.

Your phone vibrates on the desk. You realize you haven’t checked it all day, too busy sleeping and then arguing with Karkat and then almost fainting to think to look at it. You pick it up and find like thirty messages from John.

EB: hey dude are you okay? karkat said you were pretty messed up when you got to his house.
EB: are you guys getting along alright? i know he can be kind of annoying and abrasive but you get used to it.
EB: if he calls you a bunch of terrible names that means he likes you!
EB: dave?
EB: oh god did karkat kill you? i knew this would happen, this is all my fault!!
EB: karkat how could you? i trusted you!
EB: i’ll avenge you dave!! i’m putting on a dirty wifebeater and growing out my hair right now!
EB: okay haha jokes over please answer now.
-- turntechGodhead [TG] is now an idle chum! --
EB: goddamit dave!
EB: seriously it’s been like forever since you answered and i’m not saying i’m freaking out but i’m freaking out a little bit.
EB: you’re not in the hospital are you?
EB: oh my god are you in the fucking hospital???
TG: hey dude
EB: holy shit there you are! are you okay?
TG: im fine man relax lmao
TG: i slept until like two oclock and then karkat and i went back to my place to grab some of my shit
TG: also im recovering from a literal sword wound and karkat had to sew me back up it was wild
TG: it was some fucking saw shit my guts were all hanging out like a fat dudes beer belly at a nude beach totally fucking shameless
TG: all writhing around and shit
TG: it was mega fucked up tbh
TG: im all good though
EB: okay first of all ew
EB: and second of all i was really worried! i’m glad you’re alright
EB: is your eye okay or did that also involve a bunch of fucked up imagery and guts and stuff?
TG: oh dude dont even get me started on my goddamn eye
TG: ill spare you the gritty details
TG: all you need to know is that i have an eye patch now, no big deal
EB: oh shit how are you gonna wear your stupid shades now?
TG: im not dude im just gonna buy a second eyepatch actually and look hells a cool okay
TG: ladies and dudes alike are gonna be swooning over me in the fucking streets like god DAMN who is this fly motherfucker with the double eyepatches?
TG: and ill trip over all their prostrated bodies because i cant fuckin see on account of the eyepatches
EB: how will the world handle all that unmitigated swag? the absolute COOLNESS?
TG: it fucking wont dude thats how
TG: anyways i gotta go karkat set me up in his guest room and ive gotta unpack my shit
TG: ill talk to you later
TG: like ill actually answer your messages at a reasonable hour and everything promise
EB: haha okay i’ll talk to you later!
EB: i’m really glad you’re okay
TG: fuck dude me too
EB: later <3
-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:08 --

Maybe a few years ago that heart would have stirred something inside you, confused and repressed, but now you just… look at it for a second before closing the message. John is really an affectionate guy, sending you hearts over PesterChum and hugging you constantly when you meet up in person. It took you several long, arduous years to get over how that made you feel. Now it just makes you feel cared about, if only a little.

You run a tired hand down your face and it comes back with oil on it. You gag at it and go out to the living room to find Karkat. He’s sitting at the kitchen counter doing last minute homework, books and laptop strewn out over the island in a mess.

“Hey, can I use your shower?” you ask. “My face and hair have produced so much oil I’ve officially become a danger to the environment. The Gulf of Mexico is being destroyed as we speak.”

“Dave, for fuck’s sake, you don’t have to ask to use the shower,” Karkat says with a furrowed brow and a little frown. “You kind of just officially moved in so like? Knock yourself out.”

“Right,” you say with a snap of your fingers. “Sorry.”

Karkat takes a good look at you and his frown deepens, taking on a playful shape. “You’re right, you look terrible,” he says jokingly. “And you smell awful, too. You can borrow my soap for now; we’ll go to the store tomorrow and get all the shit you normally use.”

“Sounds good, man.” You leave him to his homework.

“And don’t get your stitches wet!” he calls after you.

In the shower you feel like you kind of want to cry. It’s the first few minutes in well over a day that you’ve had a moment to yourself, from your brother beating on you, to leaving, to dealing with Karkat and your new living situation. You realize suddenly that you’re really fucking overwhelmed and that you stomach and eye are throbbing in pain and that you’re still hungry and nauseous and that you’re tired, God you’re so fucking tired.

Feeling like you’re about to have a full blown panic attack, you let your weak knees take you into a sitting position at the bottom of the shower. You try to angle yourself so your stitches stay dry, and it partly works, warm water cascading down your back and avoiding the side of your stomach. You swallow repeatedly, begging your brain to calm down so you don’t start sobbing on the shower floor. The last thing you need is Karkat hearing you and subsequently pitying you even more.

You drop the side of your head against the shower wall and close your eyes. The steam and shower water, almost painfully hot, keep you grounded until you get your breath back. Eventually you stand back up and wash your hair and body, scrubbing off the aches, the oil, the stress. When you get out, putting on a set of clean clothes in your new room, you don’t feel good or even okay, but you do feel better.

Chapter Text

It’s been a long fucking day. Not only did you have a shift at work in the morning, but then you had class until three along with a fucking anatomy exam. You kind of totally forgot to study so you’re sure you completely fucked it up, which is bad enough without the added fact that you already have a B in that class. That may not seem like a bad grade but in your program that’s basically failing. Getting a shit grade on the exam is probably going to bring it down to a C and you just really don’t have time for that. You’ll have to kiss the professor’s ass for a few days and then ask for extra credit just to get your grade back up.

You’ve just been… distracted. Having a random stranger show up at your house all sorts of fucked up and then helping him basically move in with you has taken up a significant amount of your time. And fuck if you’re not gonna admit that he’s kind of hot. Like, just being brutally honest with yourself, he’s hot and you’re attracted to him. There’s no use denying that when he’s going to be staying with you for who knows how long. You might as well admit it now and then get over it sooner rather than later. The feeling will dissipate in a week anyways.

Besides, your desperate, hopeless romantic ass falls in love with any guy who so much as gives you the time of day. It happened with Sollux, it happened with John, and it’ll probably happen with Dave, too. Hell, you fell for a waiter at Applebee’s once because he talked to you about the band on your t-shirt for twenty-five seconds. That’s just how you are. You hope whatever you feel for Dave at least doesn’t last as long or feel as confusing as what you felt for John. That was a clusterfuck and you’re still embarrassed about it.

You’ve been staring at a shelf of salsa in the grocery store for like ten minutes now, lost in your thoughts as Dave fucks off somewhere else to pick up the toiletries he needs. You debate between medium and spicy, liking hotter salsa yourself but unsure of what Dave likes. He’s not white so you’re hoping he grew up with some sort of seasoning in his food, but you don’t want to assume. You go with the medium.

Dave returns to you as you’re putting the salsa in the cart, holding a pack of disposable razors, a bottle of soap, and a bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. You look at him oddly.

“Is that all you’re getting?” you ask.

“Yup.” He doesn’t add the items to the cart, continuing to hold onto them. When you tilt your head at him, prodding for an explanation, he says, “I can pay for these.”

“Nope,” you say. “Put them in.”

“I can-”

“You got a bunch of cheap shit,” you say, gesturing at his armful of products. “Three things aren’t going to put me in the hole okay, I have more than fourteen dollars in my bank account you know.”

He puts them in the cart without another word, likely holding in a thank you. He says thank you all the time. That and sorry.

You push the cart down the aisle where the chips are, conveniently located next to the salsa. You grab a bag of tortilla chips, obviously, then look at the other options.

“You like Doritos?” you ask him.

“Yeah, I’m always a slut for Doritos,” Dave answers loudly. This garners the attention of a woman with her child nearby and she gives you a dirty look, shielding her daughter from the harsh language. Dave looks back at her, calmly, and you think he maybe spoke so loudly on purpose. You hold in a smile.

“Regular or cool ranch?”

Dave scoffs, grabbing the orange bag and putting it in the cart. “Who do you think I am?” he asks rhetorically.

You just raise your eyebrows and shake your head, pushing the cart to the produce section of the store, hoping some fresh vegetables will be on sale for once. Dave follows close behind you, making conversation.

“I’m Mexican so it’s kind of blasphemous for me to eat at Taco Bell,” he starts, “but their Doritos tacos are fucking insane. You had one?”

“God no,” you say with a pained expression. “I prefer to keep my cholesterol at non-lethal levels, and my asshole not destroyed from the amount of nuclear diarrhea that has the capability of giving a human person, thanks.”

“No dude, you’ve gotta try it. Nothing is better when you’re craving junk food at two in the morning than a motherfucking Doritos locos taco,” he says with increasingly wide hand gestures. “Another thing you’ve gotta try, and this is my own invention okay I’m working on selling it to Taco Bell, is Doritos nachos . Regular Doritos with shredded cheese on top, pop that shit in the oven for like five minutes, let the cheese get all fucking gooey and everything? Orgasmic.”

“Jesus what the fuck kind of radioactive sewage have you been putting in your body?” you ask incredulously. Doritos nachos sound so fucking disgusting, you can’t just mix fake cheese and real cheese together, that’s insane.

“Delicious radioactive sewage, dude,” Dave says convincingly. “You’re seriously missing out.”

“I absolutely doubt that.”

You fiddle around in the produce section, looking for any yellow sale signs. The bell peppers look good but they’re like three dollars a pepper which is basically robbery. If you wanted to get fucked by the grocery store today you would’ve shown up with lube at the ready.

“So you’re Mexican, huh?” you ask.

“Yup,” Dave answers with a pop. You can feel him look at you up and down. “You?”

“Puerto Rican,” you answer. You put the bell pepper back down; not today. “Speak any Spanish?”

“Nah, I did when I was younger but I kinda lost it once my parents weren’t around,” he says with a shrug. “I’m basically a fake Mexican. Once I failed Spanish class in high school the Mexican council got together and decided to kick me out of the club. They made me change my birth certificate so it just says gringo now.”

You laugh a little, distracted, stuck on something else he said. What happened to his parents? The curious, admittedly nosey part of you wants to ask, but you know that would definitely be pushing some kind of boundary. You have a little social tact.

In Spanish you ask him, “What kind of vegetables do you like?”

“Ah, come on dude don’t do that ,” he whines. “Vegetables? Something about vegetables? That’s all I got.”

“That’s because the Spanish word for vegetables is nearly identical to the English word,” you say with a shake of your head.

“Don’t do that man, the other Spanish people are gonna hear me fucking this up and take me out,” he says dramatically. “I know they’ve got snipers in the fucking rafters around here. I don’t wanna die today, Karkat.”

“God, okay,” you say with another laugh. His humor is so similar to yours, full of long-winded metaphors and overarching scenarios that make no sense. You like it. “I asked you what vegetables you like,” you clarify for him, in English this time.

“I don’t really know,” he answers honestly, following you to a different portion of the produce area where the vegetables are less ridiculously expensive.

“Well like,” you shrug, waving your hand around. “What do you normally put in your salads, for example.”

He looks at you, confused, and answers like he’s taking some sort of pop quiz, “Lettuce?”

You blink. “Okay.”

Dave just continues to look at you, as if saying he puts lettuce in his salad is a completely acceptable response. You can’t tell if he’s joking or if he is seriously that unfamiliar with the concept of vegetables. You guess if he’s eating shit like Doritos tacos then it’s not totally unbelievable that vegetables are a foreign food to him. It just makes you kind of sad.

You pick up some good looking zucchini, squash, and a couple onions, planning to sauté them with dinner so Dave can have at least something healthy in his body for once. He stays by your side for the rest of the trip, only giving you his opinions when you explicitly ask for them. You wish he would just tell you what he likes or if he wants something specific, but you guess he’s too afraid to say anything.

Back at home he tries to help you put away the groceries, but keeps sticking things in the pantry when they should go in the fridge. You saw the place he lived in so you’re not exactly surprised that he has no idea how to store food but it pinches at your heart a little bit. You grew up in a big household and your dad always made sure you ate well when he was still alive. Everyone deserves to have that, you think.

Eventually you take the produce and other refrigerated items from him and hand him boxed stuff to put away instead. He looks a little embarrassed, but cracks a few jokes about it anyways. After you’ve put everything away he helps you gather up all the plastic bags and lets out a gasp.

“Oh fuck dude do you have a plastic bag somewhere around here that’s filled with other plastic bags?” he asks.

“Yeah?” you answer, confused. “Under the sink.”

He gasps again when he finds it. “Fuck yeah,” he says, sticking all the plastic bags inside. “This is the best shit, so goddamn efficient.”

“And terrible for the environment,” you add. “You’re helping me make dinner, by the way.”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” he says with a nod. “We already bought those Doritos, you got any shredded cheese? I can make the-”

“No, for the love of god, I don’t want to get anywhere near that horrendous shit,” you say, putting up a hand. “I’m showing you how to make food that’s actually edible; can’t have you starving to death or accidentally fucking poisoning yourself when I’m not around.”

“You say that as if my nachos aren’t a perfectly healthy meal that represent all of the food groups.” He shakes his head.

“I’m just gonna pretend like you never even mentioned that saturated fat filled abomination you’re talking about.”

“Your loss!”

"Anyways,” you say pointedly. “You helped me carry all this shit inside, are your stitches okay?”

“Yup.” Dave lifts up his shirt to show you the clean bandage. “No blood and all of my guts are inside my body where they belong.”

“And the pain?” You were watching him pretty closely in the grocery store, you saw the way he slouched, hands in his pockets, avoiding standing up straight so he didn’t aggravate the wound.

His light-hearted tone falters a bit. “Still hurts,” he says with a shrug of his shoulder, as if it’s not that big of a deal. “But I’m all good.”

“You’re sure?”

He nods, lips pursed and eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. “Yeah, totally.” You wonder when he’ll stop lying to you.

“Okay, good.” You pause for a moment. “I’ve gotta go work on the absolute clusterfuck that is my grade in anatomy, but we can start on dinner in an hour or so, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” he says. Then, with a smile, “Have fun with anatomy.”

You make a face and give him the finger, which he laughs at, and head to your room. You would normally just do your work at the kitchen counter or on the couch but you’re not sure if Dave wants to hang out in the living room and you want to give him space. Despite the comfortable rapport you seem to have developed with him over the last day, you still don’t really know each other. You don’t want to push him into talking to you if he doesn’t want to, especially considering all the shit he seems like he’s been through in his life. You can’t even imagine.

The homework your anatomy professor assigned to you doesn’t make any fucking sense. You’re not sure if you missed something last class or if you’re actually as dumb as you think you are because you can’t make heads or tails of this fucking assignment. You move to a different subject in the hopes that it’ll make more sense but you still can’t fucking concentrate, thinking about Dave in the living room where you can hear the TV going. It sounds like he’s watching some sort of reality show but you can’t be sure.

This is going to be a problem if you can’t get your shit together. You give up after half an hour, the catalyst for your failure being a message from Kanaya. You would give anything to have an excuse to not work on your assignment, and this is like a sign from the gods that it’s time to stop.

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 17:22 --
GA: Hello Karkat
GA: How Has The Situation With Dave Developed Since We Last Talked?
GA: I’m Rather Intrigued By It
CG: WELL HE HASN’T HURT HIMSELF ANYMORE AND ALL OF HIS BLOOD IS INSIDE HIS BODY, SO THERE’S THAT.
CG: HE’S STILL UNBELIEVABLY OBTUSE AND KEEPS GOING OFF ON THESE WEIRD TANGENTS THOUGH.
GA: To Be Fair You Also Tend To Go Off On Tangents Of Increasing Incoherency Depending On What Kind Of Mood You Are In
GA: Perhaps Thats Something The Two Of You Could Bond Over
CG: HAHA VERY FUNNY.
CG: LET’S ALL LAUGH AT KARKAT! HE’S LOUD AND SAYS A BUNCH OF SHIT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS AND MAKES HIMSELF LOOK LIKE A TOTAL ASSHOLE EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE. SO FUNNY.
GA: You Seem
GA: Stressed
CG: YEAH I’M A LITTLE FUCKING STRESSED.
CG: I FUCKED UP MY ANATOMY EXAM TODAY AND NOW I’VE GOTTA WORK ON THIS FUCKING ASSIGNMENT BUT I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT DAVE AND THE COMPLETELY DEMENTED PEOPLE HE APPARENTLY LIVED WITH.
CG: YOU REMEMBER HOW WE WENT BACK TO HIS PLACE YESTERDAY?
GA: I Recall You Mentioning It Yes
CG: WELL IT WAS FUCKING DISGUSTING. IT WAS LIKE A BOMB WENT OFF IN THERE.
CG: THERE WAS SHIT EVERYWHERE, ROTTING FOOD AND THESE BIZARRE FUCKING PUPPETS WITH BIG NOSES AND HUGE ASSES?
CG: AND I FOUND OUT HIS PARENTS AREN’T AROUND ANYMORE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM BUT THEY’VE OBVIOUSLY BEEN GONE FOR A LONG TIME BECAUSE HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT A FUCKING VEGETABLE IS. I DON’T THINK HE’S EVER INTERACTED WITH A SINGLE VEGETABLE IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE.
CG: I ASKED HIM WHAT HE LIKES TO PUT IN HIS SALADS AND HE SAID LETTUCE.
CG: LETTUCE, KANAYA.
GA: Lettuce?
CG: LETTUCE! WHAT THE FUCK?
GA: So Youre Worried About The Conditions He Grew Up In And How That Will Affect Your Ability To Live With Him?
CG: I GUESS SO? IT’S MORE LIKE…
CG: I DON’T KNOW.
CG: I JUST FEEL BAD FOR HIM. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT.
GA: And Then You Have The Added Frustration Of Liking Him
CG: SORRY WHAT?
CG: I DIDN’T SAY THAT.
GA: You Told Me Yesterday You Found Him Attractive
CG: THAT DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE SOME KIND OF FUCKING CRUSH ON HIM! JESUS, JUMP THE GUN MUCH?
GA: Are You Sure?
GA: You Seem Rather Defensive About It
CG: LOOK, I DON’T EVEN KNOW HIM OKAY. I BARELY KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM AND I SURE AS FUCK DON’T KNOW IF HE LIKES GUYS SO LET’S NOT EVEN ENTERTAIN THAT THOUGHT, OKAY?
GA: Okay
CG: FUCK, SORRY, I’M JUST… SO FUCKING STRESSED OUT.
CG: I HAVE A BRILLIANT IDEA. YOU COME TO TEXAS TO TAKE CARE OF THE DAVE SITUATION AND I’LL GO TO NEW YORK AND BE A FASHION DESIGNER! DEAL? OKAY GREAT I’M BUYING A PLANE TICKET NOW.
GA: Karkat While I Love You Dearly You Simply Could Not Pay Me Enough Money To Put Myself In Your Shoes
GA: I Understand You Are Under A Lot Of Stress Between Nursing School And Helping Dave
GA: But I Dont Think You Give Yourself Enough Credit
GA: What You Are Doing Is Immensely Generous And I Don’t Think A Lot Of People, Even Some Of Our Friends, Would Be Willing To Do The Same
CG: THANKS, KANAYA. YOU’RE RIGHT AS ALWAYS.
CG: I STILL FEEL LIKE A PIECE OF SHIT THOUGH.
GA: Yes That Is A Common Emotion For You
CG: UNFORTUNATELY THAT’S JUST THE HAND I’VE BEEN DEALT.
CG: ANYWAYS HOW DID YOUR INTERVIEW GO? THE THING WITH THE MAGAZINE?
GA: Surprisingly Well
GA: I Flubbed The Handshake Like An Imbecile But He Seemed To Like My Work
GA: I May Even Get The Internship
CG: OF COURSE YOU’LL GET THE INTERNSHIP ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
CG: HE’D BE A FUCKING IDIOT NOT TO HIRE YOU.
GA: No I Think That Would Be A Rather Intelligent Choice Actually
GA: There Are Far More Experienced Candidates Than Me
GA: And Far More Talented Ones
CG: NO, CUT THAT SHIT OUT, YOUR DESIGNS ARE INSANE.
CG: THAT DRESS YOU SHOWED ME THE OTHER DAY? SERIOUSLY? IF THAT’S NOT TALENT THEN I MUST BE FUCKING BLIND AND DUMB.
CG: AND BESIDES, IT’S JUST AN INTERNSHIP. EVEN IF YOU DON’T GET IT, WHICH WON’T HAPPEN BECAUSE YOU’RE RIDICULOUSLY FUCKING GOOD AT THIS SHIT, THEN THERE WILL BE OTHER INTERNSHIPS IN THE FUTURE.
CG: MAYBE EVEN PAID ONES! WOULDN’T THAT BE NICE.
GA: Yes It Would Be Nice To Get A Paid Internship One Day
GA: In Fact Unpaid Internships Should Be Made Illegal In My Opinion
CG: THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING! WE PAY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN TUITION AND THEN NO ONE CAN EVEN PAY US WHEN WE WORK FOR THEM? WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF POST-APOCALYPTIC DYSTOPIA DO WE LIVE IN?
GA: A Poorly Written One At Least
CG: FUCKING EXACTLY.

You chat with Kanaya for a little while longer, ranting and raving about how fucked up this country’s higher education is, before you have to go make dinner. Last night Dave told you he just ate more of the lasagna you gave him for lunch while you were in class. You can’t in good conscience let him eat lasagna for a third time in two days, not when he has so much other unhealthy shit running through his digestive tract on a weekly basis.

Dave is still on the couch, finally putting some goddamn ice on his eye, when you leave your room. You call him over to the kitchen to get started on dinner, and it goes about as well as you expect.

Firstly, Dave asks you whether or not you can eat the skin of a zucchini. You tell him yes, what the fuck, of course you can eat the skin. Have you ever seen a peeled zucchini?

Then there’s the situation that arises when you ask him to peel and cut the onion you got. He doesn’t know how to peel it, which you can kind of understand considering how many layers of skin an onion has, but when he nearly cuts off his finger trying to dice it you send him over to the stovetop for noodle duty.

“Go boil some water,” you tell him. “Can you do that without fucking killing yourself?”

“No promises,” he says honestly, grabbing a pot from the cupboard.

Once you take over handling the vegetables, things go a little more smoothly. You sauté all the veggies you chopped up for a few minutes with some soy sauce and let them simmer until the noodles are done. Dave watches over your shoulder, curious and hungry.

“Where’d you learn how to cook?” he asks conversationally.

“A combination of my dad teaching me when he was still alive and the necessity of knowing how to cook when you live alone,” you answer.

“So,” Dave starts, hesitant. “Your dad…”

“Is dead, yeah.”

“Sorry.”

You shrug a shoulder, prodding at the vegetables with your spatula. “He was sick for a long time,” you explain. “Cancer. It’s not like it was sudden or anything, so… it’s alright, you know?”

“And your mom?”

“No clue,” you say with a lighter tone. “Never met her. My dad used to tell me it was this really popular singer, Selena, but like, she’s not even from Puerto Rico? So that was bullshit.”

“I dunno dude, can you sing?” he asks. “Maybe that’s the true test and your dad was telling the truth the whole time. Maybe you’ve got her genes and you’re actually a musical prodigy, just chock fucking full of untapped potential.”

"God no,” you say. “The last cries of a maimed, dying animal would produce a more pleasing sound than my singing voice.”

He laughs a little, watching you shuffle the pan around so the vegetables don’t get stuck or burned. You’re surprisingly comfortable sharing things about your parents with Dave, if anyone isn’t going to judge you for your unreasonably tragic past it’s him. You bite your lip, hesitant, and then ask him about his parents, the thought having nagged you all day.

“I didn’t really know them,” he answers, honest with you for once. “Think they were junkies or alcoholics or some other fucked up shit. Bro and I were in the foster system for a while until he aged out and then I just lived with him until… now I guess.”

You’re quiet for a second, taking that in. As fucked up as it is, you were kind of hoping his parents were good people who died in some sort of freak accident, instead of drug-addicted, incompetent parents who got their kids taken away from them. Seems like it runs in the family.

When you don’t reply for too long Dave gives you a chuckle. “I know I’m like.. a fucking beacon of tragic pasts and childhood trauma and whatever,” he says, light tone starkly contrasting with the dark subject matter. “ Absolutely fucking glowing with fucked up experiences and dealing with shitty adults my whole life, like a kid in some kind of LifeTime movie. Where’s Sandra Bullock to act as my surrogate mother and change my life?”

“Well, I think you turned out remarkably normal, all things considered," you say. “Except for the fact that you have no fucking idea what a vegetable is, apparently.”

The two of you, mostly you, manage to finish dinner without any major issues. You sit on the couch together with your bowls of stir-fry and when Dave first takes a bite he looks at you with comically wide eyes.

“Holy shit,” he says around a mouthful of noodles.

“Amazing how nice food can taste when it’s not full of lard and saturated fat,” you say smugly, proud of your work.

You watch, amused, as Dave scarfs down the food in just a few minutes. You take your time, enjoying the fresh vegetables and the noodles, as you don’t always have the money for them. You’ve lived off of canned soup and microwave meals for weeks at a time when money is tight, and you’ve learned to savor the little things. Dave, it appears, has not gained that skill just yet.

He cleans the dishes after you eat while you put away the leftovers. In the freezer, you spy some ice cream you bought at the store and pull it out, along with two spoons from the drawer. When Dave is done cleaning, you hand him one of the spoons, popping open the ice cream tub. You dig a spoonful out of the open container, leaning tiredly on the counter, and then push it over to Dave. He hesitates for a second, but then you take a second scoop and he joins suit.

“Long day,” you say as explanation. It’s late and you’re tired, but you really want some fucking ice cream.

Dave takes another spoonful of the ice cream and smacks his lips, humming in appreciation. “This is really fucking good.”

“Good, you better eat it because I spent more money on it than I should have.”

Dave takes an enthusiastic bite. “Don’t have to fuckin’ tell me twice.” He turns the tub around to look at the flavor and nods. “Ah, yes, tres leches. You can definitely, you know, taste all three of the leches in here for sure.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t speak Spanish,” you say with mock surprise, hand on your chest.

“Fuck off,” Dave whines back at you.

You laugh and continue sharing the ice cream in comfortable silence until Dave breaks it again, twirling his spoon around in his fingers as he talks.

“I dunno if John mentioned this to you,” he starts, “but he told me today that he wants to come down and visit sometime soon? Now that we’re both in the same place and everything.”

“Oh great,” you mutter. “After all this time I’ll finally have the chance to make a complete fucking fool of myself in front of him.”

“You’ve never met him?” Dave asks curiously.

“No,” you answer. “I’ve only known him for a couple years and the timing just never worked out. School and work take up most of my day and then during my precious hours of free time I’m fucking asleep.”

“Ah man you’ve gotta meet him,” Dave says, far too genuine. “He’s even more goofy in that ridiculously endearing way in person. Like you can’t even believe some of the shit he says.”

You’re quiet for a moment, considering that. John is insanely charming, in his own weird kind of cringey way, enough so that your gay ass fell for him almost instantly.

“John…” Dave shakes his head and laughs to himself. “Man.”

“What?”

“I just…” He runs his hand through his hair, eating more ice cream before answering. “I was super fucking into him when we were kids, like embarrassingly so. But he’s so fucking obtuse that he just never noticed. Like I literally could’ve written him a homoerotic love letter and sent it through the mail with my fucking perfume on it, signed with a lipstick imprint of my pining, gay mouth and he still wouldn’t have gotten it.”

“Jesus, well at least you have the excuse of being an idiot kid,” you say, surprised at his admission. “I had a stupid crush on him when I was a grown ass adult. Took me a full fucking year to get over myself and realize that feeling any type of way for him that wasn’t strictly platonic would just make me look like a desperate jackass.”

“No, dude I don’t blame you,” Dave says. “I mean, you’ve seen him right? He ain’t got no business lookin’ that good.”

“You’re telling me,” you agree enthusiastically. “His eyes? Seriously? What the fuck kind of illicit drugs was mother nature on when she decided to make them that blue?”

“Oh man, his eyes are an ocean dude. And his ass…” Dave pauses, holding his hands apart in a wide gesture. “Is also an ocean.”

“Let me tell you," he starts, "having a sexual awakening at age fifteen because your best friend hit puberty and suddenly got really hot was fucking wild. Like, the emotional rollercoaster I went on was enough to make even the most iron-stomached people fucking ill with just how ridiculous and pubescent it was.”

“But he’s so fucking straight ,” you say, pained. You scoop out more ice cream as Dave nods again, a small smile making its way onto his face.

“Trying to come out to him was like pulling teeth,” he says. “Like I go through all these years of school trying to become a dentist and then I finally get there and some kid comes into my office needing like six teeth pulled and we’ve run out of anesthetics so I have to use medieval fucking technology to get those teeth out, I’m talking old fashioned metal fucking pliers and a bottle of whiskey. And the kid’s all crying and everything, there’s blood going everywhere, it’s a huge fuckin’ mess and then I get my license revoked and I can’t pay my mortgage and it all just goes to shit.”

“He asked me who turned me gay for like two years,” Dave adds after his long-winded metaphor. “And it took forever for him to understand that it doesn’t work like that. Also, for the record, it was Chris Evans.”

“A respectable choice,” you say, nodding. “Mine was Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender.”

This doesn’t seem to be the type of response Dave was expecting, as he nearly chokes around his mouthful of ice cream and doubles over in laughter. “Holy shit dude, are you serious?” he asks through his hysterics.

“Yes!” you defend, indignant. “He got really hot in season three!”

“He’s not real!” Dave adds, barely able to talk over his laughter. He has to put his spoon down to clap his hands together in mirth, stopping only to touch his side momentarily with an, “Ow, fuck.”

You’re about to ask him about his side, the exclamation of pain worrying you, when he starts talking again. “Good lord,” he says, wiping his eyes in an exaggerated expression. “Thank you for telling me the funniest goddamn thing I’ve heard in years. I’m getting that tattooed on me so I can always remember this moment, when I laughed so hard that I almost actually fucking hurt myself.”

“I can’t believe you laughed at me when I confided in you like that,” you say, half-joking. “I’m hurt. Truly.”

“Hey at least you weren’t in love with like… Simba or anything,” Dave says with a jab of his finger. “Wait, fuck, you’re not a furry are you?”

You crinkle your nose, “God, no, don’t insult me like that.”

“Oh thank Christ,” Dave says with a sigh. “I was about to pack all my shit back up and haul ass outta here.”

“Can’t believe you could even entertain the idea that I’m a furry, what kind of person do you take me for?”

Your back and forth goes on for a while longer, situated on your various gay crushes from childhood and adolescence. Eventually you have to call it quits so you can get some sleep before work in the morning, though part of you would be willing to stay up all night talking to Dave if you could.

Chapter Text

“You really should think about therapy,” Rose says to you, looking concerned. “Going through what you’ve been through without consulting a specialist can lead to a lifetime of-”

You hold up a hand. “Okay, can you stop with the psychology stuff for like one second?” you ask rhetorically. She stutters on your computer, frame paused on her concerned expression for a moment. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” she insists, voice tinny over the connection. “I’m worried about you, Dave.”

You sigh, having heard this a hundred times in the last few years. Once Rose found out about your brother it’s like she never stops bringing up therapy and psychiatry and everything, and you love her but you really wish she’d give it a rest.

“Look, I’m broke, I have no health insurance, and no permanent address,” you counter. “Nevermind that I definitely don’t need it, therapy is just not possible right now okay? Can we just drop it?”

Rose sighs, rolling her eyes in that way she does when she’s frustrated but knows she’s going to lose the argument.

“Fine,” she agrees. She changes the subject. “How are you settling in at Karkat’s?”

“Good,” you say honestly. And then, “I guess.”

It’s been about a week and if you’re being completely truthful, you feel more at home here than you ever did at your apartment. Despite being loud and occasionally kind of bitchy, Karkat is a good roommate; he cooks, he cleans, and he’s always extraordinarily clear with what he wants from you, sometimes loudly. If he wants you to do the dishes, he tells you. If he wants you to get your shit off the coffee table, he tells you. If there’s one thing you couldn’t stand while living with your brother it’s the fact that you never knew what he wanted from you, if anything.

“I got all my shit unpacked,” you tell Rose. “And my tablet and stuff is all set up so I can work on commissions.”

“Any luck with the job search?”

“Yeah, actually,” you say, glad that she mentioned it. If you give her some good news maybe she’ll get off your back about therapy. “Karkat got me an interview at his university to help work on the grounds and stuff. You know, mowing the grass, planting shit, whatever. Manual labor.”

“Sounds thrilling,” Rose voices. “I’m glad you’ve found something, at least; I know you were feeling like a burden on him without a proper job.”

“Well, I haven’t gotten it yet,” you say. “I could totally fuck up the interview and convince them that I’m too incompetent to even mow grass or weed flowers and they’ll kick me off their property on account of how fucking inept I am.”

“That’s not going to happen, calm down.”

“I don’t know Rose, I do have a habit of massively fucking things up for myself,” you say with a shrug. “Remember how I barely graduated high school and never even applied to a single college? And now I have no money for some reason? Wonder whose fault that is.”

“Stop being so hard on yourself,” she chastises. “It’s not going to get you anywhere.”

“I’ll stop when you stop,” you argue.

She sits back in her seat, looking at you with challenging eyes. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

“Are you kidding me?” you ask incredulously. “Correct me if I’m wrong but I recall you messaging me in the throes of a panic attack last week because you got a B in one of your classes? One of your classes for your double major, mind you.”  

“I was just having a bad day,” she says. Then, deflecting the argument away, “Are you and Karkat getting along? John told me he can be quite the character.”

You’re kind of relieved to have the topic changed; you don’t like arguing with her because she’s always right. “Yeah, we’re good,” you say honestly. “Things are good… for once.”

“John also tells me that Karkat is gay,” she says, turning sly suddenly. “Is that having any influence on the relationship you’re developing with him?”

“Jesus, no,” you shoot back, this time not as honestly. “I barely even know him.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

You’d be lying to yourself if you said you weren’t kind of attracted to Karkat. But you don’t really know him, and you’re kind of only living with him as a result of a really fucked up situation, so now’s not the time to be thinking about that shit anyways. Yeah he makes you laugh, and yeah he has a real thick ass, like an insane ass, but that’s it. You are not doing this right now.

“I don’t automatically fall in love with every available dude I run into,” you argue. “Like yeah, he’s kinda hot? But most guys are kinda hot, that’s just how it is.”

“Alright,” she says, holding up a hand in defeat. She doesn’t sound very convinced.

“What about you?” you throw out. “Have you fallen in love with a random girl on the street? Did you see some hot chick with bomb ass tits and just immediately get down on one knee to propose to her? That’s the trope, right, that lesbians go way too fast? What flavor cake did you pick out? John’s allergic to peanuts so keep that in mind if you want him at the wedding.”

“For your information,” Rose interrupts before your rant can continue. “I’ve been talking to someone.”

“Ooh,” you say, smirking. “Who is this someone?”

“Just a girl at my university,” she says, not giving away any details.  “We’ve met for coffee a few times this week.”

“Damn, coffee? Didn’t realize you were that serious,” you joke. “What’s next, smoothies? Booze? Seriously, when’s the wedding.”

“Shut up,” she says with a small laugh. “It’s nothing serious. Yet.”

“But a coffee date? A few times? You’re practically engaged if you ask me.”

You hear the front door open, followed by a string of curses, and feel yourself perk up.

“Hey I gotta go, Karkat’s home,” you tell Rose. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Sure,” she says with a soft smile.

“Good luck with your lady.”

“Good luck with your man,” she shoots back.

“He’s not my-” you start to say, but she’s already hung up. You just shake your head and close your laptop, leaving your room to join Karkat in the kitchen. He’s making himself a snack at the counter, looking tired but otherwise in a good mood.

“Hey,” you greet casually. “Was class as soul-crushing as usual?”

“And then some,” Karkat agrees. “If I have to look at another picture of a naked human I think I’m going to tear my eyes out and eat them. You can only see so much genitalia before it starts making your brain deteriorate.”

“Gross.”

“No fucking kidding.” He shoves a few chips into his mouth, sighing as he chews.

“Hey, so, I’ve got all the money for rent,” you bring up. “It’s truly amazing how much people will pay for furry porn, trust me. I’m basically rich now. Just fucking rolling in dough. You want a pizza? A sweet fucking loaf of bread? I got you. Basically have a monopoly on the dough industry because of the sheer amounts of furry porn I’ve drawn this week.”

That’s not entirely true. You made a good amount of money from commissions, yeah, but a lot of it also came from donations you asked for on your website. You just don’t want Karkat to know that.

“Ew, god, why do you tell me this shit?” Karkat whines. “Anyways, I don’t need the rent money for two more weeks so just… hang onto it for now? I guess?”

“Alright, I can PayPal it to you whenever,” you say. “Just lemme know.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says with a shrug. Then, “I talked to my landlord.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “He says if you’re planning on staying here any longer you’re gonna have to sign the lease, make it official. I told him I’d ask, you know, ‘cause I’m not sure how long you wanna stay here and everything, and I didn’t want to-”

“I’ll sign it,” you say, interrupting him. “I mean, what the fuck else am I gonna do, you know? I’m good with staying here, if you’re good with lettin’ me.”

“Okay, cool,” Karkat says, sounding a little surprised by your enthusiasm.

“Cool.” You feel kind of nervous, biting at your lip. You have no fucking clue why; your conversation with Rose has you feeling all fucked up now.

“Did John get back to you about visiting?” Karkat asks. He takes his chips and heads for the living room, taking a seat on the couch where you join him.

“Yeah, he said he booked a flight for the end of this month.”

“Good, that means I have time to mentally prepare myself,” Karkat says. “All these years of build up and I can finally make myself look like a giant, gaping asshole in front of him. Can’t wait.”

“Nah, don’t worry dude,” you reassure him. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“But…” Karkat stops, making a face like he doesn’t know how to proceed. “What if we don’t like… get along? What if he doesn’t, you know, actually like me that much when he hangs out with me in person?”

“I thought the same thing when John and I first met up, but it turned out totally cool,” you say. “And we were only fifteen, okay, so this was when I was like balls deep in unrequited teenage love with him, we’re talking the peak of the overly emotional, pubescent roller coaster. I was sitting at the top thinking I was hot shit, just teetering there all strapped in and ready like a fucking fool, but little did I know that the drop was coming and I was about to get the scare of my fucking life. We’re talking unnecessary boners and wet dreams during sleepovers okay, that shit was hells of fucked up.”

Karkat is looking at you with wide eyes. “Holy shit, are you serious?” he asks. “You seriously popped a puberty boner over your best friend?”

“Yes dude, listen,” you continue. “I wasn’t kidding when I said he got super hot super fast, like I was chill seeing him when his voice was all high-pitched and his balls hadn’t dropped yet but in the day it took him to get over here puberty hit him like a ton of really hot, deep-voiced bricks.”

“Oh my god.” He’s starting to laugh now.

“And to add to my puberty-induced hellfire of horniness and discomfort, his dad was with him, you know because you can’t let a fifteen year old travel across the country on his own, and that shit runs in the fucking family.” You whistle, half appreciative, half overwhelmed. “My teenage ass was so overwhelmed with how fucking hot everyone was I think eighty percent of my higher brain functions just shut the fuck off, I was literally drooling so much over those two.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Karkat says, wiping residual laughter tears from his eyes. “And it took him how long to find out you were gay?”

“Years, dude.”

Karkat just shakes his head, absolutely beside himself from your story, hiccuping with little bursts of laughter every few seconds.

“So what I’m saying is,”  you finish up. “If John can still be my friend after all that shit then you two will get along just fine. Trust me.”

“God okay,” Karkat says with another shake of his head. “I’m well past the point of getting boners at inopportune times so at least I won’t completely embarrass myself even half as much as you did.”

“That’s the spirit.” You stand up, stretching your arms over your head and letting your back crack.

You’ve got commissions to finish up so you let Karkat be for a while in favor of returning to your desk and your tablet. Someone paid you one hundred and fifty bucks to draw a smutty comic and fuck you if you’re gonna let that kind of money go just because of the subject matter. You were only partly kidding when you told Karkat you made cash from furry porn; there are some fucked up people on the internet and they’ll pay loads for you to draw their guilty pleasure. Emphasis on loads.

You spend a few hours trying to get the anatomy right so it at least looks like anthropomorphic wolves having sex and not some kind of fucked up science experiment gone horribly wrong. The only break you let yourself have is a few minutes to eat dinner, scarfing down spaghetti in front of your laptop as you watch a tutorial on how to draw dicks. You’ve drawn a lot of dicks in your young life, but you could always improve. The better the dicks the more money you’ll get for drawing them, that’s just the way the dick economy is.

Eventually you have to give up, your hand cramping and your eyes begging to get away from the blue light of your screen. You brush your teeth, kind of half-assed on account of your hand still hurting, and strip off your jeans to go to bed, tossing them onto the floor. Your stitches, mostly healed by now, itch annoyingly and you scratch at them a bit before stopping. Karkat will yell at you if he finds out you fucked with them too much.

Your new mattress, only a day old, welcomes your aching back. You recall the challenge it was fitting it in the elevator when it got delivered to the apartment, and then getting it through Karkat’s front door was an even bigger ordeal. But it’s here, and comfy as all fuck.

You settle down, finding a comfortable position, and close your stinging eyes, only to have them snap back open after a few minutes. You furrow your brows and turn onto your other side, settling down more forcefully this time in the hopes that you’ll fall asleep soon.

This cycle continues for a few hours, until you eventually give up. You’ve had problems with insomnia in the past, the constant threat of your brother barging into your room too stressful to allow you to sleep properly. You think you eventually adapted to just not sleeping much at night, but now that you’re actually in a safe place it’s starting to become an issue. You’ve only properly slept a few times since you’ve been living with Karkat and it’s going to start fucking with you if you don’t figure it out soon.

You sit up with a sigh, tossing your blanket off and wandering into the living room instead. You’re surprised to find that Karkat is also awake, sitting on the couch and drinking a beer, the TV on in front of him. He looks up when he hears you come in, and frantically turns the volume down. He is not wearing a shirt and you definitely don’t notice.

“Fuck,” he says. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

You shake your head. “Nah,” you say, making your way to the fridge. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh,” Karkat says. “Me either.”

You grunt, grabbing a bottle of apple juice, and sit next to him on the couch. “What’s up?”

He shrugs. “I miss my dad,” he says with a look like he doesn’t wanna talk about it. “You?”

You mirror his shrug, taking a swig of your juice. “Just one of those nights, I guess.”

“You know,” Karkat starts, looking pointedly at your bottle. “You’re supposed to drink milk when you can’t sleep, not juice.”

“Fuck that,” you say with an emphasized sip. “Milk is fucking gross, dude.”

“Are you fucked in the head?” he asks incredulously. “Milk is delicious and you’re out of your goddamn mind. You’re telling me you put fucking apple juice in your cereal? Fuck off.”

“No, dude, listen, you’ve gotten get into almond milk.” You raise a hand, stopping him before he interrupts you. “I know it sounds like some fucking hipster shit, like you might as well grow a beard and start drinking kombucha while you’re at it, maybe open up a vegan cafe or something, but almond milk is one of the best things ever made. I dunno how the hell they get milk out of almonds when almonds don’t even have boobs, but however they’re getting this milk it’s good shit.”

“I am not putting fucking nut milk in my mouth okay,” Karkat concludes. “And that’s really all there is to say on the matter.”

“Fine, man, your loss.”

You idly drink your apple juice as Karkat shakes his head beside you. When you take a closer look at the TV your feel your eyebrows furrow, finding all the telltale signs of a romantic comedy - attractive white protagonists, side characters that introduce a love triangle, crying women, and a daydream scene involving a hot guy.

“What the hell are you watching?” you ask.

“It’s 27 Dresses,” he answers. Then, when you don’t react, “You’ve never seen 27 Dresses?”

“Why the fuck would I have seen this movie, dude?”

“No, okay, this is unacceptable,” he says, putting down the beer he was about to drink. He grabs the remote, turning the volume back up. “This movie is one of the best rom coms I’ve ever seen and the fact that you haven’t watched it speaks volumes about who you are as a person.”

“Do I dare ask you what the hell this movie is about?”

“Okay, so.” Karkat turns on the couch to address you, changing his position so he’s sitting sideways on the cushions. “It’s about this woman who has never been a bride but is always a bridesmaid, and has amassed twenty-seven bridesmaids dresses from all of her time spent at other people’s weddings. And she works at a typical office job, but she’s in love with her boss, right? But then her sister comes to town and her boss falls in love with the sister and they get engaged, essentially ruining the main character’s plans to seduce and marry him herself. But then this journalist guy shows up to throw a wrench into the equation and the protagonist starts falling for him but he accidentally betrays her and-”

“Whoa, whoa, holy shit,” you have to interrupt him. If you don’t manage to get a word in edgewise he might go on forever, describing each intricate detail of the movie’s plot. “I had no idea you were so into rom coms.”

“Are you shitting me? Rom coms are one of the most integral genres of cinema ever.” You sense another rant coming on. “Where would humanity be if love stories were never written, rom coms never made? Would we even know how to love? Rom coms are like the basis of human nature if you ask me - comedy and love are the most important things to understand in life, and are arguably a straight shot directly to happiness. Do you understand? Are you listening? You’re not listening.”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you genuinely like this shit,” you say, shocked. “It’s all just convoluted drivel designed to get women to spend money on garbage they don’t need, and to convince them that they need men to be happy and shit. And also all the tropes are so fucking over done, like oh a love triangle? I’m fucking shocked thank god I was sitting down, I don’t think my heart could handle such a huge fuckin’ surprise.”

“Okay, they can be a little cliche, I’ll give you that one,” Karkat concedes. “But that doesn’t reduce the overall importance and choice fucking quality of most rom coms. I haven’t seen a rom com I didn’t like, you know? That’s just how it is.”

“I’m like, legitimately speechless here, dude,” you say. “Totally didn’t peg you for a rom com kind of guy.”

“Well what kind of movies do you like?” he challenges. “If you’re such a fucking expert.”

“Oh no dude, don’t sass me about movies, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” you say with a newly invigorated tone. “You just opened up the fucking mosh pit at the Skrillex concert of all movie convos, there are bodies thrashing and heads banging and you’re gettin’ jostled around trying to find your fucking footing and here I am in the crowd just waiting for your confused ass to find your way through the horde of colliding bodies to find some clarity in the form of my choice taste in movies. The bass drop is coming dude, it’s gonna be fucking sick and I hope you’re ready.”

“Bring it the fuck on.”

“Consider it broughten .”

You spend a good twenty-five minutes bringing him up to speed on the best movies of the last few decades, in all their ironic, shitty glory. So bad that they’re good, these movies are the absolute motherfucking pinnacle of comedy, irony, and cinematography, all wrapped up in a beautiful package of bad puns and even worse acting. The Room is your absolute favorite, a beacon of shitty sound production, a plot that doesn’t make any sense, and actors who don’t even want to participate in the fucking movie, and you share its intricacies with Karkat for nearly half an hour before he gets his bearings.

“You’re absolutely fucking with me, aren’t you?” he asks, suspicious. “There’s no fucking way you actually enjoy this shit.”

“No, man, were you even listening? You’re not even taking notes, get a fucking pen,” you instruct. “I like them ironically, that’s the whole point, dude! I strive to make movies as fucking shitty as The Room, I aspire to reach the sort of success and surreal production quality that Tommy Wiseau has, you don’t even understand how-”

“Wait, shut up,” Karkat says with a hand in your face, attention returning to the TV. The stupid rom com had continued to play all throughout your rant, momentarily forgotten in the background. “This is the best part!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” you mumble, entertaining him for a moment and watching the screen.

The young, white, generically attractive female lead is dancing on top of a bar with an equally average looking guy. They’re clearly drunk off of their asses, singing Benny and the Jets at the top of their lungs, complete with terrible dance moves and drunken missteps. It’s… actually kind of funny, if you’re being honest. Whoever plays the dude is making some ridiculous fucking facial expressions and they’re kind of cracking you up. You blame the chuckles you develop on sleep deprivation.

“See?” Karkat says, smug, when he notices you laughing. “You can’t even pretend to hate this movie.”

“I’m just punch drunk because I haven’t slept,” you defend, trying to hold in your laughter. “See, now they’re having sex in a car? You lost me.”

“Look, you need to watch it from the beginning to understand their dynamic,” he rebukes. He grabs the remote. “Here, I’ll rewind it.”

“No,” you say quickly. “No, god, please don’t make me watch this whole fucking movie.”

“How about this,” Karkat suggests. “If you watch the rest of this movie, one of my favorite movies ever made, I’ll watching the fucking Room . Okay?”

The offer is hard to refuse; seeing his reaction to Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece is too much to pass up. “Fine,” you say after some hard debating. “Deal.”

“Alright,” Karkat says with a satisfied smile, rewinding the movie back to the beginning.

You’re a man of your word, so you sit through the whole movie from the beginning, only cringing a whole fucking lot. About halfway through you start getting hungry and make a bowl of popcorn for the two of you, partly to help you get through the fucking abomination of a movie without falling asleep or blowing a gasket.

You don’t actually pay very much attention to it, only refocusing your glazed eyes on the TV when you hear Karkat audibly react to something, which is pretty often. Your eyes, tired of looking at a screen, eventually drift over to Karkat himself, taking in his shirtless, disheveled appearance. You look down at your own legs, bare except for your boxer shorts, and your ratty t-shirt, wrinkled from wearing it all day. You both look tired as hell.

In the spirit of rom coms, you allow yourself a rather long gander at Karkat’s naked torso, appreciating his dark, smooth skin and the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. Your conversation with Rose comes back to you and you forcibly redirect your gaze back to the movie. You must be more tired than you thought, totally fucking ogling him like some kind of horny teenager.

So yeah, you’re a little attracted to him, what’s the big deal? Not like you’re gonna try to jump his bones right now immediately; you barely even know each other. Rose has no idea what the fuck she’s talking about, in your opinion.

After a couple agonizing hours, the movie comes to an end. It’s nearly four o’clock at this point and you’re essentially running on fumes you’re so fucking tired. When the credits start to roll and the corny love song starts playing, you risk another glance at Karkat and see him with wet eyes.

“Holy shit are you crying?”

“No!” he says too loudly, wiping one single stray tear from the corner of his eye. “It’s a good movie, okay? She got to be a bride!”

“I guess it wasn’t completely vomit-inducing,” you say with a shrug. “Definitely not as fucking terrible as I was expecting, I’ll give you that.”

“See? I knew you’d like it.”

“Woah, let’s not get crazy,” you backtrack. “I said it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, not that I liked it.”

Karkat sighs, sniffling back residual tears. “Fine, I guess that’s better than nothing.”

“It’s super fucking late dude,” you say, standing up. “We should go to bed.”

The bags under Karkat’s eyes, normally pretty dark even during the day, have turned into deep purple blotches throughout the night. He looks exhausted and when he doesn’t stand immediately you reach out a hand for him to take, which he uses to help himself up. You put your popcorn bowl in the sink, a dish to deal with tomorrow, and you both head to your respective rooms.

In the hallway you say, “You still owe me a movie night with Tommy Wiseau.”

“I guess I do,” Karkat says. “Can’t promise I won’t get drunk in order to bear watching the steaming pile of horseshit that is that movie, though.”

“Whatever you have to do man.” You approach the door to your bedroom, feeling like a sixteen year old walking your date to their front door for the first time. “Night.”

“Goodnight,” Karkat says sleepily, disappearing into his room without another word.

You lie down on your mattress, even more comfortable now than it was a few hours ago, and fall asleep immediately.

Chapter Text

Dave is ridiculously sweaty and gross when you pick him up in the afternoon. You notice it immediately, spying the sweat stains on the torso of his shirt and brown, muddy smears on his cheeks and hands. You recoil from him when he gets into the car.

“God, Jesus Christ, don’t get your sweat all over the place,” you complain. “I just cleaned in here.”

“Yeah, sure thing,” he says, purposely stretching out and rubbing his arms and back on the seat just to annoy you. “Thanks for driving.”

“Well it wouldn’t make a whole lot of fucking sense to make you get a taxi,” you say. “Not when we’re both here and going back to the same place.”

“Eh, I’ve walked longer distances,” Dave says, too casually. You don’t think he’s joking. “Could probably use the exercise if I’m bein’ totally honest with myself.”

That’s just not fucking true. The first night he came to your house, all bloody and beaten up by his shithead brother, you saw his abs when you sewed him up. And they were nice abs, defined abs. Not that you were particularly paying attention to them, but god damn. And never mind the abs, he was also just really fucking skinny when you first met. It’s good that he’s gained a little weight now.

“You’ll get plenty of exercise working here,” you say. “So I’m guessing you got the job? Or did you just decide to go roll around in the dirt while I was at the library?”

“While I do like a good dirt rolling,” Dave starts, “I did actually get the job.” He doesn’t sound super psyched about it.

“Well that’s good. Now you can stop bitching about how much money you don’t have and I don’t have to hear about your gross, deranged furry porn!” you exclaim, delighted. “It’s a win for us both.”

He snorts with a small laugh. “I guess so,” he agrees, shrugging. “Let me tell you though, the dude interviewing me didn’t do a single background check or anything. Like I think he saw my skin tone and was like now this dude knows how to mow some motherfucking grass, this brown, vaguely ethnic guy absolutely knows his way around a lawnmower and a weedwacker and a bunch of other landscaping shit because, fuck, just look at him!”

“White guy?” you ask with a grimace.

“Of course.”

“But he seriously didn’t do a background check?” you ask, just to be sure that wasn’t a joke. Dave jokes a lot.

“Nope,” he answers, adjusting in his seat. “I’m not sure what kind of fucking institution you’re going to here but he barely even looked at my resume before he just up and hired me. Had me moving mulch within like five minutes, just straight into manual labor. Just a heads up, if this is how they do business around here then you’ve got a high chance of having a professor that’s either a serial killer, a drug dealer, a pedophile, or some startling combination of the three.”

“God what the fuck,” you say. “Like I’m glad you got the job and everything but what the fuck kind of-”

You’re interrupted by the guy in front of you slamming his breaks, forcing you to stop on a dime as well. Your arms shoots out in front of Dave as you both lurch forward and you let out an irritated noise, something like a groan and a scream. You’re lucky and don’t end up ramming into his bumper, and no one is behind you to hit your car, but you still smack the top of your steering wheel in frustration.

“I swear to fucking god,” you start, feeling a mood coming on. “If one more glue-huffing, idiot fucking ignoramus uses his last working brain cell to fuck up my day even further I’m seriously going to lose my shit. I’m going to actually lose control of my bowels as a palpable result of how fucking pissed off I am and then there’s just going to be shit everywhere and no one will be happy. For fuck’s sake, fucking move!”  

Dave is quiet for a split second, looking at you strangely for just a moment before telling you to chill out.

“Guess you had a long day?” he inquires. “I ain’t seen road rage like that before, dude.”

“Sorry, fuck,” you say, running a hand through your hair as traffic starts moving again. “I just can’t fucking stand people who can’t drive like, if your driving is so fucking piss poor then stay off the goddamn road so you don’t kill anyone? I’m absolutely fucking astounded at how completely incompetent some people are.”

“I don’t know how to drive, so I guess I can’t really judge.”

“At least you know your limits! You don’t know how to drive? Look,” you gesture to the entire car, “you’re not driving! Incredible how that works.”

Surprisingly enough, he laughs. “No dude, you do not want to see me try and drive,” he says. “I’d immediately commit vehicular manslaughter, probably drive into a fucking orphanage or some shit, be on the news because I killed forty-eight people and wounded countless others.”

You feel a little smile pull at your mouth. “Well you have more sense than half the fucking people on the road,” you say. Then add, after a moment, “Sorry for yelling; it’s been a long fucking day.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you yell, man,” Dave says, surprising you again. “I’d rather hear you yell all day about frivolous shit than have to guess if you’re mad or not, that shit’s exhausting.”

“Noted,” you tell him. “I just figured… I don’t know - like, with your brother and everything…”

“It wasn’t like that,” Dave says shortly.

“Right,” you say awkwardly. Clearly it’s not something he wants to talk about so you change the subject. “Well, good, I guess I’ll just yell all the fucking time then, no point in holding back. Hope you weren’t planning on sleeping ever again.”

“Sounds good to me,” Dave laughs.

The rest of the ride continues in comfortable silence until you arrive back at the apartment and give Dave a playful shove in the direction of the door. “Get your smelly ass out of my car,” you say.

“No,” he defies, stretching out again. “I like it in here, think I might put some of my stuff in the back and just live out of your car. My clothes could go over here, and I could put my laptop-”

You just shake your head and get out of the car mid-rant, Dave trailing behind you into the building. The elevator, slow and shitty as always, takes approximately for-fucking-ever to get to your floor.

“So,” Dave says casually. “Do I have Nurse Vantas’ approval to start working or am I still on bed rest? Have I recovered enough to start doing the type of manual labor reserved specifically for people of my skin tone and heritage? What about my skateboarding career, can I bring that back? Does Tony Hawk have a new rival or am I still benched? Are skateboarders benched? Am I mixing up my sports?”

You just stare at him pointedly, tired, and nod your head at his shirt. He lifts up the corner for you to take a look at his stitches, uncovered for a few days now. The wound looks a lot better, having healed significantly in the last week or so and no longer bloody or scabbed over. It’s starting to scar, which is a good sign, so you nod at Dave and he puts his shirt back down.

“You should be fine,” you say. “Just try not to maim yourself with a weedwacker or a hacksaw or something.”

“Sure thing, doc.”

“And your eye?” you ask, just to be sure.

Dave momentarily lifts up his sunglasses to wink at you with his previously bruised eye, now mostly healed save for a small bit of yellowish discoloration around the edge. You smile a little, glad to see how much better he looks overall.

The elevator dings open and you head for your door, making your way to the kitchen with Dave in tow. He groans once you’re inside, kicking off his shoes and peeling off his sweat-slick shirt. You remove your own shoes and pointedly keep your eyes on the floor, trying not to give in to your urge to stare at him until you eventually look back up. He’s slung the shirt over his shoulder and removed his shades, running his fingers through his hair and messing it up even more.

“I’m about to take the longest shower of my fucking life,” he says. “I’ll throw in some extra cash with the rent money for the probably exorbitant water bill because I’m gonna be in there for like an hour. Evolution’s gonna take over and I’m just straight up gonna have gills by the time I’m done. I know you didn’t sign up for an amphibious roommate but it might just turn out that way okay, I’ll move all my shit into the bathroom and just live in the tub.”

“God, just go already, you smell fucking awful,” you say with a hand up. “It’s like the universe gathered up every putrid substance it’s ever made and combined it into one huge column of filth and that’s what you are. That’s what you smell like.”

“Aw, come on, don’t be like that,” Dave whines. He opens up his arms and approaches you, “That hurt my feelings, give me a hug.”

“No, fuck,” you half yell, stepping around the island to get away from him. “Go shower before the paint starts peeling off the walls and flies start dropping dead.”

Dave just laughs and saunters off to the bathroom, finally. You hear the shower start and feel yourself relax a little, the sight of Dave’s abs no longer a temptation for you. Maybe now you can get some work done, actually make a dent in some of the shit you have to do with finals coming up. You’ve got two essays, a project, a research paper, and a fuckload of tests to study for. You’re not sure you’re gonna make it.

You head to your room and prepare yourself for hours of mental and emotional strain as you try to get literally anything done when you’re this tired. Work in the morning, plus four hours of class, and then studying in the library while you waited for Dave to finish his interview have all piled on top of you, making your shoulders and neck droop with exhaustion. The school year is so close to being over, summer just out of your reach, but if you have to read another sentence full of unintelligible academic jargon you think you’re going to take a long walk into oncoming traffic. You have John’s visit at the end of the month to look forward to, but even that might not be enough to keep you from committing academic and literal suicide in the wake of finals week.

You manage to gather some sources for your research paper, and make significant progress on one of your essays. You make nearly fifty flashcards for your anatomy final of various muscles and muscle groups but don’t actually have the energy to study them. When you start to feel like you’re going to cry you decide to take a break.

Some of your friends are online and you have an unread message from Sollux, but you’re not really in the mood to talk. You’re literally too tired to form a sentence at this point, and all you would end up doing is yelling and making an asshole out of yourself. You’ve always had problems with controlling your anger and not being a piece of shit in general, and although you think you’ve made some progress with age, you still have your embarrassingly angry moments.

Like earlier today, when that fucking asshole slammed on his brakes in front of you and you almost rear ended him. Dave had looked at you with such a strange, unreadable expression, but it was only there for a split second before he went back to his usual self. And then when you mentioned his brother it was like he turned into a completely different person, closed off and abnormally short with his words. He seems fine now, you just hope you didn’t cross any lines.

Dave. You shake your head once, hard, to get him out of your thoughts, but he stays there anyways, aggravatingly present. You remember him saying something about having a website and eventually Google his admittedly unique name after wrestling with your curiosity for a good five minutes. The first thing that pops up is a guy running for a senate seat in Washington and you blink at it before scrolling down.

There’s Dave’s Instagram, which after some exploration proves to be pretty average, mostly pictures of scenery and the occasional well-posed selfie. You notice he has several thousand followers though, likely from the art you know he posts online. Back on the Google page you find his website, which is actually just a Tumblr blog with a customized URL. It’s absolutely atrocious, with a bright background and nearly unreadable text, along with gaudy gifs of memes and like a dozen ads for random shit.

You scroll through it, eyebrows furrowed in mild disgust and eye strain, and find that he mostly blogs about shitty movies, memes, the occasional art post, and then more memes. His art is surprisingly good, not that you really doubted his skills. You’re just surprised at how serious some of it seems to be; you were expecting him to draw memes and dicks exclusively and are startled at how detailed some of his portrait pieces are. You also find a text post with a link to his PayPal from a couple weeks ago lower down on the page and pause, reading out the polite and completely serious call for donations with a frown. Farther below that you see a selfie, which seems normal enough until you look closer.

It’s just Dave, posed comfortably in front of a mirror, wearing the sunglasses he always has on and the same t-shirt he wore when he first showed up at your house. It looks like any other selfie, except for the bruises that mottle his left arm and the angry, red mark on his neck. Your frown deepens until it becomes a grimace and you feel something in your chest pull at the sight of the picture. Dave knows his way around Photoshop, he’s told you several times about the pirated version he has; he could have edited out the marks, but he didn’t. You wonder if anyone else noticed, and if he wanted them to. Your disgust turns into anger, then relief, and then some sort of mix of the two that, combined with your tiredness, makes you want to cry.

A knock at your door startles you out of your emotional confusion and into a mild panic. You quickly close out of your browser just in time, the door opening within a few seconds. You would absolutely die of embarrassment if Dave caught you stalking him online.

“Hey, hope you’re not jacking off or anything,” Dave says, poking his head into your room.

“No, just tearing my hair out and crying,” you answer as flatly as you can. “Finals are kicking my ass.”

“Can’t relate,” he answers with a shrug. “Anyways, are you hungry? It’s kinda late.”

You look at the time in the corner of your laptop and feel your stomach churn with hunger. It’s eight at night and you forgot to eat.

“Yeah, fuck, I am.”

“Good,” Dave says. Then, to your neverending surprise, he adds, “I made dinner.”

“Oh god, you did what?” you ask incredulously. “I didn’t hear the fire alarm go off.”

“Ha ha,” he enunciates. “Dave can’t cook, it’s a funny joke, you’re a true comedian. Come eat.”

You stand slowly, following Dave into the kitchen where two plates of food are waiting at the island. Your stomach does an acrobatic pirouette inside of you and you’re not sure it’s entirely due to hunger.

“I got us one of those boxes that have premade ingredients with a recipe and stuff in them,” Dave explains as you stand over the food. “I got a coupon online so I figured we might as well try it. And you seemed tired with finals and everything, so.”

You look down at your plate, seeing sliced chicken breast, some noodles, and green beans. You squint especially hard at the poultry and give Dave a look. He just stares back at you.

“Dave, I swear to god, if this chicken is undercooked and I get salmonella I’m shitting on everything you love,” you say.

He grins. “Don’t worry,” he assures. “I was all up in this chicken’s business to make sure it cooked right. Actually, it’s probably overcooked because I don’t know what I’m fucking doing and the thing said to saute them in the pan for eight to ten minutes so I cooked them for fifteen just to make sure. I even used a meat thermometer and everything, Bobby Flay is shaking.”

“Thank fucking Christ,” you say. You’d much rather have dry chicken than chicken that has the potential to give you a deadly parasite. “And did you manage to keep all of your appendages while cooking this?”

“There was one casualty,” Dave says. He holds up his left hand for you to see, where a small Band Aid is around the top of his pointer finger. “Don’t worry,” he adds with a smile, “it was just the tip.”

You roll your eyes and inspect the food further, hesitantly picking up a forkful. You pause before eating it, making your point clear again. “If you poison me,” you tell Dave, “I’m killing you.”

He nods. “That’s totally fair.”

You take a slow bite, feeling Dave’s expectant eyes on you as he leans on the counter, and feel yourself make a face when you find that it actually tastes good. Your expression must not match your emotions because Dave groans next to you.

“Jesus, is it that bad?”

“No, shit, it’s actually good,” you say, surprised.

“Wow your tone indicates that maybe you thought it would taste like ass,” Dave says. “I’m hurt, Karkat, seriously, I’m aspiring to be a world class chef and you can’t even support my dreams? Talk about a bad friend.”

You roll your eyes, picking up your plate and fork. “Two weeks ago you almost killed yourself trying to cut an onion,” you say. “Excuse my disbelief that you were able to reach a level of competence high enough to grant you the ability to cook food without blood or poison in it. Consider me impressed.”

“I’ll take it,” Dave says, scooping up his own plate and following you to the couch. You two never seem to eat in the kitchen, partly because there’s no TV in the kitchen, and partly because you don’t own a proper dining table.

“By the way,” Dave says, joining you on the sofa. “You still owe me a movie night with none other than Tommy Wiseau.”

“Oh god,” you say around a mouthful of food. “Do I have to do this? Can’t you just rip off one of my limbs instead of making me watch the absolute cosmic mistake that is this movie?”

“No,” Dave says pleasantly, picking up the DVD from the coffee table. “I even got the special edition with the director’s commentary. Also I watched your stupid romantic comedy and made you dinner so this is basically the least you can do.”

You consider him for a moment, then the food, then the DVD, and eventually groan out a, “Fine.” After another moment you add, “But I’m gonna need at least two beers.”

The food is good, like actually good. The chicken is a little dry, but you don’t really mind, enjoying the taste of a meal you didn’t have to cook for once. You scarf down most of it within a few minutes, only half paying attention to the movie, and then settle more comfortably into the couch, letting the cushions absorb your body. Dave eats a bit slower because he has to stop every ten minutes to comment on some sort of ironic scene in the movie, or to point out an example of the director’s genius. You still don’t really get the irony thing, and you think the movie is shit, but you let him talk. He at least seems to be having fun with it, laughing around his meal and during parts of the film. He even takes his sunglasses off, which has become more of a trend recently.

He talks through almost the whole movie, quoting scenes, talking about background info and lore, mentioning the impact certain parts have had on memes and social media. You barely listen, just staring at him instead, taking note of his body language and the way he talks. The more you drink the more uninhibited you feel with your staring, and you think Dave notices after a few glances, though he doesn’t say anything. You like the way he moves when he talks about things he enjoys, so fluid and carefree, and smiling. He grins and smirks a lot, but it’s rare to see him actually smile so genuinely. You wish he did it more.

You remember how he acted when you first met, when he showed up at your door with a black eye and was bleeding from a sword wound in his stomach. He’d been so closed off, hunched over as if he wanted to curl into himself and disappear. And he would hardly let you get near him for the first few days, avoiding your gaze under his sunglasses and your touch through distance.

Now, after two hours and several drinks between the two of you, you’ve slumped against Dave’s side in a tipsy, sleepy stupor, and he lets you without question. The movie credits scroll on the television screen and you squint at them, barely able to make out the text from how tired you are and from the amount of alcohol you ingested. Your plates from dinner are still on the coffee table, abandoned, and Dave’s shoulder is warm against your cheek.

“See, look, you finished the whole movie,” Dave praises sarcastically. “And you didn’t throw up or yell or throw stuff or anything. I’m so fucking proud, dude, is this how parents feel? Is this what it’s like to see your kid go off to preschool for the first time? Because you just got on the bus with your little backpack and you didn’t even cry dude, you are like the toughest five year old ever and I’m over here on the sidewalk with a tissue tryin’ not to flat out sob because my little man is all grown up.”

You crinkle your nose; you don’t think you like this metaphor if Dave is supposed to be your dad.

“Yes, the long and arduous journey is over,” you say, focusing very hard on your words. “And as a result I will probably have stomach pains and internal hemorrhaging for the rest of my life.”

“Ah come on, it wasn’t that bad,” he says. “I definitely heard you laugh a few times.”

“I guess I can kind of understand the appeal here,” you concede. “The shitty production quality and absolutely piss poor acting was at least kind of funny with a couple of beers in me. The only downside is that watching it has caused me to contract several diseases including hepatitis A and mesothelioma, which I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life because you made me watch this inane drivel.”

Dave laughs, sitting up to stretch and jostling you from your position. “Ah dude,” he says with genuine affection in his tone. “You’re too much sometimes, I swear. Mesothelioma? You’re fucking ridiculous.”

“Says the guy who just turned this experience into a metaphor about me being a child and you being my dad,” you shoot back.

Dave looks like he’s about to retort something but the alcohol seems to have slowed his sharp wit as well because he just says, “You got me there.”

You stand up, shaking your head to clear it, and grab a snack from the kitchen. Dave trails behind you, bringing your used plates to the dishwasher and replacing his bottle of beer for apple juice. Nothing in the fridge really appeals to you except for a bag of sliced ham you bought to make yourself sandwiches. You pull a few slices out of the bag and eat them without anything else, groaning suddenly when you realize that the movie has distracted you from studying for several hours.

“What’s that noise for?” Dave asks. “Your mesothelioma acting up again? Think you might be entitled to financial compensation?”

“I fucking forgot to study,” you say with a mouthful of ham. “I have to know like four million muscles by the end of the week and I know zero.”

“Well dude,” Dave starts. “If you think we even have four million muscles I think you’re fucked right out the gate.”

You groan again, louder this time. Alcohol makes you noisy. “I made like fifty fucking flashcards,” you whine. “But then I got distracted and just totally forgot to actually study them like the fucking human detritus that I am.”

You’re kind of out of it, not quite drunk but not sober either, and adding exhaustion to the already detrimental combination has only made you even less coherent. It’s also made you kind of anxious, worrying suddenly about your finals and how much shit you have to do and how much time you wasted watching a movie because a cute boy asked you to. How incompetent can one person get?

Dave seems to sense your anxiety, or the constipated look on your face tells him you’re feeling some type of way, because he offers to help you study.

“If it’s just flashcards and shit I could at least be like… kind of helpful,” he says. “Tell you when you fuck something up or whatever.”

“You really don’t have to,” you say. Dave doesn’t know shit about anatomy. Quite frankly, neither do you.

He just shrugs in a nonchalant way and you’re so desperate to do well on your final that you wave him over to your room. The flashcards you made hours ago are still sitting in a haphazard pile on your desk where you first made them. You feel a moment of panic when you remember what you were doing before Dave got you for dinner, looking him up online like some kind of stalker, but are relieved when you see your black laptop screen. Hours without use have put it in sleep mode.

You grab the cards and sit cross-legged on your bed, Dave joining you in a similar fashion. He takes the cards from you as you rub your eyes sleepily, and he flips through them for several moments before laughing and thumbing at a specific card.

“This is a good one to start with,” he says cheekily.

He holds up the card, showing you the picture of the muscle you’re supposed to be able to identify on sight. It’s a picture of someone’s backside, with a red arrow pointing at their ass cheek, the gluteus maximus. Dave grins at you, holding in a laugh, and you smile back.

Chapter Text

You feel like shit today. Your job, which requires you to work outside in the heat for several hours, is starting to take its toll on you, physically and mentally. You’re exhausted by the end of the day, and dehydrated, and the manual labor is so redundant and mechanical that you’re left with your thoughts virtually all day, which is never a good thing.

You’re glad you got the job and everything, it’s helped you feel like way less of a piece of shit just by being able to make money and contribute to the household, but you’re not sure how long it’ll last. Karkat has expressed his worry over your physical health on more than one occasion, commenting on how skinny you are or how sunburned you’ve gotten or how much water you may or may not be drinking. The mental strain is just as bad and the combination of physical labor and emotional discomfort is starting to get to you.

It’s been a long time since you’ve had an episode like this, where you start to feel like maybe nothing is worth it anymore. The three weeks you’ve spent with Karkat have made you forget, if only momentarily, that you come from a completely fucked up, broken household. It’s made you forget about your brother, and everything he’s done to you. That is, until you get a call from him.

After staring at your phone for a full minute you swipe the button to decline the call, feeling your hands shake at the prospect of speaking to him. You don’t even know why he’s calling, it’s been weeks since you left. He never fucking calls you, anyways; it was probably just an accident. You’re sure he just drunkenly sat on his phone and butt dialed you, but the thought of him alone sends your mood plummeting anyways.

You’re forced to take the bus back from work to the major dismay of everyone within smelling distance of you, and when you get back home you start to feel even worse. Karkat is in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher, still deep in the throes of finals, and he gives you a look when you collapse dramatically onto the floor. Lying on the cold tile, you pull your shirt up, not taking it off and just leaving it covering your face.

“I’m dying,” you say, voice muffled by your shirt.

You want to launch into one of your patented Dave Strider Metaphors, but you’re not really in the mood. If you half ass it, Karkat will get wind pretty fast and ask you what’s up. He’s like a fucking bloodhound when it comes to how you’re feeling, always able to tell when you’re not in the mood to talk or when you’re too tired to think. You don’t exactly wear your heart on your sleeve, you tend to keep things to yourself and cover any emotional stress you’re under with endless sarcasm, but Karkat always knows.

That’s another thing. Karkat. You’ve stopped denying, at least to yourself, that you’ve kind of got a thing for him. You’re attracted to him for sure, but beyond pure physicality you just… like him. You like being around him, all of his ranting and cussing and yelling included. You’ve been catching yourself admiring random, tiny things about him for a while now, from the way his lips curve down at the corners, to the way he always smiles to himself when he cooks. And you can’t help but admire how totally proud he is of his ridiculously shitty taste in movies, just completely shameless about genuinely liking awful romantic comedies.  

You’ve gotten into the habit of staying up late to watch your favorite respective movies together, one of you making fun of it while the other enjoys it. Your days are taken up by work and, for Karkat, school, so night time is when you normally hang out together. Karkat has a lot to say about a lot of things, and more often than not you end up having a conversation that has nothing to do with the movie, the film used as background noise more than anything.

There’s just no point in pining after him when you know he’ll reject you if you try anything. He took you in because you were desperate, and is probably only tolerating you because he sees you as a charity case. It wouldn’t be the first time. It’s better if you just get over how you feel about him instead of making an ass out of yourself trying to get something to happen between the two of you.

“Hey,” Karkat’s saying, standing over you. You haven’t been listening to a thing he’s said to you. “Do you want some juice or not? Better figure it out before I run out of patience and you get fucking nothing.”

“Yeah, man, shit,” you say. “You know I’m always up for some AJ.”

“No one calls it that,” he mumbles, already at the fridge.

“Well I call it that,” you argue. “And in my opinion everyone should call it that.”

Karkat just shakes his head and leans down to hand you the bottle he retrieved, cold from being in the fridge and much welcomed by your sweaty, overheated body. You sit up, shirt falling from your face, and chug a fair amount of the juice before standing.

“How’re finals going,” you ask Karkat, leaning over the kitchen counter.

“Nearly there,” he says. He returns to the dishwasher, finishing the bottom rack and moving to the top. “I only have one more essay and then a test on Thursday and I’m finally fucking done. I swear to god I’m on my last two working brain cells here and they are constantly fighting with each other over how to make my life fucking miserable.”

“I’m always up to help you study if you need it,” you offer.

It was fun helping Karkat study his complicated and occasionally lewd anatomy flash cards. He did surprisingly well almost immediately, especially considering how clear he was that he didn’t know jack fucking shit. He’s a smart guy, training to become a nurse and everything. Makes you a little jealous.

“I think I’m good for now,” he says, and you try to hide your disappointment.

He tells you a little more about his essay and then crinkles his nose when he gets too close to you, pushing you in the direction of the shower and coming up with some kind of long winded situation to describe the way you smell.

You do shower, but just barely. You don’t quite have the energy to actually scrub at your body, instead letting half lathered soap and too hot water roll down your skin, taking dirt and sweat with them. As for your hair, washing it is just not going to fucking happen, not with the way you’re feeling. You get it a little wet, but don’t have the strength to actually shampoo or condition it. Wet is close enough, and you get out of the shower after only a few minutes, going to your room and closing the door.

If your aching back and heavy eyes are anything to go by, you think it’s time for a nap. It’s already five o’clock, not exactly prime nap time, but you can’t really bring yourself to care. You lie down on your bed, still damp from your shower and in nothing but your boxer shorts, your wet hair leaving droplets on your pillow.

Your brother comes back to the front of your mind, his blank eyes and unreadable expression imprinted permanently under your eyelids. You wonder what he’s doing, even though you shouldn’t. Wonder if he’s okay when you know he’s not. Wonder if he misses you. Wonder if you miss him.

The scar on your stomach tells you no, but the good memories you have of growing up with him, however few and far between, tell you yes. The thought that you might miss him, even a little bit, turns your stomach and you bring you arm around your torso, squeezing.

Dirk was a piece of shit. Is a piece of shit. You don’t miss him, you don’t miss the way he treated you. You don’t miss stitching yourself up in the middle of the night because he cut you with something. You don’t miss hiding behind concealer and powder when he left bruises on you. You don’t miss going without meals during breaks from school because he didn’t buy groceries or cook food.

You don’t miss him. You don’t.

Your nap ends up being several hours long and when you wake up it’s pitch black outside. Your eyelids stick together and you rub at them, sighing. The bright light of your phone tells you it’s after ten and you slept for five full hours, your nap more of a proper night’s sleep than you normally get. Hunger eventually overrides exhaustion and you sit up, running a hand down your face.

Karkat is in the living room watching something on TV, and he turns when he hears you enter. You know you look disheveled, half naked, your hair sticking up at random angles from falling asleep while it was wet. He gives you a bewildered sort of look like he’s wondering what the hell you were getting up to in your room.

“Hey,” he says, too softly. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you say, making yourself a sandwich with whatever ingredients you can find. “Just fuckin’ fell asleep for like a thousand years is all. The motherfucking Sandman came and dumped an entire beach’s worth of sand on my face and now it’s just everywhere, like it’s all up in my asscrack and everything, you know how sand is. What I’m saying is, I’m really fucking tired.”

The stupid thing about sand seems to reassure him that you’re fine, and he gives you a look like he’s too tired to entertain your metaphor tonight.

“There’s some leftover pork in there from last night if you want it,” he offers.

“That’s a good fuckin’ idea,” you mutter to yourself. You add it to the sandwich that has quickly become an amalgamation of every random thing you could find in the fridge and wrap the whole thing in a paper towel to take back to your room. Normally you would stop to talk with Karkat for a while, and you think you see him frown at you when you leave.

You only eat about half of your sandwich, suddenly not hungry anymore. You were hoping your nap would improve your mood a little bit, or at the very least make you forget about being upset, but it’s only seemed to exacerbate your already poor emotional state. A loud sigh escapes you as your thoughts return to your brother, probably drunk out of his mind in the apartment, by himself, with no one to hurt. Something in you almost feels… bad for leaving him by himself, worried that he’s going to drink himself to death in your absence.

Feeling anything other than apathy or indifference for your brother doesn’t make any fucking sense, you think to yourself. You don’t know why you suddenly feel bad for him, why the call from earlier, most likely an accident, has sent you into a depressive spiral. Hatred and fear collide with something like empathy and force tears into your eyes. You blink them away, not willing to shed tears for him again, and go back to sleep for the night.

You fall into a pattern of waking up, dicking around on your phone for a few hours, and then falling back asleep. You’re pretty sure you don’t have work today, though you don’t actually check, and even if you do have work you probably won’t go. You don’t think you’ll get out of bed, if you can help it.

You only get up to use the bathroom a few times, returning to your bed in a heap, sheets tangled around your body as you continue your days long nap. Karkat must come into your room while you’re sleeping at some point, because you wake up to find a plate of food on your desk sometime in the afternoon. You don’t eat it.

You sit up around three o’clock in the afternoon, most of yesterday and all of today now wasted from lazing around in your room. Another deep sigh escapes you, frustrated, and you scrub at your face, trying to force the emotions out of your brain. Rose comes to mind, always telling you to talk to her when you’re feeling like this instead of keeping it to yourself. She’s always reminded you that she’s around to talk when you need it, as a psychology student and as your friend. You stare at your phone for several minutes before messaging her.

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 15:36 --

TG: hey
TG: remember how like a week ago you were real fuckin insistent about me going to a therapist
TG: well im still not gonna do that because fuck that noise but youre the next best thing considering your major an all
TG: and you told me to talk to you when i was feeling bad
TG: and i am feeling some type of way let me tell you
TG: fuck wait youre probably in class arent you
TG: totally forgot you had a life and everything there for a second fuck me i guess
TG: forget it im fine actually
TG: never been better tbh
TG: ill talk to you whenever

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 15:53 --

Okay well that didn’t make you feel any fucking better. If anything you just feel worse now, bugging Rose when she’s probably busy with school and work and not being a piece of shit like you are. You swallow back the tears prickling at your eyes and pull out your laptop, hoping that working on a new song will cheer you up a little bit.

It doesn’t. You haven’t made a proper song in weeks, only ever creating shitty sound bites that are essentially bass boosted noise with memes put over them. You open up your music program and just stare at it, the colored buttons muted from your shades, until you hear your door open.

Karkat is poking his head through your door, squinty eyed and all kinds of concerned looking, taking in your dark, messy room. You’ve forgotten to turn the lights on in your depressive stupor and he flicks the switch for you, causing you to narrow your eyes at the change in brightness despite wearing sunglasses. You’re not even sure why you put on the damn shades, it’s not like anyone has been around to look at you for the last fifteen hours. You guess they just make you feel better.

“Hey,” he says simply, voice too soft.

“Sup,” you respond, voice too hard.

“Are you… okay?” he asks, unsure. “You’ve been in here since last night.”

“Yeah, all good,” you lie. “Just chilling out, you know how it is.”

He huffs at you, taking half a step into your room and getting a better look at you. “Don’t give me that bullshit,” he instructs. “Something’s obviously wrong.”

“Maybe I just wanted to hang out by myself for a day or two,” you say. “Can’t be all up in your shit all the time, you know?”

“You’re the most talkative, socially needy person I have ever met,” Karkat rebukes. “And if you think for one second that I’m buying any of this shit then you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

If you try to speak again the shakiness of your voice and the thick lump in your throat is going to absolutely give you away. You just look at him and he stares back at you, eyes wide.

“What’s going on?” he asks. “Did something happen?”

“No,” you answer defensively. “Everything’s fine dude, I told you.” It’s obvious, so obvious, that everything is not fine.

“Did I…” Karkat pauses, looking away from you. “Did I do something wrong? Did I say something totally fucked up and just not realize? I know I can be a lot sometimes but you said yelling was okay so I’ve just been-”

“Woah, dude, no.” You’re such a piece of shit; of course Karkat would think he did something wrong. Something in the center of your chest pinches when you realize he’s probably been sitting around all day, wondering if you hate him or something. “You didn’t do anything, alright? I’m just…”

“Just what?” Karkat asks when you don’t finish.

You rub at your eyes, trying not to cry as you say, “Really fucking sad.” It sounds so pathetic when you say it outloud, especially with a poorly timed voice crack to really solidify how fucking stupid you feel.

Karkat looks at you, surprised at your honesty, and messes with his hair as he stands in your doorway. He keeps shifting his weight from his heels to his toes, like he desperately wants to come in but doesn’t want to overstep his bounds. He’s so careful around you.

He doesn’t come in until you invite him to do so with a jerk of your chin towards your bed. He hesitantly joins you on the mattress but only after closing the door behind him despite no one being around to eavesdrop on your conversation. He sits next to you, not too close, and waits for you to talk.

“This is really fucking dumb honestly,” you start, feeling uncomfortable. You were dying to get some emotional relief a few minutes ago but now you just feel… weird. “My brother called me earlier and it’s got me all fucked up, that’s all.”

“What did he say?” Karkat asks quietly. His face has gone sour at the mention of your brother, brows creased and mouth turned down.

“Nothing,” you answer shortly. “It was just an accident, got a voicemail later that was all static and background noise.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” You swallow, not sure if you want to share any more. “And then I got thinking that… maybe I miss him? A little? I don’t know.”

“You miss him?” Karkat repeats. He doesn’t sound nearly as incredulous as you were expecting.

“I know that’s stupid and fucked up and…” You take a breath; you’re gonna cry if you’re not careful. “It’s dumb, whatever, forget it.”

“No wait, that’s not fucked up, okay?” Karkat argues. “I mean… I don’t really know everything that happened, everything that he did or even part of what you’ve been through, but he still raised you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, I mean, of course you miss him,” he continues, still stumbling over his words. You can tell he’s trying and you appreciate the effort, even if you’re not sure how to voice it. “That’s not stupid or fucked up or anything, that’s just… those are just emotions you know? I know you try to pretend like the only things you’ve ever felt are sarcasm and mild indifference but you’re still human.” The last part makes you crack a small smile, though it’s more like the shadow of one, not quite there.

“Yeah you’re right, I just-” Your voice cracks again and you clear your throat. You’ve been opening and closing the same program on your computer for the past ten minutes, trying to keep your hands busy and your mind distracted. Karkat gently pushes your laptop away until your hand falls from the trackpad and you clasp your fingers together in your lap instead.

“I get that this is weird,” Karkat continues in your silence. “Like this whole bizarre fucking situation is really ridiculous and we met under what were possibly the worst circumstances ever but believe it or not I’m just… I’m your friend, right?”

“Are you?” you ask. In another tone the sentence might have seemed like a challenge, but with your voice low and quiet, too scared to raise your volume for fear your voice may crack, it just sounds sad. And desperate.

“Of course I’m your friend you opaque piece of shit,” he says, sounding more relieved than angry. “What the hell else would I be?”

“The guy who took in a charity case because he was too nice to say no,” you offer. “Or something.”

“That’s horseshit and you know it,” he says, giving you a small push on the shoulder. “I don’t just let anyone stay in my house you know. I’m not Mother fucking Theresa okay, I’m not constantly letting random guys with sword wounds come into my house because they need somewhere to stay. This isn’t a bed and breakfast.” Karkat shakes his head, running a hand through his hair again. “And I definitely don’t watch those abominations you call movies for just anyone, okay? I’m your friend whether you like it or not and you don’t have to lock yourself in your room all day when you’re feeling like this. Just… talk to me.”

“Alright,” you say, and your throat finally gives out, your voice little more than a whisper. You purse your lips together as you feel a tear slip out of one of your eyes and you wipe it away as discretely as you can, trying to make it look like you’re adjusting your glasses. Karkat sees right through you.

“Jesus, okay, I’m taking these fucking things off,” he says, reaching a slow hand towards you. He carefully, gently, takes the sunglasses off and you let him, keeping your eyes fixed on your own hands, clasped in front of you. More tears fall but you don’t bother wiping them away.

“This whole thing with your brother is more normal than you think,” Karkat says, bringing it back up. “I’ve been doing a lot of research, and-”

You snort. “You’ve been doing research on this shit?”

“Yes, goddammit, I like to be informed,” he defends. “All I’m saying is, there’s no reason to feel weird about missing him. And there’s also no reason to hole up in your room all day and avoid me like I’ve got some type of venereal disease, okay? You’re allowed to talk to me and I fully expect to take on a fair amount of your emotional baggage, that’s just how friendships are. You’ll get some of mine when the time comes, don’t think you’re in the clear.”

You laugh a little and it’s half a sob. You try to say okay but your throat constricts, preventing any sound from coming out. You want to tell him thank you, or sorry, or literally fucking anything, but you can’t. You just cry, unable to hold it in anymore, keeping your mouth closed and trying to stay quiet. Openly sobbing in front of Karkat is a step you’re not willing to take quite yet, so you settle for silently letting tears fall down your face, wiping them away and then staring at the droplets on your fingers.

“Sorry,” you can’t stop yourself from saying. “I know this is fucked up.”

“It’s not fucked up, okay? I’m glad you talked to me,” Karkat says. You jump when he puts a soft hand in the middle of your back but settle into the touch after a moment. “I can tell you about my dead dad if that would somehow make this less fucking weird for you.”

You laugh a little, surprising yourself and Karkat alike. He smiles at you, rubbing small circles into your back and you feel better, at least. You feel safe.

Chapter Text

Things have changed a bit between you and Dave since he opened up to you about all the shit he feels in association with his brother, and for the better. It’s like the situation was a hurdle you had to jump over to make any progress together, to go from being friendly roommates who found each other only as the result of a fucked up situation to being actual friends, who talk to each other, and like each other.

Dave even physically changes around you, holding himself up straighter, not crossing his arms so much, not hunching over as if he wants to disappear into himself. It’s like a physical weight has been removed from his shoulders, like he’s so relieved to hear that you actually like him and he’s not just a random guy you feel sorry for. He was always so closed off during those first days, and his tendency to avoid specific conversations with you has since dissipated, at least a little bit.

You manage to get some more information out of him about his brother, in small, throwaway comments made during your conversations and whenever you have the guts to ask him a personal question outright. You learn that the day you met each other wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt with a sword, as that was apparently his brother’s weapon of choice. Dave also tells you that he’s given himself stitches before and walked to the fucking emergency room when he thought he had broken his rib. He tells you all of this so nonchalantly, much different from the tearful conversation you had a few days ago, as if he’s so used to the abuse he’s forgotten it’s not normal.

When he sees your eyes starting to well up, shocked and frustrated at everything he’s told you, he laughs and puts a hand on the side of your neck.

“Don’t cry, dude,” he says with a little smile, like he thinks you’re endearing for shedding tears for him. He shakes you a bit. “At least I’m not living with an actual fucking psychopath anymore.”

“It’s still fucked up,” you argue, wiping your tears. He just grins, unperturbed, and pushes his thumb into your jawline.

With conversations about his brother come conversations about your dad. Late one night, after watching another poorly made movie, you tell Dave about the day you found out your dad was sick, terminally. He listens without making any sarcastic or insensitive comments, only nodding throughout your whole story, from discovering the illness to seeing him die just a year later, when you were sixteen. You don’t cry, your dad wouldn’t want you to anymore, but Dave still puts an arm around your shoulder and gives you a little squeeze.

Now that he’s more comfortable around you, the barrier between you broken down after weeks of living together, he touches you a lot . It’s always something small, brushing his hand against your back as he scoots past you in the hallway, touching you on the arm when you say something to make him laugh, poking you in the side of the head when he thinks you’re being stupid. He went from avoiding your touch, never initiating any sort of physical contact, to draping himself over your legs as you watch movies together. You like the change. You like it and you like him.

You’ve given up on trying to convince yourself that your feelings for Dave are going away anytime soon. Your crush on John comes to mind, lasting for nearly a year before you managed to get over it. In Dave’s case, you think it’s going to be a bit harder to get rid of your feelings, especially now that he’s gotten into the habit of walking around shirtless when he gets back from work. And now that he’s more comfortable touching you, you’ve found yourself more comfortable initiating contact with him as well, whether it’s something small like sitting closer on the couch or something bigger, leaning your full weight on him while you watch movies together.

You’ve allowed yourself the fantasy of thinking about Dave possibly reciprocating romantic feelings for you, but only late at night when you’re too tired to call yourself a desperate idiot. The stares you think you’ve been catching from him, the touches you think could be more than platonic, are probably just wishful thinking.

You finish your finals the same week John is due to arrive at your house which gives you more time to worry about how he’ll react to you. He sends you a text the day he lands in Houston, telling you he’s in an Uber and should be at your apartment in a few minutes. You stand by the door, nervously fiddling with your shirt and wringing your hands as Dave sits calmly at the island counter.

“Dude, chill out,” he tells you. “You’re gonna pop a vein or give yourself a fuckin’ ulcer if you keep worrying.”

“I’m not worrying,” you lie as if your anxiety isn’t plainly fucking obvious. “It’s just John.”

“Yeah, just John,” Dave agrees slyly. “Just the dude you had a whole ass crush on for a year.”

“Fuck you, you had a crush on him too!”

“Yeah but at least I own it,” he argues. “Seriously, you’ve gotta calm down, you look like you’re gonna shit your pants. Or you already have and the smell is getting to you.”

“Ew, god,” you mutter, rubbing your face. “Let’s not talk about shit for once, okay?”

“Deal.”

A knock on the door startles you and you turn to Dave with a stern look. “If you mention one fucking thing about my… crush on him I will personally see to your immediate demise in the form of killing and skinning you.”

He laughs, “You got it.” As you move to open the door, Dave adds, “Oh by the way…”

“What?”

“He’s a hugger.”

You have no time to respond as the door is pushed open and John throws his arms around you in a wild embrace, nearly knocking you over. “Karkat!” he exclaims in your ear, rubbing his hands on your back and rocking you side to side.

“John,” you manage to say around his body. “As happy as I am to see you I would also like to survive this hug if at all possible.”

“Right, sorry.” John lets you go, holding you at arms length and beaming at you. “Wow,” he says, looking you up and down. “You’re so short!”

You take half a step back. “Great, thanks,” you say. “Well it was fun seeing you, you can go back to Seattle now.”

“Aw, I’m just kidding,” he says, pulling you back towards him for another quick hug. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”

You smile, feeling shy suddenly. “Yeah, you too.”

John looks the same as he does when you chat over Skype, but far more vibrant and sunny in person, his smile infectious. You take in his jet-lagged appearance, still beautiful despite his mussed up hair, wrinkled clothes, and tired eyes. His lighter, olive skin contrasts with your own as he holds onto your hand, not quite ready to let you go so soon after meeting you. The corners of his downturned eyes wrinkle with happiness. You feel warm.

You step aside so John can fully come into the apartment, dragging a big suitcase behind him. Dave hops off his stool by the island to greet the other, John forced to go onto his toes to hug him properly.

“Hey cool guy,” he says, bright.

“Hey dude,” Dave replies. He sounds remarkably casual, as if he gets to see John every other day.

John stands back and gets a good look at the other, ruffling Dave’s hair with his hand. “You’ve gotta re-dye your hair,” he says with a little laugh. “Brown roots aren’t exactly cool, you know.”

“Yeah they are,” Dave states simply. “As long as they’re mine.”

John laughs and then bites at his lip for a second, hesitant. “So… can I see it?” he asks, pointing at Dave’s stomach.

Dave shrugs and lifts up his shirt, revealing the old sword wound which has since scarred over, a light pink imperfection over his dark skin. John runs a finger over it as Dave gives you a look from across the room, like John being fascinated by his scar is endearing.

“It’s so badass looking,” John marvels. “Are you gonna make up a cool story for how it happened?”

“Yeah, I’m torn between knife fight with a bear and alleyway showdown with five muggers.”

“My vote is for the bear,” John suggests. He gets up on his toes again to peak under Dave’s shades, nodding in a satisfied way when he sees his eye is fully healed. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Me too, dude.”

“Thanks for taking care of him, Karkat,” John says to you. “If you’d let him stay all bloody and fucked up I’d probably have to kick your ass.”

“Like you’d stand a fucking chance,” you retort.

“I so could!” he argues, taking on a fighting stance. “I’ve watched a lot of movies featuring roguish dudes who kick ass; I’ve learned a few moves here and there.”

“Yes, I’m sure your very plot heavy and totally thrilling action movies are entirely accurate in their portrayal of fisticuffs.”

“You bet your ass they are!” John yawns suddenly, raising his arms over his head to stretch, part of his stomach showing as his shirt rides up. “Can I use your bathroom? The Uber ride was really long.”

You show John where the bathroom is, taking his suitcase to Dave’s room on the way. When you get back to the kitchen Dave looks pointedly at your crotch and you stare at him, confused.

“No boner,” he announces proudly. He claps you on the shoulder. “You’re already doing better than I was.”  

“You say that as if it’s some sort of accomplishment.”

“Avoiding inappropriate boners is always worth celebrating, dude.”

“Can you shut the fuck up about boners before John hears you?” you hiss at him. “I really don’t want our first conversation in person to be about dicks.”

“You should get the dick conversation over with, if you ask me,” Dave says. “We all gotta have a cock convo at least a few times in life, that’s just the way shit is with guys.”

“That’s so not fucking true, you’re the only person I know who talks about dicks this much,” you whine. “It’s basically an obsession at this point and I honestly think you should seek professional help for it.”

“This is just who I am,” Dave says. “It’s not a phase, Karkat. This is me, take it or leave it.”

“Is it too late for me to leave it?”

Dave grins. “Yeah, you’re kind of stuck with me.”

“So,” you hear John say, rounding the corner from the hall. “What’s on the itinerary for Dave and Karkat’s Week of Fun?”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Dave asks. “I was thinking something more like Dave and Karkat’s Fruity Rumpus Extravaganza Featuring The Artist Formerly Known as John Egbert.”

“Those are equally terrible names and I’m stopping this conversation before it goes on forever and I eventually die of stupidity,” you interject. “And there is no itinerary; I figured we’d just make it up as we go.”

“I just wanna go to the zoo,” John says, rubbing his hands together. “The Seattle zoo sucks!”

“Hell yeah, let’s go to the zoo,” Dave agrees.

“We can go to the zoo,” you confirm, placating the two children in front of you. “And if you guys are on your best behavior I’ll even let you get ice cream while we’re there!”

“Sweet!” John yawns again, rubbing his eye sleepily. “For now I just wanna chill out with my two favorite bros,” he suggests.

“Well I don’t know who those guys are so you’re stuck with us,” you say.

The three of you head to the couch, John sitting in between you and Dave. Dave grabs a controller for the used PlayStation you bought the second week he was here and hands it to the other, grinning.

“You owe me a rematch from last year,” Dave says in a challenging tone. “And I’m not letting you win this time.”

“Oh, you’re on.”

Their choice is some sort of skating game with horrendous graphics that runs at approximately negative three frames per second. You squint at it, trying to figure out if you’re having a stroke and should seek medical attention or if the quality of the game is really that bad. You eventually conclude with the latter, taking in the choppy character movements and clipping objects with a sneer. You guess this is one of those things that Dave likes for ironic purposes, whatever the fuck that actually means.

It seems to be based on racing, and John loses spectacularly a few times, his character flailing about like a rag doll. Eventually he gives up with a good-natured comment on Dave’s ability to cheat and hands the controller over to you. You handle it gingerly.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” you ask. You don’t really play video games and you definitely don’t want to get involved with whatever fucking cosmic disaster this game is.

“Here, let me show you how to play,” John says, putting his hands onto yours and guiding them to the correct buttons. You notice very suddenly that your heart doesn’t quicken or thud when John touches you, and you’re so grateful for it that you almost sigh in relief.

“So this is how you move forward, this is your speed boost, and this is how you do kickflips and stuff,” John explains helpfully, showing you each button in accordance with its function.

“This is gonna be brutal,” Dave says when the next round starts. “I almost feel bad for preemptively kicking your ass, it’s like taking candy from a baby that’s also blind and doesn’t have arms.”

“Shut up,” you say with a newly invigorated tone. “I hope you’re hungry because you’re about to eat a huge, steaming portion of your own fucking words.”

You manage to beat him, but just barely. The only reason your character gets ahead of Dave’s at all is because his gets stuck in the background scenery and twitches spastically for the rest of the race. You throw your controller down in victory as Dave mashes buttons, trying to remove his character from his pixelated grave in vain, your own character skating through the finish line triumphantly.

“Nah, this is bullshit,” Dave says. “Let’s go again.”

“Fuck no,” you counter. “I’m not getting near this game with a ten foot pole ever again if I have any say in it. I can practically feel my body disintegrating into pixels as we speak.”

“Oh, do you smell that?” Dave asks. “Did you buy KFC because it straight up smells like a family sized bucket of motherfucking chicken in here. My mouth is watering, it smells delicious and crisp as hell, those eleven herbs and spices are really doing it for me. You guys hungry? You guys want some chicken? Because there’s a bucket of wings and thighs with Karkat’s name on it.”

“Actually that’s just the smell of the exhaust that comes out of your brain when you try to come up with halfway decent insults,” you shoot back. “Seriously, I’ve heard toddlers with only a loose, delicate grasp of the English language come up with more scathing retorts.”

“Okay, wait,” John interrupts, taking the controller back from you. “Can we actually get KFC though? That overly specific metaphor made me hungry.”

“KFC doesn’t deliver,” you say, checking your phone. “How’s pizza?”

“Chicken pizza?”

“I’m not fucking spending my hard-earned money on chicken pizza.” You open the app of the pizza place you normally order from and start punching in what you want. “We can get wings with it though, if you want.”

“Oh fuck yeah,” Dave says.

You spend way too long deciding on toppings, arguing between the three of you and getting into a debate about whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza. You and Dave don’t see a problem with it, but John vehemently insists that fruit shouldn’t be cooked to begin with and definitely shouldn’t be cooked onto a pizza. He goes back and forth with Dave on the issue until you make an executive decision to just get pepperoni and call it a day, putting in the order on your phone while the other two continue their argument.

John decides on what movie to watch while you eat your pineapple-free pizza, crowded together on the couch. He picks out Brokeback Mountain for some reason, explaining his choice by saying that the movie has something in it for all of you.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” you ask.

“It’s got rugged dudes for me, romance for you and…” He falters, looking at Dave. “Gay stuff for Dave!”

“Ah, what, come on,” Dave complains, gesturing towards you with a soggy pizza slice. “This is bullshit, Karkat likes gay stuff, too! This is straight up homophobia and I will not stand for it.”

“Karkat likes all romantic stuff, it doesn’t matter if it’s gay!” John argues. “You won’t watch any romance movies unless there’s something gay in it, and those are just the facts.”

“That’s just because I like to make sure my people are being properly represented in popular media,” Dave explains. “It has nothing to do with romance okay, all romance movies are trash regardless of the subject matter. That’s just science.”

“Oh really?” John smiles, mischievous. “Remember when you cried after watching that Love, Simon movie? Remember when you talked my ear off for an hour telling me about all the nuances of the-”

“Shut up dude, what the fuck,” Dave interrupts, cheeks turning red. “That was -  that was different okay, fuck, you’re just gonna spill a dude’s personal shit like that, all over the place? Come on.”

“Aw, Dave,” John says sweetly. He puts an arm around the other and shakes him gently. “It’s okay to like things, you know, unironically? It’s cute that you cried!”

“It’s not cute, it’s fucking lame as hell,” he retorts. Dave settles under John’s arm for a second despite his pouty expression and you smile at them, their argument reminding you of a siblings’ squabble. You agree that Dave’s love of a romance movie is rather cute, especially with how much he seems to fight against admitting it. A lot of things about Dave are cute.

Dave doesn’t cry when you watch Brokeback Mountain , but you do. The movie has a special place in your heart as the first film you ever saw that featured two men in a romantic relationship. It did a lot for you in middle school, when you were deep in your own gay panic, unaware that liking men was a viable option for you. Seeing it on screen, in a critically acclaimed movie no less, made your ability to accept yourself that much easier. Plus, it’s just a really good fucking movie.

You think you even hear John sniffling when one of the main characters has to scatter the ashes of his lover and at the end, when you are both openly shedding tears, Dave groans.

“You guys are losers,” he says as the credits start to roll.

“Fuck off ,” you say in a wavering voice. “He fucking died, Dave!”

“Yeah, and they foreshadowed it like hell for the entire goddamn movie,” he argues. “Like damn, okay, we get it, the dude’s gonna bite it, let’s chill with the heavy handed plot device for a second.”

“You didn’t like it at all?” John asks.

“I mean…” Dave stutters for a second before picking his words. “Heath Ledger was hot in it, at least.”

You share a look with John, who rolls his eyes as Dave stands with a groan.

“I’ve got work in the morning,” Dave says. “Gonna go to bed so don’t stay up all night talking about your stupid movies.”

“As if your movies are any less stupid,” you say.

“Goodnight,” Dave says instead of replying, heading down the hallway with a wave of his hand.

“Goodnight!” John calls back.

You yawn from your spot on the couch, fiddling with the remote in an attempt to find a palette cleanser after such a sad fucking movie. You decide on a mindless cooking show and pull your legs up onto the cushions, getting comfortable as John snuggles up next to you. He drops his head onto your shoulder, just as cuddly as Dave described him.

“So,” he says.

When he doesn’t continue you say, “So what?”

“You and Dave.” His tone is suggestive.

“What about me and Dave?”

“I mean… do you like him?”

You think you know what he’s asking but you deflect it. “Of course I like him,” you say. “I live with him? It would be kind of fucked up if we completely despised each other.”

“You know what I mean!” John whines, sitting up straight to look at you. “Do you like like him.”

“John, you are twenty-one years old,” you say. “Did you seriously just ask me if I like-like someone?”

“Stop avoiding the question!”

“Jesus Christ John,” you say, exasperated. “I cannot believe you’ve managed to fanagle your way into this after seeing me and Dave interact for five hours, when you couldn’t figure out that I had a crush on you for a full fucking year.”

It just comes out, the confession long overdue and the pressure of talking about your new feelings for Dave pushing it out of you. John looks at you, stunned, and you turn away with embarrassment. You feel yourself flush with a little bit of shame as he asks for clarification.

“Fuck, I just…” You flounder, trying to find your words. “I really liked you, okay? For… a long time. But I don’t want you to think anything weird about this, okay, I’m over it now and I would never try anything with your straight ass, it’s just not fucking realistic.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He sounds hurt, frowning at you with his big, blue eyes.

“Because there was no fucking point?” you say. “You’re straight and you also live like a thousand miles away, and thinking I could have had any sort of relationship with you would have been the deranged fantasy of a desperate gay guy. It would have been stupid to set myself up for rejection like that.”

“I guess I get that,” John says, nodding. “But I still wish you would have told me! We could’ve talked about it.”

“There wouldn’t have been anything to talk about,” you counter. “I liked you, there’s no way you would have liked me back, end of discussion.”

John takes your hand and gives it a little squeeze before letting go to play with the ends of his hair, awkward. He seems a little upset, lost in his thoughts for a moment before speaking again.

“This happened with Dave, too,” he says finally.

“He told you?” you ask, surprised.

“Yeah, a few years ago… Isn’t that weird? Two of my best friends liked me, romantically, and I just had no idea.”

“Hey,” you say in a placating voice. His tone is concerning you, like he’s blaming himself. “There’s no way you could’ve known, alright? I mean all I do is cuss and yell and call you names and Dave’s emotions are covered in a thousand layers of sarcasm and irony so you’d have no fucking idea if he felt anything other than indifference for you.”

John gives a small laugh, taking his hand away from his hair to touch you on the arm. “I guess you’re right; you and Dave are pretty ridiculous.” He sighs, shaking his head. “I just hope I didn’t lead you on or anything, that would be so shitty of me.”

“No, fuck, of course you didn’t,” you reassure him. “One of the first things you made clear with me was that you were painfully fucking straight, I had no reason to think you liked me that way.”

“Good,” he says with a little sigh of relief.

“I know this has probably made you staying here really fucking weird now,” you start. “We can just forget I ever fucking said anything and move on, I’m sure you don’t-”

“Oh, shut up,” John interrupts you, waving his hand dismissively. “Dave and I have stayed together a few times when I knew he used to like me and it didn’t make anything weird. I’m glad you told me.”

“Me, too.”

John looks at you, still a little sheepish, and opens his arms with a shrug of his shoulders. You lean into his hug, position a bit awkward from your place on the couch, and momentarily let yourself enjoy the feeling of his arms around you, the feeling of something that almost was and no longer is. When you pull away John gives you a beaming smile that quickly turns playful.

“But you do like Dave though, right?”

You give him a look but feel yourself concede. “Yeah,” you say with a small smile. “I do.”

Chapter Text

Karkat rotates the map for the third time in the last few minutes, marking something with a pen as the three of you wait at the entrance to the Houston Zoo. You took his car into the city after you got off of work in the morning and are now standing in the sweltering heat, waiting for him to finish mapping out your journey through the land of animals held in captivity against their will. You’re not a huge fan of zoos, you don’t trust that they’re treating the animals right, but John wanted to come so here you are. You’re such a good friend.

“Karkat, man, let’s get a move on,” you suggest. “All the animals are gonna have keeled over and died if you take any longer over there.”

“Shut up, I’m almost done,” he snaps. “I think I’ve found a way for us to look at nearly every exhibit with enough time to break for lunch. We’ll start with the elephants and work our way to the-”

“Great,” you interrupt, snatching the map from him so he doesn’t plan any more shit. “Let’s go.”

You start with the elephants like Karkat said, but his plan devolves from there. John isn’t able to feed the elephants since they only have peanuts available, and even touching the things would probably make his throat swell up like a motherfucker, so he heads for the giraffes instead. You follow after a moment, pausing to get a few shots of the elephants with the camera you brought.

Karkat eventually catches up to you, ranting and raving about his overly complicated plan for the day until he gets a glimpse of John, smiling as a giraffe licks up the grain in his palm. You see the other soften, deflating a bit, and he shuts up about his stupid plan. You snap a picture of his grumpy frown and he swats at you, cussing.

“Hey dude,” you say to the giraffe in front of you, leaning its neck out of the enclosure. You dip your hand into the bag of food and hold it out, using your other to take pictures of the animal eating out of your palm.

You spy Karkat standing a little ways off, holding food in his hand but looking unsure as John laughs happily nearby.

“It’s not gonna bite you,” you tell Karkat. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s fucking huge,” he counters. “I would bite something my size if I was that big and it had food.”

You put a hand on his shoulder blade and give him a little push until he moves forward. At the border of the enclosure he hesitates again, so you gently hold onto his wrist to guide his hand forward. You can feel his pulse under your thumb, racing.

“See,” you say as the giraffe scarfs up the food. “He’s totally harmless.”

“I highly doubt that.” Karkat takes his hand back and wipes it off on his jeans, grimacing.

“Dude,” John says with a huge grin, approaching you and Karkat. “They’ve got rhinos!”

“Woah, really?” You follow, trying to adjust the settings on your camera as you walk.

Karkat is trailing behind you, still pouting about his broken plan and messing with his curly hair under his baseball cap. You turn to him and stop, letting John get ahead of you, and hold up your camera. When you snap another picture of him, Karkat puts his hands up to his face and groans.

“Quit taking pictures of me!” he complains.

“Maybe if you would quit dragging your ass I’d stop,” you suggest. You wave him over and put your arm around his shoulders when he walks up to you, steering him towards the rhino exhibit. “What’s got you all grumpy?” you ask.

“It’s fucking hot,” he answers, arms crossed.

You shake him a little, laughing. “Yeah dude, welcome to motherfucking Houston,” you say. “The U.S. capital of fried food, racism, and hot ass weather.”

Karkat just rolls his eyes and you let go of him, approaching John at the enclosure instead. He’s absolutely beside himself, taking pictures of the rhinos with his phone and beaming like a little kid in a toy store. He grins at you when you come up next to him and he gestures at the huge animals.

“They’re so big!” he says obviously.

You laugh. “Fuck, dude, they sure are.” You direct him to a specific spot in front of the animals, picking up your camera from around your neck. “Say cheese.”

John’s smile gets impossibly wider as he stands at attention in front of the rhinoceros, opening his arms in a big gesture. You snap a few pictures and then show them to him on the screen, both of you laughing at the ones you took of Karkat.

The three of you make your way through the zoo together, kind of sticking to Karkat’s plan but not really. John leads the way for most of the trip, dragging you to his favorite exhibits and getting you to take pictures of him in front of the animals. Karkat lightens up a little bit once you get to the area with some of the smaller animals, lemurs and little monkeys swinging around in trees together. A marmoset takes particular interest in him and hops onto his back, trying to grab food out of his hands as Karkat laughs in delight. You smile and he covers his face again as you take more pictures of him.

You break for lunch after a couple hours, stopping to get some ridiculously overpriced sandwiches. You sit under an umbrella at a picnic table, trying to get some reprieve from the oppressive heat, eating your food and shooting the shit. You look through the pictures you’ve taken so far, lingering a little too long on the ones of Karkat.

John pokes you in the cheek, getting your attention. “Hey cool guy, no screens at the table.”

“Sorry, can’t help admiring these choice fucking pics I took,” you say. You store your camera back in your bag anyways, paying attention to John and Karkat instead.

“We should go to the amphibian and reptile house next,” John suggests. “They’ve got like twenty different kinds of frogs here!”

“Didn’t realize you were so into frogs, dude,” you say.

“I’m not,” John confirms. “But if they’ve got twenty whole species of them then we pretty much have to see them, right?”

“The amphibian place is enclosed, isn’t it?” Karkat asks.

John grins, excited. “Yeah, it’s a whole separate building!”

“Great, that means we can get out of the heat.” Karkat pointedly wipes sweat from his forehead under his hat. “I’m in.”

As it turns out, the reptile and amphibian house is just as hot as the weather outside and at least five times as humid. You don’t know why any of you are surprised, it’s kind of a known thing that snakes and frogs and shit have to be kept at specific temperatures or else they get too cold and drop dead. You don’t stay very long, favoring the dry heat of the outdoors over the sweltering, sticky air of the reptile enclosure. You guess the frogs were pretty cool, though. You only counted sixteen different kinds, but it’s whatever.

“Hey Karkat,” John starts when you’re back outside, fanning himself with a hand. “Remember yesterday how you made that offhand, sarcastic comment about getting ice cream? Let’s do that non-sarcastically.”

“Yeah, let’s get some water too,” Karkat adds. “It’s really easy to get dehydrated in dry heat like this.”

You smile at Karkat’s motherly concerns and follow the other two to an ice cream vendor. Within a few minutes you have bottles of water and sweet, cold ice cream to help cool you down. Karkat isn’t stopping anytime soon, though, still determined to get to as many exhibits as possible and traipsing ahead with invigorated purpose. You and John walk a little farther behind, observing the other fussing with the map and trying to find his sense of direction in a flurry.

You can’t help yourself and tug your camera from around your neck, taking another picture of Karkat from behind, his body haloed in a sun flare. When you put your camera down and return your attention to your ice cream, John is giving you a suspicious look.

“Do you always take this many pictures of Karkat?” he asks.

“Hey man, if you think I’m gonna let good photo opportunities go to waste then you’re out of your mind,” you say, a little defensive. “Not my fault Karkat is like ridiculously fucking photogenic.”

“Okay,” he says, though he doesn’t sound convinced. He licks his ice cream nonchalantly but continues giving you a sideways glance.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shrugs.

“Come on dude,” you insist. “You’re so fucking transparent, okay?”

“It’s nothing, just…” He shrugs again, pretending to be coy. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you have a crush on him or something.”

“Okay firstly, we’re grown ass adults so let’s stop pretending like crushes are even a thing anymore, alright?” you say with a wave of your finger. “And secondly, that’s bullshit. Karkat and I are just bros, you know, just a couple of dudes. We’re friends.”

You don’t know why you’re not just admitting your feelings for Karkat to John you just… aren’t ready. You’re still too caught up in your own bullshit to even really confess the fact to yourself without spiralling into some kind of stupid emotional abyss about it. The fear of rejection is overwhelming, something you’ve felt too many times, and despite Karkat’s attitude about it you think your past might be too much to handle, for anyone. You’d really just rather not talk about it.

“Alright, whatever you say,” John sing-songs.

“Dude-” you start, but you’re interrupted by Karkat calling to you both.

“Can you two twats hurry the fuck up?” he basically yells. “We’re losing daylight.”

“Watch your fucking language,” you call back, upsetting several parents in the vicinity. “We’re coming, god damn.”

You don’t stay at the zoo much longer, the late afternoon heat wearing all of you out within another hour. Karkat’s plan falls through spectacularly, but you think he still has fun, especially when you stop by the bird habitat. He knows a lot about birds for some of reason and is especially enamored with a pink, spoon-billed one that eats Cheerios out of his hand. He laughs like a little kid and you take another picture of him.

Before you leave, you make sure to set up your camera with its tripod on a bench so you can get a picture of the three of you. Karkat suggests just letting someone else take the picture for you instead of fucking with a tripod for fifteen minutes, but there’s no way you’re letting a random stranger hold your expensive ass camera. You had to draw so much porn to afford it and you’re not letting that hard work go to waste just because some random passerby decides to steal it from you.

Once you get the camera set up you start the timer, jumping up from your crouched position to join Karkat and John in front of the zoo’s main sign. You stand in between them, putting your arms around their shoulders and putting on a happy grin. Karkat snakes his arm around your waist while John gets up on his toes to hook his around your shoulder and you smile genuinely as the camera shutter goes off.

The three of you end up in the car during rush hour, Karkat driving while you navigate from the passenger seat. A quick peak in the rearview mirror shows you that John has fallen asleep in the back, leaning against the window like a worn out little kid. You smile a little and stretch out as Karkat cusses at the traffic.

You have to shake John into consciousness when you get back to the apartment, nearly dragging him into the building. Traffic was bad enough that it took quite a while to make your way back to your place, so you all crowd around the refrigerator trying to find something to eat, your sandwiches from hours earlier no longer satiating. You think about asking Karkat to pull a miracle out of his ass and come up with some sort of dish that includes every random type of food in your fridge, but he seems really fucking tired from driving. You get Uber Eats instead and plant your asses firmly on the couch, the television providing noise as you eat.

“So,” you say to John when you finish your food. “Was the zoo all you thought it would be and more?”

“Yeah, it was fun,” John says sleepily. “Just… really fucking hot. Houston is way hotter than Seattle.”

“Welcome to the south dude,” you say. “Wait until you get a load of all the mosquitoes we have, that’s where the real southern charm is.”

“Wow. I can’t wait.” John yawns and leans over, stretching himself out on your laps. “Thanks for driving, Karkat, you’re the literal best.”

“I know,” Karkat says. He places a soft, hesitant hand on John’s head and plays with his hair for a moment, looking tired himself. “Hey instead of falling asleep on us why don’t you just go to bed? I inflated that annoying god damn air mattress for you and everything.”

“Yeah, I’m going,” John says, not moving. “I’m just… resting my eyes.”

“Nope.” Karkat bounces his knees up and down, jostling John back awake. “I am not carrying your ass to bed when you inevitably fall asleep on me, okay.”

“God, fine,” John groans, standing up in a slow, slumping motion. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” you both call back to him.

Karkat sighs, closing his eyes as he lets his head droop onto the back of the couch. He sits back up after a moment, rubbing his eyes tiredly, and checks his phone. You feel a little bad making him drive all day, so you get up and grab two bears, handing one to him. He grunts his thanks, pressing his face closer to his phone and staring at it intently. He soon gives a sigh of relief and puts a hand on his chest, downing a third of the beer in a few gulps.

“I aced my anatomy final,” he says breathlessly. “Thank fucking Christ.”

“Woah dude, nice going.” You clink your beers together in celebration and Karkat finishes the rest of his in just a few moments, clearly relieved. The TV is still on but mostly just for white background noise as Karkat turns to you on the couch.

“I told John last night,” he says quietly. “About liking him.”

“What did he say?”

“He was worried that he led me on,” Karkat laughs. “Because of fucking course he was.”

“Is he even capable of doing that? He’s basically the straightest guy who’s ever lived and he makes it real fucking clear.”

“That’s what I said!” Karkat shakes his head, smiling.

“I can’t believe all he did was worry about leading you on though,” you said. “When I told him about my stupid, teenage crush on him a few years ago he freaked out for like a full week, had an entire crisis about it. It was like a complete code fucking red gay panic where he was worried he had ‘turned’ me like some kind of gay vampire and it was all his fault somehow.”

“That sounds like something he’d do,” he agrees. “He took it surprisingly well if you ask me, only got a little bit neurotic about the whole thing.”

Despite how tired you both are, you stay up a bit longer talking, shooting the shit. Karkat rants and raves about the absolute clusterfuck that was his anatomy final, how he was almost late to the test and nearly got a zero on it. He also tells you about his other exams that he finished during finals week, though he kind of loses you when he starts talking about one of his nursing tests. You’re still baffled he’s trying to be a nurse, it sounds like a really shitty job with a lot of emotional trauma involved, but he says he just wants to help people and you can admire that.

He heads to his room after a bit, too tired to talk anymore. You stay up a little longer, you’re kind of wired up and won’t be able to fall asleep for a while anyways. Having John stay in your room has actually helped your insomnia a bit, the sound of his light snoring a comfort when you startle awake in the middle of the night from a bad dream.

You pull out your camera one last time before getting ready for bed, flipping idly through the pictures and smiling to yourself. John was right, you took quite a lot of Karkat when you had intended on mostly shooting pictures of the animals. There’s a few of him with his face covered, hiding from the camera when he was still feeling grumpy. Then a picture of him from the back, silhouetted in sunlight, and one with a monkey on his back, one with a bird eating out of his hand. You can’t help your stupid smile as you press the arrow keys to look through the album, brightening at the photo of the three of you together.

After the picture with you, Karkat, and John, is one last photo, again of Karkat. You barely remember taking it, having pulled out your camera in the car, snapping the picture without much thought. There’s nothing particularly special about it, just Karkat’s side profile in the dim light of the evening sunset, features highlighted in gold. His hair is messy and tangled from wearing a hat all day and he has the smallest smile on his face, tired but happy. You heart thuds once, hard, and you put the camera away.

John hasn’t let up since the zoo yesterday, hounding you constantly about your feelings for Karkat while the guy in question is at work. You eventually cave and tell him that yeah, maybe you feel some type of way for Karkat. Maybe he makes your heart pound and your palms sweat when you get too close to him, and maybe you look at his ass more than a totally platonic dude friend would. Maybe you think about making out with him sometimes. It’s whatever.

“I think you should confess to him,” John says, sitting backwards in your desk chair and spinning around. “That’s the only way you’ll know if he likes you or not.”

“No thanks dude, not really in the mood to have my feelings handed back to me on a silver platter like this is butler island and I was just begging for someone to serve me,” you retort. “I already know he doesn’t like me that way, alright, he would’ve made some huge, romantic gesture by now if that was the case.”

“But what if he’s waiting for you to make the huge romantic gesture?”

“Yeah and what if Hitler invented juice boxes?” you ask. “The answer is it doesn’t matter and also isn’t true.”

“But what if it is? Not the thing about Hitler, that’s just weird, but what if Karkat actually likes you?” John continues. He’s really not letting it go. “I have it on pretty good authority that-”

The door to your bedroom opens, interrupting John’s thought. Karkat is standing there in his work uniform, looking tired and holding a box that he tosses to you. You catch it easily, turning it to look at the label. It’s a store brand hair bleaching kit.

“Saw that at the store and figured you’d want it,” Karkat explains tiredly. “Your roots are getting out of control.”

“Yeah seriously,” John agrees. “You look like a 2008 scene kid.”

“Jesus okay guys, thanks,” you mutter, running a self-conscious hand through your hair. They’re right, your dark brown roots have grown out significantly in the last month, the lighter, dyed part of your hair slowly getting edged out. You’ve been meaning to re-dye it but you just keep forgetting.

Karkat jerks his head in the direction of the bathroom and you follow, John getting up as well. Soon you’re seated in front of the mirror on one of the barstools from the kitchen with a towel around your shoulders, John and Karkat standing behind you at the ready.

“This is such a horrible idea,” you say as you stare in the mirror. “I don’t trust either of you with bleach and I especially don’t trust you with bleach near my face. This is my favorite face.”

“Calm down, you’ll be fine,” Karkat says, snapping on a plastic glove. “I’d trust the two of us with bleach before I’d trust you. Knowing how well you handle simple tasks you’d probably manage to blind and permanently maim yourself trying to dye your fucking hair.”

“Hey, I’ve done it before,” you say. “I used to not live with you, remember? Remember when I took care of myself and like… did stuff? Remember that? Remember how I survived for twenty-one years without you? Remember how I-”

Karkat holds out the mixed cup of bleach menacingly and you shut up, rolling your eyes. To get a better look at where he needs to apply the dye, Karkat runs his hands through your hair a few times, nails softly scratching against your scalp. You very consciously have to stop yourself from reacting, instead staring at yourself in the mirror, stiff. John gives you a look that you pointedly ignore.

The dye kit only comes with one pair of gloves, and the only other hand protecting items you have in the apartment are oven mitts, so Karkat takes one flimsy, plastic glove and John takes the other. Karkat stations himself on your left while John takes over the right, each of them working one-handed on different sections of your roots. The kit has a little brush in it, but it quickly becomes unusable, covered in viscous, thick bleach that sticks the bristles together.

“I remember when you started dying your hair,” John says thoughtfully, glove making a scratching noise against your hair. “It turned out orange for a few years because you never left the bleach in long enough! That was not a good look.”

“Sweet Christ, don’t remind me,” you say. “I was looking like a bottle of Orange Crush for like two years because I couldn’t get my shit together. Nearly got a sponsorship from them since I was already repping their brand so hard, just promoting the fuck out of their fake orange soda.”

“Why did you even start dying it in the first place?” Karkat asks. “Why not just leave it natural?”

You shrug a shoulder, careful not to interrupt the ministrations going on around your scalp. “My high school was like… super fucking racist,” you explain. “Like more racist than normal, you know? Blonde hair made me look a little less ethnic and people backed off once I got the dye figured out. Liked the look so I decided to keep it.”

John is frowning. “Well you never told me that,” he whines. “All this time I thought you just went through a phase or something.”

“Nope, it was the racism.”

“I get it,” John says solemnly. “Kids at my middle school used to do this to me,” he pulls at the outer corner of one of his eyes with his free hand, making it look smaller, squinting, “all the time. And everyone called me Chinese this and Chinese that, I’m fucking Korean!”

“That’s fucked up dude,” you say with a grossed out look on your face. “Why are middle schoolers such fucking assholes?”

“They have some kind of delusion about it being cool, I think,” Karkat adds. “I don’t even want to repeat some of the shit my so-called peers yelled at me in the hallways. They were at least fairly creative with the slurs they used, I’ll give them that.”

“At least college students are better,” John says. He uses a pinky to sweep stray hair out of your face, careful not to get bleach on your forehead. “So far I haven’t had anyone-”

A loud buzzing cuts him off, the source coming from his jeans pocket. He rifles around for his phone with his free hand and carefully peels off his glove to hand to Karkat.

“It’s my dad,” he says happily, looking at the caller ID. “I’ll be right back.”

Karkat just shrugs and puts on the other glove, extremely aware of how much bleach is around the wrist, nudging it on with small motions. He finishes applying the bleach in relative silence, giving you little looks in the mirror every few minutes.

“Alright, this says for medium to dark hair we have to leave it in for at least twenty-five minutes,” he says, reading the back of the box. He takes a look at your roots, already lightening to a dark orange in the time it took to add the dye. “That should be plenty of time.”

“Sweet.” You stand up and stretch, heading to the living room with Karkat in tow, the towel still around your shoulders.

“I’m gonna go change,” he says. “If you get any bleach on the couch I will fucking kill you.”

“Alright yeah, you go do that,” you agree. “You smell like grease and homophobia.”

He wrinkles his nose, “God, don’t remind me,” and leaves for his room.

You chill out on the couch for a bit, setting a timer on your phone to go off when it’s time to rinse out the bleach. Karkat joins you within a few minutes to hang out on the couch for a while, but John stays in your room, still on the phone with his dad. You can hear his voice from the living room and, although muffled, it’s obvious how excited he is to tell his dad all about the zoo from yesterday.

You look at your own phone with a small frown, remembering the call from your brother that sent you into an entire depressive spiral for a day and a half last week. Telling Karkat about it had proved to be the only way to drag you out of your mood, expressing your feelings to another human for once actually resulting in some kind of emotional relief. Karkat really has no idea how grateful you are to have him around, for taking you in when you had nowhere else to go and then being your literal shoulder to cry on. And his cooking, holy shit. You’d starve to death without him. You owe him, seriously.

You look over at him, staring at his side profile as he flips aimlessly through the television channels. After a moment he notices you and turns, giving you a look.

“What?” he asks. “Oh god, please don’t tell me I got any fucking bleach on my face.”

“No you’re good,” you reassure him. “I’m just… zoning the fuck out right now.”

“Maybe all the bleach has seeped into your brain and killed off your last working brain cells,” he suggests. “I think I can hear them screaming in agony from here.”

You’re about to retort when the timer goes off, your phone vibrating in your hand. John is still on the phone so you go back to the bathroom with just Karkat, itching to get the bleach out of your hair and replace it with some desperately needed conditioner. Your scalp is starting to hurt.

Karkat insists on helping you rinse out the dye despite your reassurance that you can do it yourself and have several times in your life.

“Just lean over the tub,” he instructs with a pointed finger. “I can use the shower head and it’ll be faster than you taking a whole shower.”

“Alright, you’re the expert here, apparently.”

You do as he says, sitting against the side of the bathtub and letting your head hang into the basin, neck limp. Karkat rinses out the bleach with a firm hand, making sure to get all of it out before adding conditioner. You close your eyes, letting yourself revel in his touch for just a moment, however mundane and platonic it may be. It also just feels good, having your hair washed by someone else. You’ve never gone to a hairdresser to get your hair professionally styled before, but you think you might try it if it feels this good.

After a few minutes, Karkat turns off the tap and hands you a towel. “I think I got all of it,” he says.

“Thanks man,” you say, toweling off your hair in sweeping motions. You get it as dry as you can before flipping it back into place, adjusting your bangs in the mirror. “How does it look?” you ask, facing Karkat and opening up your arms in a wide gesture.

He takes just a second too long to answer. “Good,” he says quietly. “You look good.”

Chapter Text

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at 18:09 --
CG: OKAY SO MAYBE YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT ME LIKING DAVE.
CG: LIKE YOU TOTALLY CALLED THAT ONE AND YOUR ABILITIES TO KNOW THAT I LIKE A GUY BEFORE I DO CONTINUE TO VEX AND ASTOUND ME.
CG: I AM ABSOLUTELY REELING FROM THIS NEW UNDERSTANDING AND THE SUBSEQUENT EMBARRASSMENT THAT IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWS IT.
CG: I’M QUAKING IN SHAME AS WE SPEAK, FONDLING MYSELF TO THE IMAGE OF DAVE’S EVER PURSED LIPS AND STUPID SUNGLASSES AS I CONTINUE TO LIVE MY LIFE AS A POOR, DESPERATE FOOL.
CG: GO AHEAD AND SAY I TOLD YOU SO, I KNOW YOU’RE DYING TO DO IT.
GA: I Am Not
CG: YES YOU ARE.
GA: Okay
GA: I Told You So
GA: Again
CG: NOT SURE HOW YOU MANAGED TO PULL THIS ONE OUT OF YOUR ASS, MARYAM.
CG: YOU CALLED THIS SHIT NEARLY A MONTH AGO AND I’M STARTING TO QUESTION WHETHER OR NOT YOU MAY HAVE PSYCHIC ABILITIES THAT HAVE LED TO THESE PREMONITIONS COMING TO FRUITION.
CG: OR PERHAPS YOU ARE NOT EVEN FROM THIS TIMELINE AND YOU’RE SEEING EVENTS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOMEONE IN THE FUTURE.
CG: SO TELL ME KANAYA.
CG: WHAT YEAR WERE YOU REALLY BORN?
GA: I Can Assure You I Am Neither Psychic Nor Am I From The Future
GA: You Are Simply That Predictable
CG: WOW YOU’RE REALLY COMING FOR MY ASS TODAY, HUH?
GA: Its Just So Easy
GA: I Can’t Help Myself
CG: I GUESS I CAN’T REALLY BLAME YOU.
CG: I AM PRACTICALLY BEGGING FOR SOMEONE TO SERVE ME UP A PORTION OF MY OWN ASS ON AN HOURLY BASIS AND YOU’D ESSENTIALLY BE FUCKING YOURSELF IF YOU DIDN’T TAKE THAT OPPORTUNITY.
CG: IN FACT, I’M WELL OVERDUE FOR ANOTHER BLOW TO MY SELF-ESTEEM, I’M GETTING TOO COCKY THINKING I MIGHT BE A DECENT HUMAN BEING AND SHOULD BE PUT IN MY PLACE ASAP.
CG: HIT ME WITH SOMETHING ELSE SO I CAN GO BACK TO MY NATURAL STATE OF BEING A COMPLETE FAILURE.
GA: Well If You Insist
GA: I Do Have Some Particularly Scathing Insults Up My Sleeve
CG: LET’S HEAR THEM.
GA: Alright But Please Try Not To Get Upset
GA: This Is All In Jest
CG: I’M READY.
GA: Alright
GA: ...
GA: Youre Gay
CG: KANAYA, HOLY SHIT, I SAID INSULT ME NOT COMPLETELY DECIMATE ME AS A PERSON.
GA: Thank Goodness You’re A Trained Medical Professional
GA: Otherwise You May Need To Go To The Hospital And Seek Attention For All Of These Burns
CG: I’M APPLYING CREAM AND GAUZE AS WE SPEAK.
CG: I MAY BE INCAPACITATED FOR SEVERAL DAYS DUE TO THE SHEER AMOUNT OF BURNS YOU’VE INFLICTED.
CG: ALSO, SPEAKING OF GAY
CG: HOW ARE THINGS GOING WITH THAT GIRL YOU TOLD ME ABOUT THE OTHER WEEK? BETTER THAN THINGS WITH ME AND DAVE I HOPE.
CG: SO BASICALLY IF YOU HAVE SPOKEN TO HER AT ALL OR MADE ANY INDICATION THAT YOU HAVE ROMANTIC FEELINGS FOR HER THEN YOU’RE DOING BETTER THAN MY SORRY ASS.
GA: Actually There Is Something About Her You May Find Interesting

Before you can respond there’s a knock on the door. You call out a short, “Yeah?” and John appears in your room, smiling and bright as usual.

“Hey, my friend Rose is on Skype with me and Dave,” he says. “She said she’d love to meet you for a bit, even though it’s not in person and everything.”

“Have you made sure to talk me down so she’s not disappointed?”

John laughs, “Stop that, you’re basically the best dude ever, she’ll love you!”

“I’m blushing,” you deadpan, standing up. Your conversation with Kanaya can wait a few minutes while you chat with John and Dave’s friend. From what you’ve heard about her, she’s known the two for quite a long time, since they were kids.

In Dave’s room you get a good look at Rose, situated inside a little box on his computer. She is eleven shades of pale and delicate, light skin and hair contrasting with her sharp eyes. When she sees you approaching behind Dave she sits up straighter, propping her chin on her hand. She gives you a long look and then says, in a voice like butter, “You must be Karkat.”

You are immediately intimidated; you get the feeling that this woman, Rose, could destroy your social life and your self-esteem in one blow, with minimal effort. You like her already.

“Yes, unfortunately that’s me,” you say, leaning on the back of Dave’s chair. John stands at the other side, bending down to be in the frame of the camera.

She laughs a little. “I know these formalities are probably unnecessary,” she starts. “But I must thank you for helping Dave when he needed it. I consider myself indebted to you, should you ever need it.”

“Hey,” Dave interjects. “It’s not that big of a deal, alright, I would have figured it out.”

“No you wouldn’t,” you say at the same time as Rose. You smile and she grins back at you.

“Oh god, there’s two of them,” John laughs. “It’s over for us, dude.”

“Well, I just wanted to say hello,” Rose continues, ignoring the other two. “Finally meet you and see what all the fuss is about.” You don’t know what she means by that, but you’re a little afraid to ask.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” you say. “Gotta say you’re already living up to expectations.”

“You flatter me.” She adjusts the angle of her head almost imperceptibly, changing her neutral expression to one of mischief. “I have lots of embarrassing stories to share about these two, if you’d like.”

“Oh, do tell,” you say enthusiastically as John and Dave groan.

“No god, don’t give him any more fuel for his overly wordy insults,” Dave insists. “He’s already bad enough as it is.”

“You know very well that only makes me want to tell him more.”

Rose begins a story about Dave’s experience with his first girlfriend, which is already hilarious without any context. Still deep in the closet, he had experimented with his feelings for girls in a last ditch effort to be straight and managed to get a girlfriend when he was around sixteen years old. She recalls him asking her for advice on how to maneuver his way around the girl’s desire to be intimate with him, lacking the experience or the inclination to do anything beyond hand holding with her. You can’t believe he didn’t come out sooner.

You want to listen to Rose’s story - embarrassing things about Dave are always appreciated - but something in the background of her camera is distracting you. There’s a shadow to Rose’s right, hovering on the floor as if someone is standing in front of her, moving around off camera. Every time you get a good look at it, Rose adjusts her position and covers up the suspicious shadow, blocking your view. Eventually it disappears entirely and you zone back into Rose’s story, forgetting the strange occurrence for a few minutes.

But then you see a figure walk behind her, wearing an oversized t-shirt and what looks like a pair of panties. The figure is a tall woman, skin a dark almond brown and hair stark black. You press your face closer to the computer, nudging Dave out of your way to get a better look at the woman in the background.

“Kanaya?” you yell incredulously.

The sound of your voice through the speakers gets her attention and she turns to you with a startled look. It’s definitely Kanaya, looking disheveled and as beautiful as ever, her hair in a messy ponytail and her face devoid of her usual makeup.

“What the fuck?” you say loudly, causing Dave to inch away from your face. “ This is the girl you’ve been seeing?”

Kanaya pulls her t-shirt farther down to cover up her bare thighs and approaches Rose’s computer with a sheepish look. Rose scoots over and Kanaya sits down, presumably sharing the seat together.

“I meant to tell you earlier,” Kanaya says, glancing at Rose. “It’s just that… I wasn’t sure how serious this would get and I didn’t want to get ahead of myself.”

“I think we’ve decided that it’s pretty serious, yes?” Rose gives Kanaya a look that’s so indecent you almost have to look away.

Breathlessly, Kanaya says, “Yes, I think so.”

You roll your eyes, “God, this is already unbearable.”

“No, this is so cool!” John states happily. “Your best friend and our best friend are dating, what are the odds?”

“Pretty fucking slim I think,” Dave comments. He sounds just as confused as you are.

“Now all we need is for you two to start dating,” John adds, referring to you and Dave, only half joking.

A strange silence falls over the five of you, thick and unreadable. No one laughs, and you and Dave speak over each other trying to break the awkward lapse in conversation. You’re louder so he cuts his sentence short, letting you finish.

“Okay, well, it was nice to meet you Rose,” you say. “I’m sure I’ll hear all about your thrilling and, by the looks of it, passionate love affair in due time, just putting that out there.”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Rose says softly. “I’m well aware that anything I tell Kanaya will likely get back to you within a few days.”

“Yeah, consider your privacy essentially ruined while I’m still alive and breathing.”

She laughs and then says something that makes your heart speed up, just a bit. “Don’t worry, everything you say comes back to me as well. Consider us even, for the time being.”

You hope to all that’s good in the world that Kanaya has the decency not to reveal your crush on Dave to Rose, but you’re not so sure. You at least don’t think Rose will tell Dave, not without your permission; she doesn’t seem like that kind of person.

“You three have fun,” she says pleasantly, as if she didn’t just send a shockwave of shame and embarrassment through you. “Try not to watch too many poorly made movies together, you’ll burn yourselves out.”

“Always a huge pleasure to talk to you, Rose,” Dave says sarcastically. “Y’all have fun, too, although it looks like you already have, based on the outfits.”

You think you see Rose turn a light pink but you can’t be sure, as Kanaya takes over the conversation. “Yes, well, we’ll talk later, Karkat.”

“We sure fucking will.”

You say your goodbyes and Dave presses the red button on the screen to end the call, making a wide-eyed face.

“That was… interesting,” John says lightly.

“I guess you could call it that,” Dave says. “So are we putting that table together or what?” You’re so grateful to hear him change the topic that you almost sigh in relief.

“Yes, please,” you say, following the other two to the other side of the room. “I’ve got like five mental images of the events that could have led to Kanaya being dressed like that and they’re starting to make me gag; some sort of mundane task will hopefully purge them from my brain for the rest of my life.”

“God I know,” Dave agrees. He plops down next to the unopened box of parts and gets to work opening it. “I really don’t want to think about what they got up to but the intrusive thoughts… they just won’t stop. I think I need therapy now.”

“Oh come on,” John chides. “It’s not that bad, they’re cute together!”

The box rips open with the sound of scraping, scratchy cardboard and the three of you start removing the parts from the inside - four legs, panels for the top and bottom, a drawer, and several miscellaneous parts you’re not sure about. You purchased the side table a week ago but are only just now getting around to putting it together, you and Dave too preoccupied with school and work to bother doing it. Having John around, who questioned the unopened box upon arriving at your apartment, has been the kick in the ass needed to get you to actually put the damn thing together. Dave’s room is still mostly devoid of furniture and the addition of a bedside table will make it seem a little less desolate, a little more like home.

“Cute isn’t the word I would use,” Dave says, unfolding the instructions for the table. “More like completely vomit-inducing? I mean did you see that look Rose gave her? I’ve never seen a look so fucking obscene, it’s like we weren’t even there. That was some not safe for work, eighteen plus, adults only motherfucking bedroom eyes and I can’t believe I saw it, right there on my own computer screen. I’m fucking blushing here, dude.”

“Okay, yeah that was kind of weird,” John agrees with a furrowed brow. “But at least they’re happy, right? Rose was convinced she was going to die alone for like years.”

“Yup, now it’s just us in the die alone club,” Dave laments. “Oh and you, Karkat.”

“Thanks,” you mumble. “Let’s just get this stupid table put together so I can get my mind off my inevitable demise as a single individual, stuck in the ‘ready to mingle’ vortex for the rest of my life.”

The table turns out to be more complicated than you anticipated, or the three of you are running on a total of five combined brain cells and are simply too inept to put together a very simple piece of furniture. Within an hour you’re sitting in a pool of seemingly random parts and screws, so many fucking screws. You swear they’re multiplying, poking you in the foot and in the thigh as you sit cross-legged on the floor, mocking your inability to follow basic instructions. The three of you have made several attempts to get the table completed, but you’ve made virtually zero progress, especially since you have to undo everything after putting on a part upside down.

“Okay,” you start, sweeping your hair out of your eyes as you stare down at the instructions for the fifth time. “Are we sure we have all the parts?”

“Yeah, I counted them like three times,” John whines. “Are those the right instructions?”

“What the fuck else would these be for?” you ask rhetorically. You flip the page around for John to see the diagram of what the completed table should look like.

“So we’re like one thousand percent sure that 4C is supposed to go into 3A, yeah?” Dave asks.

You take a sixth look at the shitty diagram. “That’s what it says.”

Dave struggles to fit the two parts together, the wood of each section rubbing against each other with an unpleasant sound. “Yeah this is not happening,” he declares sullenly. He drops the parts on the carpet with a dull thud. “Okay, yeah, I’m over this. Let’s officially give up and turn in our man cards for not being able to put together fucking furniture.”

“I don’t wanna give up already!” John says with vigor. “Maybe there’s just… too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” you ask.

“I mean… maybe we’re overthinking it and stressing each other out,” he explains. “Why don’t you guys take a break and I’ll see if I can figure this out.”

“Ah dude, no way,” Dave says with a hand up. “No fucking way I’m letting you put together my stupid table when you’re supposed to be a guest here and everything. My courtesy senses are tingling and they’re telling me that’s all kinds of fucked up, alright, I wasn’t raised in the woods you know? I’m not fucking Tarzan, okay, Mr. Rogers would be so goddamn disappointed in me if I let you do this while Karkat and I fucked off somewhere and I just can’t let that happen. Nah, you go plant your ass on the couch and chill the fuck out with some Netflix or something, Karkat and I will get this shit done.”

“Look, I’ve put together furniture with my dad like a million times,” John counters. “I’m sure I could-”

“Seriously dude, we’ve got it,” Dave insists. “What, you don’t trust us? Don’t think a couple of bros can put together a table? Just because we’re gay? Wow, didn’t realize you were such a rampant homophobe.”

John rolls his eyes and stands; once Dave starts insisting something is homophobia it’s time to give up. “Alright fine,” he concedes. “But if you guys aren’t done soon I’m coming back in to help!”

“That won’t be necessary ‘cause we’re gonna bang this shit out in twenty minutes, bet your ass.”

“Okay,” John says in a tone that indicates he doesn’t even kind of believe Dave. “You guys have fun, I guess.”

“Oh we will,” Dave says convincingly. “Nothing gets me going quite liking putting together furniture and shit, my testosterone levels are through the fucking roof right now.”

John just gives him an exasperated look and heads for the living room, leaving you and Dave to sort out the mess you made. You take another look at the directions as Dave struggles to get 4C into 3A again, the pressure he puts on the parts probably warping them to hell, rendering them completely useless. You have a feeling you’re going to be here for a while.

You end up finishing the table in about thirty more minutes, the completed product only kind of lopsided. You have no idea what you did differently from the first three times you tried to put it together, but it’s finally fucking done so you don’t question it. Dave helps you move the table next to his bed, where it fits in nicely against the wall, and he gives you a celebratory high-five.

“Hey, I have an idea,” he says. “Let’s not buy anything else for my room and just leave these three pieces of furniture in it for the rest of our lives.”

“Sounds good to me.” You slump onto Dave’s bed on your back, legs hanging off the edge. “Not like we have the money to splurge on things like furniture.”

“We totally could, as long as we didn’t eat for like a week.” Dave crawls onto the mattress to join you and settles onto his stomach, resting his head on his forearms. You grunt in response and Dave continues. “I know we should probably like… take John out and do something fun or whatever while he’s here but I’m really fucking tired.”

“Yeah, I don’t think dying your hair and trying to put together a table were really what he had in mind,” you agree. “But I don’t think he really cares, to be honest.”

You shut up as you hear the door open, John poking his head inside and letting out a delighted sound. “You finished it!” he says proudly, sliding onto the bed with you and Dave.

Dave’s bed was not made to accommodate three people but you all lay on it anyways, bumping knees and elbows as you try not to fall off.

“Yeah it was only mildly infuriating,” you say, putting your hands under your head. “I think I lost at least four or five years off of my life from trying to comprehend that completely fucking useless diagram. I’ve seen pictures made by three-year-olds that were more coherent than that fucking catastrophe.”

“Hey, at least you did it,” John says happily. “It looks like it’s supposed to, I think.”

“Yeah just don’t touch it or it’ll fall apart,” Dave adds. “Just totally collapse all comically, screws flying everywhere, projectiles bouncing off the walls, it’d be hilarious. Actually don’t even look at it too hard, I don’t wanna try to put that thing together ever again.”

John laughs. “Are you sure you actually screwed anything in or did you just put the pieces on top of each other?” he asks. “Is it even structurally sound?”

“I’m insulted dude,” Dave says with mockingly upset tone. “I screwed the shit out of that table okay, I am the proud father of a table-human hybrid baby as a result of my expert screwing and I owe that table hundreds of dollars in child support. I’ve changed my relationship status on Facebook to ‘it’s complicated’ because that motherfucking table won’t leave me alone now, asking me for diapers and baby formula and begging me to come back to it because I was such a good fuck.”

“If it’s at all possible, could you shut your fucking mouth before more demented shit spews out of it?” you ask as John cracks up next to you. “I would say that I can’t fucking believe you just insinuated that you fucked the table we just built but I’m not even surprised anymore. I think I’m becoming immune to your stupid metaphors and I’m worried the disease that is the way you speak will eventually seep into my personality through proximity alone. It’s my greatest fear.”

“I know you think I’m hilarious dude,” Dave insists. “Just admit it already, I’m a total catch and you think I’m funny as hell.”

“The day I think any of the ridiculous, vile garbage that comes out of your mouth is even remotely funny is the day you inexplicably develop one working brain cell,” you counter. “So what I’m saying is, don’t hold your breath.”

Dave pushes his elbow into your side, not hard enough to hurt, and John laughs at both of you. You feel light as the two of them do most of the talking, too tired to be much more than a bystander in the conversation yourself. You watch them bicker and laugh and tease and feel a stupid, content smile pull at your mouth.

If you’re being completely honest with yourself, finding out that Kanaya and Rose had gotten serious with each other kind of put you in a sour mood. You’re happy for Kanaya of course, she’s your best friend and she deserves the world, but you have a bad history with best friends who get significant others. It’s like you suddenly stop existing once one of your friends gets a boyfriend or a girlfriend, favoring their partner over you on more than one occasion.

You guess you can’t really blame your friends; you know you’re not the most pleasant person to be around and you can be kind of clingy. Okay, really clingy. And when significant others are introduced into the equation you’re just not that appealing anymore, not someone’s first choice to hang out with. It happened with Sollux and Aradia, as well as Gamzee and Tavros. Hell, you hardly talk to Sollux at all anymore, having grown apart once he started hanging out with his girlfriend instead of you. You remember getting pissed at him and having a huge fight, and things just haven’t been the same since then. And as for Gamzee, well, he went from clinging to you like toddler to only responding to your texts days after you send them.

Sometimes you worry that you’ll have no friends, that all of the people you feel close to will eventually leave you for someone else, it’s happened so many times already. But now, as John throws out a particularly shitty pun and Dave groans at him, pushing your arm as if to say “Can you believe this guy?”, you think your fears are irrational.

Chapter Text

During the last few days of John’s stay at your apartment, you and Karkat take him out to do at least one more fun thing before he leaves. Normally homebodies yourselves, you don’t really have a clue what to do at first, but quickly find through a Google search that there’s an amusement park about half an hour away. The three of you pile into Karkat’s car and sit in traffic for an hour trying to get there, arriving at the mediocre park in sour moods.

The rides aren’t too bad, and the food is deep-fried and covered in grease so you all cheer up within a few minutes. Karkat gets too motion sick to ride any roller coasters so he supervises from below, staring up at you with a grimace. He gives you a sick look every time you and John get off a ride, stumbling around with dizziness and adrenaline, laughing to yourselves.

“I don’t understand why you guys are willingly going on these death traps,” he gripes. “It’s like paying to get into a car accident that also makes you vomit.”

You sling an arm around him, partly for balance. “Come on dude, it’s fun.”

He nudges you with an elbow, trying to dislodge you, to no avail. “Get the fuck off me,” he says. “If you throw up on me I’m kicking you out of the apartment.”

You fake gag at him and he starts, jumping away from you with a yelp. When he sees that you’re not really gonna puke he pushes you with a loud, “Fuck you!” You decide to do it several times throughout the day, just to fuck with him.

After a few more rides you feel like you might actually throw up so you take a break, heading for one of the game stalls instead. You know these stupid things are hella rigged, but you all give them a try anyways, losing spectacularly. You jokingly tell Karkat that you want a knock-off Pikachu plush hanging in the corner of one of the booths, which seems to ignite some sort of stuffed animal fueled fire inside of him. He spends fifteen bucks trying to knock down three bottles with a baseball, too stubborn to give up and cussing with increasing vigor every time he misses.

You and John leave Karkat alone for a second to get some heart-stopping, artery-clogging, greasy ass food and you spy him approaching you on your way back, holding the lopsided and malformed plush in his hands.

“Here,” he says, pushing it into your arms. You adjust your corndog and french fry container to hold the stuffed animal, admiring how ugly and poorly made it is up close.

“Woah, no way,” you say, pleased. “Did you actually beat the game or did you just bribe the vendor guy?”

“No, I beat it,” he says proudly. “I spent twenty dollars though so I hope you didn’t want to eat this week.”

“I won’t even notice my hunger pangs, man, gonna be having too much goddamn fun with this ugly little dude.”  

“Is it supposed to be Pikachu?” John asks around a mouthful of food. “Looks more like Pikachu’s deformed cousin.”

You hold up the plush Lion King style, or as close as you can get with one hand. “Yeah this dude was definitely the product of some inter-family relationships, if you know what I mean,” you say. “The bloodline’s all fucked up now but I love him no matter how disgusting the circumstances of his birth were. Can’t wait to teach him how to tie his shoes and ride a bike and everything, I think I’m tearing up already.”

“You’re gonna be such a great dad,” John says supportively, patting you on the back. “What’s his name?”

“Dave Jr.,” you state with a grin. “He’s so goddamn beautiful, fatherhood is truly amazing.”

“I slaved over those stupid bottles for half an hour and you can’t even come up with a better name than Dave Jr.?” Karkat asks incredulously.

“What? Of course I’d name him after my likeness, that’s what fatherhood is for,” you say. “I’m already turning my life around because of my love for my adopted son, no more drugs, no more drinking, I’m gonna stop buying hookers every night and everything. This is the start of something new, okay, this is some TLC worthy shit right here.”

“You’re such an inspiration,” John quips. Karkat just rolls his eyes at you and calls you both a string of colorful names as he steals some of your fries.

Karkat, always worried about your health, insists that you and John buy some overpriced Gatorade so you stay hydrated, and confiscates your fried food until you drink some. You don’t spend too much longer at the amusement park, the late spring heat soaking you with sweat within a few more hours. There are only so many rides to go on anyways, and the afternoon rush leads to longer lines and crowded game booths. You leave the park with John, Karkat, and Dave Jr. in tow, into the oppressive heat of the car where the backs of your knees stick to the hot vinyl.

You’re all too worn out to do much else when you get back to the apartment, and the exhaustion lasts throughout the night and into the next morning. You laze around on the couch together until Karkat has to go to work for a few hours that afternoon, leaving you and John to blow through a few Netflix shows while he’s gone. John talks through a few of them, begging you to tell him more about you and Karkat.

Ever since you admitted to having a stupid crush on Karkat John hasn’t let it go, constantly hounding you for more info like you’re two middle schoolers trying to get the juiciest gossip. This is the adult equivalent of you seeing Karen kiss Melissa’s boyfriend in the girls’ locker room, it’s so fucking juicy. It’s one hundred percent real motherfucking fruit juice, emphasis on fruit, and John is gulping down boxes of the shit like he’s stuck in the middle of the desert and his sweet salvation has appeared to him in the form of your feelings for Karkat. His thirst simply can’t be quenched and he’s sucking you dry for info.

Even when Karkat gets back from work the conversation continues, simply moving from the living room to the more private space of your bedroom. John flops onto your bed on his stomach, his knees bent, feet up in the air like some kind of school girl. He keeps giving you this goofy smile as if he’s the one with a silly crush on someone, blushing like a shy little kid whenever you talk about Karkat.

“It’s just been so long since you’ve had a crush on anyone,” he explains when you ask him about his behavior. “We never really got the chance to talk about girls or anything when we were younger, it’s like we totally missed out!”

“Sorry, I’m not into girls,” you say, a little annoyed at his wording. “I think it’s about time I finally told you this, so… I’m gay. I know, you’re shocked, good thing you’re already lying down otherwise I’d have to catch you as you faint dramatically onto the floor, handkerchief at the ready to fan your delicate, pale face.”

“Okay, jeez, you know what I mean,” he says with a slanted frown. “Even when you dated that girl in high school you never talked about her, like ever!”

“That’s because I didn’t actually like her dude, not sure what you’re not getting here.”

“Well, after you came out to me you never talked about boys, either,” he argues. “Have you even liked any guys in the last few years?”

You make a small noise with your tongue against the roof of your mouth, staring at John blankly. When he just looks back at you, confused, you turn your head at him in a sharp motion and make a stern face until his eyes widen with realization. Of course you’ve had feelings for a guy in the last few years, you’re staring right at him and he knows it. John flushes a light pink for a few moments and shoots you an apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. You shrug a nonchalant shoulder. “I just… wanna talk about it with you. It’s fun, you know? You always listened when I wanted to talk about Vriska and stuff.”

You raise your eyebrows for a second, mouth pushing down at one corner in a grimace. “Yeah, that was a shit show, wasn’t it?”

John laughs. “Yeah it was.” He’s quiet for a moment, the memory of falling for a lesbian a few years back likely taking up too much space in his brain for him to talk. He shakes his head a little to clear his mind, continuing his train of thought. “So you don’t have anything you want to tell me about Karkat? Like, I don’t know, stuff you like about him and whatever?”

“Dude, where would I even start with that?” you ask rhetorically. You open your mouth to say something else but cut yourself off when you see the giddy smile on John’s face. “What?”

“You’re fucking cute, Dave!” he exclaims in delight. “You’re all smiley and everything, and all I said was Karkat’s name.”

You press your hands into your cheeks, forcing your smile away. You didn’t even notice you were grinning so much. “I’m not fucking cute , okay?” you say. “I’m a grown ass adult with stupid, unrequited feelings for my roommate.”

“Only unrequited as far as you know,” he reminds you with a finger in the air. “You’re too stubborn to ask him on a date and find out if he likes you back!”

“Not stubborn,” you quip, “just realistic.”

John rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever,” he says. “Just… tell me more stuff you like!”

You make a face at him like you think he’s annoying, but if you’re being completely honest with yourself you’re actually really grateful to have someone to talk to. Beyond some joking around with Rose, you haven’t been able to talk much about how you feel about Karkat, and now you don’t want to bog down her new relationship with conversations about your own stupid shit. Talking about your feelings is not something you’re really used to, only recently opening up to Karkat about your brother and everything. And before that you’d hidden a lot of that information from even your closest friends, always too uncomfortable to be sincere about anything.

Maybe John is right, you think. Even if Karkat doesn’t have the same feelings for you there’s no harm in gushing about him a little bit, right?

“Well, dude, I mean… you’ve seen his ass right?” you ask. “What’s not to like?”

“You are an ass man,” John agrees with a laugh.

“Yeah, what else would I be?” you say. “A dick guy?”

“A penis dude!”

“Maybe,” you say with raised eyebrows.

“What else?” John asks.

You rub at the back of your neck for a second, trying to push through the shyness and mild discomfort building up inside of you at the prospect of sharing your feelings. “Did I tell you that we talked about my brother?”

“Woah,” John says, tone getting serious. “Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not like I came to him all ‘hey you wanna share our emotional trauma and have an old school feelings jam together?’ or anything like that, I was just feeling like shit about it one day and we talked for a while,” you explain. “And he was like… super chill about it? And really helpful?”

“Karkat’s good with feelings,” John agrees. “He’s helped me a bunch when things have been, uh… bad.”

You know John’s had some issues with depression in the past, and you’ve never been able to be much of a shoulder to cry on for him, too emotionally constipated to help. It’s kind of relieving to hear that Karkat has been there for him when you couldn’t be.

“Yeah, he’s the best,” you say with a nod. “And beyond all that, I mean, we just get along, you know?”

“I’ve noticed,” John mentions, smiling again. “I haven’t heard you go back and forth with someone like that since, well… ever!”

Before you can comment there’s a knock on your door, followed by a low creak as Karkat pushes it open. He stands there for a second and awkwardly nudges the door with his elbow as he adjusts a wet paper towel on his forearm.

“Can one of you help me with this?” he asks. “I burned the shit out of my arm.”

“Yeah dude, I’ve got you,” you say, standing up from your desk chair. “What the hell did you do anyways?”

You follow Karkat back into the hallway, stopping to pull the first aid kit out of the bathroom as he explains what happened.

“The fucking fryer splashed oil on me when I was trying to speed through an order today,” he gripes. “I thought it was fine but the heat from the stove is making it worse and I can’t wrap the fucking thing with one hand.”

You sit him down at the kitchen island and he removes the paper towel for you to see the damage. There’s a nasty, aggravated patch on his forearm, spreading in a red starbust pattern over his skin.

“Jesus dude, why didn’t you cover this up earlier?”

“I didn’t have any time at work, the lunch rush was fucking insane,” he explains. “And I just kind of forgot about it until it started hurting again because I’m a gargantuan idiot who doesn’t know how to take care of himself.”

You grimace at the wound, turning Karkat’s arm around to see how far it spreads. “Yeah, that’s true,” you joke. “So what do I do here? Cream and then gauze?” You’ve gotten a lot of wounds in your life and broken a lot of bones, but you’ve never had any type of burn beyond ones from not wearing enough sunscreen when you go outside. You’re not really sure how to proceed.

“Yeah, that should be fine.”

You get to work, applying the cream as lightly as you can and watching Karkat’s expression for any indication that he’s in pain. He seems fine so you continue, trying to be gentle just in case. You glance over at the stovetop and notice the couple of pots sitting on top of it for the first time.  

“Man, I would’ve helped with dinner if you wanted,” you say.

“Believe it or not, I am actually capable of doing things by myself,” he says jokingly. “It’s just spaghetti; not complicated enough to warrant help. Even you could do it, if you really tried.”

“Wow, as if I haven’t made dinner on my own before,” you say. “Remember that sick meal I made the other week? With the chicken? Did that with my own two hands, dude.”

“Yeah except every time you try to cook you somehow manage to maim or otherwise injure yourself,” Karkat reminds you. “You’re like a toddler, I can’t leave you alone for five fucking minutes without you finding something to hurt yourself with. It’s honestly kind of impressive; you could cut yourself with a fucking stick of butter if you put your mind to it.”

You laugh, because it’s kind of true. You’re a monumental fuck up in the kitchen and should probably just stay away from it unless completely necessary.

Karkat has to show you the proper way to wrap the gauze around his arm when you finish up with the ointment. You hold onto his arm as you coil the soft, kind of sticky material around his skin, trying to be careful while still making sure the wrapping is tight enough. Karkat just watches you, probably judging your technique. He says his thanks when you finish up, heading back to the stove as you put away the first aid kit.

You hover around him a bit in the kitchen, ask him about work as he checks on the noodles. He tells you about his day, about how burning himself with hot oil was only the rotten cherry on top of the shit sundae that was his shift at a fast food place. Apparently he had a bunch of rowdy kids come in during the afternoon rush, probably a soccer team or something, who ordered a bunch of complicated shit at the counter instead of calling in to place the order beforehand.

“Every fucking one of those snot-nosed kids wanted extra pickles this or no onions that or ‘toast my bun please’ or whatever,” Karkat says with a sneer, eyes rolling. “Some annoying soccer mom told me she was making her kid gluten free and to make her chicken sandwich without a bun? A goddamn bunless sandwich? She literally wanted me to serve her daughter a chicken patty with nothing else, like that’s basically fucking child abuse and I considered calling the police.”

“You should have,” you say. “Forcing your kid not to eat bread? I call bullshit.”

“Fucking exactly, that’s ludicrous,” he agrees. He shakes his head and checks on the saucepan, stirring the contents around with a wooden spoon. “And anyways, if you wanted plain chicken with nothing else why not just buy the nuggets? What a dumb bitch.”

You just watch Karkat with soft eyes as he continues ranting about work, offering him a much needed outlet. Your gaze drifts from his butt, to his hands, to his mouth, and your heart thuds in your chest, dangerously fond. A mental image of pulling him by his shirt and kissing him pops into your head, just a flash in the pan of your mind, and you have to stop yourself from physically shaking the thought away.

You clear your throat instead of trying to kiss him, though resisting the compulsion takes a lot of your willpower. Blood pounds in your ears as your face flushes pink and your heart rate speeds up dramatically. You’re starting to think John might be right, that it would be easier to just get over yourself and ask Karkat out, finally, after a couple weeks of pining after him. Even if he rejects you, you’ll at least know for sure what his intentions are towards you and could promptly seal away your feelings deep inside yourself where they’d, hopefully, eventually wither and die.

Your mouth opens without your permission, letting out a very coherent and intelligent “Uh.” Your throat pinches with nerves and you have to clear it again before you can speak properly, Karkat looking at you with a confused expression. “So, I was thinking,” you start, only to be interrupted by a loud beep echoing through the kitchen. The alarm on the oven is going off.

Karkat opens up the oven door, checking on the bread inside, and presses a few buttons to turn the appliance off. “Can you go get John?” he asks. “This is done.”

“Yeah,” you say, voice too high. “Sure.” You basically sprint back to your room to rejoin John, heart pounding in your throat and your temples. John looks up at you when you jump into your room in a flurry, bewildered at your strange entrance.

“You’re all blotchy,” he notes, noting the flush crawling up your neck.

“Yeah it was… hot in the kitchen,” you lie. Your heart is slowly returning to a less dangerous rhythm and you try to take a discreet, deep breath.

“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen!” John says with a little laugh.

“Yeah, I literally did that,” you say. “Anyways dinner is ready.”

“Sweet!”

You let John leave the room before you, taking a few more seconds for yourself in the doorway. You can’t fucking believe how close you just got to asking Karkat out, as if there’s a chance in hell that he feels that way about you and would ever say yes to such a suggestion. The timer on the oven going off is probably a sign from whatever higher beings there are that you should just give it up, that it’s not in the stars or the universe’s plan for you or whatever the fuck. Maybe you just totally dodged a bullet, just barely avoided the stinging smack of rejection right in your unsuspecting face by the skin of your ass.

You take another breath, squeezing your hands into fists to stop them from shaking, and join the other two in the kitchen.

“Thanks for making dinner, Karkat,” John is saying when you get to the kitchen. He’s scooping an enormous amount of spaghetti into a bowl, layering sauce and noodles in increments. “This looks really fucking good.”

“Well I couldn’t let you eat takeout the entire time you were here,” Karkat replies. When he sees you approach he hands you an already prepared bowl of food, complete with extra parmesan cheese on top. You give him a soft smile, too genuine for your liking, and you take the bowl from him with what’s probably a weird expression. You still feel dazed from your almost confession, heart slow but aching.

The three of you decide to eat at the island instead of on the couch like you normally do, Karkat coming up with several wild scenarios for how the spaghetti might end up on the furniture. The only issue is that there’s only two stools at the small counter, so you have to roll your desk chair into the kitchen, sitting down onto it with a little sigh. You’re still trying to calm yourself down, avoiding Karkat’s direct gaze, being as inconspicuous as you can. If you catch his eye for too long you might have to politely ask John to leave the room so you can act on your impulses for once.

Dinner goes by and you successfully resist your urge to vault across the counter and make out with Karkat, which you’re way too grateful for. John insists on doing the dishes despite being a guest, and when Karkat protests you offer to help with the cleaning. This seems to placate him, and he leaves to take a much needed shower while you and John scrub at the pots and pans. There’s not a whole lot to clean up and when you’ve finished up within a few minutes, wiping your hands off with a paper towel, you feel John bump his forehead against your back.

“What’s up?” you ask him, still drying your hands.

“I have to leave tomorrow,” he whines. “I don’t wanna.”

You turn around to face him, letting him slump against your chest in a half hug, hands lazily draped on your sides. His cheek squishes into your collarbone as he moves his head to look at you and you wrap your arms around his shoulders.

“You gotta go back to Seattle sometime,” you concede. “You already paid for that plane ticket and Karkat and I ain’t got the money to house you forever, you know?”

“I know,” he says, and when he looks back at you you can see tears in his eyes.

“Ah, dude, don’t you dare cry,” you say firmly. “If you cry then I’m gonna cry and it’s just gonna be a really lame sight for everyone if we’re both standing here sobbing like a couple of sentimental losers.”

“What are we crying about?” comes Karkat’s voice, back from his shower. His hair is leaving patches of moisture on his t-shirt.

“I don’t want to leave tomorrow,” John explains with a little pout. “I’m gonna miss you guys.”

“It’s not like you’re never going to see us again,” Karkat says. “We’re not terminally ill we just live in a different state.”

“Come on dude,” you say, taking an arm off of John to open yourself up to Karkat. “Don’t pretend like you’re not feeling some type of way too, alright, quit being stubborn and come join the hug pile already.”

Karkat rolls his eyes but joins you anyways, putting an arm around your backs as he angles himself into the hug sideways. Hugs with three people aren’t very comfortable or conducive to any sort of movement, so the embrace turns into a jumble of elbows and chins jutting against one another. Karkat’s face gets pressed into your shoulder and you think John suffocates a little bit against you, but it’s still nice.

It will probably be a while before you have the chance to see John again, none of you having the money to regularly travel across the continental United States for days or weeks at a time. You and Karkat barely afford groceries and rent with both of you working, and even though John still lives with his dad you know he’s not exactly rolling in cash either. You’re going to miss him, too, he’s your best fucking friend, but you still have trouble articulating that outloud without an added seven to twelve layers of sarcasm and jokes.

“Don’t worry man, I’m not letting a full year pass before we can hang out again,” you reassure John. “Maybe Karkat and I will take a long ass road trip up to Seattle or something, that could be fun, right Karkat? Being in the car for like four fucking days together, pissing in bottles and scavenging for food in gas stations sounds like a fucking blast if you ask me. Maybe we’d even encounter a sex offender or a drug dealer somewhere along the way and have to fight our way out of being trafficked across the border as heroine suitcases, wouldn’t that be sick?”

“I would rather have all of my major appendages torn from my body and fed to me than ever be in a car for that long,” Karkat grouses.

“Yeah you guys would kill each other before you even got to Seattle,” John says with a laugh. He pulls away from you, breaking up the hug. “Thanks for letting me stay and everything.”

“Woah dude, no need to thank us just yet,” you say. “We’ve still got a whole night before you leave, the sun ain’t even down yet, okay, we’ve got like twelve full hours of debauchery and partying ahead of us.”

John pumps an enthusiastic fist into the air with a cry of “Debauchery!”

Karkat narrows his eyes at both of you, always sour. “Do either of you idiots even know what debauchery means?”

“Yeah dude it means the three of us getting fucking crazy and having a good ass time, that’s the dictionary definition, I guarantee you. You Google that word right now and you’ll find our names and a picture of the three of us with a shitload of booze and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos getting real fucked up until the early hours of the morning.”

“But not too early in the morning because my flight’s at nine,” John interjects. “So we have to be at the airport at like seven, which means-”

“You’re fucking up my fantasy, dude.”

“Right, I mean - yeah let’s party!”

Your “party” mostly consists of sitting on the couch and drinking the good wine that Karkat splurges on and then won’t let you drink unless there’s a special occasion. You’re not a huge fan of wine but even you think it’s good, not too sweet but not too dry. You can see why Karkat wanted to save it, and John seems surprised that the bottle was opened in his presence.

The night has to end early since you all have to get up at Satan’s ass crack of dawn if you want to get to the airport in time to drop John off for his flight. John reminds you again that he could just take an Uber or get a taxi, but Karkat is way too nice of a guy to let him spend any more money on transportation when he already bought his own plane tickets.

When you eventually finish your wine and have to go to bed, you say your goodnights to Karkat and drag your ass into your room, drowsy from the alcohol. John migrates from his air mattress on the floor to your bed about halfway through the night, snuggling up next to you with a little smile, Dave Jr. in his arms. You let yourself enjoy the company and the pressure of him against your side, sleeping soundly for the first time in weeks.

Chapter Text

You tell yourself you’re not going to cry on your way to the airport in the morning, but once you step foot in the building you feel yourself starting to tear up. Before you’ve even said your goodbyes you’re already crying at the prospect of leaving John for an indeterminate amount of time. Dave sees this and gives you a push in the back towards John, who is talking animatedly about something his dad did, unaware of your emotions. He doesn’t notice you’re crying until you press your face into his chest, arms winding around his waist in a goodbye hug.

“Aw, Karkat, don’t cry,” John says with a little laugh. “I promise I’ll try to come back soon!”

Your voice will sound pathetic and strained if you try to speak so you just grunt into the fabric of John’s t-shirt. He rubs your back.

“Maybe we can try and meet you halfway sometime,” Dave suggests as you and John separate. “Or you could move to Texas, that might honestly be easier.”

A frown pulls at John’s mouth. “Yeah, traveling sucks!” he declares. “If it wasn’t so expensive I’d visit all the time.”

“It’s cool dude, I know you’re not made of money,” Dave says, shrugging. “That’d be pretty sick though.”

“Maybe when I get older I’ll be a super famous comedian and get rich and stuff,” John fantasizes. “Then I could come visit whenever I wanted! Or pay for you guys to come see me.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath,” you say. You sniffle back residual tears, trying to keep yourself together. “Comedy’s not exactly the most lucrative business, you’d be better off with your day job.”

“Well, I can’t work at a grocery store forever!” he rebukes. “It’s fun to dream at least.”

“Hey, I totally believe in your future as a super successful comedian,” Dave adds. “I’ll be your number one groupie okay, if comedians have groupies? What I’m saying is I’ll follow you around and take pics of you and promote the hell out of you on my website, how’s that sound? And I’ll be your guinea pig for all your material, you can practice your monologues and shit on me whenever you fuckin’ want.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” John laughs. It dissipates quickly as he checks his watch and presses his lips together in a sad frown. “I really need to go so I can get through security in time. I’m gonna miss you guys.”

You say goodbye, a little rushed so John can make his flight, and Dave puts a comforting arm around your shoulder when you start to cry again after you all hug one last time. John tells you he loves you and turns to leave, waving back to you when he gets a little ways through the airport. You wave back and Dave turns you around, directing you back towards the parking garage.

In the car, Dave digs around in the center console and produces a tissue for you. You notice that there’s red rimming the bottoms of his eyes, devoid of glasses for once, but you decide not to mention it. You think you hear him sniff a few times but then he falls asleep in the passenger seat halfway through the ride back to the apartment, still tired from having to get up so early.

Your own tears eventually start to dry and your attention drifts to Dave, the mechanical task of driving on the highway causing your mind to wander. Dave is detrimentally pretty as he sleeps next to you, face serene and skin smooth. Your pulse quickens just enough to make you worry, and you turn your attention back to the road. There’s no way you’re letting yourself get into a crash today because you’re too busy staring at a pretty boy to focus on driving. Even you’re not that big of an idiot, though you’re close.

The apartment feels strangely empty when you get back, despite John only having stayed with you for a week. Dave looks around with a disgruntled expression.

“It feels all weird in here now,” he says, voicing your thoughts. “Like… there’s not enough goofy energy, you know? We’re not gonna reach our goof quota for the month without John and the boss is gonna give us a third of our pay for fucking up so badly and then we’re not gonna be able to feed our kids or anything. Little Timmy broke his leg and is using an old stick as a crutch and now we have even less cash to pay for his surgery so we’re gonna have to set that bone by ourselves, give him the only blanket we have in the shack to bite on while we snap that leg into place. Back to work, Timmy.”

You don’t answer, too tired and sad to come up with something long and scathing to reply with. You dick around on your phone instead, checking your social media and your schedule for work. Your heart drops out of your chest when you see what week it is and your mood sours even further, taking a turn from mildly irritated to dangerously upset. Dave gives you a disappointed look when you’re quiet for too long, lifting up his arms in a wide gesture.

“What, no long-winded quip to utterly destroy me?” he asks. “You’re just gonna leave me hanging like that?”

“I’m not in the mood,” you grumble, rubbing sleep and the burning of tears out of your eyes.

“Not in the mood to insult me?” Dave asks, feigning incredulity. “You must be really upset, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Dave takes a good look at you, eyes sweeping up and down your body for long enough that you start to feel self-conscious. His expression takes on one of mild suspicion and concern. “Is this just about John or is there something else?” he asks.

You grind your teeth for a second, jaw tight as you consider how much you should tell him. You’re already emotionally compromised from saying goodbye to John and you’re not sure how much you can say before you’ll start crying again. You’re really tired of crying, but Dave knows you too well to let this pass. And he’ll definitely bring up what you told him about hiding his feelings towards his brother from you a couple weeks ago if you try to pretend like things are fine.

“I’m fine, it’s just…” You sigh and turn away from him. “My dad’s birthday is this week.”

Dave gives you this pitying look but quickly tries to hide it, knowing full well you don’t want to see it. “Sorry, dude,” he says quietly. He doesn’t seem to know what to say.

You shrug, trying not to let any more unnecessary emotions well up inside you. “I’ll be fine,” you say, mostly to assuage some of his discomfort. “It’s just one more fucking thing to deal with, on top of work and the crushing weight of being alive. And then next weekend my fucking uncle is getting married and I totally forgot about it, and I don’t want to go but I already spent money on a goddamn hotel room and I can’t afford to just waste money so-”

“Woah, okay dude, pump the panic brakes for a second,” Dave says with a hand up. “Yeah, you’re dad’s birthday is gonna suck, but you’ve dealt with that for how many years now?”

“Four.”

“Right, and now you’ve got me,” he adds proudly. “And I’ll definitely be around to distract you from your feelings by talking all the time and pissing you off, which will be way better than crying and feeling like shit and stuff, right? I’ll pull out all the stops, okay, I’ll leave my shit everywhere and not put any of my dishes in the sink and leave hair in the shower and everything. It’s gonna look like a bomb went off in here and you can yell at me about it as much as you want.”

“If you actually do any of that I’m kicking your ass,” you say with a little smile.

“See? That’s what I’m talking about,” Dave says, confident in his abilities to annoy you. “And, I mean, you don’t really have to go to the wedding if you don’t want to, right?”

“If I want to avoid years of familial disownment and passive aggressive statements about my absence, then yeah I have to go,” you explain.

“Well,” Dave starts, probably about to suggest what you’re already thinking of. “I could always come with you? Not sure if that would make things better or worse, though.”

“That would make the entire event at least kind of bearable,” you say, trying to veil your honesty with sarcasm. You’re actually extremely grateful that he’s offered to accompany you without you having to ask, the prospect of facing your entire extended family alone a little daunting.

“Is there an open bar?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay, I’m in,” Dave confirms with a nod. “See? Look how easy we solved that, it took like ten minutes, no stress. That was a very minimal, lowkey conversation we just had and we figured out all of the shit you were worrying about like it was fucking nothing. See how easy it is to do stuff when you talk about it?”

“Says the guy who has only expressed his genuine feelings four times in his entire life,” you retort, even though he’s right.

“Whatever,” he says on his way to the living room. “Just come chill out on the couch with me and stop worrying yourself into an early death. You’re gonna give yourself a hernia doin’ that.”

“Well, one of us has to worry about stuff,” you grumble as you follow him. “Not all of us can be like you and pretend not to care about anything ever.”

You sit on the couch next to Dave, who lies down with his knees bent, feet on the cushions, head on your thigh. This is his favorite thing to do lately, draping himself over you when you watch TV together, especially if you force him to watch one of the movies you like. You normally keep your hands to yourself when he does this, save for the occasional tug on an earlobe when he says something particularly dumb. Now, you keep your hands at your sides, fingers clenched in self-conscious fists as you pray that Dave can’t feel your rapid heartbeat in such close proximity.

“I’m not pretending,” Dave insists. “I genuinely don’t give a singular fuck about literally anything. My fuck farm went under like five years ago and a big ass company bought me out and now they have a monopoly on all the fucks so I can’t give any even if I want to. I moved to the big city tryin’ to find better opportunities, and now I have to buy fucks at the grocery store for a two hundred and fifty percent markup.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” you retort, finding the remote and turning the TV to a random channel. “I know you care about those god awful abominations you pawn off as real movies and I know for sure that you care about memes.”

“You got me,” he says. “My secret’s out. Local cool dude has feelings, cares about things. More at eight.”

“And you care about John,” you throw out. “And Rose.”

“And you,” Dave adds, tone free of sarcasm for once.

It’s not surprise that sends a jolt down your spine, but something more like relief. You don’t know why Dave telling you he cares about you has sent your train of thought crashing into a nearby obstacle, instantly killing all of the passengers on board, but you’re left entirely speechless for a moment. You’ve never really seen yourself on par with John and Rose, always considering yourself on a lower rung of friendship than them due to time alone, so you’ve never actually thought that you might be on Dave’s list of things he genuinely cares for. Your heart, always trying its best to make you feel like shit, pounds uncomfortably in your chest.

You feel a brief moment of panic. Should you tell him you care about him, too? Would that be weird? What would you do if you weren’t the world’s biggest, most inept piece of shit? You have no idea.

You’ve been quiet for too long.

“So yeah, I guess I care about like, what, five, maybe six things?” Dave continues in your silence. “I give a total of six fucks, seven max. They cost me a fortune though, each one was like twenty dollars because they were labeled organic and non-GMO or whatever the fuck at Whole Foods. You should be honored to have one.”

“Yeah, sure I am,” you say. It comes out in a mocking tone but you mean it, truly.

“Listen Kar,” Eridan says in his stupid, fake accent. He adjusts the settings on the fryer as another order comes in, heating up the oil to speed up the cooking time. “I totally understand your romantic troubles, trust me. You’ve come to the right person.”

“Really?” you ask. “Because last time I checked you were just as big of a desperate, romantically-challenged idiot as I am. That whole fucking thing with you and Feferi? Did you think I just forgot about that? About how you bullied her into dating you because she was too nice to say no?”

“It wasn’t like that,” he argues with a pout. “What Fef and I have is way more complicated than this situation with Dave, I don’t expect you to understand, alright.”

“Whatever.” When it comes to Eridan, it’s better to pick your battles. Engaging with him when he talks about his failed romantic escapades can lead to days or even weeks of unwanted, irritating correspondence with him. You should have never given him your Pesterchum handle.

You’re not even sure why you told him about Dave to begin with. You guess it just kind of slipped out of you in the middle of your stressful work day, listed as another ingredient in the rancid, festering chicken sandwich of your reprehensible existence. Eridan, convinced of his prowess as a love guru, ran with it almost immediately. You’re already exhausted from working for three hours and now Eridan’s voice is more loud, reverberating flatulence in your ear.

“You’ve gotta learn to take more chances, Kar,” he continues without your permission. “You gotta take this situation by the balls and tell that Dave guy how you feel. Take control of your life for once, yeah?”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” you ask, putting together a chicken sandwich. “Because it doesn’t seem to be working for you.”

“Oh it’s working,” Eridan assures you. “You have no idea how many matches on Tinder I have right now, I can hardly keep up. And all it comes down to is being assertive, telling people what you want outright, no fuckin’ around with unnecessary fluff and shit. Don’t beat around the bush, Kar, tell him you want him right off the bat and he’ll be trippin’ over his pants trying to sleep with you.”

“That is the worst fucking advice I’ve ever heard,” you say with a sneer. “I’d be better off seeking help from forty year old virgins on the internet who haven’t interacted with another human being in a full decade than listen to anything you say. Even the most low-life, despicable people in society would somehow be less inept than you are at engaging with possible romantic partners and I’d honestly rather get a root canal from a malnourished, drug-addicted toddler than ever take your advice.”

“Jesus, what crawled up your ass and died?” Eridan asks with a hurt expression, handing you a cardboard sleeve to fill with fries. You almost feel bad, looking at his pouty lower lip and downturned eyes, but then you remember that he’s a huge misogynist and an even bigger asshole, and the feeling passes immediately.

You’re not going to tell him that today is your dad’s birthday and that’s why you’re particularly uptight, lest he launch into some sort of pseudo grief counseling. You get through the rest of your shift in relative silence, closing down the store with Eridan after a few more hours. He watches you closely, hesitant to get too far into your personal space, and wishes you good luck with Dave when you part ways in the parking lot.

In the car you hold back exhausted tears, trying to find one fucking radio station that isn’t playing overly dramatic and melancholy songs. It’s only about nine at night, but you’re so tired and you miss your dad so much that a few overdue, long repressed tears roll down your cheeks. You scrub them away with a hard hand, trying to get yourself together when you make it to your apartment.

Dave is on the couch in sweatpants and a t-shirt, freshly showered and watching TV when you enter. “Hey dude,” he greets you.

“Hey,” you say back, and your voice warbles so pitifully that you shut up as soon as the word is out of you mouth.

Dave picks up on it immediately, standing up quickly to join you by the door as you take off your shoes and work cap. “Ah, dude,” he says sympathetically when he sees you crying. He looks a little uncomfortable. “Is it your dad?”

You rub at your eyes and sigh, trying to push more words out of your mouth without the sounds morphing into a sob. “Yeah.”

You close your eyes to try and stop the tears but you can still feel Dave’s hesitance in front of you, too nervous to approach you any further. You can tell he wants to help but is too emotionally confused himself to know what to do, only recently allowing himself to properly feel things other than irony and disinterest in front of you. The fact that he’s trying at all, awkwardly starting to ramble about his day in front of you to distract you from your sadness, makes the lump in your throat more constrictive.

Your eyes open, tears blurring Dave’s lanky form in front of you, his hands gesturing wildly as he speaks. He won’t meet your eyes, gaze whipping around to different objects in the apartment, and he doesn’t look back at you until you start walking towards him. The distance closes between you and his arms open to accommodate your body as you fall into a hug. Dave relaxes into the embrace surprisingly fast, probably anticipating it more than you thought. He rubs your back for a second but then stops and lets his hands linger on your waist.

Your chest contracts with too many feelings, the combination of grief for your father and excitement at your proximity to Dave overwhelming your senses. You grasp onto the fabric of Dave’s shirt, face hidden in his chest, and try to hold in all the embarrassing sobs threatening to escape from your throat.

“I don’t know what to say, man,” Dave mutters against your hair. “I’m not super fond of seein’ you cry and all, but I can only think of cliche shit to tell you.”

You grunt against him, still not trusting your voice. He takes that as a cue to keep talking.

“Like, uh… he’s in a better place,” he tries, the statement sounding more like a question. “And… fuck I’m so bad at this, dude, please give me some direction here. I feel like a naive Hollywood starlet absolutely blowing her first audition and learning about the harsh reality of showbiz and rejection for the first time in her young life.”

You laugh a little and the sound is muffled by his t-shirt. “I appreciate the effort, at least,” you tell him in a quiet voice. “Even if it is the most horrible attempt at emotional comfort ever made.”

“I’m still learning,” Dave says, his own tone sliding back into comfortable sarcasm.

“You’re doing better than some of my other friends,” you mutter. “When I told Sollux my dad died he said, and I quote, ‘That sucks.’”

Dave laughs and it rumbles in his chest, vibrating against your cheek. You feel warm.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Dave says, pulling away from you. He holds you at arm’s length and the pressure of his hands against your hips is steadying. “I saw Love Actually in the On Demand menu, if you wanna watch it I promise I’ll keep my sarcastic comments and totally accurate, expert movie opinions to myself for at least part of it.”

“Are you even capable of doing that?” you ask rhetorically. “Are you sure you won’t combust from the sheer amount of effort it’ll take for you to keep your mouth shut for an hour and a half? I don’t want to be around when all of the dumb shit building up inside you from being quiet for that long eventually bursts out of you in an explosion of word vomit and metaphorical drivel.”

“I’m not makin’ any promises,” Dave says honestly. He lets you go to return to the couch and you miss his touch more than you’d care to admit. “You go change, dude, I’ll pull up this garbage. I mean this super good and definitely not stupid movie.”

“Shut up,” you tell him, but there’s no bite behind it.

You strip out of your work clothes in your room and barely have the energy to put the articles in your laundry hamper, nearly dropping them onto the floor instead. Your reflection, tired and disheveled, stares back at you in your mirror with nothing helpful to say. You rub at your red eyes and sigh as too many thoughts run through your head at once, leaving you unable to make sense of anything.

Hugging Dave was a good idea, it did actually make you feel a little bit better, but you think it may have also been a huge mistake. As if you don’t already feel like shit today, the embrace has just reiterated your position as Dave’s roommate and friend, nothing more. Your body longs to reconnect with his, pining and desperate and stupid, and you blame your compromised emotional state for how badly you ache for him. It’s not helping you feel any better, knowing that he probably only sees you as a friend, as a “bro” or a “dude” as he would put it. You shake him out of your head and a deep, ashamed part of you wants to stay in your room and avoid him for the rest of the night. Another, bigger part of you just wants to cry again.

You miss your dad. He would always help you with stuff like this, from when you were a preteen first discovering that you liked boys to when you were in high school dealing with your first relationship. Despite your conservative upbringing, your dad didn’t shame you when you came out to him, didn’t make you feel as though his love was conditional or that he would somehow love you less for being gay. You remember crying when you told him, thirteen and confused, and how he pulled you into his arms, and told you he loved you.

Now, as you struggle to control your feelings for Dave, you wish he was around to talk to. He would have better advice than fucking Eridan, and would at least help you feel less like a hopeless idiot for a little while.

You get dressed with a frown, hoping that putting on soft, comfortable clothing will cheer you up a little bit. It helps, just enough, and the ratty old sweatpants you put on, the ones with penguins on them, make you smile.

“Alright, are you ready for this shit?” Dave asks you when you return to the living room. He’s made popcorn in your absence and is sitting on the couch with the bowl in his lap, TV remote at the ready.

“I guess so,” you grumble.

Dave lifts his arm up and waves you over. “Come on, dude,” he says. “I know you’re in a mood and everything, come get your cuddle on. My shoulder’s right here, it’s ready to get cried on and it’s got your motherfuckin’ name on it.”

You roll your eyes, trying to hide how your stomach coils at the thought of snuggling up against Dave while you watch a romantic comedy together. It feels dangerously domestic and you almost want to avoid his touch, sit as far away from him as possible, just to make things easier for yourself. Of course, you fail to resist the hole in your chest that aches for comfort, and you slide into Dave’s side on the couch, comfortable under his arm.

He presses play on the remote and shoves popcorn into his mouth, the opening credits of Love Actually drifting in through the speakers. He keeps his promise and actually stays relatively quiet throughout the film, only making a few comments here and there. You appreciate the fact that he shuts up entirely during the parts that he knows you like and only talks during the less important scenes.

By the end of the movie, the popcorn bowl is empty and you’ve slumped further down Dave’s side, his arm still loosely hung around your shoulders. He squeezes you against his body for a second and rubs your arm, once, twice.

“Feeling better?” he asks. “I mean, you’re not crying anymore so I’d say overall this was a successful endeavor.”

“Yes, you’ve effectively distracted me from my emotions,” you say. “What was I even upset about? I can hardly remember.”

Dave pouts at your tone but puts on a hopeful expression. “It helped a little bit, at least, right?”

“It did,” you say honestly. You’re still feeling a bit down, but you think that’s going to last for the rest of the night, regardless of what you try to do to avoid it. “Thanks,” you tell Dave. “I know this shit isn’t really up your alley, but…”

“No problem, dude,” he says with a small smile. “I mean, I did basically the bare fucking minimum here, but I’ll still humbly accept your thanks.”

You laugh, a short exhale through your nose, and Dave grins back at you. In such close proximity you can’t smell anything but him, his scent clouding your senses, clean smelling conditioner and piney soap mixing together. Your eyes drift to his mouth and snap back up to his eyes as soon as you realize what you’re thinking of doing. You want to kiss him, so badly, but you don’t. You pull away from him instead and stand up, a cavity in your chest aching, sore. He doesn’t say anything, and neither do you.

Chapter Text

Your feelings for Karkat are getting a little out of control. You catch yourself staring at him five times in one day, and you nearly run someone over with a lawn mower at work one morning because your daydream about him gets out of hand. When your boss yells at you for almost committing vehicular manslaughter via lawn mower you blame it on the heat of the early Texas summer, but you can tell that even she think its a bullshit excuse.

After your near death experience in the form of trying to ask Karkat out, you’ve been attempting, desperately, to tamp down your feelings for him. It isn’t working very well, especially now that it’s hotter and Karkat’s gotten into the habit of wearing his boxer shorts around the apartment instead of actual pants. His choice fucking thighs are on full display for you once he gets back from work, perfectly thick and tan, tempting you all day. If someone told you that God himself came down from heaven to sculpt Karkat’s thighs out of only the most precious, pliable clay then you’d fucking believe them, because god damn are they nice.

Since your admittedly half-assed attempts to suppress your feelings for Karkat aren’t working out, you also try to avoid him, just to make things easier for yourself. You figure it’s better to just steer clear of any accidental flirty interactions you may have with him, and you decide to stow away in your room for as long as you can one afternoon in the hopes that it’ll help. It does, but only for approximately three hours, until Karkat calls you for dinner and you both end up on the couch afterward, tangled up together to watch TV. You just can’t resist him, he’s too pretty and you’re too gay. He’s a big, industrial magnet and you’re a helpless paperclip, pulled out from your desk drawer and launched at him with enough force to make you dizzy.

Things start to get so dire that you have to consult Rose. So far she’s the only one out of your friend group who has successfully managed to woo or court anyone of romantic interest, so she’s your best bet for figuring this shit out.

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 21:54 --
TG: yo rose
TG: i need ur help with some shit in the romance department
TG: assuming youre not like
TG: absolutely drowning in tits right now
TG: in which case tell kanaya i said hey and her bff is givin me all kindsa trouble
TT: No, I am not “drowning in tits,” as you so artfully suggested.
TT: I’m not entirely sure what that would entail, though I imagine the terrifying prospect of drowning would counter any enjoyment I would get from being in such close proximity to Kanaya’s breasts.
TT: Are her breasts liquid in this scenario? If not, how could I be drowning in them? Are they a more viscous material, such as gelatin or magma? Is this a merely metaphorical drowning or more literal and physiological? We’ll simply never know.
TG: no her boobs are definitely liquid in this scenario
TG: and you just got out your favorite straw
TG: its one of those crazy ones with all the fuckin loops in it and youre approaching kanayas tits with a thirst you cant control
TG: youre suckin on that straw like its your lifeline like its your oxygen supply
TG: but oh fuck you start to go too fast, kanayas screamin at you to stop as her tits start to disappear
TG: you start choking on that shit just fucking inhaling boob liquid like theres no tomorrow
TT: May I request that we end this metaphor before it goes on any longer?
TG: yeah thats cool
TG: that one got away from me a little bit im kinda in a mood as im sure you already know
TT: I assumed.
TT: And this has to do with Karkat? Like most of your problems?
TG: hey i have other problems besides karkat okay
TG: you analyze them like every fucking time we talk
TG: and you think youre being subtle but you totally arent
TT: I must get that from conversing with you too often.
TT: You wouldn’t know subtle if it glanced at you in passing from across the room.
TG: yeah whatever you wanna hear about this shit or what?
TT: Yes.
TG: im having struggles rose
TG: were talking real life difficulties and problems
TG: issues and predicaments
TG: motherfucking troubles
TG: with not ogling the shit out of karkat every time hes around
TT: And what is the issue with this?
TG: oh my god rose keep up
TG: get out the journal i know youre keeping about all this and look through your goddamn notes
TG: the problem is hes obviously gonna start to notice if im givin him googly eyes all the damn time
TG: like some kinda lovesick teenager
TG: and if he notices which he will btw then things will get all kinds of fucking awkward and inconvenient
TT: Have you considered just telling him how you feel?
TT: Perhaps that would allow you to skip any awkwardness and you two could have a genuine conversation about your feelings for once.
TT: Thus making things easier for the both of you.
TG: no dude listen
TG: i thought about it okay i really did
TG: and i definitely for real almost asked him out but my heart rate was getting to dangerous levels about it
TG: were talking full blown cardiac arrest alright i was about to pass out
TG: wouldve needed mouth to mouth right there on the kitchen floor
TG: fuck i shoulda done that
TG: thats the perfect way to get karkats luscious lips on mine without having to talk about my feelings like a square
TG: i missed my fuckin chance rose im real torn up about it
TT: So you have at least thought about confessing to him, then?
TG: yeah its crossed my mind
TT: And the reason you haven’t acted on these thoughts is because you’re under the impression that he will reject you?
TG: yeah
TT: Do you think this has anything to do with your own self-esteem?
TT: That maybe you don’t feel worthy of Karkat’s affections and are therefore avoiding any confrontation about them?
TG: no nope dont do that
TG: this is not a self esteem thing alright it has nothing to do with my inner demons or anything like that
TG: the stone cold reality here is that he doesnt like me that way
TG: im only askin you how you suppress your gay ass feelings when you fall for a girl whos virtually unobtainable
TT: Do you want me to say what you want to hear or do you want my honest answer?
TG: gimme the real shit rose
TG: nothing fake only that fda approved shit
TT: My real, honest advice, which is 100% licensed by the FDA and other associated consortiums, is that suppressing your feelings will not help.
TT: The most that will accomplish is making you frustrated and upset, more so than you currently are.
TT: Instead, as your friend and unofficial psychiatrist, I recommend a daily dose of confessing to Karkat with an additive of getting over yourself.
TT: Paired with a healthy diet and regular exercise, you should be feeling beTTer within the next few weeks.
TG: damn rose youve got me fucked up im disappointed as hell
TG: just imagine the disappointment on my face right now
TG: my mouth is all slanted in a sad little frown my lips pursed as hell
TG: i got one eyebrow quirked up all intrigued like because i cant fucking believe you just told me to confess to karkat
TG: thats straight up bullshit rose
TG: i come to you for help and you give me this shit? im appalled
TT: You wanted my honest advice, and I gave it to you.
TT: Believe me, it would save you and all of your friends a lot of unnecessary dramatics and frustration if you and Karkat were able to just work this out.
TT: It’s been several weeks and it seems that the attraction you feel towards him has only gotten stronger.
TT: Don’t you think it would just be easier to tell him?
TG: no because he doesnt like me back so whats the fucking point
TT: Dave.
TG: what
TT: Just…
TT: Think about it. Let yourself feel this way and see where it goes. You might be surprised.
TG: what the fuck is that cryptic shit supposed to mean
TT: I’m sure you have the capacity to figure it out if you give it some thought.
TT: I have to go to work. Good luck with Karkat.
TT: And don’t make me say I told you so when this situation inevitably comes to its conclusion. You know how much I revel in it.
TG: jesus okay
TG: thanks anyways
TT: My pleasure.
-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 22:34 --

You let your phone clatter onto your desk with a frustrated sigh. Rose doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about, and if Karkat liked you back you’d definitely fucking know by now. Karkat wears all his emotions on his sleeve, and he has so many of them all the fucking time that he’s basically got a whole fucking sweater of them. He cries at the drop of a hat and consistently goes on angry rants whenever something pisses him off and while you haven’t witnessed it yet, you’re sure Karkat would be super fucking obvious if he liked someone. He’d be all shy glances and hand touches and flirty giggles, blushing like a schoolgirl in a vaguely pedophilic anime. That’s just the way he is, you know him.

He doesn’t like you. And that’s really all there is to say on the matter.

You just shake your head, trying to remove the residual images you have of a shirtless Karkat floating around in your brain from when he’d gotten out of the shower earlier, and get back to what you were doing before you messaged Rose. You’re in the middle of mixing a new song, a real one, and you’ve hit a wall with it. You think the beat is fresh as all hell, but something about the instrumentals in the back doesn’t sound right. You’ve adjusted the shit out of them like a million times and you still can’t get the flow where you want it, it’s simply not fly enough. If you want to put lyrics over the song like you plan to without it sounding like a bunch of muddled garbage, you’re gonna have to figure this shit out. You need a second opinion.

Your heart is still beating a little too fast for your liking, your conversation with Rose sending you into a mild panic for a few minutes. You take some time to calm down before you momentarily abandon your project to go retrieve Karkat from his room. He’s sitting in his bed, curled up under a bunch of blankets and watching something on his laptop. He looks up when you enter and he looks even more tired than usual.

“Hey dude,” you greet. “I know you don’t have anywhere near the level of expertise I do when it comes to music, but I need your help with this one.”

“Oh god,” he groans immediately. “Is this a real song or some kind of meme filled dumpster fire? If it’s the latter consider my answer a hard no.”

“Nah, this is the real deal,” you say confidently. “I’m talking full on beats and motherfucking rhythms, lyrics and meanings and all that shit. Well, there’s no lyrics yet, but I’m working on it. That’s what I need you for.”

He squints at you, wrinkles showing up on his forehead. “You want me to help you write lyrics?” he asks. “I’m monumentally under-qualified for that and you know it.”

“No dude, I need you to help me with the shit before the lyrics,” you explain with a circular hand gesture. “Making music is like a forty step process and I’m only on step fifteen and I’m fucking stuck, dude, I am ass deep in this shit and there’s no turning back now. You gotta come listen and tell me if the tempo’s alright, give me a rating on a scale of ear-bleeding trash to tight as hell.”

Karkat pushes his blankets off and moves his laptop so he can stand. “I guess I can help with that,” he says with a shrug. “But I swear to god if I put your headphones on and all I hear is a bass-boosted version of the entire Bee Movie or some other equally repulsive shit then I won’t repress my urge to break your computer.”

“I swear it’s not the Bee Movie or any other ridiculous fucking meme,” you say. You lead the way back to your room, having to wake up your computer so you can get back to the file you were working on. “Jerry Seinfeld’s weird, kind of shrill voice is not gonna come pounding against your ear drums, I promise. This is like a real, serious, actual song, okay.”

“Didn’t realize you were capable of making such a thing,” Karkat mutters. He takes your headphones when you hand them to him, holding them a little awkwardly. He looks up at you. “So… you just want me to tell you if the beat is okay?”

“Yeah, just let me know if it sounds like it’s clashing with the background instrumentals,” you explain. “I’ve been workin’ on it for too long and I can’t decide if it needs more tweaking or if I can move on.”

Karkat moves to put on the headphones but then stops halfway. “You swear it’s not a meme?”

“It’s not a meme,” you confirm.

He narrows his eyes but puts the headphones on anyways. “Alright,” he says. He closes his eyes in preparation of hearing your music, which makes you smile just a little bit as you press play.

You watch him carefully as the song starts to play, taking note of the way his eyebrows raise in surprise and his lips purse together in concentration. Your heart takes on a dangerous rhythm, partly because someone is actually listening to your music and partly because Karkat is listening to your music. Your fingers curl into nervous fists and you start cracking your knuckles when Karkat opens his eyes to stare at you for a second.

“This is really good!” he yells, pointing to the headphones.

You’re so elated to hear he likes it that you draw yourself onto your toes for a second, still wringing your hands together, before settling back down. The song continues thumping through the headphones and Karkat bobs his head to the beat at the tail end of it, staring down at the floor in concentration. When the song ends he removes the headphones and hands them back to you with a wide-eyed expression.

“Dave, that was… “ He pauses, searching for the right words. “I had no idea you were making stuff like this.”

“So you liked it?” you ask, just to be sure.

Karkat rolls his eyes at your insecurity. “Yes, Jesus, I liked it,” he confirms. “And the beat is fine, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Okay, good,” you say uncomfortably. You’re not used to accepting compliments about your music. “Sweet.”

“You said you were gonna put lyrics over it, right?” he asks. You nod. “You can definitely hear the divide between the verses and the chorus even with just the instrumentals, it’s really… it’s really incredible, Dave.”

You feel a hot, prickly flush crawl up your neck. “Thanks, man.”

“I don’t know why you’re not sharing this online or something,” he continues. “I mean, why fill that ridiculous website you run with a bunch of insulting, garish horseshit when you could be posting this instead?”

“Bro, you’ve been on my website?” you ask with a grin. “Didn’t realize you were cyberstalking me.”

To your surprise, Karkat actually blushes, barely noticeable against his dark skin. “I mean, of course I looked you up,” he stutters. “You were a stranger about to live in my house for an indeterminate amount of time and I had to make sure you weren’t going to murder me in my sleep and wear my skin as a costume.”

“So you were totally cyberstalking me,” you confirm. “What, did you get on my Instagram, too? Check out my old MySpace page? They’re pretty fucking sweet, I gotta say.”

Karkat crosses his arms. “Shut up,” he says. “Just… how did you even make this song? You don’t have your turntables so…”

“Here, lemme show you.”

You lean over your desk with Karkat to show him the program you use, along with the soundboard you bought a few weeks ago. He watches with genuine interest as you take him through your process and show him how to use the program you favor, from the initial beats of the song all the way through the mixing and the addition of lyrics. You don’t have a high quality microphone so you don’t add lyrics often, but you let Karkat listen to one of the songs that does have your voice over it, just to see his reaction.

“Jesus, Dave,” he says as the song thuds out of your speakers. “This is…. You’re really talented, I…” He shakes his head, as if he’s seconds away from having an entire conniption about the fact that you are a three-dimensional person who has multiple interests and talents. It makes you laugh, just a short exhale through your nose.

“God, dude, you’re gonna make me blush.” You’re already blushing. “I mean, it’s really not that hard, once you get used to the interface and the concepts and everything. You wanna try?”

Karkat glances at your computer then back to you. “Can I?”

“Yeah, man, go for it.”

You pull out your desk chair to let him sit down and lean over him to explain what to do in more detail. Karkat follows your instructions to a T, asking questions here and there about what such and such button does or how to speed up the tempo of the song or add another instrument. You give him a fair amount of help, putting your hand over his on the mouse to guide him to the right tool. You feel warm so close to him, and you decide to give it a rest after about thirty minutes; your hands have gotten far too sweaty for your liking. By the end of your impromptu jam session, Karkat has created about ten seconds of a medium tempo beat with a little bit of violin in the back. It sounds good, and you save it to your computer in case he ever wants to work on it again.

“See? Told you it wasn’t too hard,” you say.

“Are you kidding me?” Karkat asks incredulously. “All of that work and we only have a fraction of a song! I can’t believe you have even an ounce of the patience necessary to actually fucking complete something.”

You shrug. “It’s not too bad once you get used to it.”

Karkat opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something else, but his thought is interrupted by a yawn. He looks like a little kid standing in front of you, sleepily rubbing his eyes and scratching at the side of his head.

“Dude, you can go back to your bed if you want,” you say. You feel a little bad for pulling him out of his room when he’s so tired. “I’ll quit buggin’ you.”

He just shrugs, makes a face. “It’s not like I was doing anything important,” he insists. “I was just watching that fucking baking show, the British one?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, the new season is on Netflix.” He pauses for a second, and tilts his head in the direction of the hallway. “Wanna come watch the rest with me? I think even someone with your… taste in media could enjoy it.”

“I dunno dude, my taste is pretty fuckin’ refined,” you say. “My palette for cinema and television is accustomed to only the finest flavors, the most savory, umami shit I can get. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stomach such low-hanging fruit, such common drivel.”

Karkat squints at you. “If you don’t want to watch it you can just-”

“Nah, I’m coming,” you interrupt, and lead the way back to Karkat’s room.

His laptop has kept a section of the bed warm while you were jamming together, and you hop onto the mattress with a pleasant sigh. Karkat’s bed is one of those fancy ones with that weird foam that conforms to your body, and fuck does it conform to you when you lie down.

“Dude, this is the comfiest fucking bed I’ve ever been in,” you state. “Like my ass is being absolutely cupped right now by this mattress, it’s doing all sorts of caressing and soothing and shit. I might never leave.” You snuggle down into the bed even more to emphasize your point.

“This was one of the first things I bought once I had made enough money at work,” Karkat explains as he gets into bed next to you and retrieves his laptop. “Before that I had this shitty fucking mattress with no box spring or anything, it was just on the floor. I think my back is still fucked up from it and will continue to be a chronic pain in my life until it eventually kills me.”

“Nah, this one is reversing the shit out of those back problems,” you say confidently. “If anything can save your lumbar or whatever the fuck it’s this thing.”

“That’s why I’m in it so much,” Karkat says. He scoots a little closer to you so his computer can rest on your thighs, warm through his blankets. You swallow once, twice, trying to push down the hard knot of nerves forming in your throat.

The show Karkat puts on is actually pretty entertaining. It’s a baking competition where a bunch of home cooks have to make complicated ass pastries and bread and shit, complete with two hosts who dial up the banter to twelve during each episode. Some of the shit they say is genuinely funny and you hear Karkat let out half snorts every once in a while when a quip is particularly amusing. The sound of him laughing makes you smile every time.

You and Karkat migrate towards each other throughout the episodes, eventually sitting shoulder to shoulder, your thighs touching. You can feel every inch of him against you, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes slowly, tired. You both start to slide down the mattress from your sitting positions until you’re lying down practically on top of each other, Karkat snuggled up against your side while the computer rests on your stomach.

Your conversation with Rose comes to mind as Karkat chuckles sleepily at a peculiar antic of one of the contestants. Rose had said not to bother with repressing your feelings, to let yourself feel them and “see what happens,” whatever the fuck that means. It sounds like she’s insinuating that if you act on your emotions it will somehow result in you and Karkat miraculously getting together which you know isn’t going to fucking happen, though he suggestion is sounding more and more appealing the longer Karkat is touching you.

Without much thought, you put your arm around him, sending your heart into a spastic frenzy. It feels like that moment in your sleep when you dream that you’re about to fall off a really tall building and then your body jerks you awake and your heart is pounding out of control, except in this case it doesn’t seem to be going away. To your surprise, Karkat nuzzles closer to you and rests a hand on your chest, his head near your shoulder. You hold your breath, and don’t let it go for a long time.

Chapter Text

“I’m fucking dying,” you tell Dave, wiping sweat off your forehead. “This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever encountered in my years living in this building, and I can’t believe this poorly maintained hovel charges me eight hundred fucking dollars a month just for the air conditioning to be turned off in the middle of the summer.”

Dave just groans back at you, the noise muffled by the fabric of his shirt which is pulled over his face. He’s lying backwards on the couch, his back on the floor and feet up on the cushions, knees bent. He’s been like that for a while now and you’re starting to worry about his spine.

“I would rather have each of my limbs surgically removed from my body and reattached backwards than sit in this heat any longer,” you announce. “This is ridiculous! It’s ninety fucking degrees outside! What kind of under qualified, incompetent, idiot fucking landlord gives a construction crew the go ahead to turn off the air conditioning for like three days? In what universe is that an acceptable thing to do to your tenants? Is today some kind of national holiday that allows people to lose complete control of their higher brain functions so they can act like fools all they damn well please? If that’s the case then maybe we should participate, just go ape shit fucking wild and act like animals for the rest of the day!”

Dave grumbles something from underneath his shirt, but you can’t make it out. You ask for clarification and he removes his shirt entirely, pulling it the rest of the way off his torso and tossing it onto the floor. Your jaw clenches involuntarily at the sight of Dave’s bare stomach and you pointedly keep your eyes on his face, sweaty and red.

“Let’s go to the pool,” he repeats. “There’s one downstairs, right? Like in the building? That’s where your money’s going, yeah?”

“Yeah, but if the air conditioning isn’t working here it sure as hell won’t be working downstairs,” you remind him. You use the edge of your shirt to rub sweat off your forehead and adjust the standing fan you brought into the living room to blow more directly on you. You think you’re about to die of heat stroke.

“Well at least the water will still be cold,” Dave points out. “It’s better than doing this shit. I’m so dehydrated from sweating like a full fucking ton that i think my vision is starting to blur. I see the light and I’m heading towards it, tell my wife I love her.”

“Do you even have swim trunks?” you ask. In your hectic attempt to get everything out of Dave’s apartment all those weeks ago, you’ve realized in the time since that you missed kind of a lot of shit. Beyond his turntables, CDs, and a few miscellaneous items, you also both somehow overlooked an entire hamper of clothes, resulting in Dave wearing the same six t-shirts every week since he’s lived with you. You’re not sure his swim trunks made it into the mix in your frenzy of trying to get out of there.

“I’ve got ‘em,” he reassures you. “Double checked earlier today because if you don’t wanna go to the pool I’m considering opening up a fire hydrant nineties hip-hop music video style and just dancing in the street.”

“Yes, because dancing around on the hot pavement in Texas during the summer sounds infinitely better than sitting quietly indoors,” you say. “We can go to the fucking pool if you want but if the water is hot I’m marching my ass right back up here.”

“Sweet.”

Dave rolls backwards off the couch, nearly hitting the coffee table, and heads to his room. You follow suit, changing into your trunks and grabbing flip flops and a towel. You decide to make some sandwiches to take with you, just in case you get hungry and don’t feel like waiting for the world’s slowest elevator to get back up to your floor.

There is absolutely no one at the pool when you get downstairs. You look around, confused, and worry that the complete lack of patrons is a sign that the pool water is hotter than the air, which sounds wildly more unpleasant than sitting in your hot apartment. You watch as Dave removes a flip flop and dips a toe in, his face morphing into a delighted expression at what he finds.

“It’s cold?” you ask, incredulous.

“It’s cold!” he shouts triumphantly. He slides his other shoe off and immediately jumps into the deep end, splashing you with water. It’s fucking cold all right. You curse at him, the sound bouncing off the echoey walls of the indoor pool, but you don’t think he hears you. When he surfaces, dripping wet, he grins at you like a little kid and your stomach does an incredible flip inside of you. A feeling you can’t describe shoots down your spine. Just from a smile.

“Come on in, dude,” Dave invites. “It’s way better than standing around in the heat like some kind of loser.”

“Shut up, I’m coming,” you grouse at him, taking off your shoes and putting down the bag you put the sandwiches in. You set up your towels on a couple of lounge chairs for when you eventually get out of the pool, and head towards the ladder like a sensible person instead of jumping straight in.

The ladder is a little wobbly, just another wonderful feature of your shitty apartment complex, and when you nearly fall Dave steadies you with hands on your back. His hands, warm and firm against your hips, do less to anchor you than he probably intends and instead send an unpleasant feeling into the pit of your stomach. Your hands shake just a tiny bit as you settle into the pool and you keep as much of your body underwater as you can, feeling a little self-conscious being shirtless around Dave. Where he’s hard and chiseled, you’re soft and loose, from your stomach down to your thighs. You’re torn between being jealous of him and being attracted to him, and it’s a constant uphill battle. Today the needle on the wheel of your struggles has landed firmly on “attracted to him,” the cool beads of water running down his chest solidifying your feelings. You’re not sure if the pool was a good idea or a bad idea.

Dave watches you with a smile as you float around on your back and when you see him staring at you you smack a hand against the pool water to splash him. “What?” you ask, but he doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head. He disappears under the water with a grin and you lose sight of him, his shape a blur. You know Dave, so you look for him with suspicion, and soon feel a tickle at the bottom of your foot. You kick out, but the resistance from the water slows down your reaction and you narrowly miss hitting Dave’s shoulder. He pops back up a few feet away, laughing and trying not to choke on water.

“Fuck you,” you shout at him, though the sound warbles through your own laughter.

The smirk Dave shoots at you from across the pool makes you blush and you watch him for just a second too long. He raises an eyebrow and drifts around in the pool, lazily kicking his feet, directionless. You take a deep breath, hold it, and slowly submerge yourself under the water to hide yourself from his pretty face and nice abs for just a minute. Despite the chlorine, you open your eyes and find that Dave has gone also underwater to drift around in front of you, looking at you with squinted eyes. He joins you at the bottom of the pool, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and when he waves at you, shy, it surprises you so much that you snort out a laugh and almost choke. You stay there with him for a bit longer, just staring at each other, until you run out of oxygen and have to resurface.

Dave is pushing hair out of his eyes when you make it back to the surface, the normally styled locks falling in front of his face in wet clumps. It clings to the sides of his cheeks, emphasizing his jawline. You nervously fiddle with your own hair where it’s nearly brushing your shoulders and forcefully avert your eyes.

You lean away from Dave until your back hits the water and you float for a little while with your eyes closed, enjoying the coolness of the pool and the stillness of the air. You and Dave are both pretty loud guys and having some peace and quiet for once is nice. Dave seems to understand this, or he at least doesn’t have anything he wants to say, because he stays quiet for a long time before speaking again.

“You want food?” he suggests after about an hour of swimming. “I’m fucking starving.”

“Yeah, I made sandwiches,” you tell him and point towards the bag you left on one of the lounge chairs. “One’s peanut butter and jelly, the other’s ham and cheese.”

“Oh shit you made sandwiches?” he repeats with wide, excited eyes. “Fuck dude you’re the best, I’m so fuckin’ thrilled I’m living with someone who has more foresight than me. As far as foresight goes yours is twenty-twenty, okay, you’re out here with your pre-made sandwiches and everything like you really have your shit together. I was about to go all the way back up to the apartment like some kind of dumbass.”

“That sounds like something you’d do,” you say. You watch as Dave gets out of the pool and dries his hair off with one of your towels, leaving it sticking up in different directions. It’s cute.

You decide to get out as well, your own stomach rumbling uncomfortably from hunger. You perch yourself at the edge of one of the chairs and open up the bag you brought to take out the sandwiches.

“Which one do you want?” you ask Dave, holding them out for him.

“Nah, you choose,” he insists. “You made them.”

“They’re just sandwiches,” you say with a confused expression. You take the peanut butter and jelly one anyways, handing the ham to Dave. He takes it happily, unwrapping it and sitting across from you on another chair.

“This is a good ass sandwich, man,” he says once he’s eaten a bit. “Like on a scale of one to ten this is a full blown Bobby Flay sandwich masterpiece . We’re talking layers of flavor and aromas and all kinds of shit, if this were one of those lame cooking shows the judges would be losing their minds right now over this sandwich. They’d stop the competition in the first round and just give you all the fucking prize money along with their own wallets because that’s how good this fucking sandwich is. You are the winner. It’s you.”

“I don’t think regular people enjoy sandwiches this much,” you say. “Are you sure this is a completely platonic admiration? I swear to god, if I see you pop a boner over the sandwich I made I’m leaving and calling the police and kicking you out.”

“I’m telling you dude, it’s good shit,” Dave defends.

You roll your eyes. “It’s not even that special,” you insist. “All I did was add a little mayo.”

“Mayo!” Dave exclaims, as if it’s a major scientific breakthrough that he’s spent his life’s work trying to discover. “That’s what’s fuckin’ doing it for me, man, it’s the goddamn mayo. A choice condiment, in my opinion.”

“Mayo is a major component of my diet,” you agree. “Everyone likes to get all melodramatic about it, like have you ever met someone who didn’t like mayo? They’d swear it was the concoction of the devil or something, like it’s personally wronged them in some way, when in reality it is a key ingredient in like every good recipe ever.”

“I feel that, dude,” Dave says. “Mayo gets a bad rap and I’m gonna dedicate my life to changing people’s perceptions of it. I’m starting a GoFundMe and a nonprofit organization for the development of positive feelings about mayonnaise and the recognition of its importance as a condiment.”

“I’ll be your first donor,” you promise.

Dave laughs and you both finish your food, watching as other tenants and their families start to trickle into the pool with the same idea as you. Soon the room becomes full of other people and you feel almost upset that they’re interrupting your alone time with Dave. You were enjoying yourself quite a bit, talking about mayo and other stupid shit with him, but now you feel like people are encroaching on you. You almost want to go back to the apartment until Dave suggests the hot tub.

“The hot tub?” you repeat. “No thanks, I don’t exactly want to simultaneously die of heat stroke and be boiled to death.”

“Ah, come on,” Dave begs. “It’s not even that hot in here.”

You take a breath and consider his proposal, weighing the pros and cons. On one hand, it’ll be really fucking hot and it’ll probably make your skin break out, but on the other hand there’s no one else in the hot tub, everyone in the vicinity seemingly too smart to bother getting in. You glance at Dave, who’s standing up and stretching his arms over his head, and take note of how low his trunks are slung on his hips and how much of his skin you can see. You swallow once and look away.

“Alright, fine,” you concede. “But only for a few minutes.”

“Sweet.” Dave heads for the hot tub, which is in a smaller, lower section of the room that’s attached to the far end of the pool. You follow him and absolutely do not stare at his butt or the movement of his back muscles as he walks. Doing that would be stupid.

The two of you must be magnetic or have some sort of gravitational pull because the moment you step into the hot tub about five more people decide to join you. Soon you’re squished up between Dave and an abnormally hairy young man, while a random woman in a too small bikini tries to make conversation with Dave. You don’t stay in for very long.

You head back to the main pool and dick around for a while longer, but soon it gets so crowded that you decide to go back up to the apartment. The air conditioning welcomes you as you enter, and you take a much welcomed deep inhale of the cool air.

“Oh shit, guess they turned the AC back on,” Dave says as he steps inside behind you. “Fuck, okay, it’s actually kind of cold in here now that I’m all damp and everything. My nipples could cut glass right now.”

“Yeah, jesus, I guess it’s working fine now,” you comment. “I’m gonna go shower, figure out what you want for dinner while I’m gone.”

“You got it.” He gives you a thumbs up. “To be honest my choice might just be another one of those bomb ass sandwiches you made earlier.”

“Fine with me.”

During your shower, your mind wanders and images of Dave, shirtless and dripping wet, drift through your head without your permission. You recall the events of the last few hours through small flashes of moments, some things replaying in your head over and over again. Dave smiling at you in the pool, Dave tickling the bottom of your foot, Dave putting his hand on your knee in the hot tub, Dave’s cheeks flushing from the heat.

You smile dumbly to yourself, feeling as idiotic and infatuated as usual as you lean up against the shower wall. The longer you think about Dave and his mannerisms, the way he acts around you, the louder a peculiar voice gets in the back of your head. Your brows crease as you consider something new, something you’ve never allowed yourself to think of before.

What if Dave likes you back?

You shake the thought out of your brain almost as soon as it enters, trying to push away the unrealistic idea that Dave might have feelings for you. There’s no way you’re letting your own desperation try to convince you that there might be something between you two; that will only lead you down a long, winding road to disappointment and self-loathing. It’s an arduous journey that you’re not willing to take just yet.

But then you think about the way he looks at you and then often looks away when you catch his eye, as if he doesn’t want you to notice him staring at you with such fondness. You think about how often he touches you, so carefree and comfortable, everything from nudging you in the side to fully draping himself on you on the couch. You think about the shape of his mouth when he talks to you, pulled into a bright smile that’s all teeth, eyes shining. You think about his hands on your hips and in your hair and on your arms.

The water starts to get cold as you stare at the shower wall with your mouth agape. Your brows have furrowed together in concentration and confusion, the idea that you might actually have a chance with Dave far more stressful than you thought it would be. Something hot and scared scrapes against the inside of your stomach like nails on a chalkboard, and the feeling mixes with something much lighter and softer. It’s excitement, you realize, and hope, and a little bit of something that’s not quite love, but close.

You press your fingers to your lips as you consider something new, daydream about what it might be like to kiss Dave, to have him kiss you. Your hand closes into a fist as insecure, unhelpful thoughts push away the hopefulness in your head, a common occurrence that has prevented you from doing anything about this situation thus far. For once, you don’t want to let your low self-esteem and previous experiences with relationships get in the way. You’re not letting this one go and you refuse to allow the bad thoughts take over the good ones. Dave likes you. At least, you think he does. And fuck if you’re going to let that slip through your fingers.

You decide that you have to tell him. You don’t know when, or where, or especially how, but you know you have to. That’s the only way you’ll know for sure if he feels anything for you, and you’d rather be rejected one hundred times over than have to wonder for the rest of your life if you missed out on something with him. Even if he says no, even if he dismisses your feelings and moves on, you’ll at least know what his intentions are towards you and be able to move on. You hope that won’t happen, and let yourself believe in the best case scenario for once.

You finish your shower with nervous, shaking hands, and they clench into fists when you find Dave back in the kitchen. He’s at the island chopping up a bunch of vegetables, and your salad spinner is sitting at the ready to his right.

“Hey dude,” he greets, not looking up from his knife.

“Are you making a salad?” you ask incredulously. “Dave Strider, who a month ago couldn’t tell a cucumber from a zucchini, is making a salad ? Wait, don’t move, let me take a picture so I can commemorate this moment for posterity. I’m marking the calendar right now.”

“Fuck off, man,” he whines. “I’ve improved a lot in the kitchen, okay, I can more than handle a little salad every once in a while. Fuck, I could make a cobb salad, a motherfucking Caesar salad, a Greek salad, you name it. I’m basically a salad connoisseur at this point and I’ve already approved the plans for a new, salad-themed restaurant. It’s gonna be tight as hell right in downtown Houston and all the hipster fucks will come down to buy their overpriced salads. I’m gonna be making bank in no fucking time.”

You step closer to him, leaning over his shoulder to watch his technique. His knife skills are still a little awkward and clumsy but he’s definitely improved since he first arrived at your house. You can smell him when he’s this close to you and you breathe in the scent of chlorine and piney soap as discreetly as you can. It takes more effort than you’d like to admit to resist outright sniffing him.

“Do you still have all of your fingers?” you ask sarcastically. “You should have ten.”

He huffs and lets go of the knife to show you his hands. “All good,” he says. “I’m basically on par with you at this point when it comes to cooking and I know you’re only acting out because you’re jealous.”

“This is not cooking ,” you say with a wide gesture. “This is chopping things up and putting them in a bowl. No heat or skill required.”

Dave threateningly waves the knife at you and you take a step back with a laugh. You go around to the other side of the island, leaning on the counter to watch him work. This seems to make him nervous, as he fumbles a little with cutting up a few bell peppers, but he gets it together after a few minutes. He explains to you that he figured you should have something green with dinner, since you hardly had any vegetables all week, both of you too lazy to properly cook anything and just ordering out instead.

“Since I’m still daydreaming about that choice fuckin’ sandwich you made earlier, I was thinking we could have like grilled cheese or something with this,” he suggests. “And I mean, grilled cheese is fucking nothing, right? I’ve never grilled a cheese before in my life but considering I’ve already won the ‘most improved’ award for cooking I think I’ll be pretty good at it.”

You just shrug. “I don’t really give a shit,” you say. “I’m just glad I’m not doing any of the cooking here. I am gonna stick around, though, just because I don’t trust your sorry ass with anything that conducts heat or requires basic cooking skills. You may have improved but you’re still an absolute disaster in the kitchen and I am not going to be held responsible for your death via grilled cheese.”

Dave laughs and holds up the knife, dangerously loose in his grip. You can practically see it falling out of his hand and clattering to the floor, slicing up his ankle, in your mind’s eye. You watch with narrowed eyes as he uses it to gesture as he speaks.

“Look dude, I don’t need a chaperone,” he insists despite his unsafe knife practices. “This isn’t some middle school dance where you gotta make sure the kids don’t try and spike the punch or makeout with each other on the dance floor or something. I’m not thirteen years old, hair all fucked and face lookin’ like the most savory of pizzas, I am a grown ass adult and I think I can handle grillin’ some cheeses.”

“Says the guy waving a knife around like a fucking maniac,” you remind him. He looks down at the knife and then puts it down pointedly.

“Whatever,” he says.

You hang around the kitchen anyways, ignoring his indignant comments about his competence when it comes to cooking. In truth, you know he can probably handle it, but you just want an excuse to hang around him a little longer. You’re drawn to him, floating around him like he’s got an atmospheric pull and you’re a stupid, infatuated satellite. It might just be wishful thinking, but you think he’s drifting towards you too, constantly leaning your way as he speaks regardless of how far away from the stovetop he gets.

You watch with mild interest and a little hesitation as he makes your dinner, paying attention to the ease in his wrists as he flips the sandwiches around with a spatula. He looks relaxed, shoulders hunched in a slouch and face devoid of any creases or wrinkles. His profile is striking and the angle that you’re looking at him from gives you a wonderful view of his jawline, his mouth, his neck. Standing here in the kitchen with him throws you back to the first week he was here, the first real meal you shared together. He didn’t even know what to put in a salad back then, never mind actually making one along with dinner. It makes you smile, thinking about how far he’s come, how far you’ve both come since he first arrived. Nerves constrict your throat as your revelation from earlier comes back to mind and you push down the fear in your chest.

You have to tell him. And you decide right there, watching Dave with fond eyes as he talks nonsense to you, that you’re going to tell him. You’re due to go to your uncle’s wedding with him in a few days, the perfect event for a declaration like this. You make the idea concrete in your head, forcing yourself to commit to it. It feels real suddenly, that you’re going to confess to Dave in a few days, the chance of rejection all too possible. You shake your head to yourself and stand up a little straighter with newfound determination, which Dave doesn’t seem to notice. You’re going to tell him. Soon.

Chapter Text

“Dude, I don’t own a single fuckin’ tie,” you tell Karkat as you rifle through your closet. “How am I gonna show up to a wedding without wearing a tie? Your family’s gonna think I’m some kinda country bumpkin, no good hick whose idea of a formal outfit consists entirely of camo pants and a wife-beater tank top. I can’t have that reputation, dude, people need to know that I clean up hella good, that I can destroy people with the gleam in my eye or the tilt of my chin, ladies and gents alike swooning over how goddamn fly I look, and I can’t pull that off without a fucking tie.”

“Calm down,” Karkat tells you. He bumps you in the back so you turn around and then he pushes an article into your hands. “I have like a million, just take one of mine.”

You look down at the tie he gives you, sleek and black, simple, clean. You nod once and shove it into your suitcase, flipping the whole thing closed with a satisfying thunk. It zips easily, the contents light since you’re only staying in Austin for a day, and you pick it up with a grin.

“Alright, ready to go?” you ask Karkat.

“I’ve been ready for several hours,” he tells you. You follow him out to the car. “It’s just that someone waited until the last fucking second to pack any of his shit.”

“Slipped my mind,” you say with a half shrug.

“I reminded you five times, Dave,” he says sternly.

“Well maybe you should’ve reminded me harder.”

Karkat just rolls his eyes and gets into the car, and you follow suit. The venue for the wedding is almost a three hour drive away and you mentally prepare yourself to be in the car for that long. Karkat’s a good driver, smooth on the brakes and never willing to take unnecessary risks on the road, which you’re so grateful for. You tend to get nervous in cars, you were never in them much as a kid and they kind of freak you out, so you’re glad to have someone like Karkat behind the wheel. You feel safe with him.

“I made a playlist,” Karkat says, plugging the AUX cord into his phone. He presses a few buttons and an alt-rock sounding song comes through the speakers. “Just to make this trip a little more bearable.”

“Oh, dude, I would’ve made us a sick playlist if you had asked,” you say. “I’ve got a lot of cool ass rap songs I’ve made on my phone, just let me-”

“Is this a playlist of the songs you actually put effort into or just the ones you’ve made about memes?”

You take a look at your phone, scrolling through the list of songs. “Yeah, they’re mostly about memes.”

“Right,” he says with a nod, as if you’ve made his point. “Memes are basically the entire extent of your selection of interests. That, and those disgusting atrocities you watch that are somehow still considered movies. Do you rap about those, too? Let me see if I can recreate one of your songs.” He clears his throat and puts on a weird face.”Something something Tommy Wiseau is a cinematic genius blah blah blah I love dicks and ass, it’s your boy Dave and I have the interests of a stereotypical male protagonist in a young adult novel.”

You laugh, delighted. “You fucking got me dude,” you say. “You stripped this shit down to the bare fucking essentials that make up Dave Strider, you hit all the major bullet points, man. Consider my ass completely shredded.”

“You’re not that complicated, Dave,” he tells you. “As mysterious and aloof as you try to be sometimes you’re really fucking transparent. A serial killer could lure you into his kidnapping van with promises of dick jokes and movies of the shittiest quality imaginable and it’d be easier than taking candy from an especially stupid baby. I’m shocked that it hasn’t happened yet. Honestly.”

“As if you’re any better, dude,” you retort. “I could coerce you to do basically anything as long as I promised to watch a shitty rom com with you afterwards.”

“That’s not fucking true,” he says. “You’d at least have to pretend like Ryan Gosling was there or something; just the promise of a romantic comedy alone won’t make me do shit. And nevermind that, I wouldn’t believe a fucking word out of your mouth anyways.”

“So what you’re saying is, if I was Ryan Gosling or Orlando Bloom or something, you’d do whatever I said?”

“Absolutely,” Karkat answers firmly.

“You’re so fucking gay, dude,” you laugh at him.

“Says the guy who has Chris Hemsworth as his lock screen.”

You can’t deny that one. “Whatever man,” you say with a shrug. “Chris Hemsworth is dreamy as all fuck and I’m not ashamed to have this beautiful man as my phone background. In fact you should be ashamed for not having him as your phone background.”

“Yes, I am burning in shame as we speak,” Karkat says flatly. “Everyday I pray that no one will get a glimpse of my phone screen, lest they jeer and point at me like the social outcast I am. Oh, how I wish society could just accept me as the wretched filth I was born as, and that equality could be achieved for people of all phone wallpapers.”

You just laugh at the wistful tone he takes on and fall into a comfortable silence, only speaking when you’re giving him directions from the GPS on your phone. It’s a long ride, and the lack of conversation and the soft vibration of the car makes you drowsy after about an hour. You try to stay awake for Karkat’s benefit - no doubt he’d get seriously lost without your expert navigating - so you try to sit up straighter, chew some gum to keep yourself from falling asleep. The playlist Karkat made is actually full of bangers as well as bops, and the upbeat music helps keep you alert for the rest of the trip.

The two of you make it to Austin in one piece, only having to stop along the way once so Karkat can pee at a sketchy gas station. The hotel he booked is surprisingly nice, and you marvel just a little bit at the lobby, full of nice tile floors and bright wall lights.

“It’s only one night,” Karkat says in explanation, shrugging a shoulder. “Figured I could splurge a little bit.”

You nod your understanding and appreciation of his choice, following him to the front desk where you get your key cards for your room. The elevator takes you up to the fourth floor and your room is about halfway down the hall, just as pretty and expensive looking as the lobby.

It’s a simple room but it looks nice as hell, the linens crisp white and the carpeted floor clean and soft. The bathroom has a shower and bathtub combo with two sinks and a confusing toilet with way more buttons and dials on it than any toilet should ever have. You note the small tubes of conditioner and shampoo as well as the fancy bar of soap on the counter with a small grin. If Karkat doesn’t take them before you leave he can bet his ass that you will.

Back in the main part of the room, you notice a small problem.

“Uh, hey dude?” you ask Karkat, who’s sitting on the only chair in the room, taking off his shoes. “There’s only one bed.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Karkat says before you can further express your concern. He points to the corner of the room where a folded up cot is tucked away, the metal frame assembled with wheels on it so you can move the mattress to a comfortable place. “I have some fucking foresight.”

You breathe a small sigh of relief and hope it doesn’t come off the wrong way. It’s not that you wouldn’t be totally thrilled to share a bed with Karkat - the idea of holding him while you sleep is only one of the many unachievable fantasies you have - but you don’t think you’d get any fucking sleep lying that close to him. The desire to kiss him would be too strong for you to resist, and who knows what you’d do, how big of an idiot you’d make yourself out to be.

“Oh, okay, sweet,” you say, trying not to let the relief and disappointment swirling around inside you affect your tone.

Karkat turns on the TV in the room and stretches out on his large bed, sighing a little. He’s probably tired from driving, and you’re sure his back hurts from being in the car for so long. You give yourself a few seconds to watch him as he closes his eyes and relaxes into the mattress, eyebrows smooth instead of drawn together, mouth slack rather than scrunched into a grimace. He’s way too fucking pretty for you to handle sometimes, and you feel yourself take a steadying breath. You hope he doesn’t notice.

You figure there’s no need to get your cot out if you’re not planning on sleeping yet, and Karkat opens his eyes when you jump onto the bed with him. You mosty just want an excuse to be close to him, and he doesn’t seem to mind, scooting over to accommodate you.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he warns. “We need to leave in a couple hours.”

“Oh right, we’re here to actually do something,” you remember. “Are you super fuckin’ psyched to go to this wedding or what? I know you love weddings.”

Karkat scrunches up his face, nose wrinkling. “Yeah, I like weddings, but I don’t like my entire extended family. They’re… kind of a handful,” he explains. “I hope you’re ready for everyone to ask you overly invasive questions about your personal life and judge the shit out of everything you say.”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” you say confidently.

“Alright,” Karkat says with raised eyebrows. He doesn’t sound convinced. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The few hours until you’re due to arrive at the wedding pass quickly, spent mostly watching TV and falling asleep on Karkat’s shoulder. He has to shake you awake after a while so you can start getting ready and you head to the bathroom to change.

You don’t own a suit, but you do have dress pants and a button up shirt that you bought a few years ago for job interviews. They’re a little ill-fitting, the pants baggy around your waist and the shirt a bit too tight over your chest. You also don’t have any nice shoes so you’re forced to put on the red canvas sneakers you always wear. You think it’s a good look, but Karkat’s family might think otherwise.

You step out of the bathroom and have to stop when you get a look at Karkat. His shirt and pants actually fit him, and goddamn do they fit him well, complimenting the dip of his waist and the curve of his hips. You openly ogle him for a second, taking in the shape of his absolutely choice ass in his dress pants. He turns around, facing you, and you quickly avert your eyes in the hope that he doesn’t notice you were staring. He’s in the middle of tying his tie, the red article standing out against the black of his shirt and pants, and he gives you a nervous look.

“Do you have that tie I gave you?” he asks anxiously.

You nod and grab it from your suitcase, holding it awkwardly. “I have no idea how to tie this fucking thing,” you tell him honestly. You’ve never had a reason to wear one, and certainly never had an older father figure around to teach you how to tie one.

“Here,” Karkat says softly, taking the article from you. He pops the collar on your shirt and loops the fabric around your neck, the tie draping over your chest. He starts to show you how to tie it, moving the two ends in a complicated way and explaining what to do. You should pay attention so you know how to do it for future reference but all you can focus on is the movement of Karkat’s hands, quick and sure, occasionally brushing against your torso. When he finishes, he pushes your collar back down and gives you a little pat on the chest, satisfied. “See? Not that complicated.”

You nod, quickly losing your capacity to speak, and finish getting ready in silence. In the car, Karkat gives you the rundown on his family, and more specifically who to avoid.

“If you see a guy in all red, talking really loudly and being super fucking annoying, that’s my cousin Kankri,” he says nervously. “Avoid him as much as possible, otherwise he’ll accost you and suck you into a conversation where he corrects everything you say and tries to one-up you with how aware he is about social issues. It reeks of bullshit and I would faster recommend developing a brain tumor than engaging with him.”

“Oh no, he’s one of those fake aware, pseudo woke kinda dudes, yeah?” you ask. “Like a white guy who thinks he’s the fuckin’ pinnacle of human civlization because he doesn’t think brown people should be deported?”

“Yeah, basically. He’s constantly talking about feminism and women’s rights but he’s a huge fucking misogynist and I haven’t seen him treat a woman like a regular human being in my entire fucking life,” Karkat answers bitterly. You make a mental note to avoid him at all costs.

“The only other person you need to look out for is my uncle Horuss,” Karkat continues. “There’s nothing particularly wrong with him, he’s just… kind of weird. He’s really into horses and the way he’s into them kind of comes off as sexual sometimes and it’s just really fucking off-putting. He’s probably the one buying all your furry porn.”

“I promised myself I’d never interact with a furry for as long as I live,” you tell him, only half joking.

“Those are the only two you need to worry about,” he concludes. “Everyone else is pretty normal; just judgemental and loud as hell. You get used to it.”

The venue is only a few minutes away from the hotel, and you arrive already feeling out of place. For one, everyone is speaking Spanish when you step into the church, and you have no idea what the fuck anyone is saying due to your status as a failed Mexican who only knows English. An anxious part of your brain, the same part that encourages you to wear sunglasses to hide yourself from people’s gazes, tells you that they’re all talking about you. You drift closer to Karkat as you walk further into the church to find your seats, nearly bumping shoulders with him a few times. You expect him to give you a weird look or tell you to calm down and back off, but he seems just as nervous as you, and sticks close by.

You find some empty seats near the middle of the section to the left, which is reserved for the family of the groom. You look around at the other side of the church where the bride’s family is, and the clear divide between Karkat’s dark-skinned family and the bride’s white family makes you a little uncomfortable.

“So, who’s getting married again?” you ask, trying to curb your nerves with light conversation. “Your uncle?”

“Yeah, my dad’s brother Sal,” Karkat says. He looks around, buzzing with nervous energy. “His wife is like Romanian or something, I forget her name, and her not being Puerto Rican was a huge fucking deal with my grandma… it doesn’t matter.”

“And everyone here is your dad’s family, right?” Karkat never knew his mom, so you figure her side of the family wouldn’t be present in his life.

“Yeah, looks like everyone was able to fly in...” He wrings his hands together as his eyes dance around nervously, and you wonder if something else is freaking him out besides the wedding. You’re about to ask him what’s up when organ music starts playing.

Everyone settles down, ending conversations and finding seats. Apparently you’re supposed to stand when the bride comes down the aisle, because everyone around you abandons their chairs once she enters the church. You follow suit because what the hell else are you supposed to do, and you watch with mild interest as the bride walks towards her soon to be husband. She’s tall and light-skinned with jet black hair, classically pretty in a way that reminds you of Rose. You turn to look at Karkat, who’s staring in awe at her, and feel yourself smile at his reaction.

He starts to cry when the bride and groom say their vows and you rifle around in your pocket for some of the tissues you grabbed earlier. When you hand one to Karkat, he gives you a grateful and slightly embarrassed look, so endearing that you have to force yourself to pull your gaze away from him and back to the ceremony. It’s relatively quick, sticking to traditional vows and an exchange of rings. Soon you’re standing back up to move to a different location for the reception.

“That wasn’t so bad,” you tell Karkat on your way out. “I’ve yet to be verbally assaulted by anyone so that’s nice.”

“God,” he responds exasperatedly. “Don’t hold your breath, I’m sure the reception is going to be terrifically unbearable.”

“That’s the spirit, dude.”

Karkat makes a beeline for the bar when you get to the reception, located in a separate building near the church that’s built to accommodate more people. In your novice opinion, it’s a very nicely decorated space, with lots of tables around the perimeter of the room and a dance floor in the middle. A DJ is already playing loud music and you nod appreciatively at his choices.

Karkat gets a beer and you decide to order a rum and Coke, both of you getting carded at the bar. You sip your drink idly as Karkat leans against the bartop, looking tired and overwhelmed. You put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing him.

“Calm down dude,” you tell him. “We only have to be here for a few hours and then we can bail early.”

“Yeah, I was planning on it,” he says. “I was also planning on getting shit-faced so I could get through this horrendous fucking-”

His thought is interrupted by a tall woman in a gaudy dress putting a hand on his shoulder and spinning him around so she can embrace his small form. Karkat, bewildered, tries his best to hug her back without elbowing you or spilling one of your drinks, his eyes wide and slightly afraid. The woman lets him go after a hug that was much longer than socially acceptable and greets him with a loud “Karkat!”

“Hi tía, ” he says quietly, still recovering from the intense hug. He adjusts his tie and clears his throat to address you with a wave of his hand. “Dave this is my aunt Paloma, Paloma this is-”

“Oh, this must be your boyfriend,” she says in a thick accent. Before you or Karkat can correct her she yanks you into a hug, shaking you back and forth and sloshing your drink around in its glass. Some of it definitely ends up on the floor. “Welcome to the family!”

“Uh, yeah, nice to meet you,” you say awkwardly. You think she touched your butt when she was hugging you.

“So, Karkat,” she says pleasantly, taking his hands. “How is medical school? You are doing well?”

“Well, it’s not really medical school,” Karkat starts to correct her. He doesn’t get to finish his sentence and you start to notice a pattern.

“I’m so happy you want to be a doctor,” Paloma exclaims delightfully, cutting him off. “Your dad would be so proud of you.”

“Yeah,” Karkat says softly, not bothering to tell her that he’s actually studying to be a nurse. “Thank you, tía .”

Your drinks are empty by the time Karkat’s aunt leaves to bother someone else and you both order refills. Karkat gives you a wide-eyed look and runs a hand down his face, groaning loudly.

“I’m so fucking sorry she thought you were my boyfriend,” he says apologetically. “I guess I should have expected that, everyone here is so fucking nosey I’m sure it’s going to come up again.”

You try to laugh away the fact that just an hour or two ago you couldn’t breathe because Karkat touched your chest a little. “It’s all good,” you lie. “And I mean, you are a gay dude who showed up to a wedding with a guy as your plus one so like, let’s just think about how this looks for a second.”

“Fuck, you’re right,” he says, as if he’s upset that people will think you’re dating. It makes you frown, just a little bit. “It’s just that everyone here has their heads so far up my ass I can barely - fuck that’s Kankri, let’s go.” He pushes at your shoulders with a nervous expression, steering you in the direction of the tables to get away from his cousin.

The bride and groom make their grand entrance not long after you sit down, and then dinner is served in the form of a massive fucking buffet with more food than you’ve ever seen in one place. You and Karkat refill your glasses then load up your plates with as much food as you can carry, and drag your haul back to your seats to stuff your faces.

You share a table with a few more of Karkat’s relatives, one of which doesn’t speak English and converses with Karkat in rapid Spanish for the majority of dinner. You’re kind of glad that you don’t understand them, so you can zone out and have an excuse to not speak. People you don’t know make you nervous, and you feel several pairs of eyes on you as you eat your meal, interested and curious. Karkat puts a reassuring hand on your wrist under the table as you make light conversation with his little cousin. You don’t catch his name; when you ask he just tells you to call him The Mayor. He’s a sweet little kid, and he talks to you about the town of cans he made in his garage for the majority of dinner.

You feel a tug on your sleeve to your right after a while at the table. Karkat is giving you a look like he’s dying for a break, so you follow his lead and stand up, trailing behind him onto the outside patio. He brings his beer with him and gulps down half of it when you get outside, either really thirsty or really desperate to be drunk. He leans on the railing with a sigh.

“What’s up?” you ask him, a little concerned.

“If I have to answer one more question about my life I think I’m gonna hurl,” he explains. His words aren’t as sharp as they normally are, the alcohol taking the edge off, making the consonants run together more than usual. “That lady at the table who kept talking my fucking ear off was my great aunt Isabella. Guess what she asked me?”

“If you were fucking the hot guy to your left with the sick hair?”

Karkat snorts, rolls his eyes. “She wanted to know if I was single so she could set me up with her co worker's daughter,” he explains with a sneer. “Like how many fucking times do I need to explain to her that I’m gay? Am I gonna have to stage an entire intervention, complete with a PowerPoint presentation and a ten step program, to get her to understand this shit? Step one is to stop being a conservative old bigot who refuses to get with the fucking times and keeps trying to convince me that I’m straight.” He takes another swig of his beer and shakes his head. “I swear to fucking god…”

“Fuck that noise, dude,” you say boisterously. Your own alcohol consumption is making you louder than usual. “And fuck her, too, if I could speak Spanish I’d give her a big fuckin’ piece of my mind. Start some old fashioned family drama in here, maybe get some drinks thrown at someone. It’d be like one of those dramatic ass soap operas, okay, I can see the fast camera zooms and hear the organ music already. The cinematography is so shitty it’s almost amazing.”

“Well thank god you’re too incompetent to learn Spanish, otherwise I might encourage you to start something just so I can be distracted from the unrelenting onslaught of invasive questions about my personal life.”

Your drink needs a refill. You look down at it with blurring vision, until you hear a fast, thumping beat drift in through the patio door.

“Oh dude, fuck yeah,” you say enthusiastically. “Fuck your aunt, okay, let’s go dance the homophobia away.”

“I don’t dance,” Karkat says sternly.

“No, man, come on.” You bend over, hands on your knees, and make a horrible, embarrassing attempt at twerking. “Come dance with me, look at these sick moves. I’m a natural.”

“Holy shit, please fucking stop,” Karkat begs you. “Dave, seriously, there are children here, I don’t want them to be scarred for life because they get a glimpse of your spastic flailing and think you’re having a seizure.”

“I won’t stop until you come dance.”

He laughs. “Okay, fuck, I’m coming,” he concedes. “Just don’t ever fucking do that again or I’m leaving you here and making you walk back to Houston.”

“Deal,” you say, leading the way back inside.

In truth, neither one of you can actually dance. You at least have the comfort of knowing that most of Karkat’s family can’t dance either, and you all jump around in a mass of sweaty bodies, mostly on beat with whatever song is playing. A few of Karkat’s younger cousins join you, cute little kids with mussed up hair and dirty dress clothes, and one of them begs you to pick him up so you can dance together. You and Karkat stay on the dance floor for a long time, only stopping to get more drinks when you start getting tired and then jumping back into the fray, reinvigorated.

The more you drink the more uninhibited you feel, and the less you care about the harsh eyes of Karkat’s family or acceptable social customs. You get looser with your staring, too, your gaze focused on Karkat’s body for far too long, tracing over the shape of his thighs and hips and butt as he dances. You’re not sure if he notices, and you don’t think you really care if he does. You don’t think you really care about anything. You grab his hand to spin him around and he laughs in your arms.

Eventually you have to call it a night, stumbling out of the venue sometime after midnight, your arms slung around each other for balance. Karkat leans against the cool brick of the building’s exterior and gives you a bright look. You feel like a little kid.

“I’m so not okay to drive,” he says miserably, though he laughs right after. “We should get an Uber.”

“Yeah dude, safe driving and all,” you say as you pull out your phone. “You’re so responsible. Such an upstanding citizen, making sure you don’t commit vehicular manslaughter or anything. Proud of you.”

“Shut up,” he says, and sinks down onto the ground with a small sigh. “I’m really fucking tired.”

“No, get up man,” you slur. You bend down to pull Karkat back into a standing position, head swimming at the small movement. “If you fall asleep I’m not picking you up, okay, you’re on your own.”

“Fuck you,” he whines, though he begrudgingly stands anyways.

When you get back to the hotel, half asleep from the car ride, you barely get your shoes off before you both collapse onto Karkat’s bed fully dressed. You try to loosen your tie and Karkat laughs at you when you accidentally tighten it instead, nearly choking yourself. He puts clumsy hands against your chest to help you, pulling the article away from your neck with relative ease. He takes his own tie off and sighs. You roll onto your side to face him.

“Thanks for coming with me,” he says drowsily, words quiet from sleepiness and alcohol. “It was way less emotionally traumatizing with you there.”

You laugh, and scoot a little closer to him. Your knees touch. “No problem, dude,” you say, voice low. You feel weird, but good, buzzing. “I guess you owe me one, now.”

“I guess I do,” he agrees. He pauses and looks at you with glassy, shy eyes. “I… I wanna tell you something,” he slurs.

When he doesn’t continue, you prod him with a, “What?”

“I just…” He trails off, sighs. You tilt your head at him but he doesn’t speak again, instead scooting closer to you, swallowing audibly.

He closes his eyes when your hand snakes up his thigh and onto his hip, his skin hot through his shirt. The sheets wrinkle underneath him as he pushes closer to you, eyes still closed as if he’s moving unconsciously. Your foreheads bump together, chests flush, and he kisses you before you have time to think about it.

Karkat tastes like alcohol and sweat, his lips soft against yours. You separate, just for a moment, and the look he gives you when he opens his eyes sends a jolt to the center of your stomach. You pull him back to you with a hand in his shirt, swallowing the sound he makes at the back of his throat. His fingers, warm, drift under your shirt and trail up your side, tracing long patterns over your skin as his lips start to drive you crazy.

You can feel his pulse, rapid and pounding, under your fingertips, against your lips, in your own  chest. He makes a noise that tastes sweet on your tongue and you push against him harder, trying to get closer. Karkat’s body is slack against yours and he lets you sling an arm around his waist, pull him against you. He draws away from you to take a breath and you spend a long time admiring him - the puffiness of his lips, pink from kissing you; the messiness of his hair, tangled from the long night; the tilt of his mouth in a smile so shy and beautiful that it makes you ache. You can’t help pressing your lips to his again, soft but eager. You kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him, and you feel like you’re on fire.

Chapter Text

You wake up with a splitting headache at eleven o’clock in the morning to the lovely sound of Dave vomiting in the bathroom. You sit up with a groan, your own stomach turning at the noise coming from the ajar bathroom door. Your head pounds, skull aching, and you look around with blurry eyes as you try to recall the night before.

You can remember the wedding, or at least most of it. The tail end of the event is a flash of random images and loud noises, along with the taste of beer on your tongue and the feeling of sweat down your back. You close your eyes, trying to focus, and feel a jolt down your spine as you remember what happened when you and Dave got back to the hotel.

You kissed him. And if your memory is accurate you kissed him a lot . You think he ended up falling asleep in your bed, the cot you had the staff bring in still folded up in the corner of the room, unused. You can’t remember if you properly confessed to him in your drunken stupor, having slammed down drinks to calm your nerves the whole night. That’s obviously backfired massively, blowing the smoke and debris of a huge mistake directly into your unsuspecting face. You run a hand down your face as panic starts to set in, and all the insecure, inexperienced parts of your brain try to convince you that you’ve majorly fucked up.

Harsh fluorescent light floods into your eyes as the bathroom door opens, and Dave slinks back into the room with slow, groggy movements. He doesn’t acknowledge the fact that you’re awake, instead dragging his feet to his bag to pull out a pack of gum.

“You okay?” you ask him. You startle a little at the sound of your voice, so harsh and scratchy from alcohol and sleep that it doesn’t sound like it came from your mouth. “Dave?” you repeat when he doesn’t answer you.

“I’m fine,” he slurs at you. “Never felt better. The puking means I’m totally healthy and definitely not hungover.”

“Fuck,” you say, trying to supress your own nausea. “I guess we overdid it with the alcohol.”

“Yeah.”

Your throat constricts with bile and nerves, and you clear it uncomfortably. “Last night,” you start. “We…” You trail off, not brave enough to say it out loud.

“Drank too fucking much and got shitfaced?” Dave finishes for you, though it’s not at all what you want to hear. “No kidding. I’m gonna go take a shower, alright, if you hear me throwing up again don’t be alarmed, it’s just my guts leaving my body.”

“Okay,” you say quietly, and you watch him go.

The rejection stings, burning in the pit of your stomach, so sour it brings tears prickling into your eyes. Dave clearly doesn’t remember kissing you or really wants to forget, and you can’t decide which is worse. He avoided the topic like the plague, didn’t even look at you when you spoke, like he was ashamed. You blink your tears away but a few fall regardless of your efforts, frustrated and overwhelmed.

You guess that’s it, then. You fucked up. You got drunk and kissed Dave and all it did was solidify the fact that he doesn’t have the same feelings for you. He probably only kissed you back because he was drunk and wasn’t thinking straight, didn’t have the energy or the mental faculties to push you away. You wipe the moisture off your cheeks, angry at yourself, and try to calm down before Dave gets out of the shower and sees you crying like the miserable sack of shit you are.

You manage to get yourself together after a few minutes, using your phone as a distraction, the brightness set the lowest it can go. When Dave returns to the room with a towel draped around his waist you try your best not to look at him, but find yourself staring at him as he digs around in his bag for clothing. His bare torso is still damp from his shower, and you feel something inside your chest clamp down as you get a glimpse of the scar on his stomach. It’s as big as you remember, and you recall the horrendous amount of blood that had poured out of it the night you first met. You’re glad that it’s healed over, pink fading into white over his deep brown skin, but something about seeing it again just makes you feel worse.

“Shower’s all yours,” Dave says simply, still not looking at you.

“Thanks,” you mutter and stand up. The motion makes you dizzy but you try to ignore it, powering through your hangover to get into the bathroom with minimal stumbling.

You manage to get ready fast enough to avoid a late checkout fee from the hotel, and you and Dave muddle around outside the building trying to get all your shit into the Uber you called. You have to pick up your own car from where you left it at the venue the night before, and you manage to start the journey back to your apartment around one o’clock.

The silence on the ride back is deafening. You want to hope that Dave is only being quiet because he’s hungover, but you know he’s avoiding you. He doesn’t even look in your direction, and not a single dick joke or irritating metaphor comes out of his mouth for the whole three hour ride. He only speaks to give you directions, and it makes you jump each time, so used to the silence that the sound of his voice surprises you. His tone is so flat, “Take this exit,” “Turn right here,” that it makes you frown. Your chest hurts.

Dave spends a lot of time typing on his phone, no doubt messaging John to tell him what a huge fuck up you are. You can almost imagine the conversation; Dave freaking out over what happened, annoyed that you have some kind of stupid crush on him, and John agreeing that you’re not worth the trouble. You keep your eyes on the road and try not to think about it.

When you get back to the apartment sometime in the afternoon, Dave disappears into his room almost immediately, not quite slamming the door but not closing it gently either. You follow suit and go to your own room, putting your stuff away with slow, tired movements. You know for sure that neither of you have work, having taken the day off to make the trip, and you’re not looking forward to the inevitable, awkward interactions you’ll have for the rest of the day.

You sit in your room, miserable, and try not to let your mind wander to last night. It does, of course, because you wouldn’t be you if you weren’t constantly daydreaming about useless, romantic fantasies. You feel so desperate, aching for Dave as your lips remember the feeling of his mouth, your hips imprinted with the memory of his hands. You have to physically shake your head to remove the thoughts from your mind; it’s over, you fucked it up. You need to stop pretending like it can be fixed.

You debate for a long time whether or not you want to message Kanaya about all of this. It’s the weekend so you’re sure she’s probably hanging out with Rose, and you don’t want to interrupt her with your petty bullshit. You ultimately decide to text her, knowing that keeping this shit to yourself for too long will just result in an embarrassing and poorly timed outburst.

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at 18:32 --
CG: KANAYA, I FUCKED UP.
CG: LIKE ON A SCALE OF ONE TO TEN THIS IS A FULL BLOWN, ATOMIC CLUSTERFUCK.
CG: I KNOW, THAT’S SHOCKING, I HOPE YOU’RE SITTING DOWN. I’VE NEVER MESSED UP ANYTHING IN MY LIFE BEFORE AND I AM SUCH A BEACON OF WELL-PLANNED, THOUGHT OUT ACTIONS THAT THE IDEA THAT I COULD EVER POSSIBLY FUCK SOMETHING UP IS PROBABLY SO UNBELIEVABLE THAT YOU’RE REELING FROM THIS INFORMATION, JUST ABSOLUTELY FUCKING ASTOUNDED.
CG: AND I’M SURE YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENED HERE BECAUSE I’M SUCH A PREDICTABLE, DESPERATE LOSER THAT THERE’S REALLY ONLY ONE POSSIBILITY.
CG: I’LL GIVE YOU THREE GUESSES.
GA: Did Something Happen With Dave
CG: WOW YOU GOT IT ON THE FIRST TRY, YOU’VE OFFICIALLY WON KARAT FUCKUP BINGO.
CG: YOUR PRIZE IS THE UNPARALLELED JOY OF SITTING THROUGH ANOTHER ONE OF MY GRADE A CLASSIC KARKAT BLUNDERS WHERE I MASSIVELY FUCK UP A PERFECTLY GOOD SITUATION.
CG: AND TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, YES SOMETHING HAPPENED. PRETTY MUCH THE WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED.
CG: I FUCKING KISSED HIM.
GA: I Dont Understand What The Problem Is
GA: I Presume He Kissed You Back
CG: WELL...
CG: I MEAN YEAH HE KISSED ME BACK BUT WE WERE DRUNK AND NOW HE’S AVOIDING ME LIKE I HAVE SOME SORT OF FLESH EATING DISEASE.
CG: I TRIED TO BRING IT UP THIS MORNING AND HE TOTALLY IGNORED ME, PRETENDED LIKE NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED.
CG: HE HASN’T SPOKEN TO ME ALL DAY. HE WON’T EVEN LOOK AT ME, KANAYA.
GA: Im Confused
CG: YEAH NO SHIT, ME FUCKING TOO.
CG: LOOKS LIKE WE BOTH GOT AHEAD OF OURSELVES HERE, THINKING ANYONE COULD EVER POSSIBLY HAVE FEELINGS FOR ME. WHAT A JOKE.
CG: AND NOW I HAVE TO LIVE WITH HIM KNOWING THAT I IRREVOCABLY FUCKED EVERYTHING UP, WHICH SURPRISES APPROXIMATELY ZERO FUCKING PEOPLE.
CG: I REALLY SHOULD HAVE A PLAQUE OR A TROPHY FOR BIGGEST COSMIC MISTAKE OR SADDEST LOSER DUMBASS OR SOMETHING.
CG: IT WOULD BE MADE OUT OF RAW SEWAGE AND MY OWN TEARS.
GA: Wait
CG: I GUESS I JUST... THOUGHT I WAS GETTING SIGNALS FROM HIM.
CG: BUT NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT, IT WAS PROBABLY WAY MORE PLATONIC THAN I WAS INTERPRETING IT, AND MY STUPID, HOPELESS CRUSH WAS CLOUDING MY JUDGEMENT.
CG: I MEAN HE ACTS THE SAME WAY WITH JOHN, ALL TOUCHY-FEELY AND AFFECTIONATE AND SHIT.
CG: THAT’S JUST HOW HE IS. AND I THOUGHT IT MEANT SOMETHING.
CG: THIS IS SO FUCKING TYPICAL OF ME.
GA: Karkat
CG: WHAT? YOU SAW THIS COMING? YOU’RE SO ANNOYED WITH MY INCOMPETENCE THAT YOU NEVER WANT ME TO PURSUE A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP EVER AGAIN? CONSIDER IT DONE.
GA: No Thats Not At All What I Was Going To Say
GA: Its Just That
GA: Rose Told Me That John Told Her That Dave Told Him That He Does Have Feelings For you
GA: And If Thats The Case Then I Dont Understand Why Hes Acting This Way
CG: I’M SORRY, WHAT?
CG: AND ALSO THE FUCK?
GA: Rose Told Me
GA: That John Told Her
CG: OH NO, I UNDERSTOOD THE FIRST TIME.
CG: WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS WHY YOU DIDN’T FEEL IT WAS NECESSARY TO FUCKING TELL ME THIS UNTIL NOW?
GA: Well
GA: I Didnt Want To Interfere
GA: Its Not My Place
CG: THAT’S BULLSHIT AND YOU KNOW IT.
CG: YOU LOVE MEDDLING!! THAT’S LIKE YOUR NUMBER ONE HOBBY BESIDES LESBIANISM AND FASHION.
GA: Well Maybe I Dont Want Meddling To Be On My List Of Favorite Activities Anymore
GA: I Was Just Trying To Respect His Privacy Karkat
GA: I Dont Know Dave Very Well And It Seemed Wrong To Even Know About His Feelings For You Nevermind Actually Telling You About Them
GA: And Rose Had Insinuated That He Was Going To Make His Feelings Clear To You Relatively Soon So I Didnt Think That It Was Necessary To Tell You Just Yet
GA: I Was Going To Eventually
GA: If The Two Of You Drew This Out Any Longer
CG: SO WAIT, FUCK
CG: WHY IS HE AVOIDING ME THEN? WHY ALL THE UNNECESSARY DRAMA?
GA: To Be Fair
GA: You Both Seem To Be Quite Dramatic By Nature
CG: BUT YOU HAVE TO ADMIT THAT THIS IS KIND OF RIDICULOUS, ISN’T IT?
CG: IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER KNOWS WE LIKE EACH OTHER EXCEPT FOR US! THIS IS THE DUMBEST FUCKING SITUATION I’VE EVER BEEN IN.
GA: Let Me Consult With Rose
GA: She May Know Why Hes Acting This Way
CG: OH GOD.
GA: It Appears He Is Saying The Same Things You Are
GA: About Fucking Things Up And Ruining Your Relationship
GA: Perhaps You Should Try Talking To Him
CG: I DID TRY! AND HE AVOIDED THE FUCKING TOPIC LIKE I ASKED HIM ABOUT ALL OF HIS DEEP ROOTED PERSONAL TRAUMA AND PULLED OUT A FUCKING NOTEPAD.
CG: I’VE NEVER HAD HIM BLOW ME OFF LIKE THAT BEFORE. HE’D SOONER TELL ME ABOUT THE INTRICACIES OF HIS DAILY BOWEL MOVEMENTS THAN TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED.
GA: Maybe Hes Just Scared
GA: He Seems To Think Hes Screwed Up As Well
CG: FUCK I THINK I HEAR HIM IN THE LIVING ROOM
CG: I’M GONNA GO TRY TO TALK TO HIM BUT KNOWING ME I’LL PROBABLY FLOUNDER ALL OVER THE PLACE AND JUST END UP MAKING THINGS WORSE.
CG: PRAY FOR ME.
GA: Im Sure Youll Be Fine
GA: Let Me Know How It Goes
CG: FUCK, OKAY I WILL.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at 18:54 --

You stay in your room for too long debating on what to say and Dave is halfway down the hall when you poke your head out of your door. He turns when he hears you and raises an eyebrow.

“Uh,” you start intelligently. A million thoughts battle for space in your brain and you start lose your nerve. “Are you hungry?” you ask. You knew you were going to fuck this up. “I’m probably just gonna get takeout, if you want.”

He shrugs a shoulder, avoids your eyes. “Yeah that’s fine,” he says quietly. “I’ll eat whatever.”

“Okay, cool,” you say. Dave just looks around for a second and then nods once, continuing back down the hallway.

You groan and slink back into your room, mentally berating yourself for being so fucking incompetent. You know that Dave likes you, if Kanaya’s word is anything to go by, so why are you still so fucking scared? The rejection you felt this morning, like a cold slap in the face, is still fresh in your brain, a reminder of what could be waiting for you if you talk to Dave. You run a disgruntled hand down your face and try to focus on ordering food, hoping that you can use it as an icebreaker, an easy way to breach the conversation.

It doesn’t end up working out that way, and Dave only interacts with you long enough to snatch the food you bought and disappear into his room again. You sigh and eat your fast food on the couch, trying to distract yourself with some random, shitty show on Netflix.

It’s only when Kanaya texts you again a few hours later wondering if you’ve made any progress that you realize, suddenly and forcefully, that this is stupid. This is so stupid. What the fuck are you doing, sitting around pouting like a child when you have it on fairly good authority that Dave has feelings for you? You stand up, newly determined, and march your ass to Dave’s room.

You feel yourself start to deflate when you open the door and he looks at you with his big, brown eyes, sunglasses abandoned on the bedside table you built together. You take a deep breath and look at him carefully as he removes his headphones. He looks back at you like a deer in the headlights, startled by your loud entrance and then lack of immediate conversation.

“We should talk,” you say simply, trying to stave off your nerves.

“About what?” he asks casually.

“Don’t do that,” you tell him. “You know what I’m talking about. Unless you were drunker than I thought you were last night and you’ve actually fucking forgotten, in which case please ignore everything I just said and never bring it up ever again.”

“I remember,” he says thickly. You wait for him to speak again, but he doesn’t.

“So why are you acting like this?” you ask him, getting right to the point. “Why are you avoiding me, pretending like nothing happened? I couldn’t even get you to look at me this morning.” Your voice gives away more than you plan, your tone hurt and a little strained.

Dave sighs and his eyes drift away from you to stare down at the floor. “This morning you just… sounded so fucked up about it,” he starts. “I figured you were gonna tell me to forget it anyways so I just beat you to it, I guess.”

You pause for a second, taking that in. “That is the dumbest fucking shit I have ever heard in my life,” you say eventually. “You thought I was going to reject you so you rejected me first? How the fuck does that make any sense?”

Dave looks incredibly uncomfortable, hands clasped together in his lap and shoulders shrugged up to his ears. “I don’t know, dude!” he exclaims. “I guess I thought it would be easier to just… forget it ever happened and try to move on, go back to normal.”

“Is that what you want?” you ask. “To go back to normal, pretend like it didn’t happen?”

He visibly swallows. “No,” he says, and it sends your heart throbbing in your chest. “I just… don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here.”

“Clearly,” you state, and he exhales a small laugh, nervous. “Look… I like you, okay? And based on your enthusiasm last night I’m going to warrant a guess that you like me, too.”

“Yeah,” he admits, carding nervous fingers through his hair. “And like… kissing you was the shit, okay, I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new hobby or something, definitely the best twenty minutes of my life so far.”

You smile and feel yourself heat up with anxious, excited energy. “Your technique could use some work,” you joke. “Though I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and attribute that to your blood alcohol content at the time.”

Dave laughs a little and then you’re both quiet for a moment, thinking. He’s at least willing to look at you now and catches your eye, staring, shy.

“So,” you start. “Have we handled this? No more dicking around and avoiding each other?”

Dave stands up, puts his headphones away. “I can’t promise I’ll stop dicking around,” he says honestly, “but I’ll definitely stop avoiding you.” He approaches you but stops a few inches away, too far.

“Good,” you say, looking up at him. “Because this was honestly one of the dumbest and most unnecessary situations I have ever been in and I’m chalking it up entirely to our combined incompetence as inexperienced pseudo-adults.”

Dave lets out an embarrassed chuckle and rubs at the back of his neck. “Yeah dude, I mean, I thought I fucked all of this up,” he says. “I’ve been bugging John about it all day.”

“You should give him a break,” you say suggestively. You take half a step forward.

“Oh man, you know damn well that as soon as this conversation is over I’m texting him a bunch of keyboard smashes like a teenage girl whose crush just bumped into her in the hallway,” Dave says with a grin. “He’s never gonna hear the end of it at this rate.”

“From what Kanaya tells me, he’s been pretty loose-lipped about everything,” you say with a shake of your head. “Apparently everyone fucking knew about this and we’re the last ones to get the memo.”

“Yeah, he told me earlier that you said you were into me, like, weeks ago?” he admits. “But I didn’t believe him because… fuck, I mean - I just didn’t think-”

“Hey, I have an idea,” you suggest. Your pulse quickens at the thoughts running through your head, and you try not to let your voice give away how nervous you are. “How about we stop fucking talking about John for once? Actually, let’s just shut the fuck up completely, we both talk way too fucking much.”

“You’re right,” Dave agrees. And then… he just stands there and does nothing. He looks at you with a little smile and he’s such a clueless idiot that you can’t help letting out an exasperated sigh, shaking your head. You tilt your head at him and make a wide gesture with your hands, trying to get him to understand what you want without having to say it out loud. His eyebrows furrow, confused.

“Dave,” you say firmly when he still doesn’t get it. “When I said shut the fuck up I meant… I want you to fucking kiss me already.”

“Oh,” he breathes and he finally steps forward to put his hands on your waist, his touch like ice against your skin. “Are you sure? You said earlier my technique wasn’t up to par so maybe you’d rather-”

You smack your lips and try to get away from him in mock irritation, but he pulls you back to him with a laugh, face flushed. You feel shy suddenly, your eyes staring down at the floor as you trace hesitant hands up Dave’s chest to loop around his neck. Your foreheads press together for a moment before Dave brushes his lips against yours, barely a kiss. You have to dig your fingers into the back of his neck to get him to kiss you properly and you feel it from your mouth straight down to your toes.

Dave lets out a small noise from the back of his throat that makes pleasant warmth bloom inside your stomach. He pulls away from you for just a second and gives you a look with so much genuine affection and excitement behind it that you can barely meet his eye. You kiss him again, briefly, and when you pull back he smiles at you, so bright it makes you want to laugh. You feel light, only grounded by the feeling of Dave’s hands on your hips, the closeness of his body. When he speaks you can feel every word.

“So, does this mean…” he starts, unsure. “Like… are we an item? Is this a thing? Can I change my Facebook status or is that jumping the gun?”

“Is that what you want?” you ask. Something sharp juts into your chest when you think about it, about calling Dave your boyfriend, about being a couple.

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

You roll your eyes, smile. “Then go change your fucking status already,” you say. “I know you’re dying to tell everyone.”

You half expect Dave to leave it at that, to let you go and head for his computer so he can at least tell John, but instead he drags you back towards him by your hips, and just holds you. You put your head on his chest and allow yourself a moment to breathe, trying to relax in Dave’s arms. It’s been a long, emotionally taxing day, and although it seems to have ended in the best possible way you’re still exhausted from the mental gymnastics you’ve been doing all day.

“Just gonna be totally unironic and genuine here for a sec,” Dave warns. He adjusts your position so you’re able to look at each other, arms still locked together. “I’m really psyched about this.”

“I fucking hope so,” you tell him, putting on a disgruntled expression. “If our budding relationship isn’t enough to make you cool your irony jets for five seconds then I’d have to preemptively break up with you.”

“Nah, I know you love the sarcasm and everything,” he insists with a grin. “I bet all my jokes and metaphors really get you going.”

“Yes,” you deadpan. “The sound of your clever and totally necessary comments sends blood directly to my groin, to the point where I can hardly function. All of my wet dreams consist entirely of you standing in front of me and going on increasingly absurd rants about things I neither understand nor care about.”

Dave laughs but it’s more of a giggle, shy and supressed. He looks at you with his golden eyes and you can’t help smiling back at him, leaning forward to give him one more kiss.

“Hey,” Dave says when you pull away. “Wanna get John on Skype? He’s gonna be so fucking thrilled, dude, like even more than I am.”

“Fine,” you agree in an exasperated tone, though you’re actually pretty excited to tell John about all this. He’d seemed so happy to hear that you liked Dave and you imagine he’ll be pretty excited when you tell him the news.

Dave hesitates for a second before letting you go, as if he would rather stay in your tangled position for as long as possible despite being the one to suggest telling John in the first place. You feel strange without his arms around you, cold, but then you’re forced to practically sit in his lap in order for both of you to squeeze into his desk chair and the prickly, satisfying warmth fills you again. Dave maneuvers around you to turn his computer on and get Skype going, the dialing sound ringing out through his speakers. John picks up after a few seconds, static coming from his side as he adjusts the position of his camera. He lights up when he sees you both on his screen.

“Hey!” he say cheerfully, smiling and pushing hair out of his eyes. “So I guess you guys worked everything out then?”

“Yeah dude, watch this,” Dave says. He turns to address you. “Hey bro can I have a kiss?”

You roll your eyes but happily comply, pressing your lips to his in a chaste kiss. You hear John gasp and you laugh, watching him beam at you on Dave’s screen. He looks nothing short of delighted, pressing his hands into his cheeks and turning pink with excitement. Dave puts his arm around you and you can’t hold in your giddy smile.

“No way!” John exclaims happily. “So you guys are like a thing now? Like real actual boyfriends?”

“Yeah man, this is one hundred percent, completely authentic boyfriend-ery right here,” Dave boasts. “The real deal.”

“I’m so happy for you guys!” John says with a huge grin. “You have no idea how irritating it was to see you two pretend like you weren’t into each other for a whole week.”

“Yeah, about that,” you start with a finger in the air. “Do you want to explain to me why you didn’t bother telling either of us that you knew we liked each other? Don’t you think that would have saved everyone a lot of fucking trouble?”

John’s shoulders ride up to his ears in a sheepish expression. “Well, I did try a few times,” he defends. “It’s just that neither one of you wanted to hear it, it was so frustrating! And, I don’t know, you guys were so obvious about it that I figured you’d get together eventually anyways. And you did! So I was right.”

You roll your eyes. “I guess so.”

“So have you told Rose and Kanaya yet?” John asks.

“Nope, you’re the first one,” Dave tells him.

He gasps, and puts a dramatic hand on his chest. “I’m honored!”

“Well you are partly responsible for this happening,” you remind him. “Even if it is in a really backwards, stupid kind of way.”

“You’re welcome,” John says with a wink.

You roll your eyes but can’t help your smile as the three of you chat for a bit longer. John is so excited about your relationship that you don’t talk about much else, instead relaying the events of the past day to him over and over again. The fact that he’s so supportive makes pride blossom in your chest.

When John eventually has to go, you and Dave resume your regular nightly routine of eating junk food and watching TV together, except this time when nestle onto the couch it’s much less platonic than before. Dave keeps his arm around you for most of the night, and occasionally pulls you towards him every once and a while for a kiss or five. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of kissing him, and each one sends a little jolt down your spine, electric and hot.

You stay up late despite both of you having work tomorrow and only detangle yourselves from each other when you start falling asleep in the living room. Dave has to drag you into a sitting position and hoist you up from the couch, giving you a little push in the back towards your room. At your door he kisses you goodnight and you feel warm all over as you fall asleep, excitement buzzing through you at the thought of seeing him again in the morning.

Chapter Text

In the days after you and Karkat get together, you manage to tell everyone about the development pretty quickly, with Rose and Jade following closely after John. Jade is happy for you and sends you a massive wall of smiley face and heart emojis, followed by a long message about how much you deserve to be happy and how much she loves you. You absolutely do not tear up about it.

You’re more hesitant to tell Rose. It’s not that you don’t think she’ll be happy for you, she definitely will, it’s just that you know you’re going to get punched in the face with a big, fat “I told you so,” and you’re not sure if your ego can take it. You open up PesterChum after about a day of avoiding it, maneuvering around the Karkat in your arms as you type.

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 23:49 --
TG: hey so
TG: youre not gonna fucking believe this
TG: but karkat and i are a thing now
TG: an item
TG: like
TG: boyfriends
TG: and all the other words associated with boyfriends
TG: like uh
TG: partners?
TG: ew no i fucking hate that
TG: sounds like were cowboys or some shit
TG: like i approached him on the ranch with my hands on my belt buckle and a piece of wheat hangin out of my mouth all howdy partner wanna hold hands and kiss and stuff
TG: wanna help me wrangle a bull if you know what i mean
TG: help me milk this cow
TG: sit behind me on a dirty stool and gently caress my hands patrick swayze style as i tug on some cow tits
TG: milk shooting into a bucket all obscene like as if this is some sort of fucked up cowboy porno
TT: So you and Karkat have worked out your differences then?
TT: I’m going to assume that’s what you mean, however thickly veiled it is behind your metaphor about cowboys engaging in various homoerotic agricultural activities.
TT: And I think you may have confused cowboys with farmers somewhere in your metaphor.
TT: Shouldn’t you be more well versed in the debate of cowboys versus farmers? Being from Texas I would assume you’re an expert.
TG: hey shut up about texas were not all hicks and country bumpkins
TG: some of us have some fucking class
TT: I’m sure.
TT: So you and Karkat are boyfriends then?
TT: How did this transpire? If you’re willing to share.
TT: Please spare me any particularly raunchy details.
TG: no raunch to be found here dude its all pretty fuckin vanilla if you ask me
TG: basically we got drunk and made out the other night
TG: and then consequently freaked out about it in the morning and fucked everything up vis a vis miscommunication
TG: but then like a few hours later we figured it out and had a feelings jam and made out some more and now were boyfriends the end
TT: A thrilling saga.
TT: I’m happy for you, Dave.
TT: I hope you know that it was endlessly frustrating watching you dance around your feelings, nearly as frustrating as it was watching you flounder around about your sexuality back when we were sixteen. I’m glad the situation has been resolved and ended well.
TT: Especially because I know you weren’t exactly exhilarated to hear about Kanaya and I all those weeks ago.
TT: As much as you tend to keep these things to yourself, I know that revelation made you feel more lonely than you’d care to admit. I hope I haven’t exasperated that feeling.
TT: And I hope Karkat being around will allow that feeling to diminish and turn into something better as your relationship develops.
TT: I think I may be jumping the gun here...
TT: All I’m trying to say is, I’m happy that you’re happy.
TG: oh
TG: well thanks dude
TG: shit
TT: And also I told you so.
TG: ah there it is
TG: i knew it was coming man
TT: Is it not well deserved?
TG: yeah i guess so
TG: whatever ill give you this one for now
TT: Good.

You chat with Rose for a bit longer before she bids you goodnight, and you put your phone away in favor of holding onto Karkat. You’re sitting on the couch with your hands newly pressed in his hair as he sits against you, his back pressed into your chest. He’s settled into the space between your open legs now that you’ve put your phone down and is using your thighs as elbow rests while he flips through the channels on the TV, staring at the screen with sleepy, pretty eyes. Every once in a while he lifts up a hand to grab your own, occasionally kissing your knuckles or playing with your fingers. It makes you grin like a sappy idiot every time and you don’t bother trying to suppress it anymore.

Even though it’s been a few days since you both confessed to each other. you’re still not used to the new rules you’ve set for yourself around Karkat. Before, you adhered to specific boundaries for how you interacted with him, trying not to touch him too much or stare at him too openly for fear of giving yourself away. Now you’re allowed to just… admire him, hold his hand, put your arms around his waist, and feel the way you do about him without any fear. The barrier between platonic and romantic has been broken down and you’re free to ogle and canoodle all you damn well please. It’s basically the best and you don’t think you’ll ever get used to it.

You still can’t fucking believe that someone like Karkat has any feelings for you other than apathy and disinterest. You’re genuinely shocked, astounded, and flabbergasted about the fact that Karkat wants to kiss you, to be in a relationship with you, to call you his boyfriend. The idea alone had once seemed so far away and the crushing rejection you felt the morning after the wedding had seemed to solidify his lack of romantic inclinations towards you. You’ve never been so glad to be wrong in your life.

You take your hands out of Karkat’s hair to loop your arms around his chest instead, pulling him against you. He puts his hands over yours and cranes his neck to look at you. You can only get a glimpse of his side profile from this angle and he looks incredibly tired, but so beautiful, and bright. You smile at him.

“Hey there,” you greet cheerfully.

“Hi,” he mumbles in reply, voice soft from sleepiness. “Think I might go to bed soon.”

“Yeah that’s probably a good idea,” you say. “My left leg has been numb for like twenty minutes and if you fall asleep on me I’m probably gonna have to amputate it or something and I’m not super into the idea of missing an entire limb. Like yeah, having a peg leg would be kinda cool and everything but I’d rather not deal with the events leading up to that.”

He pinches you in the calf and laughs when you yelp and kick at him. “Seems fine to me,” he insists.

You pout and cross your arms as Karkat turns to fully face you. “That’s it dude, no goodnight kiss for you,” you tell him. “Yeah, you’ve lost your kissing privileges for the night, my lips are officially a no-fly zone and you’re a helpless jet about to get shot out of the air by snipers. All those years at the academy or fucking pilot school or whatever have come down to you fucking up and breaking the rules, bet they totally don’t seem worth it now, huh? That’s what you get.”

“Shut up,” he says, and he kisses you anyways. You suspect it’s partly to keep you quiet. “I was thinking,” he starts when you separate, then hesitates.

“What’s up?” you ask. His tone sounds a little tentative and it’s making you nervous.

“Would it be alright if I slept with you tonight?” When you only blink in response, Karkat quickly explains himself. “I don’t mean that as some sort of fucking euphemism, I mean I actually just want to sleep in your bed… with you, if that’s alright. You can say no, like I realize this is really fucking presumptuous of me to just assume that you’d be okay with it as if you don’t need any personal space whatsoever, so if you’d rather not you can just tell me and I’ll -”

“Whoa dude,” you say with a hand up. “I’m totally down to get our cuddle on in my bed and fall asleep in each other’s arms in the gayest way possible and everything, but are you like… okay?”

“What?” He squints at you.

“Like are you havin’ bad dreams or something and that’s why you wanna get on the snuggle train to sleepville or…?”

“Oh my god, Dave, Jesus Christ,” Karkat says exasperatedly. “No, I’m not having nightmares and need someone to comfort me like a fucking child, I just… like you? I know it’s hard for you to understand because you have the emotional range of a goldfish on sedatives but I do actually enjoy being around you and would like to continue doing so in the form of sleeping next to you.”

You make a stupid sound like you’re choking on your own breath as your heart soars into your throat. That’s right - Karkat is your boyfriend, and he likes you, and wants to kiss you, and be with you. You still can’t believe it.

“Oh, okay, yeah, cool,” you stutter intelligently. “You go on ahead, I’ll be there in a few.”

“Alright.” Karkat gets off the couch, then stops halfway to the hall. “You’re sure this is okay?” he asks.

“ Yes , dude, I’m sure,” you reassure him. “Don’t get all neurotic about it or anything, I mean, we’ve had some real nice cuddle jams even before we were a thing right? What’s the difference now?”

He shakes his head, eyes drifting to the floor instead of meeting yours. “You’re right, I just…” He’s blushing. “Nothing, nevermind.”

You watch him leave, enjoying the sway of his hips but not the tension in his back where he’s hunched over from embarrassment. You don’t know what’s up with him, and you’re not planning on letting it go anytime soon. Before any snuggles, cuddles, or nuzzles take place you’re going to get some info out of him about why he’s acting weird whether he likes it or not.

You stay up a bit longer to watch the end of a stupid talent competition and then head to the bathroom to get ready for bed. The mirror reflects your tired and messy personage, staring back at you with amber eyes, soft from thinking about Karkat. You tilt your head and watch your reflection do the same, noting how your hair hangs in your face and how many freckles you’ve gotten from being outside for work. You brush your teeth without much thought, though you start to feel a little nervous when you get to your room.

Karkat is shirtless. You momentarily forgot the fact that Karkat sleeps without a shirt and are now faced with the possibility that being in such close proximity to him when so much of his skin is showing may result in some unpleasant and poorly timed boners. You would rather die than get an erection while cuddling with Karkat and you pray to whatever higher beings there are that it doesn’t happen. They don’t make you any promises.

“Comfy?” you ask him as you change into your bed clothes.

He shrugs as much as he can manage while lying on his side. “My bed is better.”

“Next time we’ll use yours,” you say, with only an ounce of suggestiveness in your tone.

“We’ll see about a next time,” he half jokes. “If you drool, snore, or kick me in your sleep I’m never doing this again. At least I’m fairly confident in the fact that you’re past your bed-wetting phase.”

“Fairly confident,” you repeat with a snort.

You finish changing and move the blankets aside to join Karkat in your bed. It’s barely big enough to accomodate the two of you and it would be more manageable if Karkat wasn’t lying like twenty feet away from you. You look at him as he plays around on his phone, expecting for him to scoot closer to you at any moment. He doesn’t, and instead pulls the blankets up to cover his whole body up to his collarbone. You move closer to him and he moves farther away. You frown.

“Alright dude,” you say, turning onto your side to address him. “I hate to be all up in your business like this but you’re acting all kindsa weird about this thing. You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

The little bit of his skin that you can see turns splotchy with a flush and he looks away from you. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re over here avoiding me like I’ve got not only crabs but also a flesh-eating disease,” you point out. “If I was a peeping Tom watching this happen through the window or something I’d assume there was something wrong with this blonde guy you’re lying next to, like he smells particularly rancid or some shit and you just don’t wanna get anywhere near him. I’d be all confused and disappointed because I thought I’d get to see some R-rated motherfucking cuddles up in here but all I got was a couple of losers barely looking at each other. My creepy boner would deflate all comically, squeaking like a balloon animal gone wrong, all because you won’t let your boyfriend spoon you like a man.”

Karkat has covered his face now, partially from exasperation at your metaphor and partially from what seems like embarrassment. He finally turns onto his side and removes his hands to look at you properly for once. His expression is a mixture of shame and sadness and it worries you. Fear flares up inside your stomach that maybe you said something wrong or somehow fucked things up already, not even a week into your relationship. It wouldn’t be surprising.

“Promise you won’t make fun of me?” he asks, voice small.

“Man, why would I make fun of you?” You cover his hand with yours for emphasis. “I know I rag on you like all the time because that’s just what we do but when it comes to like… real actual problems, you know that’s not my style, right? There’s a fine line between casual, kind of funny douchebaggery and real asshole tendencies and as much as I like to ride that line I’m not willing to go over it, you know?”

“I know,” Karkat says with a nod. “It’s just… it’s fucking stupid, it doesn’t even matter.”

“I mean, I won’t push you here but I feel like it kinda matters?”

He sighs and shoves part of his face into your pillow, making an aggravated noise. He mumbles something you can barely make out and you have to ask him to say it again, sans the pillow.

“It’s just that… you’re all abs and muscles and I’m… not, and it just…” He sighs, scrubs at his face. “It freaks me out. Why would someone who looks like you want to be with someone who looks like me?”

It feels like a punch in the gut to know that Karkat worries you don’t want him. You’re not good with words, you brain to mouth filter has been broken and clogged up for years, but you want to reassure him that everything he just said is total bullshit.

“That’s total bullshit,” you say. “Of course I want to be with you dude, have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re like model levels of hot, okay, and I mean that, really, don’t think I’m just blowing smoke up your ass here. I think I lose like five brain cells every time I look at you for too long because my synapses start firing too much and everything and I can’t even think straight. Not that I’ve ever thought straight in my life, but you know what I mean.”

Karkat smiles a little at your ranting but it’s too small, his eyes aren’t in it. You move closer to him to make your point, slinging your arm over his hip and forcing him to catch your gaze through proximity.

“Look,” you start again. “I unironically, genuinely, totally love your body. I bug John all the time about how good you look and I think I’ve written like three songs about your ass alone. It’s seriously the choicest ass I’ve ever seen in my life and I really need you to know that, okay, I’m a few stares away from just dedicating entire poems to your butt and publishing them online so everyone knows how much I enjoy lookin’ at it.”

Karkat is shying away from you again, though his smile is coming back brighter and more radiant this time. You pull him closer to you.

“And you know what? Even if you do gain weight or lose weight or get real buff or miraculously grow a few inches so you’re a normal height,” this makes him smack the side of your arm, “I’d still like the way your body looks because it’s yours . Miss me with that shit about me not wanting you, that’s easily the dumbest thing you’ve ever said by a longshot.”

“Okay,” he says, and you think you might hear a couple of tears in his voice. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, babe, I’m always up to talk about the things I like about you,” you say. “We’ve already covered your ass which is probably the most important thing, but I could talk about your smile too, if you wanna get real fucking sappy in here. What about your thighs? Your hands? There’s a lot to choose from, I might need a minute.”

“Okay, god, I get it,” he says, smiling genuinely now. “You can stop now, if you keep talking I think I’ll fucking implode.”

“That wouldn’t be fun for either of us,” you say. “You’d be a black hole and I’d have no one to ogle. It’s my worst nightmare.”

“God forbid you have to keep your eyes to yourself for once,” he shoots back. “I can’t imagine the horror you would face having to mind your own business and personal space for the first time in your life.”

“Let’s quit pretending like you don’t absolutely love having your personal space invaded,” you point out. “And I love invading it. That’s why we work.”

“Right.”

“Now enough bullshitting around, I came here to get my cuddle on and it’s been like twenty minutes so why am I still cuddle-less? What’s with this blatant homophobia?” You pull Karkat up against your side and he lets his head fall onto your chest with a roll of his eyes. “See? This is way better,” you say enthusiastically.

“I guess this isn’t completely terrible,” he says, as if he wasn’t the one to suggest it in the first place.

Karkat sneaks a warm hand under your shirt and traces along the scars on your stomach, drifting from the small ones at your hips to the largest one across your abdomen. Your muscles contract under his touches, a little ticklish, and his fingers cease their movements firmly on the large wound at the center of your stomach, now several months old. You swallow, remembering where the scar came from, where all of your scars came from. You haven’t thought about them in a long time.

“Hey, you wanna know something?” you say quietly. “You wanna hear a fun and sexy fact about me?”

Karkat snorts. “Sure?”

You swallow again. “The only reason why I have abs and muscles and everything,” you start, “is because I wanted to be able to fight off my bro.”

You can hardly see Karkat’s face from this angle, his tangled mess of hair encroaching on your view, but you can hear the frown in his voice. “Oh,” is all he says.

“Yeah, like in high school I realized the whole situation was kind of massively fucked up and everything,” you continue, your stream of consciousness opening up into an ocean of repressed memories. “And I just kinda figured that people would eventually start getting suspicious if I kept showing up to school looking like I got the shit beat out of me, you know? I could only play it off as accidental for so long so I thought I’d get real buff and lift weights and shit just like all the other insufferable dudebros at my school. It took forever because I was real underweight at first, bro never properly fed me like how guardians are apparently supposed to, so I had to stuff my face during lunch at school just to get enough protein to gain muscle. I ate a lot of fucking cheeseburgers that year, it was ridiculous and my cholesterol soared like you wouldn’t fucking believe.”

The only noticeable change in Karkat’s demeanor as a result of your story is the nearly imperceptible twinge of his eyebrows and the feeling of his hand under your shirt curling into a fist. You feel like you should stop but the floodgates have opened now and you hope Karkat has a fucking life jacket.

“You know, the day I came here all bloody and fucked up was the first time in a while that he got me,” you tell him. You’re mostly talking to yourself, though the pressure of Karkat’s smaller body against yours is incredibly grounding. You unconsciously hold him tighter. “I’d gotten pretty good at fighting him and everything, especially if he was drunk or high because he always got real fucking sloppy with his technique and super off balance and everything and I could knock him over after a while. But I’d run out of money a few days earlier and hadn’t had jack fucking shit to eat besides like a Slim-Jim and some pizza rolls so I was all kinds of malnourished and tired and he just…got me.”

“Fuck,” Karkat is saying. He sounds frustrated. “Fuck, that’s so…” He struggles for a few moments with what to say, and ultimately lands on, “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck, dude, don’t be sorry,” you insist. “Did you beat me up? Not feed me for days? Don’t think so.”

“I know that, it’s just… I didn’t mean to bring up all this shit,” he says miserably. “I was sitting here shitting around, talking about being jealous of your body when in reality you achieved your current physical appearance from what is probably the worst combination of events I’ve ever heard of.”

“Hey,” you say firmly. “There’s nothing wrong with being jealous of someone else’s hot bod, that’s like basic fucking human nature. Like, not to start talking about your ass again but I would kill to have an ass like that okay, I’ve spent years trying to get a bubble butt like yours, doing squats and deadlifts and shit, but it’s just not gonna happen. It’s not in my genetics, I just don’t have the right chromosomes for a thick ass. Consider me hella fucking jealous.”

This at least makes Karkat smile and seems to calm him down a bit. He bites at his lip for a second before voicing his thoughts any further, his tone hesitant.

“I’m… I’m sorry all that shit happened to you, regardless,” he says. “I only know a part of what you’ve been through and even that is majorly fucked up.”

“Well I’m here now, right?” you ask. “And at risk of sounding cheesy or gay or whatever, at least all of that shit led up to us meeting each other and all. Not sure why the universe decided I had to suffer for like twenty years before the cosmos deemed me worthy enough to meet you, but it’s whatever…” You pause, considering what you just said. “Okay, yeah, that was pretty cheesy to be honest, I might as well be sponsored by Kraft Singles because as far as molded dairy products go this wins by far. I should be passing out crackers if I’m gonna say shit like this.”

“It’s unbelievable how sweet you can be while simultaneously saying the dumbest fucking shit,” Karkat muses. “It’s a talent of yours I have yet to understand and it’s amazing how you can bog down genuine sentiment with shit about cheese. It both vexes and impresses me.”

“Come on, I know you love it,” you say, jostling him against you for emphasis.

“Yes, it’s only kind of obnoxious,” Karkat grumbles, though he nudges himself closer to you anyways, nose pressed into the side of your neck.

“Can we sleep now?” you ask. “All of this shit, talking about our emotions and whatever the fuck,  has totally worn me out.”