
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12344499.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Jade_Harley/Dave_Strider, Jade_Harley/Karkat_Vantas, Dave_Strider/Karkat
      Vantas, Jade_Harley/Dave_Strider/Karkat_Vantas
  Character:
      Jade_Harley, Dave_Strider, Karkat_Vantas
  Additional Tags:
      Pesterlog, Developing_Relationship, Polyamory, Codependency, Explicit
      Sexual_Content, Threesome, Threesome_-_F/M/M, Bulges_and_Nooks, Past
      Abuse, Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorder_-_PTSD, Past_Sexual_Abuse,
      Flashbacks, Past_Incest, Fluff, Fluff_and_Angst, Sleepwalking, Arguing,
      Makeup_Sex
  Series:
      Part 1 of get_happy
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-10-12 Updated: 2018-02-26 Chapters: 17/21 Words: 53364
****** I Think This Is Happy ******
by Rag
Summary
     jade, dave and karkat figure out how to be in a relationship while
     being three supremely fucked up people
     note: the rape/underage stuff does not occur in the events of the
     story, but happened to a central character before the story started
     and he has flashbacks. chapters that deal heavily with these themes
     will have warnings in the chapter notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
-- carcinoGeneticist started pestering gardenGnostic --
CG: JADE.
GG: hi karkat!
CG: HI.
GG: whats up?
CG: I WANTED TO ASK YOU A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION ABOUT HUMAN BAKING PRACTICES.
GG: why arent you asking dave? o:
CG: DAVE DOES NOT KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT BAKING, AND MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO
ALLUSIONS TO THE CONTRARY.
CG: AND DESPITE MANY OF YOUR QUAINT HUMAN SAYINGS ABOUT THE MERITS OF
ATTEMPTING THINGS WITHOUT A PLAN, I’M TIRED OF WASTING ENTIRE BAGS OF FLOUR ON
A SINGLE BATCH OF PANCAKES.
CG: ALSO EVERY STAR IS FARTHER THAN THE MOON, THAT SAYING MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO
SENSE, AND HUMAN SAYINGS SUCK IN GENERAL.
GG: oh, like yours are any better!!!!
GG: honestly, i dont really know that much about cooking either, heh.
CG: OH, GOOD.
CG: OKAY, I GUESS WE’RE JUST DOOMED. OR I SHOULD ASK SOMEONE ELSE. IS THERE A
SINGLE HUMAN AMONG YOU THAT KNOWS HOW TO MAKE PANCAKES?
CG: I CAN DO FINE WITH GROUND GRUB BUT DAVE WON'T EAT IT.
GG: i dunno, maybe rose?
GG: oh! no! jane! ask jane!
CG: JANE? OKAY. I’LL ASK JANE.
CG: WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW?
GG: SPACE STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!
GG: making sure the planets are aligned and shit, so earth doesnt go out of
orbit and roast you all like baked potatoes.
GG: or freeze you like sad meaty popsicles.
CG: JESUS FUCKING SHIT. WELL, THANKS. FOR THAT.
CG: YOU’D THINK I’D BE MORE USED TO THAT KIND OF GRAVITAS OF SITUATION WITH
DAVE AND THE TIME THING, BUT NO, IT NEVER STOPS BEING ALARMING TO HEAR ABOUT.
GG: oh, its no big deal, and its super easy. the planets are all set up, i just
have to check on them!
GG: its just like checking to make sure all the windows in your house are
locked
CG: OF COURSE IT IS.
CG: IT’S NOT LIKE YOU GUYS ARE JUST INURED TO THE WHOLE COSMIC SCALE THING, OR
ANYTHING.
GG: oh, one second, dave is pestering me!
-- gardenGnostic ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist --
-- turntechGodhead started pestering gardenGnostic --
TG: hey harley whats up
GG: hi dave! i was just talking to karkat!
TG: oh shit really
TG: give me a second
TG: actually give me like 5 minutes
GG: :o
-- turntechGodhead ceased pestering gardenGnostic --
-- turntechGodhead started pestering gardenGnostic --
TG: okay yeah you wanna group this shit up
GG: group chat?
TG: hell yeah
GG: oooooh sure!
-- gardenGnostic joined the chat WHATSCOOLERTHANBEINGCOOL --
GG: hi guys! :)
CG: HI, JADE.
TG: hey
TG: welcome to the coolest fucking chat youll ever be a part of
GG: dont be too humble, dave :p
TG: i dont know the meaning of the word
CG: HE’S NOT WRONG.
CG: I CAN VOUCH.
CG: THIS CHAT IS SO FUCKING COOL I REGULARLY GET FROSTBITE FROM INTERACTING
WITH IT.
TG: yeah its so gross
TG: karkat keeps coming to me with these dead black fingers and i have to
squeeze them between my legs until the blood comes back
GG: sounds……… kinky.
CG: OH, IT IS.
CG: NOTHING GETS EITHER OF US HOTTER THAN THREAT OF SEMI-PERMANENT INJURY.
CG: I MEAN THEY’D GROW BACK IF THEY FELL OFF, BUT ITD TAKE A FEW WEEKS.
TG: holy shit really
TG: dude we have to try that sometime
CG: TRY CUTTING MY FUCKING FINGERS OFF? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT
TG: come on dude theyll grow back
TG: like a lizards tail god thats so weird
TG: and i mean, not your fingers, but maybe your pinky toe
CG: I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO PRETEND TO ENTERTAIN THAT IDEA.
TG: okay fair
TG: but if any part of you happens to fall off can i like
TG: keep it
GG: and do what with it?!?
CG: AND DO WHAT WITH IT?!
CG: HA. I'VE JINXED YOU.
GG: no, i jinxed you, and you have to buy me a soda
CG: DO I NOW?
CG: WHAT AN INTERESTING RITUAL. IN ALTERNIA, JINXING ENTAILS MILD JUJU.
GG: you would put a juju on me? :(
CG: WELL, NOT A BAD ONE, BECAUSE I DON’T ACTUALLY DESPISE YOU.
CG: JUST SOMETHING LIKE, YOU’LL WANT STRAWBERRY GRUBSAUCE, AND YOU’LL ONLY BE
ABLE TO FIND GRAPE.
GG: but i wanted strawberry :(
CG: SORRY, JADE, BUT THAT’S THE PRICE OF JINXING. YOU’LL HAVE TO BE MORE
CAREFUL NEXT TIME.
GG: no, im pretty sure the price is one soda, owed to me by you!!!!!!
TG: i wanna brine it
CG: ABSOLUTELY NOT.
GG: i cant believe you invited me to this chat just to talk about jinxing and
karkat’s pickled appendages :p
TG: oh, we didnt
CG: WE DIDNT.
GG: :o
GG: guys???
TG: give us a second
CG: HOLD ON
GG: um
GG: everything okay over there?
GG: youre making me kind of nervous, haha.
TG: lets go back to shooting the shit actually
CG: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT DATING
TG: so smooth dude
CG: SHUT UP!!!! AT LEAST I FUCKING SAID SOMETHING!!!!!
TG: point
GG: um?? dating is okay? i guess?
GG: im happy for you guys doing it! you seem really good together.
TG: haha, doing it
CG: OH MY GOD SHUT UP
TG: jade how do you feel about doing it with us
GG: what?!
CG: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!
TG: asking her out? thats the game plan here right
TG: oh holy shit i didnt mean to say that
TG: ooooh shit okay jade i didnt mean to say that
TG: i meant to say dating i swear to god
TG: not doing it
TG: i mean maybe that too if youre down
TG: i mean, that would probably come with the dating package, right
TG: but like, dating us, not doing us, unless youre down
CG: STOP. TALKING.
TG: k
GG: youre asking me out?
GG: but youre dating karkat???
GG: are you guys breaking up? :(
TG: no
CG: NO
CG: LIKE, YOU DATING BOTH OF US, AND BOTH OF US DATING YOU
TG: yeah that
GG: ooooh
CG: BUT NO PRESSURE, AND WE CAN TOTALLY STILL BE FRIENDS JUST THE SAME IF YOU
DON’T WANT TO
GG: ooooooooooooooooooooh
CG: IT’S JUST THAT WE BOTH REALLY LIKE YOU A LOT AND WE TALKED IT OVER AND IF
YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED WE WOULD TOO BUT REALLY NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING AND I
HOPE THIS ISN’T TOO WEIRD, WE'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT FOR A FEW MONTHS NOW
GG: ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh
TG: dont leave me hanging forever dude
GG: yes
CG: HOLY SHIT REALLY
CG: LIKE, YES, YOU’LL DATE US?
GG: yeah!
CG: OH
CG: COOL
TG: hell fuckin yeah
GG: oh, god, this is so weird and exciting!!!
GG: i do still have to finish up some space stuff for a little while but when i
come back should we like, hang out?
TG: nah man dating is a hands-off endeavor where we only just talk
TG: yeah come over here so we can like
TG: hold hands and shit
GG: is that a euphemism??? ;)
TG: holy shit
TG: i mean it can be if you want it to be
GG: oh man, guys
GG: nevermind, actually!!!!
CG: WHAT
GG: nope!
TG: was it kinky
GG: it sure was!
GG: i was thinking about…………. kissing
TG: jesus, give a guy some warning before you blow his fucking mind with that
kind of smut
CG: OH
GG: karkat youre so cute oh my god!!!!!!!!!!
TG: i know right
CG: EXCUSE ME FOR BEING KIND OF FUCKING OVERWHELMED RIGHT NOW
CG: I DIDN’T EXPECT YOU TO SAY YES
GG: well i did! get used to it! we’re DATING now!!!!!!!!!!
CG: HOLY SHIT
TG: ngl im kinda floored too
TG: had a few scenarios pulled out in the old noggin and i didnt want to bank
super hard on this one you know
TG: shit this is sweet
GG: hell yeah it is!!!!
GG: okay honestly i uh, nothing has to change right away right?
CG: NO
TG: nope
GG: its just like before but also plus dating?
TG: yeah thats the idea
TG: karkat and i were dating for like two weeks before we even kissed
GG: oh my god thats so cute????
TG: hahaha yeah but then
CG: DAVE
CG: DON’T TELL THIS STORY
GG: :OOO
GG: I WANNA KNOW THOUGH!!!!!!
TG: oh shit
TG: torn between two worlds here
TG: man this is gonna be a thing isnt it huh
TG: weird
GG: ?
TG: how about compromise
TG: ill tell it when you come back
CG: I. GUESS.
GG: fiiiiine
GG: okay how about……. i wrap up the orbit stuff and come over tomorrow?
TG: oh shit yes
TG: i figured you wouldnt be able to swing by until next week
CG: YEAH THAT’D BE GREAT
GG: okay!!!
GG: okay wow!!!!!
GG: okay i wanna talk about more stuff but im kinda overwhelmed! im gonna do
the planet stuff bye!!!
TG: peace
CG: OKAY
CG: BYE
CG: COOL
CG: SEE YOU LATER
-- gardenGnostic left WHATSCOOLERTHANBEINGCOOL --
-- turntechGodhead left WHATSCOOLERTHANBEINGCOOL --
-- carcinoGeneticist left WHATSCOOLERTHANBEINGCOOL --
Chapter End Notes
     theres gonna be serious relationship trouble later i wanna give u all
     a heads up
     also what i have planned might be overly ambitious but im going to
     TRY to pull it off gdi
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     chap is long as fuck idk what happened
Jade doesn’t know what’s more surprising - that Dave and Karkat asked her if
she wanted to date them (!) or that she said yes (!!) in hardly any time at all
(!!!). Maybe she should have thought about it longer, but it just felt so
right. She couldn’t imagine any downsides to dating her two best friends, who
she’d always thought were cute as heck. Like, yes, she’d been super excited
when she found out they were dating each other, because they made each other so
happy! She had some regrets, too, because now they were both taken, but she
pushed those regrets far, far away because they were clearly perfect for each
other, and she didn’t want to get in between them and ruin it or make it weird.
But now that wasn’t a thing! It wouldn’t ruin it or make it weird because
getting between them was exactly what they wanted!
Jade bolts around from planet to planet, taking the long way around so that she
has time to think. It’s quiet, she has plenty of time to herself, and close to
no distractions. It’s a big decision, she doesn’t play it completely by ear.
She keeps expecting some sort of doubt or something to come up. It keeps not
happening, but she wants to give herself enough time to make sure.
Maybe she told a little fib to Dave and Karkat. Well, not a fib, just, not
telling the entire truth of something they didn’t ask. She could finish this up
today if she wanted to. She takes as long as she does aligning the planets
because she enjoys this. She likes being alone, she likes the chilling,
crushing emptiness of space, she likes the cold, dead planets and the deafening
silence. She assumes it’s something about her aspect, because she’s pretty sure
this would have freaked her the fuck out before the game. But now it’s
soothing. The voided air and barely-there hum of the universe makes her feel
free, alive, and right. And it’s her favorite place to think. And thinking, she
needs to do that, before she barrels into Dave and Karkat’s open arms. Because
even though she can’t put her finger on it, there’s some needling little
feeling that’s keeping her from going back right away.
Maybe she’s a little nervous about it. She’s going from being completely alone
to dating two people at once. Even if those people are Dave and Karkat, who she
probably knows and trusts more than anyone else, that’s a lot.
She hangs out with her friends a lot, or, it feels like a lot, a few times a
week. And it always leaves her feeling drained. But that might just be because
they’re friends. It’ll be different with boyfriends. That’s why people can live
together when they’re dating, but they find roommates annoying. Right? Yeah.
And if she lives with them, they can have sex whenever. And Jade is pretty sure
that’s going to be a tradeoff she’s more than happy to make. A little bit less
space than she’s used to in exchange for endless sex and cuddles and hangouts.
Well. Maybe not endless. But a lot more than she’s used to, which is nothing.
She grins to herself as she checks up on another planet. It feels like it
stares at her, this giant slab of sand and rock and wind floating out here in
the middle of nothing. She gives it a thumbs up. Thanks for staying right where
you need to be, dude.
Heh. She’s gonna get laid. She hasn’t gotten laid since, like. Ever, heh.
Apparently some other version of her was dating Davesprite, but not this
version of her. This version of her has just gotten really acquainted with her
fingers and her brush handle. Often thinking about Dave and Karkat, with her or
with each other, sometimes the three of them together, but honestly she never,
like, thought it might actually happen. Haha. Hahahaha. Perfect? This is
seriously perfect. She could ask them to do that stuff. If they wanted to. God.
Her face gets hot as she remembers some of the stuff she’s thought about. Good
stuff. Good stuff that now might be on the table. She could just ask them to do
that. And they might actually do it. They’d almost definitely do some of it,
like, fucking her, like, that was probably definitely on the table, given that
Dave said sex was on the table - okay, calm down! God. She should probably be
thinking about something other than sex, right? Yeah. Right. She’s delaying
this trip to think about stuff that isn’t just sex.
Sex with two people at once, though. Wow. Sex with Dave and Karkat, at the same
time. Wow wow wow. She should maybe just speed this along and surprise them
tonight. Wait, no, no, that’s the opposite of what she wants to do!
Calm! Down!
She decides to section off sexy thoughts at least until she finishes this up.
She’ll think about them later tonight. They’re not easy to push away, but she’s
strong.
What was the problem, again? Oh, space. New relationships, space, feeling
things out. Well, if she needs to, she can just pop off to space again and
decompress. Or her own place. And she doesn’t have to move in with them right
away. She doesn’t have to do anything. They can just take it really slow with
that stuff, test the waters before diving in. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Problem
solved. She’s a genius.
She can’t wait to see them. She’s usually excited to see them again - they’re
her best friends, and time always passes so fast when it’s with them. Maybe she
doesn’t have to wait. Jade clocks another planet - in place, again, she’s
pretty sure she got the most boring aspect in the universe and it usually
doesn’t bother her but golly it sure does when she’s impatient - and decides
that, no, she doesn’t have to wait. Why wait? She addressed all her concerns.
She’s not nervous anymore. She thought about everything that could possibly go
wrong, and came up with a plan for it. She’s good.
-- gardenGnostic started pestering turntechGodhead --
GG: hey, change of plans???
TG: sup
GG: can i come over today instead?
GG: tonight now, i guess
TG: oh shit are you done already
GG: yeah!
TG: you fuckin speed demon you
TG: yeah sure karkat and i are just kinda vibrating out of our skeletons
waiting for you so
TG: if you wanna that to an end itd be doing us a huge favor
GG: well, consider me a genie, because your wish is my command ;))))
TG: fucking sick
GG: see you soon dude!!!
-- gardenGnostic ceased pestering turntechGodhead --
                                       *
Jade knocks on the door to Dave and Karkat’s apartment, and it’s not 10 seconds
before Karkat opens the door. He smiles shyly at her. Fuck, he’s so cute! He’s
always been cute, and she’s always thought he was cute, and now it’s not weird
to acknowledge that. She beams at him.
“Hi,” he says, and opens the door enough that she can come in. She smells
something baking, something beefy. Very likely beef. She steps in and hugs him.
“Hi!”
“Shit, is she here?” she hears from another room.
“Yeah.”
“Hi Dave!”
“Fuck!” Something clatters in the kitchen. “Hi.”
She steps inside. “What are you guys doing?” she asks Karkat.
“We’re making a, um. Dinner for you?”
Dave floats in from the kitchen. The front of his shirt is wet. He reeks of
dish soap and dirty water, Jade can smell it across the room. “Yeah, we thought
we’d have time before, uh. It’s, uh. 20 more minutes,” he says.
An awkward silence falls over them. This would usually be the part where they
catch up about what they’ve been up to. Fuck. Shit. Yeah, that’s what they
should do.
“What have you-“ Jade starts.
“So-“ Karkat says at the same time.
They both go quiet. Jade laughs after another awkward minute.
“This is weird,” she says.
“Yeah. Actually,” Dave says, “I had a feeling this might happen and planned out
some ideas to unweirdify. You down?”
“Please!”
Dave puts on a TV show about these weirdos going into swamps and catching
alligators, but honestly Jade can’t focus on it at all. She’s sitting in
between the two of them, and hyper aware of the space between them. It’s less
than usual, but there’s still a solid few inches. And then Dave stretches and
puts his arm over her shoulders. Very casual. So casual. Not casual at all but
really adorable and exciting. She should follow suit. Very, very casually, she
reaches over and grabs Karkat’s hand. It’s so warm, much warmer than hers.
It’s very nice, but it feels like none of them are even breathing.
“So, uh,” Dave says. “Are you gonna be moving in?”
Oh, woah, Jade wasn’t expecting that so soon. “Uh. No?” She feels Dave tense
up. “I mean, uh! I’m totally down living here for a few weeks! And eventually,
probably, yeah.”
He relaxes. “Okay. Cool. Fuck, that was weird, sorry.”
“It’s fine!”
“Do you want to stay the night?” Karkat asks.
That, she was expecting more.
“Yeah, if you’re, uh. Cool with that.”
“Super cool.”
“Okay, cool.”
Another awkward beat follows, and then Jade smells the edges of the meat just
starting to burn.
“Dinner’s done,” she says.
Dave looks at the clock. “Oh, shit, fuck.”
They plate it up and sit down at the table. Dave and Karkat have generously
pushed their mountain of crap to the side, clearing three spaces at the edge.
There’s just enough space for 2.5 people.
“We should get a round table. Even this shit out.” Dave is trying to stay cool,
but Jade can still see that he’s excited that’s she’s here (and smell it on
him, but she’s trying not to think about that! of all the senses to get
heightened after her dogsformation, smelling people’s emotions is the one she’s
the very least comfortable with).
“Hell yeah,” she says. “So, what do you guys do when you’re, like, dating?” She
starts to eat as she waits for them to answer. It’s good. They made a roast
that’s just a little undersalted, but it’s such a far cry from the abominations
they used to crank out when they first moved in here! Jade will never forget
the “meat lasagna.” They’ve come a really long way!
Dave and Karkat just look at each other.
“Uh,” Karkat says.
“Sometimes we watch movies in languages we don’t understand and don’t turn on
subtitles and try to figure out what’s happening,” Dave says.
“Yeah, that’s fun.”
Jade looks between them, waiting for the rest. Surely there has to be more.
“We look at stuff on the internet together,” Karkat says. Dave nods.
Yeah, this isn’t going where she wants it to go. “What about cooking? Going to
clubs? Exploring the world? Going on date, what do you do for dates, guys?”
“I dunno. We don’t really do a ton of them, I guess.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t mind them,” Karkat says hesitantly. “I think we just…
didn’t do a lot on the meteor, and it stuck from there.”
“This is blowing my mind, guys. We always do stuff when it’s the three of us!”
“Yeah, hah,” Dave says weakly, and ha indeed, this is getting awkward, and
she’ll probably drop it soon. “those were usually your ideas?”
“Oh.” She thinks back to it and, yeah, usually, they were. Huh. “Well, we’re
gonna have to do more than that together, or it’ll drive me batshit bananas.”
Karkat snort-laughs and Dave smirks. “That can be arranged,” Dave says as he
cuts into his meat.
“Not tonight though,” Jade says. “Tonight we can take it easy like a bunch of
dorks.”
She meant it as a joke, and Dave laughs a little, but Karkat’s cutting on his
meat falters for a second before he picks it back up. She sees Dave look over
at him, and Karkat shakes his head a little bit. Then Karkat picks up a piece
of the steak and shows it to Jade.
“Please explain something to me first. What animal does this come from? Have
you ever seen one? Where are they hunted?”
Well, that was weird. Maybe Jade was just imagining it. They go back to eating,
and Jade explains factory farming. And Karkat explains the massive packs of
hunters that worked to gather meat in Alternia. Which sounds fun, and she wants
in on some, even though it can’t be very efficient for a society.
They finish up and start watching TV again, and things slow down pretty
quickly. Jade is yawning before long, and Karkat notices.
“Tired? It’s, like, 9 PM.”
“Well, some of us don’t stay up until 3 every day.”
“Fair.”
“Wanna sleep in our bed?” Dave asks.
Jade feels excitement tingle in her chest. “Yeah.”
“It’s definitely big enough for three, you won’t be packed in like a sardine,
don’t worry.”
“Well, I hope it’s not too big,” she says, without thinking. And then regrets
it, heh. And then un-regrets it, because Dave is cute when he’s flustered, and
he kinda trips over himself on his way down the hallway and swears and then
tries to recover.
“Think you’ll find it the perfect size. This bed’s fuckin’ baby bear’s porridge
all the way.”
They take her to their room, and invite her in, which is weird and new and
exciting. She’s seen it before, but she hasn’t been inside. Just a little tour,
like, and here’s our bedroom, and here’s the bathroom. Now she’s going in. Now
this is her bedroom, too, kind of.
The bed is easily big enough for three. Money isn’t really a concern anymore,
and while Dave and Karkat aren’t living lavishly, they didn’t spare any expense
on the king-sized bed, or the soft sheets that line it. Jade hears a little
crinkle when she lays down.
“What’s this?” she asks, making the sound again.
Karkat’s face lights up with a blush.
“It’s, uh.”
“Liners.”
“…Why?”
“Because, uh. Trolls, uh,” Dave’s words die in his throat. “You’ll probably see
eventually. Maybe later tonight.” He waggles his eyebrows. Karkat groans and
buries his face in his hands.
“What-“
“Can we go to bed and pretend this conversation never happened?”
Jade is definitely dying of curiosity, but Karkat is dying of embarrassment,
and she’s also pretty fucking tired, and so she drops it.
“Hey Karkat,” she says. She puts her hands on his and pulls them apart, and
then kisses him on the cheek. He’s so cute! And she can just do that now! It’s
amazing! His eyes fly wide open and he smiles a little. “Let’s go to bed.”
They climb into bed and lump together in a warm little pile of limbs. It takes
a few tries. Dave accidentally elbows her in the ribs as he wiggles around, and
Karkat apparently uses him for leverage a little too much and he has to tell
him to knock it off, but they settle down, with Jade sandwiched between them.
And then Karkat leans over and turns the light off.
“Holy shit,” Dave says.
“Seriously!”
They were right about the bed. The size is a perfect baby bear porridge mix of
spacious and snug. They’re all bunched up together right now, but there’s
enough space there that they can spread out, if they really wanted to. But they
don’t. It’s nice, being so close. Jade hasn’t really cuddled like this before,
in a bed, and with people she’s dating (!). It’s warm, she can hear them
breathing, it makes her chest feel tight, she feels safe and excited. Which
isn’t conducive to sleep. She’s basically not tired at all anymore. She closes
her eyes and tries to calm down for a solid 20 seconds, but it’s just not
happening.
“So,” she says, she feels Dave flinch. Her voice is way too loud, oops. She
adjusts it down to a whisper. “Sorry.”
He laughs it off awkwardly. “No problem, just caught me off my game there.
What’s up?”
“I think it’s safe to say none of us are going to be able to sleep for a
while?”
“Yeah, no, thank god you said something,” Karkat mumbles. “I thought I was
going to have to pretend until you fell asleep.”
“So, what was that story that Karkat said not to tell me the other day?”
She feels Karkat tense up a little behind her, then realizes he’s laughing.
“What?”
“You brought it up, so you tell it. I’m not having any part in this.”
“Yeah, be that way.” Dave turns around and faces Jade. He’s so close that Jade
can feel his breath on her skin, and it makes her unmentionables stir up. “So
we waited a few weeks to kiss, right? Just holding hands while we watched
movies and shit. Cuddling up next to each other and shit.”
“That’s so cute.”
“Yeah. Well, then we kissed and then fucked on the floor that day.”
Jade’s face gets hot. So much for not thinking about sex here.
“It wasn’t on the floor, Dave. And it wasn’t, uh.”
“No, yeah, you’re right, but allow me some narrative license here, dude.”
“It wasn’t… what?” she asks carefully. Good voice, it doesn’t break, even
though her thoughts are now just raring with nothing but the idea of them…
doing stuff with her right here and now. She’s glad it’s as dark as it is,
because it’s probably written all over her face.
 “I sucked his dick and then he jerked me off. And then we fucked a week
later.”
Jade swallows. She doesn’t trust her mouth to work. God. That’s. Really hot.
Thinking about the two of them fucking and. The other stuff. And they just say
it, like, just say it, like it’s nothing. Well, Dave does. But even Karkat is
just kind of laughing along, not scandalized by it.
What if they did that with her? What if they couldn’t wait with her? What if
all that was standing between them and fucking right now was her asking for
it?! God. She wants it. Was there a reason she was going to wait? She didn’t
want to make it weird, right, but they’re dating now, and that’s not weird. Was
there a reason she wanted to wait?
“That was. Fast.”
“Yeah.” Dave laughs a little. “Is this cool? Are you okay? We can talk about
something else if you want. Don’t wanna be like, hey Jade, welcome to the fuck
den, where we regale the tales of every time we dicked down for the last three
years-“
“No, it’s fine.” She’s suddenly extremely aware of Karkat’s hand on her hip.
It’s heavy, and warm, and sends tingles of arousal out from where it rests over
her shirt. “I’m just kind of, um.”
“Are you okay?” Karkat asks. His voice is normal, but right into her ear, it
makes her shiver.
“Yeah! Why do you guys keep asking!”
“Well, you got really quiet after… I mean, we really don’t want to make you
uncomfortable. I mean. I, uh.” Karkat pulls his hand away.
“Are you okay?” she asks. She turns to face him.
“Yeah! I just want to make sure you’re okay!”
“You can put your hand back. It was nice.”
Shit, was that too forward? Fuck. Karkat tentatively places his hand back on
her waist, giving her a confused expression.
Dave makes a little oooh sound. “Think she’s horny, dude.”
Oh, fuck it. If there’s a reason she was going to wait, she’s given it more
than enough time to pop into her mind, and it’s not fucking here so.
“Dave’s right! I’m horny!”
Karkat flushes so much that Jade can see it, even in the darkness. Dave
chortles.
“Oh. Do you want to. Do something. About. Uh.” He clears his throat.
“If you do,” Jade says.
“I definitely do,” he says lowly. “Karkat?”
“I. Yes.”
“Okay. Sweet.”
Karkat runs his hand up and down Jade’s hip, and it sends sparks up her body
and down into her core. She leans forward and swallows what little bit of
nerves are holding her back and kisses him. His lips are soft and incredibly
warm. He’s just incredibly warm, all of him, a solid 10 degrees hotter than
her. Probably an alien thing. His hand stops moving for a second, and she feels
him gasp, and then he’s kissing her back and squeezing at her skin. Holy shit,
this is happening. This is right out of a late-night fantasy and it’s actually
happening to her, right now. Jade feels like her heart is going to beat itself
out of her chest.
She feels another hand on her, and then a set of lips against the back of her
neck, and Dave’s fingers run down her body and dip under her shirt. She shivers
as he drags his hand up, up, up, and Jade’s pulse races in anticipation, and
then he stops just short of her boobs.
“Do you want to keep going?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he murmurs into her skin, and runs his fingers up over the fabric of
her bra. He cups her hesitantly, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be
doing - oh, maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s only done this with Karkat. That makes
her feel a little better about the fact that this is her first time even
kissing someone for more than some party game. And that hardly really counted,
and her and Roxy were both pretty drunk and thought the whole thing was
hilarious before, after and during, and, well, this is really, really
different.
“You two are so hot,” Dave murmurs. Jade feels his dick pressing into her back
and her heart races even faster. She hopes he lets her do stuff to it tonight.
“Is this okay?” he asks again as he rubs her, so gently, like he’s worried
about scaring her off.
“Yes! It’s fine! It’s super duper fine!”
Karkat’s hand trails lower, and Jade’s breath quickens so much that she’s
almost panting. He’s going to touch her, there, holy shit. He goes down, past
her underwear, and past her pubes, and then stops.
“Where… where is it?” He runs his hand back and forth over her pubes, like he’s
looking for something.
“Dude.”
“Where’s what?” Jade asks.
“Your dick?”
Jade laughs.
“Dude.”
“What?”
“I don’t have a dick, Karkat.”
Karkat seems absolutely fucking floored by this. “Why not?”
“Oh my god, dude,” Dave says. “We should have had this talk before, I’m so
sorry.”
Jade doesn’t need to respond to Karkat’s why not. Instead, she grabs his hand,
and guides his fingertips so that they brush over her clit, and shudders.
“Just. Touch this.”
Karkat’s breath gets quiet, and he runs his fingertips back and forth, like she
showed him. And it feels amazing, different from doing it herself, the pressure
is lighter and she doesn’t know what he’ll do next and it sends thrills down
her spine.
“Like that?”
She nods. It’s hard to think. “Show me yours.”
She hears his breath stop in his throat, which is so hot. And then he pulls his
hand away, and she hears some rustling, and then he guides her hand slowly to
his.
Dave had told her before that trolls have tentacles (he didn’t use that word,
of course, Jade remembers something more along the lines of ‘hentai fuckslug’),
but it didn’t prepare her for this. It’s long, and slick, and wiggles around.
He gasps when her hand makes contact with it, and she barely has time to wrap
her hand around it before she feels Dave worm his hands down her pants and
start to rub at her. Holy shit,that makes it hard to think, it’s so hard to
concentrate on anything but how good it feels to be touched by someone else,
even with a wiggling slug of a dick in her hand. She arches back and knocks
into him painfully, and hears him swear.
“Fuck! Sorry!”
Dave just laughs. “It happens.” He pauses. “Shit, I, uh, I should have asked,
was that okay, fuck, I’m sorry-“
“What, that?” Jade gestures to her crotch area.
“Yeah. That.”
Honestly, it was endearing the first few times, and it’s probably should still
be endearing now, but it’s getting kind of annoying. And she just said yes to
Karkat, why the hell would she say no to Dave?! “Seriously, Dave, it’s fine, it
was good. You don’t have to keep asking every time you do something new.”
Dave smiles a little bit, but without his glasses on his eyes are an open book,
and she can see how uncomfortable that made him. “Ha, yeah, makes sense,” he
says.
“Sorry, I said that too strongly, didn’t I?”
 And then something shifts, and he relaxes. “It’s fine. Let’s go back to making
out.”
That she’s fine with. Well, she hopes she didn’t just fuck up in a huge way,
but he did say that it was fine. Everyone makes mistakes, and they’re just
starting to figure this whole new thing out. Communication! Dave is a really
good kisser, too. And then Karkat is behind her, running his big hands all over
her body, and it really doesn’t take very long for her to forget all about that
awkwardness. And she’s running her hands all over Dave, too, feeling his skin
and more than a few pretty deep scars. She doesn’t comment on them, because no
scars are happy scars and it’s really not sexy to ask about them now. Maybe she
would ask about them later.
She feels Karkat’s… tentacle thing wiggle a little against the skin of her
back, until it starts to flick between her legs. She pulls back to gasp.
“Karkat, can you put it in?”
She hears Karkat swallow, then feels him nod. And then his tentacle slides
inside of her. It feels fucking amazing, super fucking weird and amazing, and
she moans into Dave’s mouth. Her hands go still on Dave’s skin, and then just
gently squeeze. She needs to grab onto something.
“You feel amazing,” Karkat says.
“Can I eat you out?” Dave asks quietly.
She’s going to die. They’re going to kill her immortal form. She nods.
Enthusiastically. Words are failing her.
Dave scoots down and opens her legs up a little. The angle is awkward, but it’s
okay. Who gives a shit. She’s feels fucking amazing from what Karkat is doing
to her, and her clit feels like it’s going to implode from anticipation. She’s
always wondered what it felt like, having someone lick at it. People seemed to
like it. People seemed to really like it. And oh god Dave is kissing at the
insides of her thighs, and she can feel his breath on her, and he’s kissing and
licking his way closer, and then he’s kissing her clit and using his tongue on
it. Fuck. Fuck. She hopes the moans are doing the job of letting them know that
it’s fucking perfect, do not stop, because she can’t quite manage the  words.
Karkat’s bulge gets bigger and wetter, and it flicks around everywhere like
nothing else ever has. His breaths get hard and he bites softly at her neck.
She blindly grabs for both of them - her hand on Karkat’s side and nestled in
Dave’s hair, and she manages to get out at least a few words like yes and
that’s really fucking good oh my god, which makes Dave laugh.
It feels like no time at all before he’s tensing up behind her, and then pulls
out. And starts scrambling for something under the bed, cursing under his
breath.
“What-“
Dave uses the opportunity to grab Jade by the hips and pull her down on his
mouth, and gets a few fingers inside her. She’s. Going to die. A little death.
Ha. Oh, god.
“Dave, god, yes, fuck, fuck! Fuck!” He really fucking knows what he’s doing
with his fingers. “I’m gonna come, shit, fuck-“
He keeps at it, and she grinds herself into his face until she arches off the
bed and her world goes black.
And then she collapses back down. For mostly just sitting there and taking it,
she feels like she just ran a mile.
“That was so hot,” Karkat says. His bulge is still whipping around between his
legs.
“Tell me about it,” Dave says. He kisses at her thigh again.
“Why did you pull out?” she asks Karkat breathlessly.
“Oh, shit, you gotta see this. Hey dude, can I,” he makes a little clicking
noise with his tongue and she sees Karkat’s bulge start to thrash.
“Yeah, please, like, yesterday,” Karkat says, and Dave gives Jade one last kiss
on the thigh before scooting on the floor. He puts a bucket between his legs
and wraps his mouth around Karkat’s bulge, holy shit. It’s hot enough that she
almost forgets about the fact that he has a bucket between his legs.
She swallows before she speaks. “Uh, Karkat, why does he, uh.”
Karkat opens his eyes and tries to focus on her.
“It’s… it’s for…” he’s having trouble talking, and his voice is tight, and it’s
really hot. Jade just came, and she’s already ready to go again, god damn.
“Just sit back and watch the fireworks, dude,” Dave says, and then sinks back
down on him.
Jade scoots forward and kisses him, and runs her hands all over his body. She
feels his muscles getting tight as she hears his breaths get fast, his kisses
get sloppy, and little moans leave his throat. And then he goes still and makes
the most pained face, and she hears Dave moan and hears… something that sounds
kind of like water hitting the bucket, and it just goes and goes. Karkat groans
and then goes limp against the bed. He is an alien and all, but Jade is pretty
dang positive that he just came.
Jade peers over at the bucket. It’s like a quarter full with loose, pinkish
liquid.
“Woah.”
“Right?”
“Does that happen every time?”
“Most of the time, yeah. If you milk him he eventually comes dry. But it fills
back up after a day. Like jizz. I mean, it is. It’s just alien jizz.”
“Holy shit.”
“Can you stop talking about my freakish alien jizz in front of me, you
unfathomably rude earth mammals,” Karkat says, but he doesn’t sound like he’s
actually angry.
“Okay!” Jade says.
 Dave put the bucket on the bedside table, and then he’s crawling into bed.
“That was really hot. Totally fucking sweet. Loved it. Let’s do it again
sometime.”
“Yeah.” Jade kisses him and starts to run her hand down his side, but he stops
her.
“I’m good.”
“But you didn’t-“
“I did, while I was down there. Think I could watch you two like that without
getting off?” He throws a tissue at the other side of the room, says Kobe, and
hisses when it lands nowhere near the trash can.
Oh. “But… I wanted to do stuff to you too, you know? No fair.”
“Oh. Well, uh, you can get me back next time, okay?”
“Okay.” That’ll work, yeah. She still wishes she could have been the one to get
him off, and it seems kind of depressing that he just did it himself, without
telling them, but. Whatever. It’s what he wanted, apparently. And Karkat isn’t
commenting on it, so it’s probably normal for him? Or maybe he’s really, really
shy about sex. She did kind of jump headfirst into it, she can’t fault him for
not being exactly the same way.
She kisses him softly, and realizes she’s tasting herself on his lips. Ew. Heh.
Weird. But it’s not bad, just weird. And hot.
Karkat turns over to shut the light off.
“Watch out for the bucket,” Dave says.
“Yeah, no shit.”
Something clicks for Jade. “Is that what the liners are for?”
Dave chortles. “Yeah. Don’t always make it to the bucket. Well, don’t always
want to make it to the bucket. We have, like, 40 sheet sets because we just
keep fucking ruining them.”
“Do you just, like, leave the come bucket there?”
“Yeah. Until it dries out like a festering come scab. Then we scrape it off and
feed it to the fish in the local pond.”
“Technically it’s littering. Don’t tell the police. We’re probably on a wanted
list already.”
“Ugh, guys, that’s horrible!”
“I’m kidding, we dump it out in the morning and rinse the bucket in the
shower.” Karkat says.
“Oh. Okay.” Yeah, that’s a lot more reasonable. “I think it’s a sign that I
didn’t realize you were kidding.”
“Sign of what?” Dave asks.
“That I’m too tired to think.”
“We got you good, didn’t we.” Jade can hear the grin in Dave’s voice.
“You totally did.”
Karkat kisses her. It’s soft and sweet. She feels some heat building between
her legs and she tries to ignore it, because they’re probably all too tired to
do anything about it. Including Jade. She’d probably just fall asleep halfway
through. But, gosh, it’s just so hot, Karkat tastes really good and his lips
feel so good on hers, and he bites her lips softly and it feels so weird with
the retainer in but it’s good, it’s all really good.
“You know what would be hot?” Dave asks quietly. “Watching you two boning.”
The phrasing makes Jade laugh.
“What? No dice?”
“Not when you say it like that!”
“Sorry, making love.”
“That’s worse! That’s so much worse!”
Jade can’t stop laughing. She feels as giddy as she does tired. Which is a
whole heck of a lot of both. It’s not long before conversation dies down and
eyes close and muscles go soft and relaxed with sleep.
She can’t wait for tomorrow. She’s gonna go on a fucking date. She hasn’t
decided what just yet, but she’ll figure it out. And it’ll be. Fucking. Great.
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Summary
     fluff comes before a fall
When Jade wakes up, it takes her a few minutes to remember where she is. The
walls aren’t right, the bed isn’t right, and her sleep-fogged brain can’t make
any sense of it, especially when when she’s still shaking off the weird, weird
vibes of last night’s dream. Ugh. She gets these dreams sometimes, where she
tries to talk but nothing comes out, and it always makes her so uncomfortable.
But then she hears the soft sound of someone breathing behind her - Dave.
Right. Karkat should be in front of her, but his space on the bed is completely
empty. He must have gotten up already.
She turns a little bit, trying not to wake Dave up, but his posture goes stiff
and his eyes snap open. It’s… kind of alarming. He looks extremely confused.
God, his eyes are so red, Jade has only really seen them a few times without
the shades, and never this close up. He locks eyes with her then snaps upright
and scrambles back against the wall. He’s shaking a little bit.
It’s full alarming now. Jade isn’t sure what’s happening, or how she should
respond.
“Dave?” she asks gently.
He blinks a few times, looking at her with undisguised terror. She can
practically see the gears turning in his head as his brain catches up to his
body with the whole “waking up” thing. And then something seems to click into
place for him. He looks around him and his posture relaxes.
“Oh. Ha.” He laughs weakly. “That’s one way to wake up, ha.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Can we do that over? Here, I’ll just.” He lays back down and
scoots under the covers. He makes a show of closing his eyes, then opens them
back up. “Fuck, Jade, look at you, being all in my bed and shit. Let’s make
out.”
Jade laughs, because it’s funny, but she’s still really confused. She can’t get
the image of him staring at her, terrified, back against the wall, out of her
mind.
“But what was that just now?”
“Okay, I guess we’re talking about it. Uh, I sleepwalk sometimes? It’s
embarrassing as fuck. It’s usually not that bad.”
“Oh. Okay! That makes sense.” It does, but Jade feels kind of bad for even
asking. Seeing this side of Dave is weird, especially when she can see that he
really, really doesn’t want to share it.
“So, uh, yeah, just like, can we pretend it didn’t happen and go from there?”
“That’s fine with me.”
“Sweet. So, how about that wake-up rerun?” He raises his eyebrows suggestively,
which looks ridiculous.
Jade leans over and kisses him. “You’re cute.”
He kisses her back. “Think you’re cuter.”
Kissing is good. Kissing smooths out the weird kinks of whatever that was. And
kissing very quickly becomes more than just kissing. Dave rolls on top of her
and starts touching her (!) all over, she grasps at his back and his hair, and
she feels his dick getting against her hip. All she would have to do is spread
her legs and… oh, gosh. Gosh gosh and gosh fucking darn her bladder, can’t it
see she has more important things to do than pee right now? Dave makes the
cutest sounds when he rolls against her, and she really wants to get him back
for last night, agh!
Dave goes stock still.
“Is something wrong?”
“I really have to pee.”
He relaxes. “Do it, dude. Shit, we should probably find Karkat anyways, see
what he’s up to.”
They probably should, yeah. “But I don’t want to stop.”
“Dude.” Dave continues to be adorable when he’s flustered. “Wow. Okay, uh. We
don’t have to. God, you really know what you want, don’t you?”
“Is that bad?”
“No. Just, uh, different. I mean, I’m happy to… provide.” He waggles his
eyebrows and before Jade has a chance to respond, he’s scooting down her body
and spreading her legs open.
“Holy shit! Do you always do this so much?”
“Mm. It’s fun. And I gotta learn the terrain, if you catch my drift.” He starts
kissing at her, then looks up. “Pretty please don’t piss on me.”
“I won’t!”
And then he starts licking at her, teasingly before he dives in, gently sucking
and swirling his tongue over her nub. And it really doesn’t take long before
she’s floating on that perfect peak, feeling like she could just stay there
forever. And then he does something just a little harder with her tongue and
sends her right over.
He climbs up beside her and kisses her softly. He’s making little panting
sounds, and Jade sees his arm moving.
“That was so hot, dude. I could do that to you for, like, a year straight.” His
voice is a little tight.
Jade still feels loose and foggy from the orgasm, but she gently places a hand
on his arm. “Can I? Please?”
He stops, looks at her, and nods. He swallows and pulls his hand away. For
someone who’s taken the initiative to eat her out twice in the last, what, 9
hours, he’s so shy about this. It’s kind of weird. But he’s letting her do it
now! She wraps her and around him and find it’s already wet. Probably with her
own junk stuff. Which is hot. She registers that she smells bacon cooking in
some other part of the house, but she has much more important things to focus
on than that. She pulls up and down a few times, and he seems to enjoy that,
but she quickly realizes she has absolutely no idea what she’s doing.
“How do you like it?” she asks quietly.
Dave guides her hand to the tip. “Like… like this,” he says, showing her how
hard to squeeze it, how to rub at the shaft. “Fuck. Fuck, yeah. It’s all good,
though. It’s all fucking great. Fuck.”
“So, like this?” She does what he showed her and he shakes a little, bites his
lip.
“That’s the fucking ticket, yeah.”
He feels good in her hand, and her heartbeat races at the fact that she’s doing
this to him. He’s hot, warm, velvety, hard. It’d probably feel really good
inside of her. She really, really wants that to happen soon.
“Fuck, Jade,” he moans softly. He’s so quiet, for all his yammering, barely
whispering and just making the quietest little gasps. Like he’s afraid to let
anyone hear him enjoying it. Well, some people are just quiet during sex. And
it really doesn’t take long before his gasps pick up, and he’s tensing against
her, grabbing at her skin and moaning so quietly, helplessly in her ear. Fuck.
Fuck, she wants to go again, hearing him sound like that is way too good! And
then she feels his spunk painting her skin, and he pushes her hand away.
“Fuck. Fuck, good shit. Best shit. Fuck.” He nuzzles against her in a little
half-hug that Jade is more than happy to return. “Is Karkat making bacon?
Nothing could be better than this shit.”
Jade grins. “His vocabulary is really rubbing off on you, by the way.”
“For fucking real it is, though. Fuck. I can’t even think of another
exclamation these days. I mean, it covers all the bases. Fuck.”
Jade laughs. They get dressed and head to the kitchen, where Karkat is, indeed,
making bacon, and looking intently at his phone.
“Have fun?” he asks.
“Oh, shit, you heard that?” Dave asks.
Karkat laughs a little and rolls his eyes. “I would have to be deaf to not have
heard that.”
“You coulda popped in,” he says.
“Where were you?” Jade asks.
“In here.”
Jade is going to lose it with these boys and their two-word answers. “Okay, but
why?”
“I only sleep like, five hours a night on a good night. I don’t know how you
and Dave do it.”
“Oh.” Yeah, Jade remembers him mentioning that at some point. “That sucks.”
“I’m used to it.”
“But it sucks.”
“Well, it gives me time to make you bacon while you fuck in the other room.”
“Aw, babe, we’ll get you back later,” Dave says. He goes to the cabinet and
starts pulling out dishes.
“It’s fine,” Karkat says, and Jade can’t decide if she believes him.
“We’ll get you back anyways,” she says, because that covers all the bases
pretty well! Not too pushy if he’s fine, and not too flippant if he’s not!
She’s a genius. Problem solving!
Karkat turns to her and smiles. “Thanks. It’s seriously fine, though, don’t
worry about it. Now, eat my meal of swine bacon and mashed potatoes.”
Well, if he says he’s fine, he’s fine, Jade thinks. She sits down and eats the
meal, a humble preparation of bacon and mashed potatoes. It’s one of the
stranger breakfasts she’s had, but it’s still tasty.
“So,” she says when they’re done, “what do you guys normally do all day?”
“Uh,” they both say, then look at each other and go quiet.
Dave takes the lead. “We kinda split off after breakfast, and, like, do our own
thing for a while. Then meet up for lunch and hang out?”
“Yeah. You probably want to do something more exciting than that, right?”
Karkat sounds hopeful.
“Damn right I do! We’re going to fucking London!”
“Holy shit, what?” Dave asks.
“I mean, if you want,” Jade says. “I can take us there in, like, one second.”
“Oh, holy shit. Yeah, I guess you would be able to do that, wouldn’t you?” Dave
says.
Karkat’s eyes light up like he’s watching fireworks for the first time. “That’s
fucking amazing.”
“Are you ready?”
“What, right now?” Karkat actually laughs. He’s adorable! Agh!
“Sure! Dave?”
“Hell fucking yeah.”
Jade holds her hands out, and they take them. She imagines where she wants to
go, does that weird little ‘whisper to the universe’ thing, and then closes her
eyes. When she opens them, the three of them are sitting in the center of a
grassy park. A few people scream. Oops. She probably should have done it in a
less populated place. Next time!
“Holy shit,” Karkat says. “We’re in London now? On the other side of the
planet?”
“Yep!”
 “You can just do that?”
“Yep!”
“Holy shit.”
“Come on, I’ll show you the best place to eat.” She stops. “Fuck, we just ate!
Okay, uh, the best place to shop!”
“You’ve been here before?” Dave asks as she guides the way to this totally
sweet secondhand store with just the weirdest things.
“Yeah. Not as much as some other places, but yeah!”
“Why were you keeping this on the down low?”
“I wasn’t ‘keeping it on the down low,’” she says, “it just didn’t come up.”
“Shit, yeah, guess it might not. Dude. This is so cool.”
She shows them the coolest secondhand store she’s ever seen, where Dave finds
an incredible display of a crab on a beach suspended in this weird wax
substance. Karkat says it’s a dumb tchotchke, but he’s smiling, and he doesn’t
argue when Dave says has an undeniable charm.
After that, they explore some of the rest of the city. It’s cloudy and a bit
chilly, but it’s not raining, and not too cold. A few people stop them and them
for autographs, which is always weird as hell, but most people leave them
alone. Eventually they do get hungry again, at which point Jade takes them to
this food truck she’d found a few months back that serves roasted meat by the
half-pound.
By the time they get home, all three of them are pretty exhausted. They watch
some TV and snuggle on the couch, and Jade and Dave definitely gets Karkat
back. They get him so, so back. Jade discovers that one of the best perks of
dating two people at once is that it’s really, really fun to tag team one of
them. She slips her fingers up Karkat’s dripping nook, which is almost like her
own junk but subtly different and alien and weird, and kisses him while Dave
licks at his bulge.
He’s so shy. She’d thought Dave was shy before, but Karkat is even more
intense. His words come out jumbled when they come out at all, he bites his lip
and looks away like he’s too bashful to maintain eye contact. He makes little
clicking sounds in his throat in between the moans. Jade remembers at the last
second to teleport the bucket in between his legs, although she notices for the
first time that the couches also have covers and liners.
He’s loud, though. Shy, but loud. It’s incredibly hot hearing him say their
names, breathless and strained. And the sound he makes when he starts to spill
into the bucket, Jade will probably have on recall for the next year. It’s a
good sound. It’s an incredibly good sound.
They get into bed after that.
“Today was fucking great,” Karkat says.
“Yeah,” Dave agrees.
“I agree! I like living with you guys.”
“Holy shit, really?” Dave asks. “You think you want to- fuck, nevermind.”
He was probably going to ask her to move in again. Which would have been… bad,
for reasons that Jade doesn’t really feel like articulating. But he didn’t, so
it’s fine!
“Tomorrow will be fun, too,” she says instead.
“Good.” Karkat sounds exhausted. He surprises her by snuggling up extremely
close to her, spooning into her back. She smiles. It feels warm and soft and
good, until it doesn’t. Jade realizes that there’s just no way that she’s going
to be able to fall asleep with him this close to her. He’s so warm, and having
anyone that close, her body just screams that she needs more room. Gently, she
pries herself away from the hold. Karkat gets the picture, he pulls arm back.
She turns over to face him and kisses him softly.
“Night,” she says.
“Good night.”
Jade falls asleep easily after that.
***** Chapter 4 *****
Chapter Summary
     jade and karkat go to france
Chapter Notes
     i (accidentally) lied! have some more fluff!
     and this is now the longest thing ive ever written ever
A few days later, Jade wakes up alone and realizes she’s been wearing the same
clothes for three days straight. She quickly teleports back to her apartment to
grab some.
Being there is nice. She doesn’t take too long, because she really should have
told Dave or Karkat beforehand, and she doesn’t want them to not be able to
find her and freak out. But it’s nice. She didn’t realize how much she missed
it. It’s so much cleaner than their place. She likes them a lot, and it doesn’t
bother her a ton, but both of them seem to have a bit of a propensity for
hoarding, and their artistic taste is just… bizarre. Weird colors that seem to
clash intentionally, posters for terrible movies, cheap figurines and
sculptures of every size and shape lining most available surfaces. Her place
has a few decorations. Maybe it’s a little bit of the complete opposite of
theirs, if she’s honest, so sparse as to almost be intimidating. Like a display
room in a furniture store, with a few squiddles. But she likes it that way.
It’s clean, she can think better.
But she doesn’t have much time to think now. She needs to get back to them
before they freak out. And they would, definitely. One time she decided to take
a walk without telling them, and when she came back, they were sitting on the
couch, nervously staring at the door. Then tried to play it off like they were
waiting for a package, even though they relaxed right after, and a package
never came. She let it go for their sakes and hers.
She pulls some of her favorite outfits and teleports back. They don’t seem to
have realized she left yet, which is good. She gets changed, and then scoots a
pile of trash on one of their desks to the side so she can stack her neatly
folded clothes on it.
When she walks in the living room, it’s just Karkat sitting there, typing away
on his laptop.
“Hi, Karkat!”
“Hi,” he says. He presses a few buttons, probably saving whatever he’s doing,
then looks up at her with a little smile. “Dave is out until 3. He didn’t want
to wake you up to tell you.”
“Where is he?”
“He goes to hang out with Dirk every Wednesday. Sometimes I go with.”
“Oh. Okay. Why not today?”
“I need to finish this program I’m writing. I haven’t had a fucking minute to
myself since you got here and I almost forgot what I was doing. Thank god for
non-executable notes.”
“You’re not really upset with me, are you?” Jade asks teasingly. She can hear
in his voice that he’s not, and she knows better by now that if he was really
upset, he’d say it a different way. He’s just very, very bristly, but not in a
painful way. He’s a cactus completely covered in spikes, but it turns out the
spikes are as fine as hair and give way to even the gentlest touches. Heh.
“The mortal realm can’t contain my fury. I made plant-based biscuits and swine
ham earlier, it should still be warm if you want any.” He pauses his typing.
“Did you bring a change of clothes when you came here?”
Jade is impressed that he even noticed. She has no idea if he’s wearing the
same thing he wore yesterday. “Oh! No, I just went home really quick and
grabbed some.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll never get used to the fact that you can do that.”
Jade makes herself up a plate of food. Again, it’s delicious, albeit the
combination is just off from what she would be used to. But it’s good! There’s
no reason biscuits and ham shouldn’t go together. She plunks down on the couch
next to Karkat.
“What’s the program do?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Shut up and tell me.”
He laughs. “How could I even do that? It’s one or the other, either-“
“Karkat.”
“Okay. It’s a module to run a visual novel, because none of the existing ones
do what I need to have the right branching paths. All your human software is
focused entirely on dating, and doesn’t even start to account of quadrants, let
alone polyamory. It’s disgusting.”
“Woah.” Jade tries to run through the scope of that and fails. Karkat had sent
her a few lame but totally passable and possibly worth your time visual novels
before, and she’d thought the 15 or so endings they had were more than enough.
“How many endings would you have, then?”
“Well, I don’t have a story written for it, it’s just the system to run it. But
it should be able to handle at least 5,000 disparate endings per game.”
Jade’s eyes widen. “That’s insane.”
“Yeah, well, someone has to do it.”
“You know most of our games only have, like, five endings tops?”
“I’m aware, yes. That’s exactly why someone has to do it. I’ve been sorely
lacking for this since the game started. You can only play through the same 372
endings on 16 games so many times before they get stale.”
“Wow. Okay. Well, I was going to ask if you wanted to go on a date,” Karkat
looks up from his program, “but are you busy, then? That seems huge.”
“This can definitely wait.”
“You want to go out somewhere?”
“Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. You seem to be pretty good at coming up with shit that
isn’t completely stupid for dates.”
Jade smiles. “Such high praise! Thank you. Do you have anything you want to
do?”
“I dunno. Anything you come up with would probably be fine.”
“Lame.”
“Uh. We can watch Love Actually.”
“We can do that later.”
“Fine, okay. What ideas do you have, then?”
“I was thinking more like, having dinner in Paris in a few hours. It’ll be
dinnertime there and I know a good place. And then we can walk the Seine until
Dave gets back. It’s really pretty at night.”
She can practically see the hearts in Karkat’s eyes. His mouth actually drops
open a little for a few moments before he closes it. He’s such an open book.
“That doesn’t sound awful.”
“You know, it’s okay to like things, Karkat.”
“It sounds good. Yeah. Let’s do that.”
                                       *
Karkat is so adorable. He keeps making all these little comments about how
ridiculous earth is, but he looks totally awestruck when Jade shows him the
river. She takes him to an outdoor café that overlooks it. A candle lights the
table softly, giving Karkat’s grey skin a gentle orange glow, and a soft-spoken
waiter suffers through Jade’s awfully-accented French to bring them two mostly
rare steaks.
“This is… really good,” Karkat says as the sun sets fully and the darkness
settles in over them. A few dim lamps come on over them, nothing overwhelming.
“I’ve seen this place in movies, but I never thought…”
Jade smiles. She feels giddy, having given this to him. Hell fucking yes,
teleportation powers are so sweet, what the hell is travel time when you can
port literally anywhere?
“Where’s the weirdest place you and Dave have gone together?” she asks.
Karkat thinks about it a while before responding. “He took me to a garbage dump
outside of New York City a few times.”
“…why?”
“Treasure hunting. Where did you think we got most of our decorations?”
“Oooh,” Jade says. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Excuse me? You’re supposed to be awe-struck by that. You’re supposed to be,
like, woah, no way, Karkat, I never would have guessed that in 100 years!”
“Well, I wouldn’t have guessed, but it still makes sense.”
“Unbelievable. You’re just unbelievably rude. I can’t believe I’m dating you.”
He smiles to himself after he says that. She can practically see it written on
his face, holy shit, I’m dating you. It’s so cute.
They walk along the bridge when they’re done. Karkat keeps an awkward distance
between them for the first few hundred feet, but when Jade decides to close the
gap and hold his hand, he seems thrilled, and squeezes her hand tight in his.
“I have to admit, the humans here did a really good job on this.” He motions to
the whole scene in front of them, the quiet lights of the city, the bridge, and
the gently sloshing water beneath them. “It’s weird, Dave and I haven’t done
this kind of thing in, like, years.”
“Why not?”
He hesitates. “I don’t know. We just kinda stopped at some point.”
“You should start doing it again. You’re clearly having fun.”
“Yeah. What do you think that is?” he asks, pointing at a building a few blocks
away.
It’s an obvious change of subject, so Jade drops it. “I don’t know. Want to
find out?”
Karkat smirks. “Don’t teleport us in front of all these people. You’re going to
give someone a heart attack, and Jane isn’t around to do damage control on
that.”
“Oh. Oh, good point. Well, I guess we can walk over there, like people or
whatever.”
That makes him go quiet. Oh, because he still has to walk everywhere, doesn’t
he. Shit. Jade has the most delicious foot.
“Uh,” Jade says, “not that there’s anything wrong with walking.” Very smooth.
“Fuck no there’s not,” Karkat says. “You and Dave and the rest of you flying
around like that, shit’s unnatural. Gravity is a perfectly good rule and I’m
happy to stick to it.”
Jade actually does a lot to regulate gravity on planets with sentient
lifeforms, but she has a funny feeling that Karkat doesn’t want to hear about
that right now. Hmm. Maybe, though, she could figure out a way to turn his
gravity off, but so that he could still be in control of it, so that he could
fly, too. Hmmmmm. Maybe.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“A present I might get you later,” she says, and squeezes his hand.
Eventually, Karkat pulls out his phone. “Oh, Dave’s back.”
“We should probably head back then, shouldn’t we?” Jade asks.
Karkat nods.
“This was really fun, though.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was.” He smiles so big he’s practically beaming.
Together, they head over to a relatively empty side street, and then teleport
back outside of Dave and Karkat’s house. Karkat uses a key to unlock the door,
and they see Dave sitting on the couch on his laptop.
“Hey. Where were you guys?” Dave asks.
“Nowhere big-“ Karkat starts to say.
“We went to Paris! We got dinner in a candlelit café and crossed the Seine! It
was awesome!”
Dave looks between them like he can’t believe it. “Seriously? Dude, that’s so
sappy. That’s like, tap the fucking tree and have syrup for years level of
sap.”
That’s a weird reaction and- oh, that’s why Karkat was being so weird about it.
Dave probably made fun of “sappy” stuff like that before, so Karkat felt weird
about bringing it up. Well, this seems like a problem that would be perfectly
fixed with some communication.
“Maybe we had fun, Dave. And maybe you would, too. I think you should try some
‘sappy’ stuff sometime.”
Dave stares at her for a minute, like he’s trying to figure out if this is an
extended joke. Then he looks at Karkat.
“Wait, really?” He waits. Karkat doesn’t respond. “Shit,” he says quietly.
“It’s fine,” Karkat says.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner, dude?”
 “It… it didn’t come up.”
“Dude, it totally came up. It would have been, like, so easy to just say, like,
hey Dave, let’s go on a sappy date, also stop calling it sappy and bullshit all
the time because it’s something I actually want to do and you’re being a huge
asshole.”
Jade looks between them. This feels like a conversation she shouldn’t be
listening to. This feels like she just stepped on some weird landmine that has
nothing to do with her, and is stuck awkwardly surveying the wreckage.
“Should I go for a while so you guys can talk?” she asks.
They both stare at her for a few eternally long moments.
“This is weird,” Dave finally says. “But yeah, probably? Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she says. “Sorry for making it weird.”
“No, it’s my fault, I made it weird,” Karkat says. “Fuck.”
“It’s fine. Just, go, talk,” Jade says, shooing them with her hands, if for no
other reason than to end what she foresees as a long, extended discussion about
which of them made it the weirdest.
Dave and Karkat head off to their room and close the door behind them. She can
hear them talking, really softly, but can’t make out the words.
It makes sense that they would have to talk about that alone. It makes sense.
It’s something she’s not involved in. So why does she feel so left out? That’s
stupid. But… she can’t compete with them, can she? How can she ever compete
with them? They’ve been dating for three years, they know each other so well-
well, she doesn’t have to compete with them, that’s how! They invited her to be
a part of this.
And how long until they realize that they actually liked being alone together
better than being with her?
Fuck, she needs to think about something else, these thoughts are so stupid.
She scrambles the room looking for a book, or a game, or something. She feels
weirdly like she’s in a time-out or something, waiting for them to finish up.
Yeah, actually, that won’t do.
“Guys, I’m going for a walk! Bye!” she yells. She hears their voices soft, then
Dave calls out cool. She walks outside.
It’s the afternoon, and the sun is just starting to set in the sky. She hasn’t
really had a chance to look around the neighborhood yet. It’s just on the
outskirts of the city, where weather-worn concrete and brick buildings are just
starting to encroach on the trees and grass of the suburbs. The blocks are long
and winding. She has a great sense of direction, but she would be willing to
bet a lot of people got lost around here. She walks out about a mile before
heading back, realizing when a little kid points and stares that she forgot her
baseball cap and just walked outside with her ears just in the open. And now
everyone who doesn’t recognize her thinks she’s a furry. Oh well. Worse things
have happened!
When Jade comes back, Dave and Karkat look way more relaxed, but incredibly
sheepish.
“Turns out talking about shit is good for what ails you,” Dave says. “Sorry we
had to boot you out.”
“But you guys figured it out? And you’ll go on more dates now?”
“Hell yeah,” Dave says. “Karkat’s gonna be so sweetly romanced by us he won’t
know what fucking hit him. I’m gonna eat my three year old foot of shit talking
the adorable-ass shit that is romance.”
“God, shut up, and never say ‘ass shit’ together like that again,” Karkat says.
He’s smiling. “This is fucking mortifying.”
“I think it’s cute.”
“Yeah, same,” Dave says. “You’re overruled. Two to one. It’s poly rules.”
“Good!”
“Are you good?” Karkat asks.
Jade decides that whatever stupid worries she had earlier aren’t even kind of
worth talking about. They’re ridiculous. Karkat and Dave are happy to have her
with them, and that’s all that matters.
“I’m great. Dave, want to see the Seine with me and Karkat?”
“Hell fucking yeah, I do.”
Jade holds out her hands, and they both take them, and then she takes them
away.
***** Chapter 5 *****
Chapter Notes
     click to bottom for warnings if you want them
See the end of the chapter for more notes
She wakes up alone the next day, too. Which is weird. Apparently she’s a really
heavy sleeper, and apparently Dave and Karkat aren’t. She hears the two of them
shooting the shit in another room. Jade hasn’t really had a lot of time to
herself since she got here, has she? Except for that walk she took last night,
and a few moments here and there. she’s spent almost all her time with either
one or both of them. And that walk was so nice. Even though it was tamped down
all the worry and the weirdness, being alone was so nice. And now she’s hungry
for more. So she takes her time getting ready. There’s no need to rush!
The air around her is just different when she’s sharing it with someone else,
and there’s so many things she doesn’t have the time or space to think about
when she’s around multiple partners at once. Being around multiple friends for
a few hours was intense, but people this close to her… it takes being apart
from them to realize how hard it is to think straight around them. She hadn’t
even noticed the pressure building, but now that it’s gone, she feels the
weight where it used to be aching like a bruise.
A sick feeling goes through her. She thinks about that other Callie, what she’d
said about space, how it was best conquered in silence and loneliness. How it
seemed to spear into Jade that that’s what she was destined for. Her aspect,
the way she grew up, all of it pointed towards an inevitable life of complete
isolation, didn’t it? Fuck, no, she’s being overdramatic. It’s fine to want
some space sometimes. Everyone needs it. And she just… needs more of it than
other people? Fuck. No. She shouldn’t, and she can’t let herself, because if
she gives into that, where will it end?
She should leave. She should go meet Dave and Karkat in the kitchen. She
doesn’t. When she’s done with her morning routine, she sits on the bed and just
looks out the window. She hasn’t even had time to check the view yet. She sees
houses and apartment complexes, a pretty nice view of the sky, and some birds
chirping away on the telephone wire. She watches them intently. They’d be fun
to chase.
“Oh, you’re up?” Dave asks. Jade turns to see him in the doorway. “Cool, saves
me a step. Breakfast is ready as shit if you want it.”
Jade puts on a smile and pushes back the feeling that she wishes he’d just
waited for her to come to him instead. She wasn’t done here. Of course she
wasn’t. Because she needs all the space in the world, doesn’t she? Ridiculous.
Stupid. She wasn’t even doing anything! She pushes the thoughts out of her
mind, gets up and heads to the kitchen to eat with her boyfriends.
They made chocolate chip pancakes.
“Do you guys cook a lot? This is the fifth time you’ve cooked for me.”
“Yeah,” Karkat says. “It’s fun. Your cooking styles are so involved here.”
“Karkat makes the best shit. He’s a regular fucking Ramsey.”
“Ramsey is good, but he’s far from the best of your celebrity chefs, and it
baffles me that you keep bringing him up as the pinnacle at every opportunity.”
“Who the hell is better than Gordon Ramsey? That’s blasphemous as fuck. Name
one.”
Jade wishes she could contribute, but she finds the entire conversation
annoying as hell. Who cares about Gordon Ramsey! Who cares about which
celebrity chef is better than which other celebrity chef! Why did they always
have to talk about people and things she barely knew?
Why did they have to interrupt her?
 “Jade?”
“What?”
“You look like you want to murder your pancake.”
“I didn’t burn it that bad, did I?” Karkat asks.
The other Callie’s words burn in her ears.
 “No. It’s good. It’s super good.” Jade should probably just come clean, no
point in stringing them along. “I think I want to eat in the living room
instead.”
“Oh, that’s weird, but I can dig it. Yeah, let’s move over there,” Dave says,
and picks his plate up. “Watch some TV or something.”
Jade gives up. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.
Karkat hesitates. He looks between Dave and Jade.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
 “I’m fine! Want to watch TV?”
“Okay, yeah.”
It takes a few minutes for the weirdness of that to die down, but it does,
eventually, much helped by Dave putting on this really, really obnoxious dating
show from the early 2000s that makes it hard to think about anything else. Jade
finds that forcing herself to participate in the banter really helps with the
god I have to get away feeling. Of course it does! She just has to involve
herself in the conversations. And when it’s one of these shows, these trashy
pulpy reality shows, no one knows who anyone is, and she’s not expected to be
up and up with the hundreds of dead celebrities from their old planets.
“Do you have any ideas for today?” Karkat asks when they’re done eating.
She didn’t, no. But he sounds so hopeful, and there’s this look in his eyes
that she doesn’t want to say no to. And hell, why should she? They’re retired
gods, they have all the time and money in the world, and she loves spending
time with them. She does.
She takes them to these really cool Greek islands she found earlier in the
year. They exhaust themselves swimming in the ocean and running around the
cliffs. Karkat especially seems to love it. He’s happier than maybe she’s ever
seen him, and he’s so excited to point things out. Holy shit, look at the view,
what the fuck. Check out this weird crab I found, do you think we could cook
it?And Dave is more relaxed than he was before. Whatever they talked about
without her did them both some good. Good for them. Fucking great. She’s happy
for them.
When they get back, Dave surprises Jade by kissing her.
“You’re really hot in your swimsuit,” he says. And weirdness be damned, she
feels herself start to swell down there. It doesn’t take much to get her going,
and, well, it’s been a few days, hasn’t it?
“You were, too.”
Karkat comes up behind her and kisses the back of her neck.
“You seem to be having a bad day,” he says. “Maybe we can make it better?”
A shiver goes through her. She kind of feels like a cornered animal, that the
two of them are starving for her. She likes it. She likes it a lot. She nods.
Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she acknowledges that she doesn’t like how
well they can read her already. Better than she can read herself. She tried to
play it off like she was fine, but it was glaringly apparent, somehow. It feels
violating. It feels bad. It makes her feel helpless and it makes her feel
shitty. But that’s just in the back of her mind, and it’s easy enough to
dismiss when she has two very loving boyfriends guiding her to bed.
Dave does that thing he does. And Jade shouldn’t be surprised anymore, she
should expect it.
“Can I take this off?” he asks, gently thumbing at her bra.
“Yes, Dave, you can take off my bra when we have sex,” she says, and it comes
out a little sharper than she meant it to. Well, he should know better! He’s
already naked, Karkat is only wearing his briefs, of course they’re all going
to get naked. “I told you to stop asking so much. I told you like five times.”
Is he her bratty child? God, what’s wrong with her?
Dave gets tense. He looks like a wounded puppy. Karkat’s hands and lips stop
what they were doing. Shit, was it that bad?
“Oh,” he says. “Ha. Yeah, guess that would. Be included in the package.”
She doesn’t apologize, even though she kind of wants to. He unclasps the buckle
on her bra and starts to pull it away. His movements falter, and he pulls away.
“We… we should probably talk about that some time,” he says, and it sounds like
the words are causing him physical pain. “I, uh, don’t think we’re on the same
page there, and it’s kind of. A moodkill.”
She feels him soften completely against her leg. Great. She did that. She
killed the mood by being such a fucking asshole. For asking Dave to stop doing
obnoxious shit.
“Should we talk about it now?” she asks.
“Do you guys want me to go?” Karkat asks quietly.
Dave swallows. “No, uh, it’s fine. Some other time.”
“Dave,” Karkat says quietly, and Jade can’t parse the tone at all. And Dave
reacts to it, goes limp against the bed, because the two of them know each
other so well that they have their own language of whispers and glances.
“Okay, yeah, now,” he says quietly.
“Okay,” Karkat says. He gets up, throws his clothes back on, and leaves the
room.
Dave sits up and curls into a lose ball.
“This is so fucking awkward, ha.”
“Why do you keep asking, then?”
The tiny hint of a smile leaves his face. “Because I need to know. Before I do
stuff. I don’t want to do anything to you that you don’t want.”
“But we’re dating. And I trust you.”
There’s that look again, like he’s going to start crying or run out of the room
or something. Shit. Whatever this is about, Dave, her boyfriend, is clearly
really fucked up about it, and maybe it would have behooved her to use even one
single iota of tact at any step along this process.
And why might that be? a little voice asks her, and things start to click into
place. Maybe. Maybe Dave wasn’t asked about this stuff. Maybe it wasn’t someone
he trusted. Maybe it wasn’t someone he was dating. She hopes she’s wrong.
Because that would fucking suck for Dave, and it would mean she’s been a huge
asshole. But it would make a lot of sense, wouldn’t it? Fuck. If there’s one
thing she knows about Dave, it’s that he’s not going to start opening up about
this.
“Yeah, hah, it’s not the most rational thing, is it.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks gently, trying not to make it too
weird. It doesn’t work, she’s made it weird. Dave goes tense.
“Talk about what? There’s nothing to talk about that we’re not already talking
about.”
Well, it was worth a shot, wasn’t it?
“Okay,” she says. “How about a compromise, then?”
“Hell fucking yeah, compromises rule.”
“You can ask for super new stuff, and I can tell you the second I don’t want
something.”
He nods slowly, like he’s thinking it over.
“Do you want me to ask for you, too?” Jade asks.
He stops mid-nod. Then starts back up again. Just a tiny little movement of his
head.
“That’d be rad, yeah. Super fucking cool shit.”
“Okay. That should help start to fix this mess we made, right?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Dave?” she asks. He looks at her. “Sorry for being a jackass.”
That makes him laugh a little. “Well, I should have said something too, instead
of just hoping you’d read my smoke signals.”
“Maybe we were both trying to do that.”
“Yeah, probably.”
A quiet rests over them. Jade doesn’t know if they got everything out, but she
knows it’s better than before.
“Do you want to watch TV for a while?” she asks.
“Yeah. Let’s go get Karkat. I bet he’s already watching something stupid. I
think he’s due for us indulging one of his shitty movies.” Dave gets up and
starts to head towards his clothes, then stops. He looks at her awkwardly.
“Good talk.”
He talks like such a frat boy, for someone who’s never set foot in a frat.
Jade… likes him so much.
“Good talk.”
*
When they go to bed, it’s after watching A Walk To Remember with Karkat. His
eyes absolutely lit up when Dave suggested it, even though he tried to play it
off like it was just because that movie had a marginally better plot structure
than the dreck he was watching. By the time the movie is over, any weird mood
that was hanging between Dave and Jade seems to be gone.
They all crawl into bed together, but Jade can’t sleep. She keeps hearing them
breathe, and feeling their little shifts. She used to take sleeping alone for
granted. She used to wish she had someone to sleep next to. Ha, little did she
know, there would be no sleeping going on, because people are loud and make
noise and she just wants to be alone.
Which makes her incredibly uncomfortable. She thought she was done with this
line of thinking. She thought the movie and the emotional talk fixed it.
Because she absolutely cared about them so much, and she liked spending time
with them. But she wants to be alone. She needs to be alone. She feels it in
her bones, the way she feels a need for water in her throat and chest.
Maybe they wouldn’t notice if she just slept on the couch instead. That seems
like a good middle ground, actually, where she can get her alone time in and
they won’t be hurt, which they inevitably would be. Carefully, she creeps out
of bed.
Dave bolts upright. Of course he does. Which wakes up Karkat. Why did she think
she could do this quietly? She’s never been the most graceful person.
“Just going to pee,” she lies. Well, she doesn’t lie, because that’s all she’s
going to do, now that they’re up. She doesn’t want to make things weird, and
she doesn’t want to have that other conversation, about not wanting to sleep
next to them right now.
“Okay,” Karkat says sleepily.
Dave gives her a thumbs up and lays back down.
She takes her time in the bathroom. She finishes up and just sits in the dark,
quiet room for ten minutes. It’s almost like space. Like how a bathtub is
almost like an ocean. The air is different when she’s in the dark, by herself.
She feels like it’s recharging her, and she wants to bathe in it for hours, get
her battery up high enough so that she can just date like a normal person. And
in the quiet calmness of it she realizes that she’s going to have to tell them
how she’s feeling. She remembers Dave’s face, sad and hurt, and the fact that
she didn’t even stop to think about, hmm, why is he relentlessly, neurotically
asking for permission? No, she just snapped, because clearly it was just
because he didn’t care enough about her to stop doing this weird thing that she
hated. And she snapped, because she wanted to be alone, and these little things
kept building, and she let that be the one that tipped the powder keg over.
If she lets this fester, it’s just going to keep getting worse. She’s probably
going to blow up on them even harder, or teleport out mid-conversation. Both of
those things would suck. This is normal, isn’t it? To need space? Maybe she is
doomed- no, it’s normal. She’s normal. And it’s not helping anyone to pretend
that she wants to be here, Dave and Karkat can tell something is up and she
doesn’t know how many more times she can tell them it’s fine, really before she
snaps. And she doesn’t want to do that. She’ll tell them, tomorrow.
It takes a while to fall asleep. But she does, eventually.
When she wakes up next to them early the next morning - early enough that
Karkat is still in bed, breathing peacefully - feeling like she’s going to
suffocate, she knows what she has to do. She gets up as quietly as she can, and
somehow, somehow manages to not wake them up. Maybe they’re deep enough in
sleep? Well, she’s not looking that gift horse in the mouth.
It’s quiet in the kitchen, and she has a chance to really look around it for
the first time. She realizes that even though she’s kind of sort of living
here, she basically hasn’t really scoped out the place at all. She’s just hung
on Dave or Karkat basically the entire time. It probably makes sense that she’s
going crazy about the space thing, she’s barely had a minute to herself for
three days now! That little part of her that worries this means she’ll never be
compatible with them is calmed down by that thought. It’s fine.
She opens the cabinets and looks around. There’s so, so much food, it’s kind of
absurd. If there’s an order to it, she can’t tell what it is. Flour and sugar
are mixed in with potato chips and soy sauce and tuna fish. The bread sits on
top of a careful stack of Chef Boyardee and Spaghettios cans. The fridge is
worse, somehow. The freezer is stacked full of plastic bags filled with… she
has no idea what until she smells them. Chicken, beef, Brussel spouts (why!),
fish, and something that smells like wax worms, which is probably Karkat’s.
She does all this very quietly. She doesn’t want to wake them up.
She manages to find some coffee. She finds multiple bags, actually, in
completely different shelves, and one in the fridge. Sure, why not? She puts a
few spoonfuls into the pot and listens to it bubble. Things will be fine. She’s
figuring it out.
*
Karkat stumbles in first, and Dave follows him.
“Oh. Hi,” Karkat says.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Dave asks.
And there it is again, this stifling feeling that everything she does is being
watched and judged, that her thoughts are not her own because they’re being
broadcast into their minds.
“I need some time alone,” she says, and cringes because she wanted that to be
at least a little smoother.
Dave goes still. “Is this because of yesterday?”
“No. Absolutely not. Yesterday was fine. I mean, the… discussion we had. That
was totally fine and good.”
“Is it because of the other night?” Karkat asks.
“No. I just need some more space.”
“Uh, are you sure? I mean, is something wrong?” Dave asks tentatively. “Did I
do something shitty? You gotta let me know so I can stop, right, like, lickedy-
split I’ll be so done with whatever it is that isn’t keeping your wheels
turning-“
“No,” Jade says. She has to interrupt him, even though she hates to do it,
because she has a feeling he’ll just go on and on and on if she doesn’t. “You
didn’t do anything. Neither of you. Not yesterday, or any of the other days.
I’m just not used to being around people so much, that’s all. It’s a lot.”
“Oh,” Dave says. “Okay. That’s cool.” It doesn’t sound like it’s cool. “That
makes sense, yeah, for sure. People, being around them all the time. Yeah, for
sure. Can’t imagine why you would enjoy that, or, like, crave it. No, okay, you
don’t like it?”
Jade stares at him uncomprehendingly.
“Do you like it?”
“Well, yeah. That’s why we live together.”
You’ll never be enough, you’ll never be like them, you’ll never be able to date
anyone-
“Oh, well, that’s different. I need more space than that!”
“Oh,” Dave says weakly.
“I’ll be back,” Jade says, trying to reassure him. It does not seem to reassure
him, or Karkat, at all.
“You’re leaving?” Karkat asks, his voice cracking.
“I’ll be back! Just a few days.”
“Yeah. Okay. That makes sense” Karkat sounds like someone just kicked him in
the stomach, and he looks like he’s going to cry.
“Are you okay?” Jade asks.
“I’m fine.”
“…You don’t seem fine, Karkat.”
“I didn’t realize you were gonna be leaving, that’s all, it’s coming out of
nowhere and I just woke up. Fuck. I mean, I thought, like, you would just spend
some time in the room or something. Should we get you your own room? Uh, maybe
we could clean out the shit room and that could be yours? I mean it’s just
garbage in there-“
“That’d be cool, yeah! But it would take, like, a week, and I’d rather not wait
that long. I don’t want to start getting snappy and mean. Well. Snappy and
meaner.”
“But you weren’t that snappy or mean,” Karkat says. “Like, I’m the fucking shit
king of snappy and mean, and you’re not close to touching my throne. Like,
maybe a couple dick moves. But you’re not-”
“A couple dick moves is two more dick moves than I want to make!” she says.
“I’ve been getting really impatient about stupid things and I don’t really want
to talk about it because it’s stupid! I just need to get away for a little
while.”
“Oh. Fuck. Fuck, we should have cleared out the room for you before you got
here.”
“It’s okay, Karkat, really. I didn’t know, either.”
“No, it’s just so fucking obvious that you would want your own room. Like, Dave
and I are fine sharing a room, but you too, that’s fucking weird, of course
it’s weird-“
“Dude,” Dave says, and Karkat stops. “Breathe.”
Karkat exhales. “Sorry. When will you come back? Fuck, a few days, you said
that.”
“Breathe,” Dave repeats.
“I’ll be back,” Jade says. “Okay? I just need a few days. I used to spend
almost all of my time alone, and now we’re together 24/7, and it’s just too
much.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Karkat says. She seems him relax a little bit. Not
much, but it’s progress. She waits for them to say something else, but
apparently the conversation is over.
“Goodbye kiss?” she asks.
Karkat leans forward and kisses her. She turns to Dave, and he kisses her too.
“See you, dude,” he says.
Jade resists the urge to apologize. Because what does she have to apologize
for? Taking a few days to herself? They don’t even live together. This is
entirely reasonable. Why does she feel like she’s breaking their hearts?
She feels like she should stay a little longer. Maybe give them some warning.
But it’s too late for that now. Now, all day would just be this sad, tense,
awkward dance of them pretending not to be dreading her departure. No. She has
to leave now. She can give them warning next time.
“Bye, guys. See you soon.”
And she leaves.
Chapter End Notes
     an argument happens during sex about boundaries
***** Chapter 6 *****
Chapter Notes
     release schedule is weird bc of work but i still love this story and
     im not giving up on it any time soon
Jade’s gone. She was here, and then she left. People do that. It feels like it
all happened way too fucking fast. Like, blink, she’s here, blink, she’s here,
blink, she’s gone. Not that she teleported out of the kitchen right then. No,
she went to their bedroom, and Karkat and Dave mopily drank some coffee, and
then when they went to check if she needed help packing (Karkat knew that was a
bad idea, of course she didn’t, stupid idea, stupid excuse to try to fix
whatever he fucked up) the place had that weird stink of slightly burnt rock
that he’d come to associate with her teleportation powers.
She took her clothes with her. Karkat tries not to panic about that.
“She said she’d be back, dude. It’s okay.”
Maybe that would have comforted Karkat on another day, but not today. It’s just
words, they don’t sink in, the panic doesn’t leave. He did this. He, Karkat,
did this, by showing Jade that he and Dave weren’t literally perfect together
all the time. This is his fault. Because, obviously, this is her first
relationship. She doesn’t know what’s normal (does he?). And she probably
thought you always agree about everything, and he confirmed that’s not the
case, he confirmed that you can get three years into something and somehow not
know something important about your partner, and she got scared off-
Dave sits down on the bed and pats the spot next to him. “I can see the bad
thought gears spinning in your head.”
Invitation to feelings jams. That’s what that is. Karkat should accept. Karkat
sits on the bed, close enough that their arms and legs are touching.
“It’s probably my fault.”
“What? No. How the hell is it your fault?”
“What, do you think it’s your fault somehow?”
“I mean, yeah, pretty sure.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“This is a stupid argument,” Dave says, and he’s right, but Karkat isn’t ready
to let it go.
“Why would this be your fault? I can’t fathom your reasoning.”
“I… we had some shit go down.”
The obvious follow up: what shit went down?But Karkat can’t ask that, because
Dave is visibly uncomfortable. Back off, change courses slightly, adjust tone.
It comes naturally to Karkat. The two of them have been navigating each other’s
minefields long enough, they know what a raised lump in the ground means when
they see it.
“And it was bad enough that she’d just leave? I doubt that.”
“Anything is possible with Christ, dude.”
Karkat ignores that inane remark. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I mean, you were there.”
“Oh.” That. Okay. Yeah, Karkat was there. For part of that, at least. It was
awkward. He kept wanting to pull Jade aside and tell her what kind of shit she
needed to not do, but that seemed really, really out of place. Fuck, what if it
wasn’t? No, no, it was. “I really don’t think that’s why she left,” he says,
but he doesn’t know if he believes it. It’s about as likely as her leaving
because she got freaked out that Karkat and Dave weren’t a perfect couple,
isn’t it? It’s as good an explanation as any. “Did you… tell her to not do that
anymore? It was pretty clearly freaking you out.” Watching that happen over and
over, watching Dave flip his shit for god knows why, and watching Jade continue
to not pick up on it, was painful.
They didn’t talk about it after Dave and Jade came out of the room. They seemed
a little nervous but way more relaxed and more than willing to move on from the
subject, so Karkat didn’t question it.
Dave nods stiffly.
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. But shit was awkward as hell. So if it was either of our faults, it’s
definitely mine.” He’s quiet for a few seconds. “Why do you think it’s your
fault, dude?”
When faced with the opportunity to put his bullshit reasoning to words, Karkat
decides he’d rather pluck his own eyelashes out one by one with tweezers. “It
doesn’t even make sense. I don’t know. It just feels like it’s probably my
fault.”
“You’d blame yourself for the weather report being wrong, dude.”
“Excuse you, I only blame myself for things where there’s some semblance of a
possibility of my own culpability.”
“Like the dishwasher breaking, yeah.”
“That was probably my fault and you know it.”
Dave makes a little psch sound and wraps his arm around Karkat.
“She’s probably telling the truth, though. She just needs space. That’s her
thing. Space.”
“Yeah.” It makes sense. It’s logical. Thank god Dave is still here. Karkat
can’t imagine going through that again, having someone so close just leave and
having nothing, no one left. Going from all that contact to nothing, not seeing
it coming, and picking up the pieces. Trying to fill the space and time left
behind and not think about how he did it, he drove them away, either with some
stupid action or a series of inactions, or with just the sheer uselessness of
his entire personality-
“What are you thinking, dude?”
“I’m really glad you’re still here.”
Dave hugs him tighter. “You too, dude.”
Maybe it’ll be fine like this. It hurts to have her leave, but Karkat will get
used to it. And he and Dave can be each other’s rocks for it. He laughs a
little.
“What?”
“We’re being so fucking overdramatic about this.”
“Yeah,” Dave says, grinning. “Probably. Definitely. Let’s try and not mope all
day.”
“Fine. Yeah. Good idea.” Karkat tries to think of something to do and fails.
Well, one of them will think of something. “Did you know this was coming?”
The question seems to catch Dave off guard. “No. Couldn’t you tell from in
there?”
“Right, yeah, but the two of you hang out a lot, so maybe she mentioned it, I
don’t know.”
“No, dude, it was as much of a surprise to me as you. Came out of fucking
nowhere, ha.”
And the mood starts to sink again. Karkat squeezes him a little. “If I’m not
allowed to mope, you’re not either, dipshit.”
Dave perks up and laughs. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go… do shit.”
                                       *
They do shit. They explore a weird artsy section of the city they moved to,
which they haven’t done in literally a year, at least. Dave takes him to this
coffeeshop he’s never been to, says he comes here sometimes to write his
screenplay when he needs to get out. There’s some board games on the tables,
ones with complicated enough rulesets that Karkat doesn’t lose his mind with
the inanity of it like he did with human checkers.
It feels really good to get out. Karkat had resigned himself to being a
homebody, even though he really liked exploring the world, doing new things,
meeting people (even if he was absolutely awful at it), because Dave usually
wanted to stay at home. But Jade is rubbing off on him. He’s actually excited
to get out again, like he hasn’t been since very shortly after the game ended.
And when they’re done there, Dave takes his hand and asks if maybe he wants to
watch the sunset at the park. And Karkat realizes what this is - a date. His
face is probably flushing as his chest fills with warm, overwhelming feelings
he doesn’t totally know how to process, and Dave smirks and looks down a little
bit. Karkat squeezes his hand and tells him yeah, the two of them have enough
time to find a vantage point that doesn’t suck. And they do.
                                       *
Dave is… affectionate that night. He nuzzles into Karkat’s neck and runs his
hands down his body.
“Been a while since I had you to myself.”
Karkat’s heart races. It’s true. If he’s being honest with himself, Karkat has
been feeling like kind of a tack-on addition to Dave and Jade. He feels like
he’s dating Dave, he’s dating Jade, but when the two of them are together, he
finds himself just taking a backseat. And it’s stupid. He doesn’t bring it up
because it’s stupid. It’s a stupid problem with an obvious fix, which is to get
over himself and just dive in and stop being so weird about it.
But he’s been feeling a little neglected and weird, and this is something he’s
wanted for a while. He’s like a pathetic affection sponge, just soaks it all up
like he isn’t fucking drowning in it constantly. He should be glad they pay any
attention to him at all, and from them especially, they're fucking amazing and
way too good for him, where the hell does he get off feeling neglected? But
this feels good. Really good.
It’s different doing this with Dave again, without Jade here. It’s quieter and
feels more private. Not that he doesn’t love doing it with Jade, too, he
absolutely does. All of it, it’s new and exciting and hot and fan-fucking-
tastic. But there’s just a lot of stuff he has to think about when it’s the
three of them that he and Dave have worked out years ago. Dave kisses him and
ruts against him, pulls his pants down and groans when Karkat’s bulge wraps
around his dick. He asks Karkat to hand him the lube, tells him he’s been
missing Karkat’s sweet bootytastic action. Karkat rolls his eyes.
“I’m so glad doing this with Jade hasn’t killed your stunning way with words.”
“Thanks, babealicious, I try. You know what you should do one day?”
“What?” Karkat asks as he watches Dave slick up his fingers. He spreads his
legs and tries not to think about his disgusting red bulge whipping around
between his legs. Dave runs his fingertip over his hole, which is already kind
of wet from his gross red nook drippings but not nearly enough for this, they
know that, they’ve tried that, it was unpleasant-
“You should stick your bulge in your nook,” he says, just as he sinks a finger
inside of him.
“Holy shit.”
“Maybe while I’m fucking you. Double-stuffed Karkat. Self-stuffed Karkat. Hey,
remember when you tried to date yourself? This would be just like that.”
“Can we talk about anything else while you finger my ass?”
Thankfully he does. He laughs and then asks Karkat if he can eat him out a
little bit while he does this. Like Karkat would literally ever say no to that.
But he’s been asking a lot lately, as much as when they first started doing
this on the meteor, and it seems to make him pretty uncomfortable if he
doesn’t. It seems like one of those “beeping landmine, do not touch” issues so
Karkat isn’t pushing it. Dave talks about stuff if and when he wants to, and
not a minute sooner. So Karkat bites down the yes, obviously, please, you
buffoon that’s sitting in his throat - not because he really thinks he’s an
idiot for asking, but because it’s weird and alarming and that’s how he reacts
to weird and alarming when he can't do anything else about it, and he knows he
can't, not with Dave - and just nods. He bites his hand to keep from making all
kinds of stupid noises as Dave licks into his nook as he rubs his prostate with
two, three fingers.
Dave has him turn over. He pushes in, asks Karkat if he’s okay, holds his hand
and tells him he loves him. It’s good and overwhelming. And then Dave whispers
some stuff in his ear about how much he’s missed doing this to Karkat, how good
he smells and sounds. Karkat’s bulge thrashes against the bed, making a fucking
mess, and he moans Dave’s name as the pace picks up. Fuck, he’s missed this,
too. It’s stupid, but he’s missed Dave.
They scoot past what Dave dubs “Karkat jizz mountain” on the sheets when
they’re done and cuddle to the side until they’re with it enough to change the
sheets. Dave asks Karkat if he wants to come hang out with him and John the
next day, asks him if he has any plans with Sollux or Kanaya this week. He
doesn’t, and decides to make some. He has a bad habit of getting so lost in
relationships that he lets his friendships die, and apparently that wasn’t
limited to just him and Dave. He says yes to the thing with John, too.
“We should hang out just the two of us when she’s here, too,” Dave says.
“Didn’t realize how much we weren’t doing it.”
“Yeah. It snuck up on me, too. I missed you.”
                                       *
Three days pass. Dave and Karkat fall into their more usual routine after day
one. Meaning, Karkat suggests something that isn’t watching TV or playing video
games, and Dave says ok maybe later, give me a few minutes.
Which is fine.
It’s fine. They hang out with John, and Karkat is meeting up with Terezi and
Kanaya in a few days to watch some stupid movie (Karkat will never understand
what Terezi gets out of movies, but she’s always the one to suggest them).
Plus, they both needed some time to clear out the spare bedroom for her. It
needs a bed, if she wants it, but it has a desk and dressers and shit. And the
rest of the house is only a little bit more absurdly packed with garbage as a
result of the cleaning. It’s a lot of work, it kills a lot of time. They didn’t
have time to go anywhere crazy, anyways.
Jade will be back eventually, and they can all do fun shit then.
She’s rubbing off on Dave, too. Maybe Karkat won’t ever have to even bring it
up with him, because he’ll just start enjoying stuff more.
Karkat’s phone buzzes at the same time that Dave’s does. Which could be any
number of people inviting them to a group chat, but he still hopes it’s her.
-- gardenGnostic joined the chat WHATSCOOLERTHANBEINGCOOL --
GG: hey guys! :)
GG: is it cool if i come around tonight?
GG: i think I figured out what i need to figure out to make stuff work without
leaving out of nowhere like that again, haha
GG: (sorry about that)
TG: hey
TG: yeah thatd be super cool
TG: come on back and tell us all about that introspective shit
CG: HI JADE
CG: YEAH TOTALLY COME BACK WHENEVER
CG: IT’S TOTALLY COOL
GG: okay sweet! i'll see you tonight :)
GG: i missed you guys!
CG: YOU TOO
CG: I MEAN I MISSED YOU
TG: yeah samesies
TG: see you soon?
GG: a few hours
GG: can i… bring some more stuff over?
CG: TO LIKE
CG: MOVE IN?
CG: WE CLEARED THE SPARE ROOM FOR YOU.
GG: sweet, thank you!
GG: but not exactly, no
GG: i mean, kind of?
GG: like halfway moving in but not
GG: just, no pressure, right?
TG: yeah, of course not
TG: so little pressure that we’re literally floating like astronauts through
this beautiful relationship
CG: YEAH
CG: WHAT DAVE SAID, BUT LESS STUPID
TG: dude we’ve talked about this
TG: literally literally means figuratively now, it’s fine and not even kind of
stupid
CG: WELL IT SHOULDN’T, AND YOU SHOULDN’T JUST GO ALONG WITH WHAT SOME COUNCIL
OF IDIOTS SAYS ABOUT WORDS LIKE THAT.
TG: you sound like an old man
TG: get off my lawn with your gameboys and pokemans, back in my day literally
didnt mean figuratively and we had nine planets and i care so fucking much
about this for some reason
CG: THAT LITERALLY MEANS NOTHING TO ME AND YOU KNOW IT
GG: ANYWAYS, GUYS!!!!
GG: im coming back tonight, ok? just a few hours to pack :)
TG: oh yeah
TG: see you then
CG: YEAH
CG: LOOKING FORWARD TO IT
CG: SEE YOU SOON
-- gardenGnostic left the chat WHATSCOOLERTHANBEINGCOOL --
***** Chapter 7 *****
Chapter Notes
     i said the chapter schedule would be wonky and i meant it
“So,” Jade says, “I’ll live here for a few days, and then leave for a few days.
Is that okay?”
Dave and Karkat nod. Sounds good to Dave, at least, and he’s pretty sure Karkat
saw this coming, too.
“So this time, I’ll leave on… Tuesday. And come back on Friday. And I think
I’ll build up my resistance to being around people 24-7.”
“Sweet.”
Jade smiles, embarrassed.
“Sorry for leaving like that. I had to think about some stuff.”
“I get it, dude. Gotta be alone to think.”
“Yeah.” She looks so relieved. “That exact thing, yeah. You too?”
“For sure, yeah.” He usually pauses time to do it, but he doesn’t need to tell
her that right this second, when she’s just settling in.
“Karkat? Are you okay with this?” she asks. Dave realizes that Karkat hasn’t
said anything since this started.
“Yeah. It’s great, sounds like it’ll work. I’m glad you’re back. Did you see
the room? We got most of the garbage out of it.”
                                       *
Jade settles into her room. The three of them decide to take it easy for a day
or two, before jumping in to hanging out literally constantly. Which is a great
idea. Should have thought of that himself. Haha. He spends his time in his room
office thing, writing his screenplay, playing MMOs, shooting the shit with John
and Roxy, who’s fun as hell and he’s just starting to get to know. At one point
he walks in the kitchen to grab an energy drink and gets an eyeful of Jade and
Karkat making out against the counter. So intensely that they don’t even hear
him come in. Heh. It’s kind of hot, but he really doesn’t want to interrupt
them or make it weird, so he slinks out quietly. He’ll get his energy drink
later.
                                       *
Jade pulls him out of his room a few hours later. She’s practically bouncing in
place, beaming as bright as the celestial sun she is. Wow, that was cheesy,
jesus he needs to stop watching those movies with Karkat so much.
“I have an idea for tonight.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. Karkat’s waiting in the living room! Wait, fuck, are you doing
anything important?”
“Nah. Let’s go.”
                                       *
She teleports the two of them to rolling fields somewhere.
“Where the hell are we?” Karkat asks.
“Velika Planina. That's not important right now. Okay. Okay." She paces a
little bit, seems to be gathering her thoughts. "Dave, okay, uh. No, nevermind.
Okay. Karkat, take my hand.”
Karkat raises an eyebrow and takes her hand, and she levitates the two of them
a few inches. And beams. She’s absolutely giddy.
"Okay."
“Jade,” Karkat says hesitantly, “you know, Dave can do this too-“
“Give me your other hand.”
He holds it out to her, totally baffled.
She turns his hand over and puts something in his palm. It looks like a rubber
marble about the size of a half-dollar. Dave smells something weird and
indescribable in the air around them.
“What the hell is-“
“Now let go.”
“I’d rather not fall on my ass, thanks.”
Dave laughs. “Jade, what the hell are you up to?”
“Do you trust me?” she asks Karkat.
“Y…yes?”
“Let go of my hand.”
Karkat’s fingers pry themselves off from Jade’s arm one by one, and then he
slowly lifts his hand away. And stays floating. He stares at her, then the
ball, then her again, eyes wide. He pulls his hand a little farther back. And
then floats back several feet.
Jade squeals and claps. “Yes!”
“How the fuck- what?”
“Holy shit, Jade, did you do that?” Dave asks.
“Yeah! This is why it took me so long to come back, actually? Had to make sure
it actually worked!”
Karkat floats a little higher, then drops back down. “How am I controlling
that?! AmI controlling that? Or is that you? What did you do?”
“So, okay, I bound up some gravitational control in that ball, and bound it to
you when you touched it, and now it lets you fly however you want to. Just like
me and Dave!”
“Wh- what-“
“Do you love it?” Jade asks.
“Fuck- what if I drop it?”
“Well, it should bring you down slow enough that you won’t get hurt. Try it!”
she pulls him up a few feet and looks at him expectantly.
He turns his hand out and drops it on the ground. And slowly, slowly sinks back
down to earth.
“Hell fuckin’ yeah,” she says.
Karkat starts to pick it up again. His movements are slow, full of disbelief.
“How-“
“Dave! Come with me!” She grabs Dave’s hand and pulls him several hundred feet
in the air. It’s cold up here, quiet. Dave’s ears pop with the change in
velocity, but it’s been worse. Karkat is small on the ground under them,
staring up with his hand clutching the ball tightly.
“C’mere, dude,” Dave yells.
“Yeah, catch us if you can!” Jade hollers. “He can,” she says to Dave. “He
totally can.”
“Holy shit, I can’t believe you did this. Shit’s amazing.”
She grins. “I thought he’d like it. I think he does.”
Karkat slowly floats up to them. He looks down and starts shaking. “Oh, woah.”
“That takes a while to get used to,” Jade says.
“Yeah, don’t look down for a while. Eyes up here.”
Karkat looks at them both, his face a mess of happiness and shock and something
that makes Dave’s heart feel like it’s melting in his chest.
“Holy- holy shit, Jade, guys I- I didn’t think I’d ever do this.”
Is he crying? Shit, Dave’s pretty sure he sees tears. Yeah, fat pink tears,
streaming down his cheeks, moonlight reflecting off of them like a cheesy
romance movie. Jade reaches out and hugs him, and he hugs her back.
Dave kind of feels like an emotional voyeur, but he doesn’t want to disturb
this adorable-ass moment, and then Jade pulls him in.
“Get over here, nerd, you’re part of this, too!”
Dave wraps his arms around both of them. And beams. He can’t remember the last
time he’s seen Karkat so happy.
(which makes him feel like a massively shitty boyfriend, so shitty, like woah,
but not really the point of this excursion at all)
“Fuck, thank you, thank you so much. I really… I thought I would never do this.
Ever.”
Jade kisses his cheek, and then kisses Dave’s cheek.
“And if you lose it, I can just make you another one.”
His eyes well up again and he laughs.
“Holy shit, Jade...”
“Now!” she says, “let’s look around the park. This place is so pretty at
night.”
She lets him go and starts to float off. And Karkat follows her.
                                       *
She’s right. The park is gorgeous at night. But Dave can’t stop looking at the
two of them, listening to them banter and laugh, and wondering how he got so
unbelievably lucky. It doesn’t feel real. But it is. This is real. This is his
life.
And every time he starts to let himself drift off, let the two of them have
some time together, Jade calls him a dork and pulls him right back with them,
until he stops wanting to fall back.
***** Chapter 8 *****
(a few days later)
 
Karkat goes grocery shopping alone. They probably don’t need even more shit,
but they’re out of milk, and he needs an excuse to be alone. To get away from
Jade so he can think.
He’s trying not to make it weird. But that’s what he does best, and he knows
he’s going to make it as weird as it can possibly be if he’s around her
anymore. He walked in on the two of them drinking coffee, and she smiled at him
and waved and he felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest
because of how gorgeous and perfect she is. Which is fucking weird!!! And he’s
been trying to ignore it, every night since that fucking unreal, magical night
when she gave him the flight totem. Honestly, he’d been pushing it away every
day since the fucking Seine, and he was actually having some success with it
until Jade did fucking, that, that shit, flying through the sky in her arms
like he’s her fucking Lois Lane, diving into moonlit lakes in one of the most
beautiful places on earth, and she’s radiant, she’s absolutely radiant and she
makes him feel like he’s going to explode.
There’s a word for this. He feels it on the tip of his tongue every time he
talks to her - well, three words, that one stupid human word in the middle
tying them all together - and he’s not going to fucking say them three weeks
into this fucking relationship because that’s so, so fucking weird.
So he walks around the grocery store - even though he could float if he wanted
to, now! - and tries not to get overwhelmed by 1) the sheer abundance of shit
on the shelves and 2) those three words and all the shit that comes with them.
Shit like, he’s an idiot and he’s probably wrong about it. He’s a creep and
he’s moving way too fast. He hasn’t felt that way about Dave since a few months
into their relationship. Which means it’s not… love, probably, it’s
infatuation. It’s a very intense crush. But it’s different with Jade than it
was with Dave. They have almost a decade of this ultra-close friendship and
life-changing universe-saving as a bedrock, and now they’re dating.
But still, something changed the other night. Something clicked in how he felt
about her, and excitement and attraction and friendship gave way to something
bigger and deeper and much more difficult to describe, except with this four-
letter word that meant so many fucking things that it basically meant nothing
at all.
Milk. Right. He’s here for milk. What the fuck is he doing looking at bread?
Why the fuck is there an entire fucking aisle of the store devoted to varieties
of bread? How could the human economy possibly sustain that much variety of
choice for fucking bread? Whole wheat, cheap gummy white, rye, marbled rye, rye
with seeds, rye without seeds, pumpernickel, rye and pumpernickel combined, and
about 75 more. Ridiculous.
Another problem with this is that Karkat knows himself. He knows how he thinks.
He thinks like a fucking idiot. He thinks in histrionic extremes and he watches
too many cheesy movies. He thinks things like, she makes my heart soar. Like
he’s a lead in one of those movies, instead of a boring little mutant toad. Who
the hell does he think he is? He’d just creep her out telling her any of this.
She makes him special, and she makes him feel like he’s living that dream,
dancing in the moonlight, but that’s entirely him being a huge weirdo and has
nothing to do with her. He’s disgusting for even wanting that. He’s grossing
himself out just thinking about it.
Things are weird with Dave, too. Dave taking him on dates and watching the
sunset, Dave telling him he loves him and holding his hand. Going from getting
that from zero people to two is probably just overwhelming him and leaving him
confused. Because he’d given that up, basically, when Dave started talking
about how glad he was that Karkat didn’t like that stuff. And now it’s
happening. It’s a lot. And now he feels like he wants to sweep Dave off his
feet and kiss him and keep him safe and tell him how much he loves him, because
he doesn’t say it enough.
Or maybe he just loves them both, now. Maybe he just fell in love with Jade,
too, and he’s infatuated by her.
In any case, he should keep a fucking lid on it. Whether it’s reasonable or
not, it’s fucking creepy. Even if they’re dating. Because they’re only just
dating. It’s okay to care about each other, but not throw around the l-word
like it’s a fucking party popper on New Year’s Eve. They’ve been dating like a
week (three weeks), he’s probably not even really in love with her, just
infatuated - but, it’s not like it’s too soon to be in love, is it-
Karkat realizes the mental conversation is circling and will continue to circle
forever if he lets it.. He decides what he usually decides, which is to not say
anything about it ever. Well, or, until she says it first, because then it’s
safe. It took him and Dave over a year of flushed dating to get the word out,
there’s no rush. He’ll just keep a fucking lid on it.
                                       *
Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially when Jade is right in front
of him. Every time she laughs, Karkat’s chest gets warm. When she smiles, he
wants to hug her. When she looks at him, it feels like she’s looking straight
through him. And he gets caught in a mental loop of how to not make it weird,
which he realizes is probably causing it to become weird. But, fuck, what can
he fucking do? He has to stay alert, lest he fucking drop it like a hot tuber
on her unsuspecting lap.
He walks by her in her room. She and Dave are mixing some music. She calls him
in, and he sits to the side as they work.
She sings. She has a really lovely singing voice. It’s sweet, soft and
hypnotizing. And maybe he’s seeing her with rose-tinted glasses but it seems
like she just comes up with the most perfect melodies to Dave’s backbeat, and
they play off each other perfectly.
She’s going to fucking kill Karkat by the end of the day.
“Hey, are you going to get in on this, or just keep staring?”
“Not all of us are as musically inclined as the two of you. Not all of us have
a voice that doesn’t make small animals want to throw themselves off a cliff.”
Jade laughs. “There’s no way that your voice is that bad, but you don’t have to
sing if you don’t want to.”
“Yeah, dude, come here. He’s sick with drums and bass.” Dave clicks some
buttons, turns the laptop in his direction, and raises his eyebrows. Karkat
caves.
Listening to Jade singing this close fills his fucking brain with a torrent of
flushed feelings, but at least now he isn’t gaping at her like a love-struck
animal anymore. He has the music to focus on. And Jade’s amazing talent and
laugh and smile. Agh. He’s so bad at this.
                                       *
Jade stops him in the kitchen later that night, as he’s topping off his 8
o’clock espresso triple.
“Karkat.”
“What?”
“You’ve been staring at me like you want to say something all day.”
No. Fuck no. Red alert, absolutely not. Fuck, he’s so bad at this.
“Weird. No. I’m not.”
“Are you sure?” she asks teasingly. “Oooh, what are you drinking?”
He holds it out to her, because that’s easier to address. She sniffs it and
laughs.
“How do you drink that poison?”
“My stomach is built to withstand things that would literally kill you. This is
nothing to me.”
“I’m so impressed, Karkat,” she says, dripping with sarcasm. Fuck. Even that’s
fucking adorable. “Can I have some?”
“Think you can survive it? It’s pretty strong.”
She rolls her eyes and takes a sip.
“It might be good with some biscotti.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I know a place in Venice. Do you want to go?”
“Wh- right now?”
“Yeah, sure. Dave can come too! It’ll only take a minute.”
“Shit, sure.”
Dave decides not to come. He says he’s super busy finishing up a track. Which
Karkat understands to mean “I left the house six times this week and you want
me to do it again? Have mercy.” He has mercy, he doesn’t press it. Jade drops
it, too, after calling him a loser.
The place in Venice is perfect. Of course it is. It’s sunny and warm and the
biscotti is fucking incredible. There’s a little bit of some fluffy white plant
blowing in the summer wind and even though it’s gross when a tuft lands in his
fucking coffee, it just makes the whole scene feel that much more magical.
The whole time, he’s trying not to say it. And she keeps telling him how cute
he is, how she loves doing this for him, how she loves seeing him happy. He’s
going to die. She’s going to kill him.
But he manages to not say it. And if he stuck that out without blabbing, he’s
probably going to be fine. That was the truest test of his abilities. He
passed.
They get a bag to go, so Dave can try some, too, and teleport back home.
Jade puts the bag on the counter and attaches a little note on it so Dave knows
it’s for him.
Then she turns back to Karkat. She has a little tuft of white stuck in her
hair. He tells her to hold still and pulls gently out. She looks at him as he
does it, up close. He can smell her skin, and she smells amazing. And then she
kisses him for a long time before pulling back.
“Today was really fun, Karkat,” she says, and there’s something in her eyes
that just.
“I love you,” Karkat says.
Idiot. Bumbling fucking idiot. Moron. Rotten fucking dish sponge moldering from
the inside. Jade’s eyes go wide. Of course they do. Because he’s a fucking fat-
lipped jackass with fucking insane proclivities for insane nonsense that’s way,
way too intense for the situation, like telling Jade that-
 “Oh, woah, really?”
“I’m sorry, fuck, that was too soon, that was way too soon-“
“You love me?”
Karkat considers taking it back, but decides not to. The train has left the
station. The train is stuck and rusting in the heart of fucking Atlantis. He
ran his stupid mouth, and now Jade is going to tell him he’s moving way too
fast, that she doesn’t feel like that yet but maybe someday, and it’ll be
weird, if she doesn’t outright dump him for it, because wow that was fast and I
don’t know if I’m ready-
“Karkat? Are you ok?”
“I’m fine. Sorry for dumping that on you. It was fucking stupid. I didn’t mean
to, it was a mistake.”
“But you meant it… right?”
Yet another chance to take it back. Is she giving him an out intentionally?
“N….no?” Stupid. “No, I mean, it’s stupid-“
Jade looks amused. “Oh, okay, because I was going to say that I think I love
you too, but now that would be weird.”
Karkat couldn’t have heard that right. His chest feels tight, and his thoughts
narrow to just Jade.
“What?”
“I think I love you?” she says cautiously. Her relaxed, playful confidence from
before is gone, she looks just as nervous as he feels.
“What?”
“I said I think I love you too! Can you hear?”
“You… you think you love me?”
“Yeah.” She smiles awkwardly. “It’s kinda silly because we only just started
dating, but. I dunno. I’ve liked you for forever, and you’re just. I don’t
know. I mean! It feels like… love? But maybe it isn’t. I’ve never dated anyone
before. What’s love feel like?”
That’s. A lot. “It’s.” Karkat tries to think beyond she loves me too, oh my
god. He… he hadn’t even considered this as a possible outcome. This wasn’t even
on the table in his mind. But it’s happening.
“It’s like.” He forces himself to speak. “You get really excited when you see
them, and you want them to be happy, and you want to be around them.” This is
stupid. His explanations are just as stupid as his thoughts, and make no sense.
“Why am I explaining love to you! You know what love is. It’s a fucking human
concept.”
“Are you seriously trying to tell me that trolls don’t have love?”
“We have love! It’s just different.”
“Well, which one do you feel for me?”
Karkat swallows and looks at Jade. He tries to pin down a thought to
communicate in the whirlwind of chaos. I get excited when I see you, no one
could ever love a mutant freak like you, you make me feel like romance isn’t
just in movies, I metaphorically see a fucking glowing light of radiance
emanating off you when you smile, ugly mutant freak with a stupid voice and
stunted horns trying to woo a god-
His voice freezes in his throat. There’s just absolutely no way any of that is
coming out of his mouth. He tries to speak, but, nothing. Fuck. Fucking
worthless. Worthless, useless-
And then Jade kisses him. He relaxes muscles he didn’t realize were tense.
“That was kind of an unfair question, wasn’t it? Sorry.” She kisses him again.
“I love you too, though.”
“Really?”
She laughs. “Yes, Karkat! Really! I… It feels really fast, too, which is why
I’m nervous that maybe it’s weird or something, but, you said it first, so
it’s… fine. I dunno. I had a crush on you for, like, the last four years, you
know? And then we had dinner on the river, and it just. Made me feel weird. And
good. Whenever I see you. And Dave. Which is weird. I love you both, uh. Which
feels insane. It’s only been, like, three weeks. Please stop me, I’m rambling.”
Karkat kisses her. It lasts a while this time. It lasts a very, very long time.
It heats up in no time at all, and she’s running her hands through Karkat’s
hair and bumping him up against the kitchen table and laying him flat down
against it. He can feel rumble sphe- her breasts pressing into his chest, and
he opens his legs so she can press up between them-
“Again? You two are like fucking rabbits up in this bitch. Consecrating every
known surface of the kitchen with- oh, shit, uh, I mean, getting out of here,
uh, don’t mind me, pretend I wasn’t just here.”
And he leaves.
And the mood is dead. He killed it.
Jade pulls back and laughs awkwardly. Her hair is kind of messy. She looks like
a goddess.
“I’m... really glad this is in the open now. I can just tell you I love you.
It’s cool.”
Karkat nods stupidly. It’s a lot to take in. He’s relieved, so fucking
relieved, and still pretty horny, and Jade is so perfect and adorable when
she’s like this. And like anything. He’s being a creep. He’s always being a
creep.
But Jade loves him too.
She loves him too.
Karkat smiles.
"Me too."
***** Chapter 9 *****
Chapter Summary
     the mood whiplash chapter
Chapter Notes
     MOOD WHIPLASH ALERT!
     tw for this chapter: incest, childhood sexual abuse, rape,
     flashbacks, dealing with ptsd badly
     ALSO giant thank you Makizushi for all the help and character jams
     and feedback, it's infinitely useful and excellent
Dave has that nightmare again. He’s back there, and it’s happening again, hands
where he doesn’t want them, he's too scared make it stop and disgusted with his
body for reacting to it, disgusted that it’s happening with him, smelling shit
and sweat-
He opens his eyes and sees the wall, and the feeling doesn’t stop. Fingertips
brushing along the tip of his boxers, running over his pubes, again.
He never got out, did he?
The game wasn’t real. Karkat wasn’t real. God, Karkat wasn’t real. That sears
like a burning brand in his chest. And Jade, too, fucking, that was just
getting going, that was just getting fucking wonderful, except it wasn't,
because she’s not real, either. And Dirk wasn’t real, obviously, obviously that
was just some sick mind game he played with himself, none of them were real,
that was just a dream, they’re all just people he talked to on the internet and
he’s alone, he’s alone and he’s 13 and he’s trapped here, and his brother is
here with his hands down his pants and he’s going to push him down he’s going
to take it, again and again and again whenever Bro feels like it, for as long
as he lives because there’s no way out-
“Good morning, Dave,” says a voice that’s not… his. Jade? Jade is here. Dave
turns his head around and sees Jade staring at him. Her hand - her hand, not
his - pulls away from his lower stomach as he looks at her, trying to figure
out what’s happening. Fuck, he’s so confused, it hurts to think.
“I’m sorry, oh jeez, I’m sorry, fuck, I thought it’d be fine if I didn’t-
shit.”
That doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense. Dave’s head hurts a
little, trying to piece all this together.
“Where is he?” he asks, quietly, because he doesn’t want to draw his attention,
doesn’t want to bring him here.
“Where is who? Karkat?”
“Karkat is real?”
“Yes, Dave, Karkat is real. Do you know where you are right now?”
That makes him think. He thought he was in Houston, but Jade is here, and
Karkat is real, and the fan isn’t the same and the window is different-
He feels the sleepwalking fog start to shake off for good. Relief that this is
real, not that fucking hell, is only tamped down by the utter mortification
that he just did this shit in front of Jade.
There’s just… no way of recovering from this. Not right now. Panic starts to
set in, which is never good. Well, he has a handy little off switch for that,
doesn’t he? He clicks into that part of his brain, slows the gears down, and
pauses it all. Jade’s eyes stare blankly, her face concerned, at the wall in
front of her as he gets up. Gets dressed. Leaves the room. Opens the bathroom.
Karkat is showering, the steamy water around him suspended in warm little
clouds that move only when the door pushes into them and forces them out of the
way. Okay, not there. Into the… guest room. Jade’s room. Hmm, no. This feels
bad, too. This isn’t his space to be in like this. Maybe the living room? Yeah.
Bathroom would be ideal, but this works. He’ll just keep time paused until he
settles down.
Focusing on the rooms issue so he doesn’t have to think about what just
happened? Nah. Dave would never. He addresses shit head fucking on. That’s what
he does.
Interacting with a time-frozen world is weird. Everything is stuck unless he
wills it not to be, which is sick as hell, but unnerving. And there’s this
subtle quality of wrongness to everything, even things that are still or dead
anyways. Statues, books, furniture, even the air itself all seem to silently
rebel against him. Well, that’s all made up of some living particles too, so
probably makes sense that it doesn’t like it, maybe? But he’s a god of this
shit, this is his right, and he’s using his powers for good. His good. And it’s
not like it’s actively hurting anything sentient. He’s fine.
He pops in one of his favorite movies, one he found after the game because the
ones he watched before just make him feel kind of sick and awful now. Kingsman,
though. This shit is his, this shit is safe, and this shit is fast and slick
enough that it can drown out the rest of his thoughts pretty well.
He didn’t say anything too revealing to Jade, he doesn’t think. He has pretty
good recall of what happened there, and she probably has no idea who “he” is,
or why Dave was so scared of him. For all she knows, “he” might be Karkat.
Which is good. Shit’s way too heavy to dump on anyone, let alone his
girlfriend.
Fear that he’s going to spill his fucking guts out about this, whether he wants
to or not, because his subconscious mind is intent on letting it spew like
projectile vomit from his brain? Drowned out by a sick action sequence. Terror
that she’d abandon him if she knew? Sickening dread that the weight of this
shit would crush their burgeoning relationship to a gibby pulp? Silent in the
face of this sweet, sweet soundtrack. Discomfort that this shit really only
kicked into high gear once Jade came around? Because his brain doesn’t parse
Jade as safe yet the way it does with Karkat? Washed away by a tidal wave of
hella cool gearing up. Fuck, those suits are so sick. He should get a suit
again, one that fits really nice, tailor that shit up.
After about an hour, he feels himself start to relax. He knows from experience
that he can brute force his way through this, and that’s exactly what he
intends to do.
When he has about an hour left to the movie, he feels the world around him
starting to vibrate against the chains of timelessness. It does that sometimes,
if he extends this out too long. It’s best to let it go when it does. He really
doesn’t want to. He wants to extend this out at least another 15 minutes. But
it’s best to listen to the universe on this one.
The room seems to relax when he releases it. He hears Jade yelp in the bedroom
and feels a twinge of guilt.
She comes in the living room a few minutes later, sheepishly. Well, of course
she does. Dave is totally, totally over it, but it literally just happened for
her. She looks at him uncomfortably and lets out an awkward little half-laugh.
“God, it’s weird that you can do that.”
“You’ll get used to it. It took Karkat a few months.”
“I don’t like it.”
Dave doesn’t respond to that.
She looks at the TV.
“How long have you been gone for?”
Dave pauses the movie. The timestamp reads 1:37:04.
“Holy shit, Dave...”
“Time," he wiggles his eyebrows, "really flies when you’re watching this,
though.”
“Can we talk about what just happened?”
“Sure,” he says, only because it’s completely inevitable.
“I’m sorry. I thought it would be fine if I waited to… go farther until I asked
for permission. But that was too far, wasn’t it.”
Talking about it this bluntly puts Dave’s nerves right on the fucking edge. He
weighs his words carefully so he doesn’t want to give too much away.
“Maybe while I’m sleeping, yeah. Gotta give the ol’ noggin a chance to catch up
first.”
“Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that. Can I sit with you?”
 “Yeah. That’d be sweet.”
She sits next to him. Their thighs touch. It’s... bad. He tries and fails to
suppress these stupid thoughts. She’s just like him, this is how it starts,
she’s going to snap and pin him down and fuck him whether he wants it or not,
she’s going to laugh in his face, she’s going to tell him he wanted it.
Ridiculous. She just said she wouldn’t do all that bullshit. Well, implied it.
She also implied it with literally everything she's done in the last, what, 10
years? Except tell him he was a weirdo for asking for permission too much, and
touching his junk without asking to, but, uh, she apologized for that, so it's
fine. Jade is so fucking categorically safe, he just needs this stupid lizard
part of his brain to fucking acknowledge that.
It’s so dumb. All this shit was fine before the game ended. He didn’t think
about it, so he didn't. He wanted to push it away, so he did. And it was fine.
And then, after the game, the nightmares kicked into high gear, and the
memories at the dumbest times, and the dumbest shit would set it off, and. He
can't stop thinking about it. He cannot will himself to just fucking stop it
anymore. It comes back. It keeps coming back.
And maybe he cut hangouts with Dirk to twice a month instead of every week
because there’s just no good way to deal with that, is there. It doesn’t always
bother him, is the thing. Sometimes they hang out for hours and it’s fine. But
sometimes he says a certain turn of phrase or does some weird thing with his
fingers or gets a little too close to that and Dave pauses time to calm down in
Dirk’s bathroom for an hour. He knows Dirk knows he’s doing it, he knows the
time shit leaves a weird smell behind him like a magical god slug trail, but he
doesn’t comment on it. Which is good. Because what the hell is Dave going to
say? You smell exactly like my brother did when he was raping me and it’s
really bugging me today, haha, no, absolutely literally never. This will all go
away soon enough, and shit will go back to normal, which it absolutely never
will if he tells anyone any of this, especially Dirk. Fuck no. Shit’s weird.
Dirk doesn’t need to know that. Dirk cannot know that.
(what if he knows, though. dirk reads him like an open book at the best of
times and these aren’t the best of times- nah, it’s fine)
(but fucking heart powers, dude. soul intuition. what if he knows?)
(no, it’s fine, he probably just knows something is fucky)
(hell, there’s no way he wants to know that, and god knows the two of them can
have powerful blind spots when they want to)
(it’s fine)
So yeah, maybe sometimes he tells Karkat he’s going to Dirk’s and then goes and
gets coffee at a local shop and works on his screenplay, because that’s
hilariously ironic. The coffee shop screenplay part, not avoiding his friend-
cum-brother because he reminds him of his brother-cum-dad. Anyways. That might
bite him in the ass later, if Karkat finds out, but hell, he can just tell
Karkat… hmm. He should figure out what to tell Karkat, if that ever comes up.
“Dave?”
“What?”
“You haven’t said a word in five minutes.”
“Oh, I just love this movie, it’s rad.”
“Are you actually watching it?” Jade sounds exasperated.
Are you watching, bitch? Don’t look away. Look at me. That’s it.
Wow, haha, not even kind of on the table right now, brain, but thanks for the
reminder.
Watching. Watching, all it takes to spur this on is hearing the word watching,
apparently, hahahaha.
“Yeah, it totally rocks.”
“Dave… I don’t want this to get off on the wrong foot. And I feel like it
really did. It’s like I created a third foot just to start this off and
immediately fell on my face because what the hell is that third foot for? Noth-
“
Dave maybe sort of pauses time again. He needs a second to stop thinking about
fingers in his mouth, nails digging into his tongue suck, don’t you dare bite
me because Jade is talking to him and he can barely think. He takes a few deep
breaths. He looks at Jade, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth in a
syllable she’ll have to wait to finish. Jade. She’s so fucking cute. They’ve
been friends for so long, she was his first crush, they kind of lost touch for
a while during the game and now there’s all this new stuff to her personality
and her powers that he loves finding out about. She’s a fucking delight. And
she’s is being helpful, she’s trying to work with him, she isn’t his brother in
any way, shape or form. Jade is safe. And she’s right about this.
Why the hell can’t she just figure it out like Karkat can? Why does she have
to talk about everything? Karkat just picks up on the clues. At least she
hasn’t asked what this is all about yet, and hopefully it stays that way
forever. Ugh. But it’s fine, relationships are compromise and all that shit. He
can work with this.
“-ing.” She stops and stares at him. It probably wasn’t long enough to leave a
huge stank behind, but something probably feels wrong. But she doesn’t ask
about it. “Can we start over?”
She’s trying. She’s not him, she’s Jade. She cares about him. She doesn’t want
to hurt him. She just hit while he was in the grasp of the subconscious morning
demons, and she realizes that, and she’s not going to do it again. She’s
trying. She’s working with him. It’s painful and awkward, but she’s working
with him, so that it doesn’t happen again, so they can do better, be normal and
happy together.
Dave smiles. “Yeah. That’s a good idea. Wanna hug it out?”
She visibly relaxes. “Yeah.”
She’s warm. She’s safe and soft and warm and hugging her is good. That was a
weird, uncomfortable thing that just happened, but they fixed it.
“Do you want to talk about it? Or anything else?” she says softly.
Dave shakes his head. Any residual weird feelings are just left over from
before. It’s fine. They figured it out. Problem fucking solved. Package wrapped
up and postmarked, on transit to the North Pole where it belongs. Far the fuck
away from here, away from them.
“What are you guys watching?” Karkat asks from the hallway. Dave and Jade pull
apart.
“Kingsman,” Dave says. Karkat’s hair is still wet, and his skin shines a
little. Dave pats the couch next to him. “It’s almost done. Then we should get
fucking pancakes or something.”
“That sounds good, yeah! I need to try them with ice cream.”
“This movie is lame. At least it’s almost over.”
Karkat sits next to him. And as they finish it up and talk over the ending to
decide where to get breakfast - Dave’s seen it a hundred times, and Karkat and
Jade haven’t seen enough for it to matter, and it was never really about the
movie anyways - the last of the weird vibes die. He’s here now, with them, and
they’re going to get pancakes and have a great day. His dumbass lizard brain
can fucking kick it.
***** Chapter 10 *****
Chapter Notes
     i decided i was gonna post at least 1 chapter per week
     which means this one is hot off the presses
     maybe a little too hot
     but w/e
A few days pass. Dave seems to be going out of his way to talk to Jade more. He
invites her in his room to mix tracks, forces himself to get out to a park with
her, talks to her about his screenplay. It seems like he’s talking about
everything except what happened the other day. Jade isn’t pressing the issue.
Things are fine, except when they’re not. It usually doesn’t come up.
She wishes there was a way she could make him open up about… whatever it is
that he’s carrying around in there. And she’s pretty sure she’s got a good
picture of what happened, and she’s pretty sure he knows that, and she’s pretty
sure that scares him, and she’s pretty sure that all this communication through
mind-reading is going to kill her. She gets the impression that Dave and Karkat
primarilycommunicate like this, and it blows her mind. And terrifies her.
She keeps wanting to say something about it, get it out in the open, because
it’s getting moldy like a wet wad of clothes that’s been left in the washing
machine. And she tries to bring stuff up, usually. With most things. Like with
the dates thing! She brought that up, and it went great, and now everyone is
happier. And she’s going to keep bringing things up, because it makes everyone
happier. But not this. Definitely not this. Jade is confident that she’s pretty
fucking awful at people, but even she knows better than to press this. But she
feels it there, and she feels that it’s fucking huge, and it’s killing her that
she can’t just address it at all. Especially with something so big.
But, it doesn’t usually come up.
They write songs together, and they watch movies, Jade takes them to a couple
more fun new places, the three of plan out a group date thing with Dirk and
Jake. Jade is kind of nervous. She never really talked with Dirk before, and
still hasn’t talked to Jake a ton outside of letters. And, and and and, she
doesn’t know what the whole “double date” thing entails. Like, obviously they
won’t all be macking on each other, because that’d be weird as heck. But she’s
so new to this. She really doesn’t know what to expect.
Karkat notices, before she even formulates in her mind to ask him about it. It
still kind of bothers her how well he can read her. But he tells her that it’s
basically just like hanging out with a couple of people who happen to be
dating, while you do stuff that you might do while you date.
“By that definition, a group date with you and Dave would be watching soap
operas and eating frozen pizzas.”
Karkat rolls his eyes. “Listen. Listen. Just because you have magical
teleportation powers that make your life a literal fantasy doesn’t mean the
rest of us are just wasting away in apathy.”
But, okay. It’s just like a normal hangout session. It’s fine. No pressure.
Then Dave is coming out from the shower, his hair soaking wet (Jade makes him
blow dry it, she won’t hear any of this “it dries in the car ride over there”
nonsense), and then they’re off.
                                       *
They go bowling. Jade has literally no idea what she’s doing there, but neither
does literally anyone else. They all walk out to the bowling lane immediately
after paying, only stopping to change out their shoes after a worker chases
them down. Weird. Jade’s seen this in a few movies, but never actually had a
chance to do this before. She would feel weirder about that if it wasn’t so
blatantly apparent that everyone there was in the same boat. That makes her
feel a lot better about the whole “am I actually a feral animal in human
clothes” thing that sometimes gnaws its way into her thoughts at night. Nah.
They’re all figuring out the society thing!
“So, who’s idea was this?” Jade asks as Dirk fiddles with the touchscreen.
“Karkat’s,” Dirk says.
“Charlatan frabricator. This couldn’t possibly be less of my idea. If anyone
had approached me to pick, and no one did, I can’t think of anything that would
have been lower on my list of ideas than throwing heavy balls at weighted
pins.”
“Yeah, I lied, it was all Dave.”
“Dave? Dave decided to go bowling?” Jade asks.
“Yeah,” Dave says. “Nothing I love more than some physical activity. Hand-eye
coordination. I’dda thought you’d know this about me by now, Jade.”
They’re both smirking. God, they’re insufferable together. Jade wishes she
didn’t find it so stupidly charming. Dave gets along so well with his brother,
they just clicked after the game. Sometimes she’s kind of jealous, because she
and Jake are chummy (to use a terrible word he’d use) but nowhere near that
kind of close. They like each other fine, but they’re not hanging out every
week. But she’s happy for Dave. She’s happy for both of them.
Jake comes back from the ball-selecty place and sits next to Dirk.
 “Something tells me you’re lying, too, Dave.”
“Me? Never.”
“Lying about what?” Jake asks.
“How it was totally Dave’s idea to come here,” Dirk says.
“What? No, it was my idea. What?”
“Jake. Man. You’re killing me,” Dirk says, but he’s smiling.
Jake seems really confused. “I have to admit I don’t understand the ruse. But,
I watched this in my movies, see, and I never dreamed I’d get to play it myself
someday. Well. I did dream it. I never thought it’d really happen.” Jake talks
quicker the longer he goes on. “Um. Anyways. Dirk, you should go pick your
ball. So should the rest of you.”
“Pick my ball, you say,” Dirk says slowly. “Hm.”
“Do you not know the first thing about how this works? You have to pick a ball
to a weight that you’re comfortable with.”
“Mm. Yeah, I totally knew that. Give me one second to finish running some
numbers.”
Jake snorts. “Oh, don’t look it up on your glasses, I can just show you.”
The two of them walk off.
“I think we should make it a couple’s competition,” Jade says.
“It’s three to two, there’s no way we wouldn’t destroy them,” Dave says. “Perks
of being a trio.”
“You fail to account for our collective lack of physical prowess. Well, Jade,
you have more than zero, so it probably evens out to, what, a third of an
average person? One divided by three.”
Jade laughs. “You guys can’t be that bad at it.”
“You underestimate me,” Dave says. “You underestimate Karkat.”
“We’ll see.”
Jade looks over to where Dirk and Jake are trying out the balls, heh. Dirk
grabs one with two hands until Jake shows him how to grab it with his fingers.
“You don’t really talk to him much, do you?” Karkat asks, a little quieter.
“Not like Dave and Dirk.”
Like he can read her fucking mind.
“No. Not really.” Before she can go into any detail at all, they start heading
back, so Jade drops it. Instead, she fills the two of them in on the plan. Jake
seems approximately 10,000 times more interested in a competition than Dirk
does. Good. Well, he’s on. Maybe she should invite him to play sports more
often? It seems like they have that in common.
Dirk starts fiddling with the screen on the front of their table. He sets his
team’s name to THE DEATH-DEFYING SLAYE, because apparently the character limit
caps before he can finish “slayers.”
 “You guys should pick out your balls, too,” Dirk says.
“Righto! I’m more than happy to help you guys, too. Jade, have you ever gone
bowling before?”
“I barely know what bowling is, to be honest.”
“That makes two of us.” Karkat looks over the other patrons of the place, who
are tossing balls around a few lanes over from them. “This game looks stupid.”
“That’s the spirit,” Dirk says.
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, chum.”
Jake shows them how to pick their balls out. Jade wants to pick the pink one,
but ends up going with a much larger black one, because apparently it should be
just under the heaviest that you can manage. Apparently. Jade isn’t sure if
Jake really knows what he’s talking about, either, but he knows more than the
three of them.
Jake also has to explain to them how to roll the ball. Jade has absolutely no
idea what she’s doing, and neither does anyone else. After two straight rounds
of everyone but Jake getting all gutterballs, they turn on the bumpers. For her
part, though, Jade is picking it up. It’s taking a while, but she’s figuring it
out. She’s pretty sure she won’t need the bumpers soon.
Dave and Dirk make a competition to see how few pins they can knock down,
minimum of one per round. Dipshits.
Jake gloats as the bumpers go down for his turn and his turn only.
“Jade, Karkat, even if these two over here aren’t taking this seriously, I
think the three of us still have quite a fierce competition ahead of us. At
least, the two of you do. Maybe we should combine your scores against mine?”
Karkat rolls his eyes and laughs. “Yeah, as if. This game is a pale imitation
to its Alternian version. You had to literally hunt for your pins and slaughter
ballbeasts.”
Jake’s eyes go wide. “You’ll have to tell me about that. You’ll have to tell me
all about that, as soon as I finish this strike.”
“Sick fucking burn, dude, you gonna take that?” Dave asks.
Karkat rolls his eyes again as Jake walks off.
“So, Dirk, Karkat told me that you and Dave hang out every week,” Jade says.
Dave goes stock still, and Dirk looks confused.
“I mean-” Dirk starts.
“Yeah,” Dave says quickly. “Every week. Right, dude? Like clockwork. Every
week.” He seems weirdly insistent about it.
Dirk’s brows knit up further in confusion. Karkat looks at Dave warily.
“Yeah. Totally. Every week. Like Dave said.”
Okay, this is weird as fuck. Fuck. What did she say wrong? Why was that off
limits? Why was that weird to bring up?
Jake comes back. “What are you guys talking about? Looks a mite serious.”
“Nothing,” Dave says. “Oh, sick, my turn.” He gets up to go. Jade notices his
hands shaking a little.
It’s quiet when he leaves. Karkat is staring at Jake so intently. Jade
recognizes that it’s his concentration face, but it looks like there’s murder
in his eyes. Jake shifts uncomfortably.
“Did I bungle something? Hah. I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re good, dude. Don’t worry,” Dirk says.
Dave comes back after knocking down most of the pins.
“You’re getting off your game, bro,” Dirk says. And then the world feels a
little bit different, and the air around them stinks that weird chemical smell.
That smell from the other morning.
Dave sits down without saying anything. Then, like he just remembered to
respond, he says, “Shit, I forgot I was playing the anti-game. I’ll get you
back by sheer lack of pins by the end of this. There’s no way you’ll top me in
ineptitude.”
Dirk takes a while to respond. “We’ll see. You’re not accounting for my secret
technique.”
“What the living fuck is your secret technique?”
“Telling you would nullify its existence as a secret technique.”
“Yeah. Fair. Shit, they have pizza? Who wants pizza?”
And whatever the hell happened just then, it’s not gone, but it’s cleared out
of the air enough that conversation moves back to a more normal flow.
Dave orders one pineapple pizza for himself and Jade, one meat lovers for Dirk
and Jake, and one anchovies and jalepenos one for Karkat and whoever else wants
to hazard a slice. Jade tries it, and it’s horrible, and god it does stupid
things to her chest to see Karkat eating gross food. Like, what the hell is her
deal. Why is that making her feel all gushy inside. He’s nasty. It’s not cute.
But it is. Fuck.
Ultimately, the game does end up a competition between Jake and Jade. Karkat is
making some rad progress for a game he’s never played, but Jade is off bumpers
and hitting strikes by the middle of the first game. She wins one game, he wins
one game. Dirk wins the un-competition with Dave.
Dave is kind of quiet for the rest of the night, but he seems to have relaxed
from before. Jade hopes she’s imagining it. She tries not to feel guilty. She
feels like she caused whatever it was that happened, but she knows that’s
ridiculous. As much as she plays that conversation back in her head, she can’t
come up with where she messed up.
When Jake asks if they’re up for a tiebreaker round, Dave speaks up.
“I’m beyond tired, gonna have to pass. I mean, you four can stay here if you
want. Kick it up like an actual double date, instead of this quintuple-headed
monstrosity.”
“It’s an adorable monstrosity, Dave,” Jade says, “but I’m pretty tired, too. Do
you guys want a teleport back to your place?”
Dirk and Jake blink at her.
“A what now.”
Jade wiggles her fingers. “I can get you there lickety-split with god stuff.”
“Shit. Yeah. Blast me, space master,” Dirk says.
So, they return their shoes, and then Jade drops Dirk and Jake off at their
place in the blink of an eye (they go to the back alley before teleporting, no
need to freak out the entire bowling alley! She revels in their compliments
about how that’s totally the best power, damn, why didn’t they get space
powers, all they got was the ability to fuck with souls and make dreams come
true.
“You what?”
“Ah, hah, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Jake says sheepishly.
“Yeah. My bad. I mean, hell, maybe my shit doesn’t totally suck, and I just
haven’t figured out how to use it yet.”
This is fascinating. Jade wants to know more. But Dave is exhausted, and she
gets the strong impression that he wants to leave ASAP, given his lack of
responses to stuff.
“Can we talk about this on Pesterchum?” she asks them.
“I’d be glad to!” Jake says.
“Yeah, totally.”
“Sick.”
Jade waves them off, takes Dave and Karkat’s hands, and teleports the three of
them home. Well, to Dave and Karkat’s home.
“Okay, hey, uh, that was sweet, I’m gonna just go in my room for a while, don’t
come in, I’m working on, like, the craziest shit. So crazy. Okay?” Dave says.
“Uh. Okay?”
Karkat stares at him, concerned.
“Dave…”
“It’s not a big deal, really. Just need to get this out of the way.”
Karkat’s whole body seems to deflate. “Okay.”
Dave walks off. He closes the door behind him.
Karkat looks crushed. Then he forces himself to perk up. “You want to go out?
The stars are probably going to come out soon.”
“Yeah. That’d be good.”
They leave a note, because Dave didn’t want to be disturbed. They leave it
smack dab on the middle of the couch, so he’ll see it if and when he leaves.
And they go to watch the stars come out.
Jade has seen stars close up, as close as you can get before your skin starts
to peel and burn. She actually knows a really nice spot in this one nebula
where you can see more stars than you could ever imagine. But now doesn’t seem
like a good time to bring that up. The two of them find a quiet, grassy patch
in a park where they have a good view of the sky and lay down.
They talk about bowling in Alternia, and how apparently Dirk and Jake had a
super rocky patch for a few months where they were completely insufferable to
be around, and about what they’ll do the next few days before Jade leaves
again. Then Karkat gets quiet.
“I know you have to leave,” he says quietly. “For a while. Right.”
Jade nods, then realizes Karkat can’t see her. “Yeah, that’s probably for the
best. I think that’ll help stuff.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too. And Dave.” She stops there, thinks about him sitting in his
room, setting off his landmines with the most innocuous phrases. “I’m worried
about him.”
Karkat is quiet for a while. “Me too,” he says weakly.
Well. She’s not just imagining it. If Karkat’s worried, too, stuff is weird,
and stuff is bad.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” he says.
Jade takes his hand and squeezes it. “Me either.”
Stars start to come out, one after another, blinking into existence so quietly
Jade doesn’t notice until they’re already there.
“Well. That’s two of us, isn’t it,” Jade says, and laughs weakly. “But it’ll be
okay, won’t it? We’ll figure it out.”
Karkat is quiet a while. “Yeah. Do you think we should talk to him?”
“Y…yeah. But not at the same time. I think that’d freak him out.”
“Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.”
“Not tonight, either. Too soon, it’d freak him out, too.”
“Yeah.”
“But soon. If he’s still acting weird in a week or two.”
“Yeah.” Karkat sounds perkier. Like this talk, weak as it was, is calming his
nerves. “God. It’s so stupid. It wouldn’t have even occurred to me to talk to
him about it if you weren’t here.”
“Woah, really? Why not?”
“I… I don’t know. We just have a pattern. Where we don’t talk about stuff, we
just figure out how to work around the steaming piles of emotional dog shit.
It’s stupid.”
Jade had assumed as much. She looks up and realizes that the sky is full of
stars, that the sun has set completely, and the sky is blue-black broken up by
the white moon and stars. It’s pretty. It’s as pretty a night sky as you can
see in the city, on earth. The air is starting to get cold, but Karkat is warm.
She scoots a little closer to him. He wraps an arm around her, and she nuzzles
into him.
“I’m really glad you’re here. It’s great having you around. And dating you. And
shit.”
“I love you too, Karkat,” she says jokingly.
“Shut up. And I didn’t mean that, like, pressuring you to stay. I get that you
have to go. I don’t mean-“
“It’s fine, Karkat. Don’t worry.”
“Okay.”
They hang out until it’s too cold to justify staying out with only their T-
shirts on, and then head back.
Dave is playing video games in the living room. He waves at them. Asks them how
their date went, asks them if they boned down in public. Acts like nothing was
wrong earlier. Jade reminds herself that she’s not going to push, not tonight.
She lets it go as well as she can, and her and Karkat both make themselves buy
into the fantasy Dave is pushing on them. Because, really, maybe it’ll work
itself out, and there’s no point in poking at it for no reason if it does.
Hopefully, it does.
***** Chapter 11 *****
Chapter Notes
     they finally fight
Karkat starts macking on her two nights before she’s supposed to leave, before
the three of them fall asleep. And she returns the macking. (god, these dumb
boys are rubbing off on her too much! macking? who says that!) Dave tentatively
tries to join in, and then slowly pulls away. Before Jade can even ask if he
wants to slow down or just go to bed,
“I left the stove on, uh, gotta go check on that.”
She knows what this is about. He knows she knows. He has to know. They didn’t
even use the stove tonight, they ate at a sushi bar in Tokyo. But it’s not
about the excuse, it’s about getting out of there as fast as possible.
And the mood is dead, right, with her and Karkat. Karkat looks concerned. He
gives her this look that’s probably meant to communicate something more than
“that was bad, this is bad.” As if she could possibly have the same level of
wordless communication with Karkat that he has with Dave.
“Do you know what that was about?” she asks him quietly.
“No.”
“Does he do that with you?”
Karkat pauses, then shakes his head. He looks really uncomfortable.
Oh. This is new information. It’s not just Dave, is it. It’s Jade. She’s the
problem.
Jade wants to leave now. Jade wants to bump up her departure by one day and
just leave now because she can’t think straight. I’m the problem. I’m the
reason he’s like this. I’m the reason he’s upset. Probably because I was such a
fucking asshole-
She has to address this. She doesn’t want to force him to talk about stuff he
doesn’t want to talk about, but she has to address this before it gets worse,
she has to figure out why it’s just her, she has to make this better, she has
to fix this right now.
“Where are you going?” Karkat asks as she sits up.
“I have to talk to him.”
Karkat looks extremely distressed about that. She gives him a few seconds to
decide if he wants to say anything or not.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says.
“Well, what’s a better idea? Let this just keep happening forever?”
Karkat looks like he’s in physical pain. His eyes are wide and scared.
“Are you okay, Karkat?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t look okay.”
Karkat doesn’t respond to that for a while. He keeps opening his mouth to
speak, then closing it.
“It’s. Hard.”
“What? What’s hard?”
Jade notes that Dave does not come back into the room at any point. He’s
probably watching TV or something. Is she more annoyed at Dave, or herself?
It’s a mystery! A cosmic puzzle of the universe! Fuck!
“I. Feel like. I’m. Fuck. Fuck, I mean, I know you’re not, but-“
“Like you’re what?”
“Being asked to, uh, pick. One of you.”
“What? No. What the hell? I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I know. Fuck.”
“I would never ask you to pick, Karkat.”
“I know, I apologized, I fucked up, it was stupid-“
He’s panicking. Jade doesn’t really know exactly what she stepped in here, but
it seems pretty bad.
“Hey, it’s fine.” Is it? Is it fine? Honestly, Jade’s kind of fucking offended
by both the idea that she would ask him to choose, and maybe there’s some
fucking horrible part of her that’s offended that he wouldn’t choose her at
all, even in this tiny little way that benefits literally everyone involved.
But that’s fucking awful and she refuses to acknowledge it. Stupid. Haha,
they’re both being stupid. It happens. Relationships, right? Relationships.
It’s fine.
“You’re fine,” she says.
“I’m sorry.”
“Karkat, I love you.”
That seems to start to calm him down. And her, too, because she does, she loves
him. Is she really going to let this stupid little thing upset her? She loves
him, and he didn’t mean anything by it, and he apologized. It’s fine. It’s not
worth fighting about.
She kisses his forehead. “I’m not asking you to choose, not at all. I just want
to figure out how to make this better.”
He sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t know how. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She kisses his forehead. “I’m gonna go talk to him. I’ll be back
in a few minutes.”
She finds Dave sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup with steam coming
out of it. The room reeks of that indescribable chemical smell, and everything
feels a little stale, the way it did the other morning. She wonders if it’s his
first cup, or his third.
“Can we talk?”
“Sure, about what?” Dave asks.
Jade is getting really tired of that.
“About what just happened.”
“Oh. Uh, well, I forgot if the stove was on, and then I was hungry-“
“Dave.” He stops. “Can we please talk about it?”
He’s gripping his cup so tight his knuckles look white. He doesn’t outright
rebuff her this time, but she goes over her words and cringes. Holy shit, that
must have sounded pretty fucking bac on his end. Come on, Dave, just tell me
everything, right now. No. No no no, that’s the exact opposite of what she
wanted from this talk.
“Like, about how to make things better. You don’t have to talk about things you
don’t want to talk about-“
“Yeah, no shit I don’t,” he says sharply.
Oh, ow. Okay. She deserved that, though. Probably.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. It came out wrong. I just really don’t want to freak you out
again. And I don’t know how and that freaks me out.”
Dave looks into his cup. He seems to be thinking.
“Okay. Sorry. I’m being a dick. Okay. Uh. I’ll work with you here. Can we talk
about it later?”
Shit. Yes. Victory. Progress. It makes sense that he needs some time to collect
his thoughts and feelings about it.
“Yeah. Sure. Whenever, just tell me when you’re up for it.”
He nods. “Cool. Now’s just not a good time,” he says.
“Yeah, I get it,” Jade says.
A silence falls over them. It’s not comfortable, but it’s not as tense as it
was. Dave scoots back the chair next to him and gestures towards it.
“You want some tea?”
“Sure.”
He pulls her a mug and makes her a cup of something black and strong, but she
doesn’t know enough about tea to even hazard a guess as to what it is. She
drinks it slowly, and the weird vibes dissipate.
Dave starts to speak. He’s so quiet, Jade can barely hear him. “Sorry for being
a freak,” he says. Jade waits for him to go on. “It’s like. Shit’s out of my
control, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like. I’m trying not to think about…” he pauses, then full stops. It feels
like a full minute passes. Then Jade smells that weird smell, like chemicals,
sticking in the back of her throat. “Trying not to think about.” He stops.
Again. More of the weird smell. “Gross shit,” he finally says. “But it keeps
coming up.” His voice gets quieter and slower as he goes on, like an automaton
running out of batteries. Jade is worried he’s going to stop altogether, but he
keeps going. “I don’t wanna make it weird, right.” He takes a sip of his drink.
He seems to be done, he glances at her, waiting for her to respond. He looks
very small, and very nervous.
“It’s already a little weird,” she says. “I think that train might have left
the station.”
He deflates a little, but he laughs.
“Yeah. Yeah, it has, hasn’t it.” He takes a careful sip of his drink. His hands
are shaking a little. “I’m trying not to. Right. But it’s like. It’s fucking
determined to get weird.”
“Maybe…” fuck, Jade shouldn’t have spoken, she has no idea what she’s doing
here. Oh, well, too late now. “Maybe talking about it would help.”
Dave sighs a little. “Yeah. Maybe,” he says quietly. “Probably.” He looks like
he’s going to say more, but they hear the sound of the bathroom door opening
and closing. The toilet flushing, the sink running. She knows better than to
press when Karkat might pop in at any second. The time for talking is probably
gone. Maybe they should do it in space next time. No interruptions. Yeah,
that’d be perfect.
“Can we talk about this later?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah. Definitely.”
“Ok, cool. I’m gonna call him in here, is that cool?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Dave does. Karkat comes down the hallway and stops in the entrance to the
kitchen. He looks at them warily, like he’s trying to figure out the mood of
the room.
“What the hell are you two doing? Drinking fucking tea? It’s 1 in the morning.”
Jade knows better than to try to continue that conversation.
“Yeah, drinking tea. It’s good tea. Come here, nerd.” She pushes the garbage
off a side of the table and scoots a chair closer to Karkat.
Karkat joins them. He calls them idiots for drinking caffeine before bed. They
finish up their drinks slowly, then pile back into bed. This time, they fall
asleep quickly, close together and warm.
Dave kisses the back of her neck.
“’Night, Jade.”
                                      **
The next day starts off pretty quietly. Jade gets the feeling that Dave and
Karkat still don’t know how exactly to deal with the fact that she’s leaving
tomorrow. They’re trying not to let it show, but apparently two (three?) can
play at this accidental mind-reading thing. And that just won’t do. She’s going
out with a bang, not a fizzle. Something that’ll leave them all with a good
taste in their brainmouths.
At the same time, coming up with date ideas by herself every time is honestly
starting to get exhausting. She’s kind of nervous she’s going to run out of
stuff to do soon. The world is huge, but she’s worried that she’s going to run
out of places, or (more realistically) it’s only a matter of time before
exploring new places starts to lose its luster.
And… she’s happy to see them happy, but there’s this little part of her that’s
relentlessly annoyed that they don’t suggest anything, ever - well, she’s being
uncharitable! They suggested some stuff. Karkat suggested the park. There. But
it’d be nice if they suggested more.
She finds them on the couch, as usual, and plunks down.
“What do you guys want to do today?”
“I dunno. Whatever,” Dave says.
“Yeah. What are you thinking?”
Jade resists the urge to roll her eyes. She can’t expect them to change if they
don’t know she what she wants!
“Work with me, guys!”
“What?” Dave asks. “But this is like, your thing.”
“What, planning stuff for us to do?”
He nods. “Which might actually be incredibly shitty for you, huh.” Thank god,
he picks up so quick.
“Oh, fuck, Jade, I’m sorry,” Karkat says. Agh.
“No! It’s fine! I just expected you guys to pick up the slack at some point.
It’s fine! Better to take care of it now, right?”
Dave seems super fucking on edge, and Karkat looks like he might cry. Fuck.
Fuck!
“It’s okay, really! Really! How would you guys know it was bothering me if I
didn’t tell you?”
“I should have picked up on it,” Karkat says. “It’s skull-numbingly obvious. It
should have been plain as the fucking day.”
“What? No. How? I didn’t tell you. Karkat, it’s fine.”
“Is it?” he asks carefully.
“Yeah.”
“Is that… is that how you and Dave…” Stupid mouth, there it goes. Of course it
is. He told her that, she should have picked up on it before now, of course, of
course, they just, read each other’s minds, half-effectively, all the time. It
never fails to surprise her. It just doesn’t make sense, it’s not how people
work. But, shit, this is awkward. “Well, Dave, do you have any ideas?”
“Yeah, six.”
“What? Where the fuck have you been keeping them?”
“Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV--”
“Oh my god, no, we’re not marathoning that again.”
“Uh. How about. Fucking. What’s a cool place that you can take us to, Jade?”
Jade tries not to let her annoyance show. “Well, if you’re the one coming up
with the date idea, it’s your job to pick it.”
“Oh. Okay. Got it. Uh… Egypt.”
This really isn’t what Jade wanted out of this exercise. “And what’ll we do in
Egypt, Dave?”
Dave takes a half-step back. “Uh. Uh. Fuck. I don’t know. Look at the pyramids.
You probably know a lot of cool stuff down there, right?”
Jade’s done. Because honestly, she put herself out here, because she was
worried about how this would go down. And it’s like Dave doesn’t even care.
She’s just a well of ideas and plans that he taps into, even when she
explicitly tells him she doesn’t want to be that. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t
care!
“Are you serious right now? Your date idea is me figuring it out? Again?”
“Wow, okay. Sorry for not knocking it out of the fucking park the first time I
swung the old idea bat around. Second time, actually, because the boss isn’t
good enough, either.”
“I don’t think that Rocky is the human that’s called ‘the boss,’” Karkat says
weakly. “Uh, should I go?”
 “What? Why?” Jade asks.
“You… seem like you two need a minute to hash this out?”
What a very Karkat way to deal with this, Jade thinks. Which is mean, and she’s
glad she didn’t say it out loud, but fuck, this has been bothering her for a
while now and he’s doing it again and well, apparently it’s time to get all
this stuff in the open!
“No. You’re part of this, too. You never suggest anything, you just go along
with whatever I pick. It’s lame and I hate it!”
“Did I not already apologize for that? Oh, no, I did, at the top of this
conversation. Look, I can make a list of shit to do-”
“It’s not about the date ideas!”
Karkat’s eyes widen. “What the fuck? What’s it about, then?”
All the words leave Jade’s brain. Oops.
“Jade?”
Jade really wishes she could go back and eat those words. Just gobble them
right up. She can see how scared Karkat is, and hurt, and preemptively angry.
“Jade, do you need to, like, cool off for a few?” Dave asks carefully.
“No. Well, mayb- no! No. We should talk about it, it’s been bothering me for a
while.”
“Talk about what?”
“How you guys refuse to talk about things!”
Dave goes stock-still and his mouth sets in a straight line. Shit. Shit.
“Not that,” Jade says weakly. God, she has the tastiest foot! “Stuff like this,
like date ideas. And like. Like, why did you freak out the other day? I have no
idea! I don’t know what I did wrong! Am I expected to know why that was wrong?
There’s all these little things that I keep messing up and I don’t know why and
you refuse to explain-“
“I mean, Karkat seems to have figured it out pretty well without me having to
spell it out for him letter by letter.”
Oh. Ow. Okay.
“Jesus Christ, Dave, what the fu-“
“Okay, well, actually, forget staying another day.”
“What, you’re leaving? Just from that?” Dave asks. “So much for talking it out,
I guess.”
“Are you serious?”
“Jade, wait-“
“No! You and Dave can just hang out and read each other’s minds while I’m away,
and it’ll all be fine, right?”
“Wait,” Dave says, and Jade waits. “Are we putting shit on the table? Or are
you just gonna say your piece and then poof?”
Insufferable. He looks so pissed and smug, too, like this is some long-standing
thing he’s been dealing with. As if! He can say whatever he wants whenever he
wants, why does he not know that!
“Maybe if you’d actually tell me something for once I’d be able to react to it!
Please! Please say it!”
Dave’s mouth sets in a straight line.
“Okay, well, maybe you could fucking cool it with trying to make me say
everything I think and feel every time it makes you uncomfortable? Maybe?
Because that’s a thing that’s happening.”
Jade feels like she can’t even begin to parse that. She’s wrong, isn’t she,
she’s in the wrong here- but so are they! They are, too! Fuck! She’s trying!
She thought she’d been doing well. She thought she was taking it slow. She
thought that she and Dave had a moment the other night, and things were fine,
and that was okay and good, even. Haha, stupid, apparently, because apparently
he fucking hates that it happened at all!
“Is that what you think I’m doing? Is that really how you see it? Really? Dave?
I’m making you spell out every single thing you think just because it makes me
uncomfortable? I thought I was- I wasn’t trying-”
“I mean, maybe that was a little strong, but-“
“I’m gonna… go…” Karkat says shakily. Is he panicking? He looks like he’s
panicking, his eyes are wide and scared. Jade would do more about that, like
tell him it’s okay and that she loved him etc, if Dave wasn’t right there, and
if she wasn’t halfway to panicking herself. She’s feels like she’s going to
scream.
 “Don’t bother! I’ll just go! Bye!”
“Jade, come on, I didn’t mean-“ Dave starts to say. Nope! Bye! Goodbye!
And she’s back in the quiet of her room. Her room, not the room they let her
sleep in, not the room they let her put her desk in. It doesn’t have her
computer in it anymore. Hmm. She should get another one for here. Yeah. She
really didn’t think that through, only having one computer when she knew she
would be coming back here. She didn’t think a lot of things through, ahhaha,
like choosing to date her two best friends instead of just fucking leaving it
be before she ruins everything she ever had with them with her ineptitude
because she’s cosmically destined to be alone and knew that going into this!
That was a fight, apparently. Was that a normal level of fight? She’d ask Dave
and Karkat later. If they still want to talk to her, Oh, god.
Her phone buzzes. Her phone buzzes again. And again.
She mutes it.
But she knows it’s still going, on and on, that they’re talking to her and
explaining things - or, maybe, telling her that actually, yeah, just stay,
we’ll bring your stuff over, sorry for ever thinking this could work.
She takes it out of her pocket, throws it on her bed, and goes into space.
She doesn’t strictly need to align the planets, because they don’t actually
ever go out of line, and because she’s not even due to check up on them for
another five days, at least. But, why not. Why the fuck not.
For the first time in days, she feels like she can breathe again. In space. Ha-
ha.
It still hurts. She really thought she and Dave were doing well with that
stuff. She thought she wasn’t pushing too fast. Did he want her to never say
anything, ever? Because… it’s just such a huge thing, and it keeps coming up,
she can’t imagine how she could do that.
And Karkat… that was shitty of her. That had been bugging her for a while, it’s
true. Especially after he told her, explicitly, that yeah, her suspicions were
right, he tends to just not do anything about anything. She told herself she
was just happy to help and nudge him in the right direction, but it bugs her.
And she let herself just throw that on him out of nowhere because she was in a
bad mood and fighting with Dave and Karkat started doing it again, just leaving
- although, was he even wrong to leave then? It really didn’t have anything to
do with him. It just fit into the overall pattern. But it sucked. Agh.
She needs to apologize to Karkat.
And she needs to talk with Dave. That presents more challenges. But she has to
do it, doesn’t she? If they want to keep … doing this.
God. What if… what if it doesn’t work? With just her and Dave? And Karkat has
to pick- she really doesn’t want to follow this train of thought. He’d pick
Dave, obviously. If she ever has trouble with either of them, she loses both of
them, doesn’t she? No, that’s probably not right- but what if?
She’ll deal with it, she guesses. Hope it doesn’t happen and deal with it if it
does. When it does. If it does.
She runs through her thoughts again a few times, trying not to worry about what
might happen. Because whatever happens, happens. She really hopes they don’t
have to break up. Hopefully her and Dave can work out whatever this is, and
Karkat can forgive her for being tactless and having terrible timing.
She goes home and opens her phone. And feels relief wash over her the second
she starts to read the messages.
-- turntechGodhead started pestering GardenGnostic --
TG: sorry that was dumb
TG: please come back
TG: that was seriously the douchiest possible way to do that
TG: i mean its like
TG: a tiny thing that kind of has been bothering me a little bit and got poked
by some stuff that you said but honestly like
TG: the other night was fine
TG: idk why i had to bring that up right then like
TG: thats probably why you were so upset right
TG: because it seemed like i was lying about the other night being fine
TG: i wasnt
TG: im just a douche with bad timing
TG: please come back
TG: i can make so many date ideas that dont suck if you want
TG: date one uh we can go rollerskating and you can watch me and karkat wipe
seven times in one minute and do kickflips over our prone forms
TG: thats not exactly the issue here but its part of it right
TG: i get that youre ignoring me right now but you havent blocked me and i take
that as a sign that its fine to continue
TG: so uh
TG: sorry for being a massive, swollen, turgid cock about everything
TG: we can talk about stuff if you want
TG: like
TG: not everything everything right ok because like
TG: i think like
TG: sorry
TG: but can we at least talk about what went down just now
TG: jade
TG: are you there
TG: im starting to think not
TG: im being so respectful of privacy right now and not asking if youre
responding to karkat like so respectful please note my mad respect
TG: anyways if youre not uh, sorry about the wall of needy overemotional text
youre gonna have from both of us
TG: please come back if you want to i really like having you around and youre
wonderful and i really really like you and sorry for being a tool
TG: ok gonna stop the text wall now
She closes that message set out, and looks at Karkat’s.
-- carcinoGeneticist started pestering GardenGnostic --
CG: JADE
CG: CAN YOU COME BACK SO WE CAN TALK
CG: MAYBE I CAN FACILITATE FOR YOU AND DAVE INSTEAD OF STANDING THERE LIKE A
FUCKING GOB-SMACKED MORON
CG: PLEASE COME BACK THOUGH
CG: SORRY FOR BEING WORSE THAN USELESS WHEN YOU GUYS NEEDED ME
CG: THAT’S KIND OF MY THING BUT I’M WORKING ON IT
CG: I MEAN YOU’RE PROBABLY PISSED WITH ME TOO RIGHT SO THIS WALL OF BULLSHIT
ISNT GOING TO SIT WELL BUT
CG: SORRY
GG: why on earth are *you* apologizing??????
CG: JADE
CG: HI
GG: hi, karkat. :p
GG: im really sorry for being a jerk for no reason.
CG: I MEAN
CG: I WAS BEING A USELESS PIECE OF SHIT
GG: you were not!!!!
GG: it’s not your job to facilitate me and dave’s arguments
CG: I MEAN
CG: IT WOULD HAVE HELPED, THOUGH, RIGHT?
CG: OH, UH, DAVE SEES THAT YOU’RE RESPONDING NOW
GG: oh, fuck
-- GardenGnostic ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist --
-- GardenGnostic started pestering turntechGodhead --
GG: thank you
GG: i came on really strong, too. kinda out of nowhere
TG: haha yeah i guess maybe a little
GG: a little. a FUCKTON more like
TG: pff
TG: are you coming back
GG: yeah.
GG: we have some stuff to talk about, still
GG: maybe we should do it over text?
TG: do we have to
TG: jk
GG: … are you really jk?
TG: fuck yeah i mean dumb joke right now right
TG: asshole with terrible timing, remember
TG: mastering the aspect has no bearing on my phenomenal lack of tact
TG: sorry
TG: please come back
GG: ill come back!
GG: i just think we really should talk about this stuff first, because i really
dont want to step all over your toes all the time forever!
GG: and i gotta know where your toes are so i can avoid them, right?
TG: yeah
TG: yeah, definitely
TG: the shit i said about karkat getting it was bogus sorry
TG: you dont have like five years of relationship backlog at your disposal like
he does
GG: don’t i know it :p
TG: shit that really bothered you didnt it
GG: it’s fine!!!
TG: im really sorry it was stupid
TG: im so happy to work with you idk what i was thinking
GG: thank you. its ok. really
GG: do you guys mind if i come back today? like right now?
TG: please
TG: karkat also says please
GG: okay. see you guys soon.
-- GardenGnostic ceased pestering turntechGodhead --
*
Jade politely teleports herself to the front door, and knocks. She’s barely
inside before Dave is crushing her in a hug.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. I’m sorry.”
Jade has her eyes closed, and she’s just reeling with the feeling of relief and
the warmth of Dave’s body and how nice it is to hug him again when she was so
worried that she wouldn’t be able to, that she doesn’t see Karkat approach,
doesn’t realize he’s coming until she feels his arms wrap around her, too. She
lets go of Dave, just for a second, and hugs Karkat hard.
“I’m sorry, Karkat!”
“It’s fine. I’m just… really glad you came back.”
“Of course I would come back! Did you guys really think I wouldn’t? I thought
you wouldn’t want me back!”
“Why the hell would we not want you back? There’s basically nothing you would
do that would have me declare this a no-Jade zone.”
It feels good. It feels even better, knowing that she can bring stuff like that
up, and they can bring stuff like that up, and still want to be around each
other afterwards. Fuck, it’s overwhelming, and her eyes start to tear up. She
slings one of her arms around Dave, and he wraps both his arms around her and
kisses her. She kisses him back. They usually have to work their way up to
messy, but this starts out at an 8 on the messy scale, strong and almost
missing. It feels like reassurance. It’s okay. It’s okay. I still want you. I
want you here.
“I love you,” Dave says quietly.
“Oh, wow.”
“Hah, sorry to dump the emotional shit on you all at once, but I thought I lost
you, and it was like- it was like holy shit, she’s not even gonna know, and I
mean, I can’t tell her after, right, because that would be weird-“
Jade kisses him again and squeezes him in her arms.
“I love you, too! I was starting to worry you didn’t… I mean…”
“No, I totally do-“
She feels Karkat start to step away and grabs his hand. She turns to face him
and kisses him before he can tell her how it’s okay, really, her and Dave just
need a minute alone. Maybe she’s kind of bothered by him being as passive as he
is, but she doesn’t exactly do much to rope him in when he’s uncomfortable,
does she? Maybe he just needs a little nudge. She can help him walk before he
runs, and she’s happy to do that.
“I love you, Karkat. I love both of you.”
Karkat squeezes her hand and swallow. His eyes are pink with tears. Such a
softie, gosh, she thinks as tears roll down her cheeks.
They make their way to the couch.
“So should we talk about… stuff?” Jade asks carefully. She sniffles a little.
“Yeah. I’ll try to bring shit up more when it comes up. Instead of hoarding it
like a fuckwit and pelting you with it like the world’s most passive-aggressive
squirrel hoarding pain nuts.”
Jade laughs. “Okay. Should I… back off more than I have been?”
“…Maybe a little.”
“Can we have a word to let me know when to back off? Because I don’t know when
I should. And I can’t read you like Karkat can.” That hurts to admit,
especially to Dave. She feels completely naked in front of him now. But he just
nods.
“Yeah. That’s a good idea. Uh. Slimetime?”
“Slimetime? You’re picking slimetime?”
“I mean, I’m not gonna say it any other time, right?”
“You’re right. Yeah. You’re right.”
“Karkat, you, uh. Sorry for being a jerk. I should have been nicer about that.”
“It bothers me, too,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“I know I take a backseat to shit basically every time I have a chance to pick
a seat. I hate it.”
Ha. Haha. Jade is just the best girlfriend.
“I’m sorry-“
“It’s okay, you weren’t wrong. I can see why you’d hate it. I can try to be
better.”
“I’m sorry for being such a dick about it, though! You keep acting like it
doesn’t matter, and clearly it does. It’s like you don’t think your feelings
matter.”
“He does that,” Dave says.
“Don’t team up on me, you soft alien freaks.”
“Nah, it’s basically a unified from on the Karkat should think higher of
himselffront. I’m glad I got someone else backing me up now. Maybe it’ll start
to sink in more.”
Karkat flushes and laughs, and looks away awkwardly. Jade kisses his cheek.
“I love you, and I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to think it’s
fine that I did.”
Karkat looks at her. “Thanks,” he says uncomfortably.
She squeezes his hand. It’s quiet for a moment.
“Is that everything?”
Dave and Karkat think for a moment.
“Yeah,” Dave says. “Think so.”
“Yeah, I can’t think of anything else.”
“I’m really glad we talked about it, guys. Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Dave says, “me too. It’s like. Shit’s better. Fucking incredible. We
fixed it.”
Jade feels something warm swell in her chest. They fixed it, she fixed it, the
nasty shit that was brewing between them. She’s so happy she could cry. But she
won’t!
Dave looks at her, probably sees the sappy expression she’s wearing plain as
day on her face, and hugs her again. And kisses her.
He loves her, and he’s glad she’s here, and he still wants her here, and
everything is better now, and they fixed it, and she’s so relieved and happy
and warm. She kisses him back, and it doesn’t take long before it gets heated,
before Dave starts biting at her lips and running his hands up her sides. And
before Karkat scoops her up and cradles her back into his chest and kisses the
back of her neck. Jade runs her hands past Dave’s shirt, then pauses before
dipping under.
“Can I-“
“Everything, yes, you can do everything, unless I tell you to stop, anything,
it’s fine. Better than fine, it’s so fucking good, please.”
God that’s so hot to hear, and she feels Karkat’s bulge wriggle against her
back.
“The two of you are so hot,” he says softly into her ear. Jade turns and kisses
Karkat as best she can, which isn’t great, given the weird angle and the weird
couch thing.
Fuck, fuck she needs to look into positions that the three of them can do
together, all at once, because as she’s kissing Karkat, Dave unzips her pants
and starts licking his way down her happy trail and she can’t think of anything
but how bad she wants to feel him there. But, fuck, no! No leaving out Karkat!
She tugs on his hair before he reaches her clit, because she knows it’s going
to be hard to tell him to stop once he gets started.
“Can we take this to bed?”
“Oh, fuck yeah, absolutely yeah.”
They stumble awkwardly into the bedroom. Jade pushes Karkat down first and
immediately gets to work pulling his pants off. He pulls her up before she can
do anything with his bulge which is already out, and kisses her. He wraps his
arms around her, and she’s got her skin pressed up against his skin basically
everywhere it could possibly touch, and it’s amazing. He’s so warm and soft and
his mouth feels so good, and his bulge is flicking lightly against her. And
then she feels Dave behind her, naked, his cock poking against her thigh.
The most unfair part about dating two people is that you can’t kiss both of
them at once, Jade decides. It’s a travesty.
“How- how should we do this?” she asks shakily, because Karkat’s bulge is
flicking against her clit and Dave is kissing her neck and dipping his fingers
into her teasingly.
“This seems just fine to me. Karkat?” Dave asks as he dips in deeper, starts
fucking his fingers into her. Jade moans and falls forward
“Yeah, this is good. This is great.”
“Guys!” Jade tries to sound admonishing, but it’s hard to do when they’re
making her feel this good.
“Hey, Jade, can I put my outie in your innie?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“He wants to fuck you, and he’s being insufferable about it.”
“Oh, fuck. Fuck. Yes. And never call it that again.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He pulls away, but before she can look up and ask why Karkat pushes her hips
down so she’s straddling his bulge, which licks up against her clit.
“You feel so good,” Karkat says. “So soft.”
“Fuck! Fuck, your bulge is amazing, oh my god. You’re amazing.”
“Shut up.”
“You are, oh fuck, do that again-“
She hears some weird plasticy sounds behind her, and then something wet. What
the hell is he doing back there?
And then she feels him against her back, and feels his cock press against her
slit.
“Tell me if you need me to slow down,” Dave says.
“Okay.”
“Are you ready?”
Jade’s heart hammers in her chest. “Yeah.”
And then he’s pushing in, and it’s amazing. It takes her a second to get used
to it. It feels so good and wet and warm and she’s surrounded on all sides by
soft, warm, slightly sweaty skin from the guys she loves to bits and they love
her too and agh. It’s overwhelming. She’s making all kinds of stupid noises,
because it feels so good and Karkat’s bulge hasn’t stopped molesting her clit
with perfect, soft, warm pressure. And when Dave picks up the pace, it’s hardly
any time at all before she’s shaking and her eyes are rolling back into her
head, with Karkat kissing her and telling her how perfect she is and how much
he loves her. And Dave gives her a chance to recover before starting up again
and, oh, oh this is good.
And the rest is a hazy, fun, pleasured blur. Dave keeps fucking her and Karkat
keeps fondling her until she’s nearly screaming three separate times. Dave
eventually buries himself in her, and Jade doesn’t think she’ll ever forget how
hot it is when he says her name like that. And then he’s pulling out, and she
shivers from the lack of contact. Then she hears something wet.
“You absolutely insufferable fucking wiggler. No older than fucking two sweeps
in your fucking brain. Was it hard to learn to speak, you fucking-“
She hears the slap again, and Dave giggle. She looks down and sees him slapping
a tied-off condom against Karkat’s legs.
“Dave, you’re the worst!”
“That’s not what you were saying five minutes ago.”
“Oh my god.”
“That’s my name, don’t-“
Jade can’t not laugh. Her emotional filter is zero. “Dave! Stop! It’s Karkat’s
turn to feel good, don’t you think?”
“Oh, fuck yeah it is.”
Karkat makes an embarrassed alien sound in his throat, and Jade slides her way
down his body. His bulge is thrashing, and it takes some maneuvering, but she
gets it in his mouth, and he trills.
“Scoot over, make room, gotta get my love up on this dude.”
Jade moves over a little bit so that Dave can slip his fingers into Karkat’s
nook as he kisses the alien chirps and trills out of his mouth. And it takes
hardly any time at all - much less time than Jade would have liked to spend on
him, and she’ll have to make it up to him next time, get him in the kitchen or
the bathroom and just lavish him with attention - before he’s spilling all over
her face with a comical amount of jizz. She waits for him to start shaking and
then wipes it off, makes her way back up to the two of them, and joins the
cuddle puddle.
When Jade goes to bed that night, on a clean set of sheets because, oops, it’s
tucked snugly between the two of them, the three of them taking turns kissing
and whispering out little I love yous.
She doesn’t know what comes next, but they if got through this, she’s a lot
more confident that they can handle the rest.
***** Chapter 12 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Dave sits at Dirk’s kitchen/living room table, trying to think how to phrase
what he’s about to say. The thing is, he wants an outside perspective about
what went down. Because it’s probably fine, and they probably fixed everything,
but it was still significantly more intense than anything that’d gone down with
just him and Karkat, at least in the last three years. That freaks him out. And
Dirk is cool, and Dave trusts him, and he’s had a lot of ups and downs with
Jake so it’s a totally natural-ass culmination that Dave wants to hash it out
with him.
“If this is way too personal tell me to back off,” he says.
Dirk waits for him to go on. The two of them are waiting on cups of coffee from
a weird new machine that Dirk made, which might or might not prove functional.
Just a prototype, still in beta, yadda yadda, it’s probably amazing. Dirk
seemed equally confident that it might be shit or the best coffee he ever had,
or ever will have, and that’s a gamble that Dave is willing to take.
“How much did you and Jake fight, like, when you first started dating?”
The machine burbles.
“Define first.”
“Like, the first two months,” Dave says, and then cringes when he sees Dirk
raise his eyebrows, because oh, haha, isn’t that the exact timeframe for how
long he’s been dating Jade. Oh well. Too late now.
“Never.”
“What?”
“Never. Took a little longer than that.”
“How long?”
“I dunno. Maybe three months.”
“Oh. And then you…” Dave thinks about how to ask this, what he wants to know.
He wants to ask, was that normal? Was that fight a normal part of dating? “This
is about Jade,” he says bluntly, because dancing around this any longer is
going to become farcical.
“I’m aware.”
“Okay. Well. We fought, right.”
“Was it bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want to talk about it? Have a 20 minute honesty power session?”
“Hah. Yeah, let’s fucking do this. I guess I just want to know if it was normal
shit. Or bad shit. Or if I can make it better with some shit.”
“If you get any vaguer I might just think you were talking about a dick
abscess.”
“Okay.” Dave thinks for a second. He and Dirk talk about a lot of heavy shit,
right. Like, Dirk has talked to him about having trouble with Jake sometimes,
and they talk about growing up. And, well, he leaves out some stuff in his
stories. Because you just can’t say that kind of shit to someone without making
it weird. But they’re heavy shit bros. Not all the time, just when they need
it, and that way they can get it out without tying that emotional anchor to
their boyfriends. And girlfriends. “We had a fight, right.”
“Right.”
“It felt pretty bad. Like, Jade just teleported right in the middle of it and
didn’t come home for a few hours.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a huge dickhead.”
Dirk thinks something over. “Was it the same or worse than times you’ve fought
with Karkat?”
“So, like. Maybe a few times, like that, a few years in. But I guess I figured
that was just because we were teenagers. And that we fixed everything right up
when we got older.”
“Ah.”
“So? Thoughts? Pearls of wisdom from the horse’s mouth?”
Dirk rolls his eyes. “Don’t call me that. Or call me that exclusively. But
don’t just throw it in every once in a while.”
“Deal.”
“So, you want to know if that was normal?”
“…Yeah.”
“Uh. Not to be a dick, but I’m not exactly a relationship expert here. I’ve
dated one guy and we spent like half our time together time arguing. I’m really
not a great standard to hold.”
Dave doesn’t respond. He’s right, and Dave is being an idiot.
“That said, we can like, talk it out, if you want.”
“Okay.”
“What started it?”
“Some stupid shit. Like, I can hardly even remember. It was fucking nothing.”
Dirk laughs a little. “That happens.”
“So, like. Jade does this thing, right, where.” Dave stops. Talking about this
without getting to too close to that could be tricky. But he can manage. And
the shit isn’t acting up today. He’s actually totally comfortable around Dirk,
and he should probably wring this juicy comfort orange for every drop of
emotional juice that he can. “She tries to get me to open up about shit, right.
Like, bad shit.”
“Ah. That would be a problem, yeah.”
“Right. I mean, it’s not like, yo Dave, tell me about every fucked up thing
that ever happened to you in detail, but it’s like, she just doesn’t get it
unless I spell it out a little. Like, Karkat gets it, you get it, but she needs
it all in print form.”
Dirk is quiet for a while. The coffee maker gurgles. “So, what, she does things
that bother you? Does she slam doors? Teleport into rooms without warning you?”
Hah, he’s fast to cut right to the core. No pussyfooting around. Dirk kind of
cringes when he says that, too, like he usually does when they talk about him
in any capacity. Dave used to tell him that he’s so different, like, such a
fucking different person, and holding himself accountable for shit that some
random other dude with his genes had was ridiculous, but he doesn’t think it
ever really sunk in. It’s another reason that Dave really, really doesn’t want
to let slip about the other shit. Other than the fact that it’s fucking awful
and would make everything weird and terrible forever. There’s no reality where
Dirk doesn’t blame himself for it happening, and that would suck.
“No,” Dave says, before he thinks better of it. Whoops. Because now Dirk wants
to know what it is that she does, that isn’t slamming doors. “Uh, she.” Fuck.
“Yeah, she slams doors and shit.”
If Dirk doesn’t believe him, and there’s basically no way that he would, he
doesn’t press. “Okay. And you don’t want to tell her why that bugs you?”
“Fuck no.”
“…Did you ever tell Karkat about him?”
“Like, a little bit, but no. They don’t need to know that shit, you feel me?”
“…It’s your call, I guess.”
“What, would you tell Jake that kind of shit?”
“I mean, yeah. Not as much I’d tell you but, yeah. Like, he used to give me a
ton of shit for needing so much time alone, right. Thought I hated him or
something. Kept asking me what he did wrong. So I told him what was up, and he
stopped, because he got it. It wasn’t just a random set of rules for him to
memorize anymore.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, you don’t have to go into every little thing, but they probably want
to know.”
Do they? Do they really want to know? “But shit’s so fucking heavy.”
“Yeah, but.” Dirk looks down and raps his fingers on the table erratically.
“What if it was them? Would you want to know?”
The coffee maker dings before Dave can answer. Dirk gets cups, pours them both
a cup.
It’s fucking perfect. And it’s something to focus on, besides how fucking right
Dirk is about this.
“Holy shit,” Dave says.
“Yeah, it’s not bad.”
“Sell this, dude. Market the shit out of it. It’s viral waiting to happen.”
“Pff. At least a few more things I want to try out with it.”
“Excuses. You gotta get this off the ground.”
Dirk takes another sip. He’s not going to sell it, Dave knows him better. He’ll
be happy to just keep it here, share it with Jake, maybe give a prototype to
some of his friends.
“Honesty session is still ongoing, right?” Dirk says eventually.
“Yeah, totally. It’d be all kinds of shitty to soak up all that time for myself
and then cut you off at the pass.” Dave takes another sip. Fucking ambrosia.
Dirk is gonna deny most of the human race the best thing they ever had. “And
thanks.” He holds out his fist, and Dirk bumps it.
“No problem.” Dirk taps the table again, forming the words in his head before
he says them. “Why did you lie to Jade and Karkat about hanging out every
week?”
Well.
Dave pauses time before Dirk can see him panic. He should have seen this
coming, right. That kind of shit doesn’t just sit, not between them. Like, a
lot of shit goes without saying, though, and maybe Dave was hoping against hope
that this would be one of them. But, no, because there’s no intuitive logic to
it, no leap for Dirk to make for why Dave is avoiding him and lying to his
partners about it, and-
And the longer he keeps shit paused, the more likely Dirk is to notice. Fuck.
Think.
Honesty? Completely, utterly out of the question here. Not gonna happen. Cannot
happen. That’s the thing. Everything rests on him not spilling the fucking
beans about this. Everything.
Okay. Okay, he’s got something. Unpause.
“I’ve just needed some time to write my screenplay, right. Alone. And shit’s
really intense with Jade around, and I don’t wanna offend either of them by
being all, oh I totally can’t think when you’re around because you being around
is psychically noisy even though I totally love you.”
Dirk’s tapping slows down, and he looks away. Dave is pretty sure he’s not
buying a word of it. Oh, haha, yeah, because he’s been cutting hangouts short
since well before Jade entered the picture. Ha. Haha. And even without that,
wow, he just dropped the L-bomb right on the waiting architecture of Dirk’s
listening ears, didn’t he.
“You know you can tell me things, right?”
Pause. Breathe. Unpause.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not gonna push you to slice yourself open so I can poke at the viscera.
But, like. Something’s up. And you can talk to me.”
Dave wants to laugh, and he gets dangerously close to actually doing so before
he pauses time again. He can’t hold it back.
Ha. He can talk to Dirk. About this. Yeah, okay, Dirk. Good one. God. It’s the
funniest thing he’s heard all week. He’s actually crying. Fuck. Fuck, breathe.
Get it together, dude. Okay.
“Thanks,” he says, and pauses again so he can let loose the hysterical fit of
giggles. God. Fuck. Fuck, he has to get it together. Fuck. He takes his glasses
off and wipes a tear streak off with his hoodie. Good thing he wore black
today, can’t see shit. Okay. Okay.
“I appreciate it.” He holds his hand out for a fistbump.
Dirk stares at him. He slowly returns the fistbump, his movements forced. Hah.
“I know you want to drop it, but.” He stops. “Just kinda worried about you,
dude. In general.”
“What? Why? There’s nothing to be worried about. I’m totally fine.”
Dirk sighs quietly through his nose. “Alright.”
Dave fights the urge to apologize. He’s got nothing to apologize for. And Dirk
really, really doesn’t want to know this. Even if he thinks he does. He
doesn’t.
“You want more coffee?”
Dave nods and Dirk grabs his cup. And then they start talking about the
screenplay instead.
Chapter End Notes
     updates might be fucky for a while, work is picking up like crazy
     come follow my tumblr if you want! i take ficlet requests there
     https://rag-writes.tumblr.com/
***** Chapter 13 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Jade is gone, and Karkat is bored.
Dave wakes up a few hours after him. So does Jade, when she’s here, usually.
Sometimes one of them wakes up significantly before the other one, and that’s.
Something. Well… sometimes Jade wakes up before Dave. And Karkat just has a few
sleepy morning hours to sit at the kitchen table with her, drink coffee or tea
and talk (or make out like adolescent wrigglers because she’s so hot and she
somehow finds him hot). She tried his grub tea once. She said it tasted like
soup. Not bad but weird. She’d try it again if he made it for her. Maybe with
some salt. And then she asked him all about Alternian cuisine, and her eyes
sparkled with interest at what he told her. And fuck, it’s stupid, but he
missed that, feeling like he was telling someone something new, and she was so
excited for everything, she had so many questions-
Fuck. He misses her.
He puts on coffee and listens to it burble. He’ll have to drink a whole fucking
pot to get anything out of it, with how little he slept last night. She’d left
yesterday, and she’d been very clear that she didn’t want either of them to
text her outside of an emergency. If I start talking to you guys while I’m
away, it’s going to make me want to come back even more and I can’t do that
even if I want to. So don’t! I love you. See you soon.
Texting her and having her around would defeat the purpose, she said. The
purpose is that she leaves on a good note, and slowly gets used to being around
the people she’s dating in such close proximity for so long. And on one hand,
great. Karkat feels his romance-sucking thinkpan wheeling into Assumptions Town
but, that seems like it means she might want to move in someday, enough that
she’s working on it. On the other hand, he knows it’s mostly his fault that she
has to leave, that she can’t stand being around them for more than a few days.
So, Jade left, and Dave has also been acting weird since he got back from
Dirk’s. Dave is acting weird, a four-part epic describing the last year. But he
was acting really, really weird. Karkat kept catching him staring at him, and
when he’d ask him what’s up? Oh, nothing.Or, you got something on your face,
it’s handsome. Nice try at distraction, fucko (well, it worked. But only for a
few minutes). Karkat chalked it up to Jade weirdness, but it followed them into
bed that night, and every little thing Dave said sounded halted or forced and
it was weird. Karkat didn’t ask him if he wanted to talk about it. He probably
didn’t.
The coffee pot stops gurgling, and Karkat shuts it off. Better for it to be
lukewarm as fast as possible. He wishes he could just fucking inject it into
his bloodstream, bypass the chore of guzzling cup after bitter cup. Oh well.
He’s halfway through his third shitty cup when Dave walks in. He hugs him from
behind loosely and kisses the back of Karkat’s neck.
“Shit, you’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep without my hot water heater buddy. Come back to bed, it’s
warm.”
“And watch you fall back asleep? I’ll pass.”
“Or we can make out.” Dave kisses the side of his neck now, hugs him a little
tighter. “Just sayin’.  That’s on the table.”
“Hmm.” That’s tempting. But admitting that would be weak at this point. And
Dave probably knows, anyways, because Karkat didn’t immediately shoot him down.
This is the little game they play. Like, convince me, to do this thing I would
absolutely do immediately right now if the floor wasn’t so hard.
“That sounds like a yes.”
“Drink some coffee so you don’t fall asleep on me.”
Dave cranes his neck out and purses his lips.
“What are you doing.”
“Give me the coffee.”
“No.”
“Just pour it in my mouth.”
“It’ll absolutely spill.”
“Not if you’re really careful with it.”
“No. Get your own cup.”
“But then I have to detach myself from you and, nah, it’s too cold in here.”
“Dave-“
“Sorry, man. I’m stuck here now. Until we get back to bed.”
“…Don’t spill it.”
“I won’t, babe. I’ll be so careful. You be careful, too. Work with me. Pour
that sweet goo down my throat nice and easy.”
“Stop talking.”
Karkat can’t believe he’s doing it, but he’s fucking doing it, he’s taking the
cup of iced coffee and reaching it over and attempting to pour it in Dave’s
mouth. Some probably gets in. A lot gets all over his stupid gas station T-
shirt. It’s a graphic design nightmare, it’s covered in wolves howling at the
moon and cursive print that says take a walk on the wild side and it’s just
fucking awful.
“More.”
“You’re insufferable. Get off me so I can fill the cup up.”
“Hmm, nah.”
So Karkat and Dave carefully walk to the coffee pot, then carefully to the ice
cube tray, and Karkat does his best to not laugh. And still fucks it up. At
least Dave deigns to take the cup in his own hand this time when he downs it.
“There. Am I properly caffeinated now? Come to bed.”
“Fine.”
And finally, Dave lets him go, and they go back to bed.
Dave flops into bed on his back. He looks up at Karkat, smiles and holds out
his arms. “C’mere, dude.”
Karkat sits on the bed. First order of business. Take off that fucking T-shirt.
Dave laughs. “Shit, feeling frisky? Me and Jade didn’t wear you out the other
night? We should double-team you more. We should double-team you every day. I
have to talk to her about-”
“No, I just can’t stand looking at it anymore.”
“Sure.”
“It’s true and you know it.” Karkat pulls it off, and then gets under the
blanket. Dave scoots up close to him and drapes his leg over Karkat’s hip.
As much as things are great with Jade, it’s just so much more relaxing with
just him and Dave. And relaxing tips so easily back into boring, but he’s
missed this, too. He wishes he could just get lost in it, like he used to.
Instead of comparing it to when she’s around. And when she’s here, wishing they
could all find this same kind of peace. He’s just never fucking happy, is the
problem.
“You’re overthinking something,” Dave says softly. He kisses the side of
Karkat’s head.
Instead of admitting that, Karkat just turns to kiss him. That’s another thing
about Dave. In Dave’s words, not everything has to be a federal fucking issue.
Don’t want to think about something? Then just fucking don’t. Dave is down to
drop uncomfortable shit at any time, and that’s a breath of fresh. It’s like a
warm blanket. It’s perfect. They’re both perfect, in completely opposite ways,
and Karkat is dating both of them and it’s not even unusual for trolls to date
multiple partners so why does he feel so torn about how he feels-
“Oh, fuck.” Dave is snaking his hand into Karkat’s sleep pants and fingering at
the slit of Karkat’s nook.
Dave pauses a little, raises his eyebrows at Karkat. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
And that puts an end to the stupid, agonizing thoughts. For now.
Dave kisses him and fingers his nook slow and sweet until his bulge wriggles
its way out from its stealth cavern.
“I need to do this to you more. So much more,” Dave says.
“Can I fuck you?”
Dave goes still, and then jolts forward a few inches in the blink of an eye.
Gyah. Karkat fucking hates when he does that time pausing shit when they’re
close enough that he can see it like this. But he’s a good boyfriend, and he
knows better than to call him on it, because he’s doing it with the exact
intention that they don’t make a federal fucking issue of it.
“Yeah, totally,” he says.
“You can say no, you fucking nooksponge. Just fuck me instead.”
And Dave jolts back this time.
“I want it, dude. Let me ride you.”
“Dave-“
“Come on. I super want it.”
Dave rocks back against Karkat’s bulge. Just a thin layer of fabric between him
and Dave’s ass. “Yeah? Karkat? Can I ride your bulge? Please let me ride your
bulge.”
Fuck him and the fucking begging fucking. “Yeah, yeah, do it. Fuck.”
Dave scoots his briefs off and wastes absolutely no time sinking down on
Karkat’s bulge, and no time setting a delicious, lazy rhythm that has Karkat’s
eyes rolling back in his head.
“Fuck, I love your sex limpet, dude.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“It’s so fucking wriggly, Karkat. Erotic fuck noodle Vantas, you’re stirring me
up.”
“Why are you like this?”
“Because your, fuck, your jizz flavored ramen soup is my ass’s favorite fucking
flavor- oh fuck, do that again.”
“Will you stop talking about this shit?”
Karkat does it again anyways. It’s kind of hard to control his bulge, but he’s
had practice, and Dave seemed to like that spot right… there. Dave falls
forward and pants into Karkat’s shoulder, and Karkat picks up the slack until
Dave is panting out excited warnings into his ear as he rocks back onto him.
And then he gets impossibly tight and whimpers, and Karkat feels his stupidly
weak spurts of genetic material on his stomach.
Karkat pulls out carefully. Dave really, really doesn’t like it if he keeps
going after. Karkat hugs him and kisses at the side of his neck as he trembles
above him, and then goes lax.
“Mm. Mm. Love getting dicked down by your fuckin’ dick scallop.” Dave reaches a
hand down and starts to stroke Karkat, firm and fast enough that Karkat can’t
think of a clever, biting response to his fucking inanity. “Gotta get my love
on this tasty dude. Not right now, though. Too fulla my ass and that’s just not
my cup of tea.”
“Please stop talking,” Karkat begs.
“Okay.”
And he does, blessedly. For a full 10 seconds or so. And when he starts up,
it’s just to tell Karkat that he’s hot, and that he should just spill because
the sheets need changing anyways. Which is what does it for Karkat.
Dave is so enthusiastic, like he always is, after. He clamps onto Karkat like a
fucking barnacle. “You’re hot, dude.”
“You told me in the kitchen.”
“Don’t play that game.”
“Let’s move out of the jizz puddle.”
They scoot over. There’s more than enough space for three, so they could just
leave this here, but that’s fucking filthy and they won’t. Karkat refuses. In
five minutes or so, because god he’s tired and the bed is soft.
“We should watch some shit.”
“Sure.”
“There’s so much shit to watch, dude. We can watch something all day every day
for years and have more left at the end.”
“What a fucking nightmare that’d be,” Karkat says, before he thinks better of
it, because he’s a fucking idiot and he just had sex and he didn’t sleep enough
and Jade is gone and he’s a moron.
“What?” Dave sounds hurt, for all that he’s pretending he’s not. “We don’t have
to watch anything, dude.”
“No. Fuck. Watching things is good. I like it.”
“…You sure about that?”
“Yeah. We just do it a lot.”
Dave goes quiet. Fuck. Fuck. What the fuck is wrong with Karkat? He loves Dave.
And yeah, the movies are getting kind of old (after five years of them) but
fuck, it’s their thing, what the fuck is wrong with him?
“I want to watch a movie with you. Please. Let me pick it.” Karkat tries not to
panic. Fuck. “Just not all day every day for years. That’s the only time it
would be shitty. It’s fine. I love you. Movies with you are good.”
“You… okay.” Dave sounds unsure. But like he wants to drop it. “Don’t worry.
It’s okay. What do you want to watch?”
Karkat picks an art movie that he’s never heard of, because it gives him some
small illusion of novelty. And it’s tense, it’s not okay, but they have the
movie to focus on and comment on. He’s glad when Dave picks some blindingly
action-packed Hollywood movie next, because it’s so overwhelming that he can’t
focus on how badly he fucked up.
Just a few minutes after the second movie ends, Dave kisses Karkat’s cheek and
tells him he’s gotta go meet up with John. Karkat wonders, but doesn’t ask, if
he’s still upset.
Dave has the right idea, hanging out with someone who isn’t him. Karkat should
ask someone to dinner or something.
And he should have seen it coming that literally everyone he’s comfortable
asking to hang out on the fly is fucking busy. Because he never does anything
on the fly. He plans days in advance. He considers asking some people he’s only
hung out with a few times, but that’s way too fucking weird and random. Cool.
Fucking great.
Well, back to coding his stupid fucking visual novel that no one will ever
bother reading. He opens the window beside the bed before sitting at his
computer. Ha, ha, nice middle ground, there.
Maybe she could come back early. That’d be nice. Karkat looks at his phone. He
picks it up and opens it to Pesterchum. And throws it across the room - on the
bed, so it won’t break. The bed, which is still completely naked from this
morning, because neither he nor Dave could muster up the will to bother with
it. They never muster up the will to bother with making it except the day they
put new sheets on. And that never used to bother him before she came into the
picture. Jade makes the bed every morning. Now it looks filthy and wrong. It’s
a fucking scab in their pigsty room and he has to fix it.
It doesn’t look as good as when she makes it, but it kills a few minutes. He
should ask her how she gets it so crisp. He’ll have to do that later, because
she wants to be really alone from his bullshit for the next few days, and
asking her how she folds a fucking sheet isn’t allowing her that.
He tries coding. He gets nowhere. His phone buzzes and he almost falls over
himself to pick it up. Spam. It’s a spam email. Fucking. Stupid. And now he
messed the bed up again. He straightens the sheets out and puts the phone back
down. The house creaks a little in the wind, but everything else is painfully
silent.
How was he so okay with this before? With just spending day in and day out,
most of the week, with just Dave? Why is it not the same? Why is it not the
same and why is he such a fucking idiot that he hurt Dave by letting him know
that in the fucking stupidest way possible?
He looks at his phone again. She said not to, but as long as he keeps it short,
it’ll probably be fine.
-- carcinoGeneticist started pestering gardenGnostic --
CG: HEY JADE
Idiot. Stupid. Why the fuck did he click send. Why did he type the letters. If
I don’t send it now I’ll regret it too much and never send it ever, he’d
thought, and that’s where he should have fucking stayed, because he should
regret it, because it’s stupid.
She doesn’t respond for 10 minutes.
GG: karkat? is something wrong?
Fucking moron. Karkat frantically racks his thinkpan for something, some
conceivable excuse. He comes up dry because his fucking thinkpan is empty, it’s
just a fucking wriggling bulge and two shame globes and an eternity’s worth of
clingy bullshit that he indulges too fucking frequently.
CG: NO
CG: JUST WANTED TO CHECK IN WITH YOU, HOW ARE YOU?
She types and deletes for five full minutes before her response comes in.
GG: im fine. im hanging out with jake.
GG: i said not to text me, remember?
CG: SORRY
GG: is everything okay with you?
CG: YEAH I’M FINE I’M JUST A FUCKING IDIOT
GG: youre not an idiot
GG: youre being kind of clingy but youre not an idiot
GG: i love you a lot, but please don’t do this
CG: I’M SORRY I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I WAS THINKING
GG: hey, karkat, its okay!!!!!
GG: i love you. ill be back before you know it. but i gotta be alone for a
while.
CG: OKAY
GG: …
GG: are you and dave doing okay?
CG: KIND OF
CG: IGNORE THAT, IT’S NOTHING, DAVE AND I ARE FINE
CG: I’M JUST A FUCKING IDIOT
GG: youre not an idiot
GG: did you guys fight?
CG: KIND OF
GG: oh, shit, want to talk about it?
CG: I FEEL SO FUCKING STUPID RIGHT NOW I’M SORRY
GG: is that a no?
CG: YEAH
GG: okay, well
GG: if you change your mind later
GG: hmmm
GG: ill make an exception to the ‘no contact’ rule for this one
CG: FUCK
CG: YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THAT
GG: sthu!!! i want to. youre clearly freaking out
CG: OKAY
CG: THANK YOU
CG: FUCK THANK YOU THAT’S REALLY NICE
CG: I LOVE YOU
GG: i love you too
GG: text me if you want to talk about it. or if theres an emergency
CG: OKAY
CG: HAVE FUN WITH JAKE
CG: YOU SHOULD TELL ME ABOUT IT SOME TIME
CG: IF YOU WANT TO
GG: okay, karkat
GG: bye!! :*
-- gardenGnostic ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist --
And well. That was fucking moronic, wasn’t it.
Chapter End Notes
     thank u circumlocute for the ramen comment. it's a treasure
***** Chapter 14 *****
Chapter Notes
     thank u @ makizushi for the dirk convo idea i love it and stole it
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Jade spends the first day of her boyfriend vacation completely alone. She
drinks in the silence of her apartment. She flops into bed and just stares at
the wall for a while. Then she draws the blankets up to herself and pulls out
her phone, and enjoys the hard-to-define happiness that comes with knowing that
no one is going to disturb her, no one is going to make a clatter as the
poorly-stacked mountain of pots and pans crammed under the sink tumbles onto
the floor, no one is going to freeze time and  come back smelling of dried salt
tears and fear then belligerently pretend he’s fine and leave her to stew in
concern, no one is going to ask her to come with him to the coffee shop because
he doesn’t want to go alone. She takes a deep breath. She’s glad that she left
when she did. She’d thought about staying a little longer, because she wasn’t
as annoyed with this or that little thing as she sometimes is before she
leaves, but she stayed resolute to the timeline she set. And now it’s all
bubbling out, and she’s glad it’s coming out here, and not at them.
And she starts to wonder if this is normal. She knows she needs some space,
sometimes, but she doesn’t know if this cycle is good. Hang out with them,
swallow down every annoying thing she can, let it bubble out of her when she’s
alone. No, it’s probably actually not so great. She should probably just tell
them when things bother her, and why. Meaning that she has to figure out how to
do that without being a massive, blunt dick. Argh. Well, for now, cat videos on
the internet.
It’s soothing, but not as much as it used to be. The lack of noise and presence
sets her on edge. Slowly at first, and then more and more, until she’s opening
up her messages. She asks Jake to hang out tomorrow, and he tells her that it’d
be just dilly darn tootin’ (or something) if she came over tomorrow for brunch.
She closes that out and then texts a few more people, staggering it out so that
she’ll hang out with someone every other day. Hell yeah. Perfect.
And the rest of the night passes less anxiously than before. It’s still weirdly
tranquil, but that’s not as upsetting, and she can actually focus on the
experiments and projects that she’d left off. She should probably move a few
over to their place when she comes back.
Neither of them text her, which she’s glad for. It probably wouldn’t take much
for them to convince her to come back at this point. Come back right now, fix
all the few little problems that are left, and then everything will be perfect!
Silly. But they respect that she asked them not to, which makes her happy.
*
Jade hasn’t been inside Jake’s place for six months, but it’s even messier than
she remembers it. Probably because now it has the addition of all of Dirk’s
things, too. Which is no excuse! Sometimes she thinks she’s the only single
person from the session who knows how to clean. Even Rose’s place is all a-
clutter with far too many statues and half-finished fabrics projects and
pincushions and books.
Jake brings her inside and spends a while chattering to himself as he
frantically clears off some space on the coffee table. He leaves, and then
comes back with a cup of hot coffee that smells like gasoline. And tastes about
the same. She sets it down.
“Is this espresso?”
“Oh, no, granulated stuff. Freeze-dried. Lasts for eons. Had more than enough
when I was scrumming it alone on the island, got a real taste for it.” He looks
even more doubtful for a moment. “Do you hate it? I can make something else.”
“It’s fin-“
“Dirk actually made quite the machine lately, I just don’t know the first thing
about working it myself.”
“Did he?” Talking to him is so weird, and never stops being weird, and Jade is
starting to regret coming. Agh. They used to get along so well when they were
younger, she doesn’t know what happened. “What is it?”
“A coffee machine. Come, I’ll show you.” He leads her to a bizarre looking hunk
of metal in the kitchen. There are several buttons, with labels, but the
handwriting is so messy Jade can’t begin to make sense of it. “As you can see,
the functionality isn’t exactly intuitive, although it makes the meanest cup of
bean you’ve ever had. He’s around here somewhere, maybe he can- oh, darli-“
Jake clears his throat, as if that’s going to make Jade not hear the pet name,
which is adorable, “Dirk, hello, would you mind operating the machine for us?”
“Coffeetron700? Hey, Jade.”
“Hi!”
“Yes. This one right here.” Jake slaps the machine. Something creaks and he
rears his hand back.
“Sure.”
“Lovely. Just dilly. Thank you, ba-“ He clears his throat again. “Thanks!”
“I can bring it out for you guys when it’s done.”
“Okay, great.” Jake leads her back into the living room. And awkwardly asks her
how she’s doing, how things are going with ‘the boys.’
“Oh, it’s great! I’m on my break from them right now, until Sunday.”
Jake blinks at her. “You’re on your what now?”
“Well, sometimes I just need some me time, so I move out for a while. And then
come back later.” Jake looks at her like she’s speaking German, and Jade starts
to feel embarrassed. “I mean, we’re not breaking up. I’m just really not used
to being around people that much.”
“Oh, huh. Okay. Wow.”
“It’s not that crazy, is it?” Jade asks. Is it?
“Oh, no, I just. I never considered that one could do such a thing. I thought…
hm.”
Dirk comes in with the coffee, and Jake tells him he should stick around, if
Jade is quite alright with that. The coffee is perfect, like, ridiculously
good. And Jake seems to relax a little when Dirk is around. Still painfully
nervous, but less so. And before too long, he’s excusing his terrible rudeness,
how could he forget, he promised her a meal and didn’t even get the thing
started.
“I’ll be back in just a few,” he says. “So sorry. So sorry, Jade.”
“It’s okay, really, I’m not even that-“
But he’s gone before she can finish.
“He gets nervous around people he doesn’t see a lot,” Dirk says quietly.
“Like this?”
“Yeah. He’ll chill out eventually. He’s just really shy in person.”
“Oh.” Jade sips her coffee. She should probably hang out more, then. Because
she does miss how easy they used to talk. Maybe message him more, too. “Okay.”
Something clatters in the kitchen. Dirk pulls out a deck of cards and starts
shuffling them. “It’ll probably be like 10 minutes. Want to play something?”
“Sure!”
Dirk explains the rules of the game. It’s simple, quick to learn, and something
to focus on other than the sounds coming from the kitchen and the awkward
silence. For all that Jade hasn’t spent much time with Jake, she’s spent even
less with Dirk, and she’s not totally sure how to talk to him.
“Have you talked to Dave recently?” she asks. She’s not sure if this is off
limits. Fuck. Fuck, why did she ask?
Dirk nods.
“Cool.”
They play a few more rounds. “He’s freaking me out a little,” Dirk finally
says. Jade feels like the awkwardness dam breaks open.
“Me too. He keeps, like. Does he.” Jade stops. “You don’t have to answer, but
does he do the time thing with you?”
“Oh my god. Oh my god, he does that to you, too?”
“Holy crap, does he.”
“Yeah, it’s...” He plays another card, takes the pile. “So fucking alarming
seeing him twitch like that.”
“What?”
“Like. Like he moves, right. He tries to keep still but you can’t keep totally
still. It’s fucking. Quantum-level impossible. And so he clicks off and
suddenly he’s just twitching forward a little. Like a stop-motion movie.”
“Oh my god. I don’t think I’ve noticed.”
“It’s so fucking freaky. And you can’t say anything because he doesn’t want to
talk about it, but fuck.”
“He just, like, vanishes on me. Like one second he’s there, and then he’s just
completely gone.”
“Holy shit.”
“I almost had a heart attack the first time it happened.”
“Yeah, I fucking bet. God. That’s new.”
Jade finds herself wanting to laugh. She puts her hand over her mouth, but she
can’t stop. Not because it’s funny, at all, but it just feels so good to talk
about it with someone who isn’t Karkat. And because that’s new, that’s special,
that’s just for her, apparently!
“God. Sorry. Sorry,” she says. “It’s not funny.”
“Nah, it’s kind of funny. In a fucked-up kind of way. Like a dead baby joke.”
“God.” She laughs more, plays a card, takes a pile. She doesn’t have any clue
who’s winning, and she doesn’t think they’re going to count the score at the
end.
Jake comes into the room with three trays. In the sections, neatly separated
out in the tray's partitions, is sliced canned ham, canned mandarin oranges,
and soggy, pale green beans.
“It’s nothing big, but it’s something good while you’re here!” he says
cheerily. He sits down and picks up his fork. “What are you two playing over
here?”
“War,” Dirk says, and he sets his cards down.
Jade takes a bite. She doesn’t know why she expected the food wouldn’t be room
temperature, but she was led astray by that hope. Her phone buzzes and she
pulls it out. And it’s Karkat.
“I ever teach you war, dude?” Dirk asks.
“I don’t believe you have.”
“Okay, check it. We can play three. Jade, you in?”
“Yeah, just a minute.”
Jade tries not to get annoyed by this. But she told him. She told him not to do
this. And she was so happy yesterday that he respected it. But he just doesn’t
care, does he.
GG: i said not to text me, remember?
He freaks out, because of course he does. Jade tries to talk him down, keep him
calm, undo the damage, because he’s probably freaking out about something else,
too, and she’s just making it worse.
“Everything okay?” Dirk asks.
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
Only, it’s not super duper fine, she finds out. And she doesn’t just want to
leave Karkat hanging. She’s surprised by how quickly and resolutely he refuses
her offer, but she has a feeling he’ll take her up on it later.
And she’s not surprised when, on her way home, her phone starts buzzing again.
CG: I JUST DON’T LIKE MOVIES ANYMORE RIGHT
CG: LIKE I CAN DEAL WITH IT BARELY BUT I FUCKING HATE WATCHING MOVIES EVERY
SINGLE DAY
CG: BUT I’M A MASSIVE FUCKING ASSHOLE AND I CAN’T SAY THAT POLITELY OR LEAD
INTO IT OR ANYTHING AND I JUST SAID IT LIKE A FUCKING DICK AND HE WASN’T
EXPECTING IT AND I’M JUST SHITTING ALL OVER OUR THING LIKE A FUCKING ASSHOLE
GG: woah, slow down, im on my way home, can you explain as i walk?
CG: WHY ARE YOU EVEN WALKING WHEN YOU COULD JUST TELEPORT
GG: why do you walk when you can drive! its my life to lead! youre not my dad :
p
CG: FUCK I’M SORRY I’M SUCH A FUCKING DICK
GG: im joking, karkat, im not upset
GG: i just thought it was funny
GG: maybe shouldnt have joked right now sorry?
CG: NO I’M A FUCKING JERK AND I PHRASED THAT LIKE A JACKASS LIKE I DO WITH
EVERY POSSIBLE THING
Oh, god. Jade really doesn’t know how to handle this. It seems like everything
she says just gives him more fuel to hate himself. She sneaks off to an empty
alley and goes ahead and teleports home, because clearly this needs her full
attention.
GG: stop doing that its okay really
CG: SORRY
CG: SORRY I’M FREAKING YOU OUT
GG: can you tell me what happened?
CG: I TOLD DAVE I HATE WATCHING MOVIES WITH HIM WHEN IT’S BEEN OUR *THING* FOR
LIKE FIVE YEARS
CG: THAT WAS OUR FIRST DATE AND I JUST FUCKING
CG: TOLD HIM THAT I HATE IT
CG: AND NOW HE’S WITH JOHN ALL DAY BECAUSE I’M A JERK
GG: you told him you hate movies? those exact words?
CG: I MAY AS WELL HAVE
GG: are you sure hes not just hanging out with john because they had something
planned?
CG: NO IT’S BECAUSE I FUCKING SLICED INTO HIS HEART WITH DAGGERS FOR NO FUCKING
REASON
GG: can you take some deep breaths
CG: WHY
GG: youre freaking out a lot
CG: I FAIL TO SEE WHAT BREATHING WILL DO TO CHANGE THAT
GG: i dont know but thats what helps me! just try it?
CG: I’M TRYING IT OKAY
CG: MAYBE IT HELPED A LITTLE
CG: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT
GG: youre not getting enough air because your breathing gets shallow or
something! i dont know, i read it online when i was growing up and there were
scary noises outside
CG: WEIRD
CG: OKAY
CG: OKAY I THINK I MIGHT HAVE HURT HIM AND NOW HE’LL HATE ME FOREVER AND I
DESERVE IT
GG: you really think that?
CG: KIND OF?
CG: I MEAN I LITERALLY TOOK A LIQUID DIARRHEAL SHIT ALL OVER THE THING THAT
BROUGHT US TOGETHER LIKE
CG: I DESERVE IT YEAH
GG: it sounds like this has been bothering you a while, though
CG: WHAT HAS
GG: the movie thing
CG: YEAH
CG: IT HAS
CG: IT DIDN’T BOTHER ME AS MUCH BEFORE I STARTED DATING YOU
GG: woah, really?
CG: FUCK THAT’S WEIRD AND I’M SORRY
GG: you dont have to apologize so much! youre not doing *anything* wrong
CG: IT’S JUST
CG: YOU DO ALL THIS SHIT RIGHT AND IT MADE ME REALIZE HOW THIS HAS BEEN
BOTHERING ME FOR A WHILE BUT I JUST DIDN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT
GG: why not?
CG: I DON’T KNOW
CG: I HAVE NO IDEA
CG: I JUST GOT USED TO HOW STUFF WAS AND IT WAS FINE
GG: well, if its been bothering you that much, it seems like hed want to know,
right?
CG: MAYBE
CG: BUT NOT LIKE THIS, LIKE A FUCKING ASSHOLE
GG: i think you two should probably talk it out?
CG: YEAH YOURE RIGHT SORRY
CG: FUCK
CG: IGNORE THE SORRY ON THERE
GG: okay :p
CG: THANK YOU
CG: SORRY FOR DUMPING ALL THIS SHIT ON YOU
GG: karkat!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CG: UH
CG: AHEM
GG: maybe wait to talk to him, actually
GG: until youre more calm?
CG: OKAY GOOD IDEA
GG: and its fine, really, im happy to help, as long as its not like
GG: i become your go-between forever
GG: and dont apologize for this but it was really upsetting that you texted me
even though i told you not to
CG: FUCK
GG: i get it, you were really upset, and i told you it was okay, just dont make
a habit of it!
CG: OKAY I WON’T
GG: just tell him whats up. you can do it, i believe in you!
CG: THANK YOU
CG: FOR THE WHOLE THING
GG: yw!
GG: bye! talk to you sunday!
CG: BYE
-- gardenGnostic ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist --
Jade shuts her phone. Then turns it off. She closes her eyes and takes a few
deep breaths, listening to the air conditioning hum softly in the other room.
She shouldn’t have told him that she wanted to do that, is what should have
happened there. But she did, so she had to follow through on it.
Is that how he thinks about her, too? Or just Dave? Did the two of them just
stuck in a weird rut, or does he look at all of their little disagreements like
they’re the end of the world, too? Probably not. He probably would have come to
her with something, if he did. Or, maybe that’s what normal relationships are
like? Jade feels sick when she thinks that. She really, really hopes that’s not
the case.
And the fact that... is she some weird lynch pin that's causing them to fight?
Should she feel as guilty as she definitely does about that? 
But it’ll be fine. She’ll know better next time. And he’ll know better next
time. There probably won’t even be a next time, because he won’t do that again.
He and Dave will talk out their stuff, and she’ll come back on Sunday, and
they’ll all just do better from now on.
Chapter End Notes
     hello
     please note the added presence of a chapter count
     i have a plan and an ending and all that jazz
     i know its dragging a little but you gotta crack eggs to make an
     omelette and i gotta set stuff up so i can tie it off later
     but the tie is plotted and now its just a matter of painstakingly
     moving my hands around the fabric so that it looks like this
     thank u all for reading and commenting
***** Chapter 15 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
-- carcinoGeneticist started pestering turntechGodhead --
CG: CAN WE TALK
TG: im with john whats up
CG: FUCK
CG: NEVERMIND
CG: NOTHING
TG: ok
-- turntechGodhead stopped pestering carcinoGeneticist --
-- carcinoGeneticist started pestering turntechGodhead --
CG: CAN WE TALK LATER
TG: sure
-- turntechGodhead stopped pestering carcinoGeneticist --
-- carcinoGeneticist started pestering turntechGodhead --
CG: DON’T YOU CARE WHAT IT’S ABOUT
CG: DAVE?
TG: well theres a less than 0% chance that its not about this morning
TG: or you wouldnt have introduced it with ‘can we talk’
TG: am i wrong
CG: NO
TG: ok
TG: listen it wasnt a big deal dont worry about it
CG: BULLSHIT
TG: ok but can this wait until i get home
CG: YEAH
CG: FUCK SORRY I KEEP FUCKING UP
TG: babe its okay really
CG: I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOU
TG: woah what?????
CG: I’M SO FUCKING SORRY I DIDN’T TELL YOU SOONER
TG: gimme a sec
TG: ok i snuck off for a few whats wrong??? why would you lose me??????
TG: thats not even kind of on the table dude
CG: IT’S NOT
TG: no literally where the hell did that come from
CG: I DON’T KNOW
TG: ???
TG: youre kind of freaking me out please give me something to work with
CG: YOU WERE IGNORING MY TEXTS
CG: AND I THOUGHT IT WAS BECAUSE
CG: THIS MORNING WAS THE LAST STRAW THIS MORNING AND YOU’RE FUCKING DONE WITH
ME
CG: WHY BOTHER TALKING ABOUT IT WHEN ITS OVER
CG: BECAUSE MOVIES WAS OUR THING AND I JUST SHAT ON IT BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO
TELL YOU I DON’T LIKE MOVIES ANYMORE BECAUSE WE DO IT TOO MUCH
TG: fuck
TG: no
TG: calm down
TG: i love you, no, its not over or a last straw or anything
TG: i just didnt want to talk about it because i was kind of sore about it and
literally with john right then
TG: like it sucked hearing that like a whole fucking lot and maybe i was a
little salty yeah
TG: maybe more than a little idk
TG: but mostly ive been having a minicrisis about it and that crisis is getting
bigger right now because i really dont know how long thats been a thing with
you and well that speaks some fucking volumes about how i treat you doesnt it
TG: and my response was to watch yet more movies with you like wow good one
dave
TG: and i was trying to not think about that and then on you pop into my phone
asking to talk and just
TG: and now apparently you think im straight up going to dump you for it
TG: when really alls thats going on is im a weak pos so i wanted to just not
think about it for a while you feel me
TG: im so sorry dude i shouldnt have been a dick
CG: YOU’RE NOT LAME
CG: WHAT THE FUCK IS POS
TG: piece of shit
CG: YOU’RE NOT THAT EITHER WHAT THE FUCK IS *WRONG* WITH YOU
CG: FUCK
CG: YOU’RE FINE IT’S MY FAULT
CG: FUCK
CG: DON’T HAVE A CRISIS ABOUT THAT I’M JUST A FUCKING MORON AND THIS ENTIRE
THING WAS A STUPID OVERREACTION ON MY END
TG: im absolutely not letting you shoulder this
TG: like i was legit being a dick because i was salty at you
CG: YOU WERE ONLY SALTY BECAUSE I WAS A DICK
TG: dont
TG: do you want me to come home? talk it out?
CG: NO ITS FINE DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. PLEASE. HAVE FUN WITH JOHN. SORRY FOR
BEING LIKE THIS WHEN YOU’RE WITY YOU’RE FRIENDS
TG: karkat come on youre freaking me out
CG: DON’T BE FREAKED OUT, I’M FINE
TG: you are the antithesis of fine and we both know it
CG: HOW LATE WERE YOU GOING TO STAY?
TG: i dunno, few hours
TG: ive been here all day though like its no big deal to cut it a little short
CG: I GUESS IF IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL AT ALL LIKE
CG: TALKING MIGHT BE GOOD IDK
CG: WE’VE BEEN FIGHTING SO MUCH MORE LATELY
CG: WHY THE FUCK CAN’T YOU DELETE SHIT ON THIS STUPID FUCKING PLATFORM FUCK
CG: IT’S SO FUCKING USELESS AND STUPID
CG: WE NEED TO GET A DIFFERENT FUCKING TEXTING PLATFORM
CG: WHAT KIND OF FUCKING CODE DOESN’T ALLOW FOR DELETION
CG: FUCKING INEPT CODE THAT’S WHAT
TG: ill be home in a few ok
TG: just gonna say bye to john and then ill be home before you know it
CG: OK
nbsp;-- turntechGodhead stopped pestering carcinoGeneticist --
He’s true to his word. Not five minutes pass before he’s home, reeking of
mothballs and ozone. Five minutes where Karkat tries not to scream or cry or
something similarly stupid as he sits at his desk, clutching his phone, staring
at it blankly, trying to think. He’s close to panicking. His thoughts are
racing. For no fucking reason. It’s so fucking stupid. But this feels like the
beginning of the end. And that conversation might have just confirmed it. He’s
overreacting, probably, maybe? He’s overreacting?
And then there’s a knock on his door. “Can I come in?”
Karkat can’t move. “Yeah.”
The door opens. And then Dave’s hand is on his back. “Hey,” he says softly.
“You okay?”
Karkat nods.
“Really, now?” Dave says, sad humor in his voice.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
Karkat peels himself back from the chair and looks at Dave. Right into his
eyes, because he has his shades hanging from his shirt.
“I’m just. Really worried.”
“About what?”
“That this is. It.”
“Wh-“
He feels a sick, cold chill run through his blood, but he can’t stop, as much
as he wants to just shut the fuck up. Leave this tucked up away so the lack of
oxygen can kill it.
“Like, it starts here. We were getting along and now we’re not. And what if.
What if we’re not. What if it-“
Dave’s eyes get wide and he takes a step back.
“Why are you saying this stuff? Do you- do you want to-” His voice gets so
shaky and weak, it’s hard to listen to. It makes Karkat want to cry. He doesn’t
want to see Dave like this, what the fuck is wrong with him for doing this,
saying this? “Are we-“
“No! Why the fuck would I? I’m just- I’m- worried that. You. Do.”
“What?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Please, Karkat.” He looks and sounds so scared. At this point, not telling him
is going to freak him out more than telling him. Good one, Karkat!
“Because- because shit like this keeps coming up. And you’re not fine and you
keep saying you are, and I just. I’m trying not to be offended by that, but I
just,” Karkat stops when he sees the deer-in-headlights look on Dave’s face.
Right, like this is a good fucking time to bring this up. Make him even more
upset, throw some defensiveness on the shit cake. “Stuff like this, right? The
movie thing? It comes up and it’s like. Maybe we’re just not fucking perfect
for each other.” Wow, that sounded just as moronic out loud as he thought it
would. “This is so fucking stupid. Fuck.”
“No one is perfect for each other, dude.”
“Well, maybe I.” Karkat stops. This is too fucking stupid to say.
“What?”
“I thought.” Nope. Not coming out.
“…You thought we were?”
And those stupid tears that he’d been trying to keep in start falling. Karkat
blinks and wipes them away, clearing the pink haze from his vision. So fucking
stupid, so embarrassing.
And then Dave is back on him, hugging him tightly and tugging him up. Karkat
hears the sound of Dave’s glasses hitting the desk. “C’mon, get up so I can hug
you properly.”
Karkat gets up numbly and Dave’s arms lock around him. It feels good, safe,
warm. He hugs him back and tries not to cry harder.
“Maybe I thought so too. A little bit. But it’s fine. It’s normal to be like
this. I’m pretty sure. I mean, we don’t have a guidebook here, right. But it
seems like the kind of thing that’s normal.” He’s rambling, talking a little
too fast, but he’s staying on point and Karkat wants to hear what he has to
say. “If we were totally perfect for each other, fated for each other, like a
fairy tale? Like, maybe that’d be sweet, I guess. But like, that shit doesn’t
happen. You gotta make the choice, right? To work with the person. When you’re
not immediately perfect in every possible arena. Because you love them. Or
whatever.”
“Yeah. You’re right,” Karkat chokes out.
“I love you, dude.”
Karkat would respond, but he’s crying too hard.
“It’s freaking me out, too. It’s like all this shit is getting dragged up that
we tried to leave buried. It fucking sucks.”
“Yeah it fucking does.”
“Right? Just let it fucking die. But no. It’s gotta come back. It’s gotta come
out. I guess.” His voice gets kind of weird. There’s something in his tone that
Karkat can’t read.
“What?”
“Like, this stuff,” he says, a little too quickly. “No, fuck I just- What the
fuck. No. Fuck. I-“
“What?”
“It’s a lot, right? The shit from earlier?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t be offended, I just,” Dave stops and doesn’t say anything for a few
beats. “I’ll tell you later, okay? More important shit to talk about right now.
I’m just all fucking hopped up on honesty at the moment.”
“O…kay?”
“I love you. That’s the point.” Dave hugs him tighter. “I know it’s not about
the movies, but we can do something else. We can go places. Or hang out with
people. What do you want? We can do it.” He rubs Karkat’s scalp, kneads his
hand into his back. “Please tell me shit like that. I really didn’t know. I
know I should have known, but I didn’t know. I should have been looking. And
I’m such a fucking dick for being pissed at you about it-“
“You were pissed at me?”
Dave takes a fast breath. “I’m an asshole,” he says, almost whispers. “I’m
sorry, dude. It wasn’t cool. It sucked. I was trying not to be a dick to you
because I knew it was shitty.”
“I- that’s why you left?”
Dave nods. Fuck. Karkat is glad they’re talking, but it hurts. He was mad,
Karkat was hoping he was overreacting, but he was mad, and that’s why he left,
he was right about everything, Jade thought he was overreacting but he wasn’t-
“Please tell me shit like that,” Dave says quietly, and then laughs. Karkat
hears his breathing get funny, and his voice is thick. “I know I’m a fucking
hypocrite. I’m working on it. But tell me so I can do something. I want to make
you happy. I love you. Fuck movies. I don’t- I don’t want you to do shit you
hate to make me happy, that sucks so fucking bad.”
“I’ll tell you stuff,” Karkat says. And he will, he’ll try to, from now on.
Because Dave’s right, and telling him earlier could have saved them both from
this. And he was hurting Dave, too, by not telling him this shit, and he feels
like an asshole piece of shit because of it. “Can you,” Karkat almost doesn’t
say it, but, fuck it, they’re being honest with each other. “You too, please.”
Dave nods. “I’ll try.”
“I love you. I want to choose to work with you.”
Dave laughs a little. “I want to work with you, too. You’re the fucking bomb.”
He strokes Karkat’s hair softly, and Karkat hugs him tighter. “I’m so fucking
sorry that I fucked up with you so bad that you thought I wanted to dump you.
No way, dude. Not even fucking close. I love you so much.”
That makes Karkat feel a little better. Better enough that rational thought can
start to creep in and actually hear the words Dave’s saying, and register them
in his stupid, oversaturated sponge of a brain.
“Thank you,” he says. For saying that, for not dumping him, for talking it out,
for coming home, for being honest, for not telling him to get over himself.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, babe. Stuff comes up, we can deal with it. That’s how it works. I don’t
know if it’s because the game is over or because Jade’s here or what, why
shit’s all coming up now, but ignoring it hasn’t made it go away yet, so I
should probably stop hoping that it will.”
“Hah. God. It’s so stupid.” They pull away a little, and Karkat thinks as he
calms down. “It’s probably both, right? The game and Jade?”
“Yeah, probably. Everything’s all fucked up from how it usually is.”
“Yeah.”
“Something was bound to change eventually, right. Couldn’t have stayed on the
meteor forever.”
“Thank fucking god we couldn’t, though. If I had to smell Vriska’s unshowered
pits one more fucking time I would have thrown myself off the ledge.”
“Oh, same. Or be interrupted from makeouts by Terezi’s fucking cackle.”
“Or walk in on Rose doing who fucking knows what with her silicone molds one
more fucking time.”
“Or pretend not to hear Jake and Tavros jacking each other off through the
vents?”
“Ugh! Never fucking remind me of that again! Those were the worst fucking
nights of my life!”
Dave laughs.
“How the fuck did we survive three fucking years of that?”
“God, I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. But if we got through that…” Dave
snorts and starts to giggle, kind of manically. “We can get through fucking
anything. Seriously.”
Karkat sits down on the bed. He’s fucking exhausted. Dave sits next to him,
incredibly close, like he wants to be sure that they’re really okay. Karkat
nuzzles into him.
“Yeah. You’re right.” He takes a deep breath. He feels so much calmer, so much
better, he feels like he has ground beneath his feet again. “Can we go for a
walk when our eyes aren’t bloodshot and puffy?”
“Yeah.” Dave kisses his forehead. “We totally should. Hell yeah. Love walking
with my boyfriend. Fucking exploring with our feet. There’s a whole world out
there that’s barely charted by the gods of the new realm-“
Karkat kisses him quiet and squeezes his hand. Dave squeezes back.
Chapter End Notes
     yes i know that if tavros and jake touched that they would have fused
     into a sprite
     it was post-cat incident and only for a few days or weeks before the
     series end
     which might not work exactly with the canon but w/e
     if you think i dont have that backstory written in my head youre
     sorely mistaken
     alternatively what if they did start to make out and immediately
     fuse? man that would be wild
***** Chapter 16 *****
Chapter Notes
     this one's a doozy
     chapter content warnings: mentions of child abuse, incest,
     pedophilia, rape, ptsd
Karkat is extra cuddly the next few days, and Dave is super happy to be extra
cuddly right back. It’s not like they actually almost broke up, but his lizard
brain refuses to understand that. There’s a deep, instinctual part of himself
that’s stuck on those few moments where he wasn’t sure why Karkat was bringing
this up, if his next words were going to be this isn’t working out, I’m sorry.
But they weren’t. Dumbass brain, making every time he holds Karkat’s hand or
wakes up next to him or sees him smile feel like a treat he doesn’t deserve, a
treat he almost lost by being such a selfish fuckup. It makes everything stupid
levels over intense. He almost cries over pancakes. Karkat makes really good
pancakes, and Karkat made them, for him.
He got close to telling Karkat about… the shit, that day. And he’s glad he
didn’t, because the timing was seriously awful, could not have been worse, that
would have been the dumbest possible way to drop that. But he also regrets it
because now his will to share is blasted out of the stratosphere. Every time he
thinks about telling him, he can only come up with a hundred reasons not to. It
would be wrong to tell him but not Jade (would it? Would it really? Can he not
just tell her later? But, no. It would be wrong). Karkat doesn’t need to know
(weak). It hasn’t been acting up lately, he hasn’t been having flashbacks,
hasn’t needed to pause time for anything, so maybe he just got over it (how
many times has he been down this path already?). There’s reasons, and all of
them keep him quiet on it.
But it’s not like it’s taking up all his thoughts. Far from it. Because he’s
being a good boyfriend for fucking once, he asked Karkat what they should do
together, and they’ve been busy. He went to hang out with Sollux and Kanaya,
and realized that it might have been over a year since he’s done that with
Karkat. Boyfriend of the year, Dave Strider.
He’s also had a lot of time to think about the movies thing. He was kind of
dwelling on it day and night. The movies thing was really comfortable, but even
without knowing that it was dragging Karkat all the way down, it was getting
kind of depressing. There were only so many times Dave could watch his old
standbys before they completely lost their luster; and the newer, unironically
good stuff was nice practice and inspiration for his own shit but there was a
limit for how much time he could spend on that, and force his partners to spend
with him, before that was bound to blow up in his face. And he really should
have seen that coming. What the fuck is wrong with him.
He and Karkat talked it out. They can watch movies together, just not multiple
times a day, not as their first and primary hangout activity. Still, Dave’s not
sure when he’ll be comfortable bringing them up again. He messed it up so
incredibly bad the first time around. He’ll probably just bring it up never, or
wait until one of them says something first. He’s fine with that. Fuck movies
if they hurt Karkat. They can do shit like take walks in the park instead. He’s
fucking determined to be a good boyfriend.
                                       *
Jade is coming back today. Dave can’t wait to see her. He’s been missing her so
bad. Everything is weird now. And maybe he should feel like she made it weird,
but he doesn’t. He wants her to come back. It feels like, if she’s back, things
will go back to normal. And he misses the hell out of her, and they agreed not
to contact each other outside of emergencies when she’s away like this, and he
really wants to see her again and catch up.
He’s hanging out in the living room on his laptop, just in case she doesn’t
text him before she decides to show up.
But she does, and then 15 minutes later there’s a knock at the door.
He opens the door for her and she gives him a crushing hug. He wheezes and hugs
her back.
“Hey.”
“I missed you so much!”
“Yeah, you too. Was gettin’ kinda antsy these last few days.”
“Jade,” Karkat says from the other side of the room. “Hi.”
Jade lets Dave go and runs over to Karkat. “Karkat! I love you! Hi!”
Jade leaves them to unpack her bag, which gets a little lighter every time she
comes over. And then she comes back outside, beaming.
“I missed you so much yesterday!” she says, and plops on the couch between
them. “I almost came back early.”
“You coulda.” Dave says.
“Don’t tempt me!”
“Anyways, you want to go check out the city?”
Jade stares at Dave like he has a second head. And then she looks at Karkat,
and smiles, and looks back at Dave. Karkat told Dave how he asked her for help
the other day. He should probably thank her for helping them pull their heads
out of their asses and actually communicate about this.
“Yeah! That sounds great. Karkat?”
“Yeah, that’d be okay.”
                                       *
The city thing is great. Probably a lot better than movies would be. They see a
lot of new shit, and it’s exhausting, but the good kind of exhausting. Dave
needs to figure out how to build up his stamina bar and do this with them more.
Maybe also organize a group thing. Which sounds exhausting, but they’d both
appreciate it, and he’s trying.
Jade catches them up on what she’s been up to. Who she hung out to, some
changes she made to her apartment, some experiments she’s been running at home.
Apparently Jane is part of the Roxy-Callie combo now, and was asking Jade for
advice, which is adorable.
“It’s kind of funny, it’s like she thinks I know what I’m doing?” she says, and
then laughs. “Like, maybe a little more than her? Maybe. But not really!”
“Dude. We should have a sextle date.”
“Ew, what?! No! Dave, what-”
“What the fuck, Dave?”
“Shut up, don’t make it weird, fuck, uh, sextuple?”
“You can say double date! It’s still a double date!”
“Fine, whatever, one of those.”
Jade laughs and says she’ll ask them about it, that they totally should.
                                       *
Jade is frisky that night, waggling her eyebrows at them and being like, so,
guys….almost before they close the front door. Dave realizes it’s the first
time in, what, two weeks, that he’s had something other than post-crying makeup
sex. Hah. That’s uncomfortable. But it’s fine, they all just hit a rough patch.
Shit happens.
She’s so eager and it’s ridiculously hot, her telling them both exactly what
she missed. At one point, she tells Karkat to go ahead, kiss Dave, go on. And
he does it. And the idea that they’re doing this for her, that they’re putting
on a show for her, is hotter than it has any fucking right to be. And he kind
of wants to do more with that, a whole fucking lot more, if Karkat is into it.
And things devolve (evolve) from there, until they’re all sweaty and gross and
sticky. They clean off just enough that they can go to sleep without feeling
awful and turn the light off. The warmth of their slightly sweaty skin is the
last thing Dave is thinking about before he falls asleep.
                                      **
He’s back there, again. He’s trying to hide, there’s nowhere to escape to. He
hears him coming, the heavy metal thud of his belt buckle falling to the floor,
asking where the hell he got to. Dave finds a door in his closet that he didn’t
remember being there before. He doesn’t know where it goes, but it doesn’t
matter. He opens it and crawls, as fast as he can. There you are, little shit.
He has to get away. He tries crawling faster, but the hole is so small, going
nowhere. A hand on his ankle, bigger than his foot. He screams, Bro tells him
to shut up. He drags him out by his leg, pulls him to bed, pushes him over.
Dave, Dave, listen, he’s saying. It hurts. Stop. Please stop. Please. I don’t
want it. Help me. Help.
Dave.
Hands on his shoulder. His, but not, warmer, gentler.
Dave, it’s okay. You’re dreaming.
“Wake up. It’s not real. It’s a nightmare. You’re okay.”
Dave wakes up. It’s still dark, he can barely see, but he sees her in the dim
light from the streetlamp filtering in through the windows, and Karkat, staring
at him, looking really concerned.
“Haha. Okay. Uh, thanks.” Dave sits up and tries to shake the feeling off.
Eugh. That one was fucking intense.
Something hangs in the air. This would… this would probably be a good time to
tell them, wouldn’t it. Because he decided to tell them. And this is as good a
time as any. He’s still kind of freaked out from the nightmare.
There’s still some part of him that’s a kid and trapped there and scared, and
that part hasn’t been shaken off totally by waking up. Naked. Why did he think
it was a good idea to sleep like that? It’s never a good idea to sleep like
that. He needs to remember this. Just put on a fucking pair of boxers next
time. Jade had the good sense to put her shirt back on before they went to bed,
he should have followed her lead. He tugs the sheet up around his torso to
cover up, that helps a little.
“Can I, like.” He can’t just ask for a hug, though. That’s weird.
“What?” Jade asks softly.
“Can you come here for a second?”
She bridges the gap between them hugs him.
Dave wraps his arms around her. That’s better. That’s so much better. He could
cry. Not gonna, but he could.
“Was I saying shit?”
“You were making a lot of noises. Asking someone to stop.”
“Oh. Okay.” He squeezes her tighter.
“You sounded really upset.”
“Dave?” Karkat asks. He feels Karkat’s hand fumbling around in the darkness,
until it’s holding his. Dave squeezes his hand.
“Yeah?”
“…Nevermind.” And then Karkat is getting up, scooting around the bed, until
he’s flush up next to Dave. All three of them sit against the wall, looking at
the dim light and shadows in the room, sandwiched up next to each other. It
feels like a moment out of time. It might be, Dave doesn’t have the best
control over that stuff when he’s upset. He draws his knees to his chest.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jade asks quietly, sounding so uncertain of
herself. Probably because he keeps flipping his shit every time she broaches
the subject. And she’s still trying with him. Fuck. She’s so good.
He should tell her. He should tell both of them. They’d want to know. He
should, and he will. Fuck. His heartbeat kicks into high gear and he struggles
to keep up the calm façade.
“…Yeah. I mean. If you want to hear about it.”
“I do,” she says.
“It’s a lot.”
Karkat takes his hand again, and Jade waits for him to go on, tapping her hand
against her thigh nervously.
“It’s like, you guys want to know, right? Because shit keeps coming up. But I
don’t just want to dump it on you.”
Karkat squeezes his hand. “I mean, I’m fine with whatever you want, but I want
to know. I just… I don’t want to push you or anything.”
Fuck, he’s so good, too. He’s trying so hard not to push him to talk about it.
They’re both so good. He doesn’t deserve them. How the fuck did he get this
lucky.
“…Okay. Okay.”
Fuck. He should have thought how to phrase it. Because he has the images and
memories and sensations and they all just fucking scream at him and it seems
impossible to put into words. It’s like trying to bottle one particular section
of a stormcloud. There area few specific words that would say it all, but he
can’t just saythem.
“Dave?” Jade asks.
“I’m thinking,” he says. It’s hard to talk. God, he’s going to tell them. He
has to tell them. It’s gotten to that point, he can’t drop it now. But he can’t
just say it, the words dry up before he can even think them. He’s never told
anyone, he doesn’t even know how to start saying it. The shit he told Dirk,
that was different, that was easier to talk about, not that it was easy, but it
was easier, there was some shred of dignity in it, not like this-
Maybe ease into it. Maybe.
“My… brother sucked.”
They both wait for him to continue, but he can’t find the words. “I’ve gotten
that distinct impression,” Karkat eventually says carefully. He sounds like
he’s worried he’ll say the wrong thing.
Dave laughs. Nervous giggles. Is he really going to do this? Yeah, he is, oh
god, fuck. He has to, fuck, he feels like he couldn’t stop if he wanted to. If
it’s not now, it’s later, and it’s probably going to be now.
“Really sucked, though. Like, really sucked.”
“I thought you got along with him?” Jade asks quietly.
Oh, because Dave stopped talking about him after he started up with that shit.
He went from doling out effusive hero worship to next to nothing, because he
didn’t dare to articulate the shit that was brewing in him where Rose might be
able to smell it and dredge it out of his brain for everyone to see. That he
still looked up to him, that he kept telling himself it was the last time, that
was just a one-off, he won’t do it again. He was terrified and confused and
even as much as he hated his brother, he still wanted to impress him in
strifes, with his comics and irony and music, and there were just these two
awful things that happened sometimes, between the beatings and the… other
stuff, that happened sometimes, but Bro was so cool, and he couldn’t make sense
of it. No, seriously, he was absolutely never going to let anyone in on that,
ever. He knew how to move conversations away from Bro as fast as fucking
possible and he did, until everyone else kind of forgot about him. And he’s
leaving Jade hanging, getting lost in memory lane.
“Oh, no. Nope. Fuck that guy.”
“Oh. Okay. …How did he suck?”
“All the ways? Every possible way?”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she says, but she sounds confused. Because he’s not explaining
anything. Fuck. Well, apparently Jade doesn’t even know the basics, so he could
start there. Jade squeezes her hand on Dave’s shoulder gently. “That sounds
really bad.”
“Like, he beat the shit out of me, right. A lot.”
He can feel her hand flinch back gently. “Wait, what?”
“Yeah. Like, that was a given, if I did something he didn’t like. Or if I was
around when he wasn’t happy. Or if he, like, wanted to train me. Because I had
to learn what the world was like. And I totally deserved it. For being such a
little shit. Like, by asking him when he was going to get food.” Well, the
spigot on this douchenozzle is off and it’s all pouring out, apparently. He’s
more numb than panicked, which is nice. And he’s not getting into the weird
shit yet. He tells himself he can maybe save that for another time, if he needs
to. It’s weird, it’s hard to get the words out, he’s talking in stunted little
phrases. but he can’t stop saying them. “He’d kick me awake sometimes. To
fight. I was, like, 10. He was 30. How the fuck would that have ever been
fair.”
“Oh my god.”
“What the fuck?!”
“I mean, I couldn’t win, right?”
“No! Of course not!” Jade says. She squeezes Dave’s shoulder. “Why the
fuckwould he do that to you? You were tiny!”
“It was basically just beating up a child, right.” Dave isn’t sure why he wants
her feedback on this, why he’s worried she’ll argue with him. He’s not sure why
it feels so fucking good to hear.
“Yeah, absolutely.”
“And he wouldn’t stop when I was down, right. He’d kick me until I got up.
Until I couldn’t get up anymore.”
It’s kind of alarming to tell them this shit, but Dave can’t really stop. But
it also feels good to just fucking tell them. He realizes he’s drawing in
tighter and tighter on himself, that he feels more and more vulnerable.
He’s kind of… kind of worried that Karkat won’t get it, and Karkat hasn’t
really been saying a whole lot, and that’s not helping. Alternia was super
fucked up, and for a while Dave felt like a fucking jackass for caring so much
about this shit when Alternia was objectively so much worse. Not that Karkat
would ever say something like that. But it was right there, in his stories
about the drones and the genocide and the murder and the torture and monitoring
and everything. What if lusi just did this to their kids. What if Dave was
fucked to hell and back by something Karkat thought was normal. And he’d
probably be respectful about it, maybe, probably, but he might also just think
Dave was shockingly weak and pathetic. And he kind of is, but like, hearing it
from Karkat would suck.
Which is why Karkat’s response opens the weird crying floodgates.
“Dave, what the fuck? What kind of fucking toxic waste grub rearing shit is
that? What’s the objective of beating your own fucking adolescent ward? Why the
fuck would he do that?”
“Ha.”
“Oh, fuck, are you- Fuck, I’m sorry, what did I say? I didn’t mean- I don’t
know, what did I say wrong? Don’t cry, fuck.”
Dave hugs him. “You’re good, dude.”
Karkat wraps his arms around Dave. Karkat hugs rock. Super fucking good. “Why
are you crying?”
“I dunno. Was worried you’d think that was normal or something.”
“What? Why the fuck would I think that was normal? That’s fucking
unfathomable.”
“Is it? Even growing up on Murderland?”
“What are- no. Lusi are there to protect you, not fuck you up worse than the
rest of the world does. That’s fucking insane. Where the fuck were you supposed
to go to feel safe?”
Dave hugs him tighter and tries not to cry harder. Ow. There really… wasn’t
anywhere, was there. He could walk around the city and hope he didn’t get into
trouble or he could stay at home and hope Bro wasn’t around, or that he was
leaving soon. It was basically just when he was talking to his friends that he
felt okay. Which is part of why he fucking hopped headfirst into the game the
second he could.
“I dunno.”
“That’s fucked up. I’d kill him again if I could.”
“Hah.”
Dave pulls away from Karkat so he can look at her. He really, really wishes he
had some clothes right now. He pulls the sheets around himself a little
tighter.
“This is so fucking random, but like. You guys cool if I get dressed right
now?”
“Wh- yeah, go ahead, if you want,” Karkat says.
Thank god. Dave leaves, sheet wrapped around him, and goes into the closet for
some pajamas. When he comes back to bed, he feels infinitely better.
“I’m so sorry, Dave,” Jade says. “I… I didn’t know. I had no idea that was
going on. Oh my god. And I was talking to you while this was happening, wasn’t
I? Jeez, I’m sorry.”
“What? No, dude, don’t feel bad, you were a kid too, how the hell were you
supposed to pick up on shit I was intentionally burying away?”
“I guess. Yeah.” She pauses, flicks at her leg a little bit with her pointer
finger. “Thank you for telling us.”
He takes a deep breath. “There’s more.” He could leave it here. He totally
could. But the point of this is to tell them what they need to know, and that’s
not all they need to know.
He’s so fucking scared that it’ll make everything suck. He feels like he can
barely breathe, just thinking about the next words that’ll leave his mouth.
That they don’t need to know this, and it’s only going to make everything weird
and terrible. They don’t need to know this. But they would want to know this.
He’d want to know this for them.
And shit’s already weird and terrible, isn’t it? That damage is done. That’s
what he tells himself to try and drown out the fear that no, this is the tip of
the iceberg, things could get so much worse and more awkward from here if he
just opens his whore mouth one more fucking time.
“What do you mean?” Jade asks.
“You know,” Dave says. “More.”
“Are you… what are you getting at?” she asks carefully.
He can’t do this. “Nevermind.”
“What kind of more?”
No, fuck it. “The, like, really gross, fucked up kind?”
He hears her gasp softly. “Oh my god...”
Dave laughs nervously. Can’t take it back now. Shit’s too real. And now she
knows. Bam. Done. The Forbidden Knowledge is fucking roosting in that noggin.
“What? What does that mean? Jade?”
“Um,” Jade says. She looks at Dave helplessly.
“You know,” Dave says. Very effective. He’s helping.
“What’s the really fucked up kind? What does that mean?”
“Oh, hah, god. Yeah, you wouldn’t know, would you, right, because lusus
literally can’t fuck their kids.” God, it’s out, holy shit that’s just out
there, Dave keeps up the verbal vomit because it’s nice to talk about anything
else and wow maybe he should have waited but it’s just a little too fucking
late, isn’t it?
Karkat rears back. “What the f-“
“Like, not even if they tried, right. Where would it even go. Do they even have
dicks? Oh, sorry, lusi, right, it’s plural.”
“Dave-“
“Not lusus or lususes. Lucy. Lusis. Like how it’s geese, not gooses or goosi.
Gooses is a sick word, though-“
Karkat hugs him.
Dave is still kind of numb. That’s just out there, huh. Neat.
“Do lusi do that ever? To the grubs? Maybe you guys have that too and I just
didn’t hear about it, because why the hell would you tell me about it, not like
that kind of shit comes up.”
“No. What the fuck. Why the fuck- that’s so fucked up. What the fuck. It’s
fucking unfathomable. Like, so fucking unfathomable. Holy fucking shit, Dave,
what the fuck?”
“Oh, hah.”
“Fuck. Do humans do that? Jade? Is that a thing? What the fuck?”
“No- I mean, sometimes, but no, uh? I don’t know!”
“I mean, it’s not unheard of, right. But it’s not, like, a normal occurrence.
Or a sometimes occurrence. I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, it’s not like everyone
is chomping at the bit to talk about it when it happens, right.”
“I- I guess. What the fuck.”
 “Sorry, Dave,” Jade says.
“Thanks.” Fuck. He kind of tuned everything out for a while, let his mouth do
the thinking for him, and now the anxiety is catching up with him. It feels
kind of good, having it out there. But not like the other shit, that was mostly
good, and this is mostly terrifying. He doesn’t want-
“I don’t want this to come up, like, every time we fuck, right, like, we can
fuck without you being like,” he chokes on his next thought, too gross to come
out, that Bro staked this ass out long before they did and it’s tainted forever
and the earth of his body is salted and dead, “like, thinking about him and
that shit and me and whatever the fuck, right? Like, I wanted you guys to know
because you probably wanted to know but this shit is bananas and really fucking
heavy and do you get why I didn’t tell you sooner right.” By the time he’s
done, he’s barely whispering.
“Yeah. Totally,” Jade says. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I’m going to go back in time and murder him. Take me.”
Dave laughs.
“I’m so fucking serious.”
“Dude. No.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve talked about this. Fuckin’, butterfly effect shit. Maybe we don’t get
together. Or finish the game. Changing the past shit, it’s wonk, it’ll nullify
the timeline and shit. Or doom a session. It would suck.” Dave tries not to
dwell on the idea that he had to have gone through all that, for years, in
order for the timeline to succeed. It’s kind of fucked up. Is there a version
of him that didn’t have to go through that to get here? Yeah, probably. But
it’s not exactly him, etc, whatever, not important.
Karkat takes a deep breath. “On one hand I see your point. On the other hand,
your fucking guardian needs to die again.”
“Hah.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry. Is that why… that’s why you’ve been acting like this.”
“I guess. Hah.” Dave takes a moment and tries to gather his thoughts. There’s
so much to say. Keep it to the bare minimum, what they need to hear. “It wasn’t
a problem before, right. It wasn’t coming up. But shit came up again. Like,
nightmares and shit and whatever the fuck.”
“Is it… because you’re hanging out with Dirk more?”
“…” Dave considers that for the first time. Huh. Incredible. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Dirk never- he didn’t-“
“Of course not, what the fuck.” His tone is sharper than he meant it to be.
Because he really fucking doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to
acknowledge that any part of him is terrified that some part of Bro is in Dirk
and maybe it’s just waiting to be unlocked and he might have a hand in
unlocking it and it would be his fault if he ever- if it happened again. “Fuck
no. Dirk is great.”
“Sorry. Fuck. That was stupid.”
“It’s fine.”
“Fuck, Dave, sorry.”
“It’s fi-“
“No, I mean, in general. About that.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“…Thanks for telling me. God. I can’t believe you went through that. What the
fuck.”
“Hah.”
The room gets quiet.
“Do you want us to do anything different?” Jade asks. “Like, in light of this?
Because I totally can. Like, please, please let me know.”
“Thank you. Yeah, uh. Just. Not like, sneaking up on me, I guess. Or like,
doing shit like, uh, you know, without asking.”
He feels her flinch back and feels terrible. He could maybe have just a tiny
more tact, couldn’t he? The point isn’t to make her feel like shit about it.
“Oh, no, oh my god, I’m sorry I-“
“It’s cool.”
“It’s not cool! It was awful! I’m so sorry!”
“You didn’t know, dude. It’s fine.”
“I should have been better, still,” she says quietly.
“Well, it’s fine now, so, it’s fine.”
She breathes out loudly through her nose. When she starts to talk again, she
sounds like she’s crying. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I really didn’t want to
put you through that when I was-“
Dave hugs her. He’s kind of uncomfortable around crying people, and he feels
fucking awful that he made her feel this shitty. Fuck. “It’s fine, babe. Sorry,
I said it like an asshole.”
“No you didn’t.”
“But it’s okay. I mean, thank you and, like, it’s okay now, ‘cause you won’t do
it anymore, right? So, we’re good.”
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
Dave kisses the top of her head.
“Can you also please tell us when this shit rears up?” Karkat says quietly.
“Like. I- you- it’s been coming up, right.”
Dave lets go of Jade and draws tighter in on himself. He has a feeling he knows
where this is going. “…Yeah.”
“And you just pause time and then pretend it’s fine.”
“Don’t call me out like this, man.”
“Don’t call you out- that shit sucks! And I don’t want to fucking contribute to
it any more than I already have.” He sounds so upset. Jade sniffles. And this
is what not telling them for so long did, isn’t it. Now they’re all confused
and sad and hurt and scared to fuck up again. The possibility of this making
things weird seems almost fucking inevitable now.
But it needed to be said. This fucking sucks, but it’s better than it would
have been if he’d kept it from them for the rest of eternity. And maybe it
doesn’t have to be awful, if they just continue to talk to each other about
shit.
“Okay. Yeah. We’ll get a fuckin’ triplicate of communication going on in this
bitch.”
Jade laughs. “Yeah. Okay. A whole fucking triplicate! I like that.”
And there’s probably one more thing, that’s been eating away at him this whole
conversation. “Sorry for not telling you guys sooner.”
“…I mean, I get why you didn’t,” Jade says.
“Yeah,” Karkat agrees. “But, yeah, it’s good to know.”
“Yeah.”
“Can we burn something that looks like him? And then piss on it?”
That’s just. So fucking much that Dave starts cracking up. He can’t stop
laughing for a little too long. Jade is half-laughing along awkwardly, and
Karkat is staring at him like he’s grown a pair of antlers.
“Yeah, maybe. Good talk?” Dave asks.
“Yeah,” Jade says.
A silence falls over them for a few beats. Dave’s pretty sure they hit
everything he wanted to hit. And shit, even if the didn’t, he doesn’t know if
he could continue this conversation if he wanted to. He’s fucking exhausted. He
bites down another fit of manic giggles. Cool it. Chill.
“Can we go back to sleep?” Dave asks. “I’m so dead right now.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jade says. “I love you.”
He leans over and hugs her. “Yeah, love you too. Both of you. You guys are the
best.”
                                       *
Dave tries to sleep. He closes his eyes and tries focusing on his and their
breathing. That works sometimes, but not tonight. He’s fucking reeling. All he
can think about is what he just told them. He’s too hopped up on fucking
everything, keeps almost laughing and starting to cry. Is this going to fuck
everything up? Should he have kept his mouth shut?
He starts to pause time so he can just slip out and spend the night staring at
the bathroom wall or something, but stops himself. The point of this was
honestly or whatever. And leaving without letting them know? What kind of
honesty is that? Shitty honestly. The kind of off-brand garbage honesty that
wouldn’t even dare to show its face on the clearance rack at a dollar store.
Shouldn’t have even been made in the first place, what the hell were those
manufacturers thinking. So he gets up without pausing time.
“So, uh, hey,” he says quietly.
“What?” Karkat asks. Jade turns over to face him.
“Kinda can’t sleep, so I’m just gonna…”
“If you think you’re the only one who can’t sleep after that, you’re sorely
fucking mistaken.”
Dave laughs.
“Yeah, uh, me too,” Jade says. “Wanna do something together?”
“Yeah, that’d be cool.”
“We should watch a movie,” Karkat says.
“Aw, dude, that’s sweet, but we really don’t have to.”
“Fuck off, that wasn’t a pity offer. Maybe I miss watching them with you.”
“Oh.” Dave thought he’d hit the emotion quota tonight, but no, apparently he
still has a lot more fucking love and adoration and hopeless gratitude to feel
that these two are in his life right now. “Cool.”
“Awww, guys, you’re so cu-“
“Sh- don’t make it weird! But if you want to, or whatever.”
*
Karkat lets (demands that) Dave pick the movie. And Dave isn’t up to his usual
commentary, but it’s still really good, and watching it with them does a whole
fucking hell of a lot to assure him that maybe he didn’t just ruin everything
forever, that shit isn’t going to be completely horribly different from now on.
And when the he finally falls asleep, it’s on the couch next to them as the
second movie of the night plays softly over their quiet, sleeping breaths.
***** Chapter 17 *****
Chapter Notes
     cw: mentions of incest and pedophilia and survivor stuff
Things are surprisingly normal the next day. Jade wakes up shortly after Dave
and smiles at him, squeezes his hand. She seems hesitant to make any moves
towards him. Dave pushes back the thoughts that well, she knows he’s tainted
now and she’s too disgusted to touch him. She’s probably just nervous. He
dropped a bomb. He’s not too gross to touch.
“Come on, do I smell that bad?” he jokes, except it comes out a little less
cool than he wanted it to.
She laughs. “Oh, no, no, I just…”
He waits. Stupid fears grow.
“I dunno, are hugs okay? Or should I ask?”
Stupid fears, see? Totally stupid. Take that, asshole brain.
“As long as I see you coming in for ‘em, they’re totally on the table. Come
here.”
“Okay! Okay, good.” She hugs him.
Nothing to be worried about. They’re fine. Everything is normal.
The two of them walk to the smell of baking sweets in the kitchen and Karkat
plates them all up some weird fritter-y things, and some coffee that’s just a
little too strong. The three of them lay out plans for the day.
“What do you want to do, Dave?” Jade asks.
“I dunno, whatever you want.”
She falters for a beat before forcing a smile. “Okay. I’ll think of something.”
“I, uh, gotta go to Dirk’s later.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it.”
“Sure is.”
“Are you…” Karkat stops.
“Spit it out, dude.”
“Is that a good idea?”
“What? Now? Or ever?”
“Now. Like. You know.”
Maybe everything isn’t normal. Maybe he completely fucking ruined everything,
because any conversation might take a sharp turn into kidfucking. Golly gee,
it’ll be fun to find out, won’t it. Fuck.
No, that’s not fair, this is possibly the single most related and warranted
time for them to bring this up. What’s wrong with him?
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Sorry,” Karkat says meekly. “It’s not really any of my fucking business.”
And apparently Karkat saw right through his façade and immediately knew how
pissed he was to be talking about this right now, which was totally fucking
uncool, and, fuck, he fucked up, everything is weird.
“Dude, no, come on-“
“He doesn’t know about, uh. Are you okay talking about this?” Jade asks. “Uh,
sorry for interrupting.”
“It’s fine,” Dave says, keeping an eye out for the fastest and easiest way to
end this conversation. “And no, he doesn’t.”
“He, uh.” She stops. “Nevermind!”
“What.”
“Nothing.”
“Jade? C’mon, dude, don’t leave me hanging.” He won’t like what she says, but
he doesn’t really want to let it drop. Like an aching bruise you can’t stop
poking at.
“I was just going to say, he probably would want to know?”
Oh. There it is. Fuck. Karkat boggles at her. And, yeah, Dave is kind of
fucking pissed that she’s pushing him into this, but before he can form the
words that gently communicate fuck off, she starts up again.
“But that’s totally your decision when and if you want to tell him! I know
that! I realized that! That’s why I tried to drop it! And I couldn’t think of a
convincing lie! And we’re trying not to lie!”
He’s still annoyed, but that’s fair. There’s probably no single elegant way in
the universe to talk about this. “Okay. You’re fine. Can we drop it?”
“Yeah! Totally! I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. So, uh, question, I know home movies are out, but how do you guys
feel about theaters?”
                                       *
The thing is, she’s not wrong. And he kind of pushed her into sharing that
little nugget after she tried to stop (because he wouldn’t know a boundary if
it slapped him in the face? Because he had respect for others beaten out of him
years ago?) And Dirk probably would want to know. And now he’s sitting at
Dirk’s table, not saying anything because he’s just trying to figure out if he
should ride this honesty high into this conversation or just let the truthbomb
fester for another few weeks or months.
There’s no real fucking question, is there.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
They sit in silence and wait for Dirk’s legendary coffee machine to finish
brewing up before starting playing some Yakuza.
“Okay,” Dave says. He’s gonna do it. “Okay, can we talk about shit?”
“Okay?”
“It’s super fucking heavy.”
Dirk settles down. “Sure.”
He has no idea what’s coming, ahhaha.
“Like, really fucking heavy and weird.”
Dirk’s eyebrows knit up a little in concern. But he waits.
“Things were really bad with him, right?”
“I’m aware.”
Dave takes a deep breath. His heartbeat is racing. He should tell him. Does he
have to tell him? He’d want to know. Jade’s right. Karkat’s right. If Dave were
Dirk, he’d want to know. And Dirk is cool and Dirk would want to help. Will
want to help. And know. He should know.
“You okay, dude?”
Dave swallows and shakes his head.
Dirk’s eyebrows knit up in concern, but he doesn’t press. He waits for Dave to
go on.
“Really bad.”
“Are you… are you telling me something new?” Dirk asks carefully. Not being
sarcastic. A genuine question.
Dave nods. It’s too late to take this back, but his voice isn’t working. And
then he notices that Dirk’s hand is shaking a little. Fuck.
“What kind of really bad?” he asks.
Dave takes a deep breath. He’s doing this, Dirk wants to know, Dirk would want
to know, he has to tell him. “All... of… the possible ways.”
Dirk goes still. “Oh, Jesus. Holy shit. Fuck. Dave-“
“It wasn’t you,” Dave says weakly. He feels like shit and tries not to
overthink it, tries and fails. Why did he think telling Dirk was a good idea?
It’s only going to hurt him. Fucking immensely. Nothing but pain. Dave fucked
up. Time streams be damned, he should - actually, no, that’s a bad idea, he
can’t, it’s bad enough that he keeps fucking pausing it all the time, he can’t
justify that, can’t justify splitting another fucking stream for this, and it’s
still going to fuck over a different version of them and prolong the
inevitable.
“I know,” Dirk says tightly. “I’m so sorry.”
“It literally wasn’t you.”
“Okay. Okay. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just. Thought you should know.”
“Yeah, I. Thank you for telling me. I… Fuck. I’m so sorry, dude.”
Dave takes a slow breath. “That’s why I’ve been. Weird lately. It’s been
bothering me all of the sudden.”
“Oh my god. Okay. Jesus. Fuck. How could it not bother you ever.”
“The mind is a powerful thing, dude. Not powerful enough, but powerful.” Dave
laughs weakly and looks up.
Dirk is trembling. And looking like he’s trying really hard to keep it inside.
“Dude, are you okay?”
“Fine,” he says tightly.
“I’m no shrink but you don’t seem fine-“
Dave flinches back as he seems Dirk literally splinter in front of him. A semi-
transparent version of him floats just above the blank-faced body that still
sits in the chair, slowly going lax.
“Well, fuck,” the transparent one says.
“Uh, Dirk, what the fuck is happening.”
“Nothing. It’ll go back to normal later.”
“Dude.” Dave’s having trouble finding the words for I just told you the biggest
fucking bombshell, are you seriously going to pretend nothing is happening
right now. Right now. You’re going to say that to me now, from ghost form. Dirk
seems to read his mind. Maybe it’s the heart powers, maybe it’s the brothers
thing, maybe it’s common fucking sense. Who knows.
“This. Happens. When I’m upset.”
“Uh.”
“It’s so stupid and embarrassing and I really fucking wish it would stop.”
“What exactly am I looking at?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Dave just stares at him, until he starts talking again.
“Okay, well,” Dirk points down at his body, “that dickhead isn’t feeling
anything right now, right. My subconscious, in its infinite wisdom, created a
fucking version of myself to take on the painful shit so my body can sit there
and drool on the table. And I’ll remerge together later and have a migraine
from the mental strain of merging the experiences of two consciousnesses into
one. Consci?”
“Woah. That fucking sucks.”
“Yeah. Anyways. I’m really fucking sorry and if he wasn’t dead I’d kill him
again.”
Dave laughs. “Thanks. Fuck. Sorry for making you psychically split in half.”
“Nah, that was all me.”
Dave relaxes a little. He says this is normal, that it happens sometimes, and
that’s not the kind of thing he would lie about. He still kind of feels like
shit for doing this to him, but it probably had to happen eventually, because
he couldn’t fucking chill about it. It wasn’t going away. Anyways, splintering
aside, this is going way better than Dave imagined it would. Dirk is still
talking to him, he’s not looking at him like he’s disgusting and tainted and
that it’s too weird to go on. Of course, he’ll have to see if it makes anything
weird later. But he never even dared to imagine this far into it, because he
just assumed it would go impossibly bad. But no. This is fine. Well, it’s not
super fine, but it will be fine. And Dirk isn’t treating him any different, and
they’re still talking, and oh Dave is crying. Embarrassing. He wipes it away.
“Fuck, dude, you okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks. Don’t worry about it.”
“Wish I had a body to give you a hug right now. Well, maybe you wouldn’t want
that. Fuck.” Ghost-Dirk looks away uncomfortably. “Did I ever hug you and it
made you think of…“
No point in lying now. “Yeah.”
The transparency flickers. “Fuck. I’m sor-”
“You didn’t know. Sorry for not telling you sooner.” It’s easier than he
thought it’d be. Maybe from actually practicing it beforehand, with Jade and
Karkat.
“No, I get it. Fuck. Have you told…”
“Yeah.”
Dirk nods, and then goes still. “You said…” His voice is tight, and Dave starts
to get nervous. “Last time, you said Jade was doing things that made it worse.”
Dave swallows and pushes down the anxiety. Oops. He didn’t think this would
come up. Why did he not think this would come up? Oh, because he was never
going to tell Dirk about it.
“Yeah, it’s no big deal, and it’s fine now-“
“What did she do.” Coiled anger warps his voice. It’s freaking Dave out a
little (a lot).
“It’s cool, we talked it out.”
Dirk takes a quick breath through his nose. “You don’t want to talk about it.”
The coffee maker dings to indicate that it’s done. Dave almost jumps out of his
chair, but they both ignore it. Hah, he’s on just a little bit of a hair
trigger right now, isn’t he.
“Okay, like, she was kind of pushy, right.”
He takes another deep breath. Dave can see his knuckles clenching white, and
the solid form of him that’s sitting down starts to scrape his nails across the
table.
“Like, I don’t want to get too into the details-“
“Did she… like he did?”
“No, like, not even in the same realm. Okay, like, on the outskirts of the same
realm, maybe, like, the forbidden woods-“
“Dave-“
“She didn’t know, right, like, she just thought it was really weird, and she
was like ugh stop asking for every little thing and like come on, why won’t you
just let me blow you.”
“And you know that’s fucked up, right?” Dirk’s voice is tight and way fucking
scarier than it has any right to be. “You know that’s unacceptable? You know
that’s fucking sexual abu-“
“It’s not, but okay, but listen, she stopped and apologized, right. And then
when I told her why she felt, like, really fucking bad.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Dude, come on, she didn’t know. She’s great. She just fucked up a little?”
“A little,” he grits out.
Dave’s never seen Dirk this mad. His heart is starting to race, and it’s
getting really hard to ignore and that push away with reminders that it’s not
him, this isn’t Bro, this isn’t him right now, this is Dirk and Dirk is a good
dude. Dirk can be angry without taking it out on him. But he can see the same
lines in his face that he saw on the face that looked down at him when he was
bringing down the metal end of his belt-
“Okay realtalk honesty time, you’re freaking me out a whole fucking lot right
now, should I come back later?”
Dirk freezes, and then he takes a deep breath and starts to relax.
“No. Fuck. Sorry.”
Because he’s not him. See, brain? Dumbass. It’s Dirk. Dirk’s cool about shit.
“She stopped?”
“Yeah. She was fucking mortified the other night. It sucked.”
“…When you told them?”
“Yeah. Like, she put two and two together real fast. And like, everyone fucks
up. Please don’t hate her, dude, she’s great.”
Dirk sighs and looks down. “I don’t hate her. I was just… that sucks.”
“Yeah.”
Silence falls over the room. Dave can hear the hum of the air conditioning, the
too-slow, too-even breathing of Dirk’s meat sack, and not much else.
“So, uh, I didn’t really have a plan for what comes after the big reveal,” Dave
says awkwardly.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nah. Too fucking weird.”
“Okay. If you change your mind, though.”
“Cool.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“Yeah.” Dave gets up and tries to give Dirk a fistbump. Dirk’s hand glides
straight through his fist.
“Fuck. Forgot about that.”
“Holy shit, are you a ghost right now? Did I kill you?”
“No. I mean, temporarily I can’t interact with the physical world, so maybe
functionally yes. But it’ll be fine.”
“Fuck, sorry, dude.”
“Don’t worry about it. Do you wanna watch a movie, though? Or are you gonna
head out?”
“Let’s watch shit.”
They watch shit. Dirk uses voice activation to turn everything on, to the point
where Dave wonders just how often this happens to him. He’s so fucking
prepared. But that’s kinda not his business.
About ten minutes in, Dave starts thinking about all the shit he could tell
him. And it feels like they should be talking, instead of just watching the
movie. It’s seriously heavy shit, but they’re heavy bros. Dirk’s told him shit
about growing up so existentially alone that he built a robot version of
himself just so he’d have someone to interact with when the three people he
knew in the entire world weren’t online. And he’s started to dip into some of
the issues he’s had with Jake. Which, hey, that’s something.
“How’s stuff with Jake?” he asks.
Dirk looks over at him and takes a deep breath, then turns back to the movie.
He doesn’t respond for a while. He doesn’t seem to be ignoring Dave, just
thinking about what to say. Which says plenty.
“Not great, huh,” Dave says.
“It’s like, I wonder if anyone literally ever has had the answers to this
shit.”
“What shit?”
He stops again to think. “It’s weird telling you this right now.”
“What, after…?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“This is kind of incredibly fucking trivial, comparatively.”
“Dude. No. Shit doesn’t work like that. If it was a pissing contest the world
would be fucking drenched in sticky icky.”
“Gross.”
“Right? So, yeah, what’s up.”
Dirk thinks for a while, and then starts to talk.
                                       *
By the time Dave comes home for the night, he’s emotionally exhausted like
nothing else.
Dirk didn’t go super into it, but he got enough into it that Dave realized he
must have had his head up his ass for a while. Like, he didn’t even realize
that shit was so messy and uncomfortable, and he should have picked up on it
sooner.
(To which Dirk told him to chill, he had his own stuff going on, and Dirk
wasn’t exactly broadcasting it around, because he was hoping it’d just go away?
Which, ha ha, they really are related aren’t they, har har)
And Dirk could probably figure this stuff out, especially if Jake was willing
to work with him on it. Dave told him that, all tactfully and shit.
Dirk used his weird voice control shit to change the movie they’re watching to
some really weird avant-garde shit that pushes the boundaries of narrative, and
it’s nice to have something non-impossible to focus on. And it’s nice that Dirk
is still opening up to him about shit, and still talking to him, and still
wanting to hang out with him? It’s all fucking great. It’s better than Dave
imagined it could be.
Which brings him home.
He opens the door, and no one’s there to greet him. Which is pretty fucking
weird. Their shoes are by the door. He hears something splash in the bathroom,
and then hears soft murmurs and… yep.
Well. Awkward. His room is next to the bathroom, and he doesn’t exactly want to
sit on the couch in the living room and listen to them go at it without them
knowing he’s here. And, uh, knocking on the door and being like yo, don’t mind
me, except do mind me, because I’m here now and you should know that, no. He
can take a walk for a while.
He gets a few blocks away before he’s bored out of his skull, so he pulls out
his phone and just texts John for a while. And then heads back after he kills a
half hour.
This time, Jade springs up off the couch to greet him, hair wet and skin dewy.
“Hi, Dave!”
“Hey,” Karkat says.
“Hi.”
“How was Dirk’s!”
“Fine. Good. I’m exhausted. Can we get some Mario Party up in this bitch?”
They don’t press. They listen to the little he provides, like, oh yeah I had
his coffee, have you guys had his coffee. But he can hear what they’re
intentionally not asking, and it’s making shit weird. But he doesn’t really
want to talk about it, and they do want to talk about it, and it’s fucking
uncomfortable.
Or maybe they’re uncomfortable like this because they can’t stop thinking about
all the kidfucking in his past? He probably fucked up in telling them.
No, that sounds fake. He had to tell them, anyways.
He beats Karkat at the last minute, using a hoard of saved-up dice blocks to
land his way to the tie-breaking star.
“Sick,” he says. “Best three out of three?”
“I’m going to drag a shit-covered sponge across your keyboard. And your
smartphone.”
“Karkat, that’s disgusting!”
“That’s the point. And it’s only a fraction as disgusting as Dave’s blatant
cheating.”
“Dude, come on. Lose with grace.”
“Karkat, um, it’s impossible to cheat at the game unless you have an external
cheatcode hardware, or software, and we don’t.”
“He’s cheating at the spirit of the game. The rules are there, just not coded
into the game.”
“Fake.”
“Karkat… if they’re not coded into the game, they’re not really rules.”
“No, they’re entirely real, and you should be disqualified. For cheating. You
can’t use more than two diceblocks per turn.”
“Show me the rulebook.”
“I don’t have to.”
And the tension is gone, and shit’s normal again. It’s fine. He made the right
call telling them, it made shit better, it had to happen, etc. He asks Karkat
to walk him through procuring the shit, whether it would be his shit or
Karkat’s (or Jade’s?), if he was going to let the sponge fester at all before
applying the layer of cheaters sludge. Karkat tells him of course he’d let it
develop for a minimum of two weeks. Dave asks how he can ever make it up to
Karkat. He likes that phone, he likes that keyboard, he can’t afford to encrust
them with shit.
“Buy me grub candy.”
Dave considers it. Sure, why not. “Come with me?”
“Oh- fuck. I was joking. I thought you were, too. Fuck. Sorry. Fuck, I didn’t
mean-”
“Nah, dude, let’s get your fuckin’ candy. We haven’t flown anywhere in a while.
Jade, are you in?”
“Yeah!”
They fly to the closest grub candy-carrying convenience store, which is a
little bit of a fucking hike even with flight, and then take the longer way
home. Which means the high-up way home, up past the light pollution so that the
stars are bright and impossibly numerous above them. Karkat still seems amazed
that he can do this now, which is really fucking cute.
And when Dave goes to sleep that night, feeling their warm heat radiating from
their skin and remembering the stars and their laughter, he’s pretty sure
everything is, and will be, fine. Because whatever comes up, they’ll figure it
out.
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