Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dave slammed the door open, figuring that nobody would be home, as usual. 

“Bro, you here?”

No response. As usual.

He threw his backpack onto the table, walking the few feet to his bedroom door. There were boxes still piled around it, unopened, but he wasn’t about to mess with them. Bro could do that when he got back from work, sometime around midnight, drunk as hell. 

His room was already painted a sloppy black, colour smeared a bit into the carpet and a lot on the ceiling, which caused even more black droplets around the edges of the floor. He didn’t really care. Sighing, he dropped into his seat and opened his laptop, logging onto pesterchum, then back off. He didn’t want to talk to anyone today. Instead, he pulled up Paint and began working on one of those ironic comics he was overdue to make. Homework could wait. 

A few hours later, he was finally in a good enough mood to pull up the chat client. Somebody had been trying to contact him.

It just would be the Egderp, wouldn’t it. 

EB: hey dave!

EB: you around?

EB: oh, come on. i’ve been waiting for forever!

—- turntechGodhead has logged in —-

TG: what do you need egderp

TG: ive been busy

EB: oh, hey! 

EB: well, i was thinking, and suddenly it hit me.

TG: thats kind of dangerous dude

EB: just listen! 

EB: anyways. you’ve met karkat vantas, right? 

TG: the albino kid who never shuts up

EB: yeah, him! 

EB: well, i was wondering, me and vriska are going out to see a movie, and since karkat’s probably tagging along, would you like to go too?

TG: are you trying to set me up with someone

TG: you dont even know if im gay or not

EB: dave. 

EB: i saw you making out with eridan freaking ampora sophomore year.

EB: you’re a homosexual.

TG: oh gog why me

TG: fine ill come on your stupid double date

TG: but dont expect me to fall in love

TG: no dramatic hollywoodesque swoonage will occur by any stretch of the imagination

TG: got it

EB: yeah, yeah!

EB: i’ll be by to pick you up at 8!

—- ectoBiologist has signed out —-

Dave logged off, unsure what the hell he had just gotten himself into.

A double date with not-a-homosexual John Egbert and his bitch of a girlfriend, and Karkat fucking Vantas.

He’d never even spoken to the guy. 

Shit.

Chapter Text

It was 7:59. Dave straightened his shades, waiting a few feet away from the door. He didn’t exactly want his “date” to think he was a slacker. Well, it was his first ever date, after all.

Suddenly, a loud horn blared from outside. Dave stood up from his position on the couch and opened the door. Sure enough, John was leaning on the horn of his dad’s old junker of a car, waving at him with his free hand.

“Dave! Hey!”

Dave just nodded in response. Waving… no. Just, no. There was Vriska, peering over the derp’s shoulder, her auburn hair looking perfect as always, eyepatch fixed in place over her one blind eye, prosthetic arm pristine and shining.

And then in the backseat, there was Karkat. White hair, incredibly pale skin, blood red eyes. Just like Dave. The difference was that his hair was incredibly mussed, and he didn’t hide his eyes behind “ironic” shades. He was wearing a black shirt and grey corduroy skinnies. Dave’s white jeans and red shirt seemed too bright in comparison, but he climbed in anyways. 

“Hey,” Karkat smiled. Okay, he seemed nice enough. “Karkat Vantas. So you’re the guy the fuckass in the front seat’s been telling me about.”

“Yeah. Dave Strider.” He held out a hand, and you shook it. No reason to look like a jerk. “Nice to meet you. Guess we’re in this shit together.”

“Guess so. Do you even know what fucking movie we’re going to see? Because they didn’t tell me.”

“Not a clue. Probably a Nic Cage failur- I mean movie. They’re both really into him for whatever reason. I swear Egbert has a man-crush on the guy.”

“Maybe we could sneak out…” Karkat winced, although there was a bit of amusement in his eyes. “While these two fuckasses are busy with their Nic Cage, we’ll save ourselves from the proverbial fucking tower of the movie theater castle and get out until the fucking banquet hall of romcoms and all the good shit that they’re missing up in their high tower as they wait for their Dashing Prince Nic Cage to save them from the tower while we’re escaping via the realization that we don’t need any fucking Nic Cage to save us.”

Dave stared at him for a second as John pulled out of the driveway. “That was the most long-winded, horrifyingly accurate metaphor I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ve been told I do that a fucking lot. Apparently you just learn to ignore it.”

Dave sat back, adjusting his shades as the sun went down. “If it does turn out to be a Cage movie, you and I can sneak out and watch something else. Although seriously? Romcoms?”

“Romcoms are good,” Karkat protested, running a hand through his already messy hair. 

“Maybe if you’re being ironic,” Dave allowed. “But there is no other way.”

“Fine, I’ll pretend irony. Or you can just see it for the fucking irony of the situation, and I’ll go and actually fucking enjoy it. I’ll enjoy the hell out of it.”

“You do that.”

They rode for another fifteen minutes in stone-cold silence, John and Vriska laughing their heads off and joking around in the front seat. John had just admitted to stashing a bottle of wine for later in the trunk, and was turning around to look at Dave, half of a sentence already out of his mouth.

“Hey, Dave, do you think you’ll want some of-“

The lines on the road started to veer off-course. No, it wasn’t the lines. It was the car.

“Egbert, eyes on the road!” Dave snapped. Of course, John paid him no mind.

Everybody in the car but John could see the inevitable coming as he swerved, yakking on about some shit that nobody was listening to. There was a dark green truck, an instant of mind-numbing terror, and then…

CRASH.

Chapter Text

Dave woke up in a place far too clean to be his own home. Everything smelled like medicine and old people, and the walls were white.

Definitely not his apartment. “B-Bro?” he stuttered out the first name he could think of, looking around wildly and feeling his head immediately start to pound. 

“No,” a quiet voice answered him. There was a rasp to it, but it still sounded better than his own. “He left to get some food, practically hasn’t left your side for days. It’s just you and me.”

He recognized that voice, and turned his head enough to make out the shock of white hair in the bed next to his. “… John? Vriska?”

Karkat shook his head. “It’s just you and me.”

Dave nearly burst into tears. Totally uncool. 

“It was instantaneous, apparently,” Karkat continued. “Not too much pain. They were the lucky ones.” 

Dave curled up into the starched sheets he was lying in, feeling pathetic. John was gone. That didn’t make sense. That didn’t even come close to making sense. John Egbert was a universal constant, even if he was a dick. 

Was being the operative word…

He drifted back into pained sleep, his head throbbing. 

The next time he woke up, Bro was sitting by his bed, watching him intently.

“Hey, you’re up,” the older Strider greeted, flashing a smirk that only a Strider could pull off in this situation. “How’s your head?”

Dave shook his head, realizing that he was missing something crucial- his aviators. “Where are my shades?” he asked, saving all potent discussions for later. 

“Took them home,” Bro shrugged, nonchalant. “The docs wouldn’t let you keep them on. Besides, I figured it’d make Shorty over there feel a bit more at home.”

“Shorty?” Dave looked around for a moment, then realized he was talking about Karkat. Oh, duh.

Oh, shit. Karkat had seen his eyes. He glanced over at the albino kid, and was rewarded by a tiny smirk as red eyes met. 

Okay, so he was kind of cute. Kind of.

But that didn’t matter right now, right? This was a time for panicking about Egderp, not daydreaming over albino assholes.

Where did that thought even come from? He wasn’t daydreaming.

“Anyways. I need to run off and actually get shit done, I have an internet empire to run.” Bro tipped his hat /ironically/ to Dave, who barely suppressed an eyeroll. 

“Yeah, yeah, come back when it’s time for me to get out of this hellhole,” he shrugged, feeling pain shoot up his right arm and wondering just how many injuries he had. 

Bro just nodded and left the room, not even saying goodbye. Well, that was fairly normal. Dave turned to look at Karkat again, who he realized belatedly was actually sitting up, with only two needles in his skin. 

“So…” the shorter boy managed a smile at Dave. “It would appear that we’re seriously fucking similar. Who would have guessed?”

Dave almost shrugged, then remembered his apparent shoulder injury and stopped himself. “You don’t rap, do you?”

“Why the fuck would I do that?” Karkat shook his head, raising a hand to brush his hair out of his eyes, and Dave saw that he had a cast on his forearm.

“Because it’s the /shit/, dude. So tell me. Were you actually conscious through the accident? I mean, you seem to be a lot better than me.”

“Yeah… John was dead before the medics even fucking arrived, and Vriska went right after. You were unconscious, they had to pull all kinds of stunts to get you into the ambulance, since your back got really fucked up, and then… you know, your arm…” Karkat shrugged. 

“What about my arm? It’s just my shoulder that hurts.”

Karkat’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh, shit… you’ve been asleep for a week, I guess you didn’t notice… I… I suggest you look at your arm.”

Dave rolled his eyes, but looked down, then blinked once, twice. Nope, nope, nope.

Well, that could explain the pain in his shoulder…

“How the fuck did I lose my fucking arm?” he whispered to Karkat, staring at the place where his arm used to be, now only three inches of stump hanging off of a useless shoulder.

“Shrapnel from the door on your side. They had to amputate while you were unconscious.”

“This fucking /sucks/,” Dave practically yelled, throwing up his arms- arm, accidentally ripping a patch from his hand and not caring in the least as the monitors started to go crazy. “What the fuck am I supposed to do without two arms?”

This was totally uncool, and he knew it. He had to calm down, somehow. 

Karkat wasn’t in his bed when Dave next looked over. In fact, he was standing right the fuck beside Dave, on the side of his good arm. His only arm. Shit.

“Dude, aren’t you supposed to be all hooked up to those machines over there?” Dave protested.

“And you’re supposed to be a guy who never loses his cool. If it was me freaking the fuck out, everyone would understand. But you need to take a chill pill.” Karkat leaned closer to him, forcefully making his point. 

“Some first date, huh?” Dave joked as Karkat’s face got a bit too close to him for comfort. There we go, he was cool again. Much better. 

“Some first date,” Karkat agreed, then pressed his lips against Dave’s forehead.

That felt weird. Bro didn’t exactly do real sappy things like that, so… huh. It wasn’t totally unwelcome. 

And he was tingling. Probably just some medicine or other kicking in. 

“Go get in bed, fuckass,” he lifted a corner of his mouth into a smirk at Karkat, who obliged, his face a bit red. “I think you’re drunk or something.”

He kind of hoped he wasn’t.