
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/412848.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Dave_Strider/Karkat_Vantas
  Character:
      Dave_Strider, Karkat_Vantas
  Additional Tags:
      Dream_Bubbles, Caliginous_Romance_|_Kismesis, Flushed_Romance_|
      Matesprits, Quadrant_Confusion, Blindness, Illustrated
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-05-25 Words: 12231
****** Looks just like the sun ******
by messageredacted
Summary
     “Holy shit,” you whisper. Dave joins you at the window.
     There are no stars left in the sky. Nothing but blackness and a faint
     soap bubble sheen.
     “Is that a dream bubble?” Dave says.
     And then it swallows you.
      
     Update: Now with a VERY NSFW illustration by Renaris.
Notes
     As always, my unending gratitude goes to shellfishDimes, who is the
     best beta in the world.
     This won first place the S.S. Davekat fanfiction contest, for the
     following prompt:
     I live near the
     slaughterhouse
     and am ill
     with thriving.
     —Bukowski
The dream bubbles come without warning sometimes. The meteor is traveling very
fast, propelled by Sollux and Aradia’s psychic push, and it can blast through
the smaller dream bubbles in the blink of an eye. Sometimes the only sign is
the blip of memory long forgotten, a dead face staring at you for a fraction of
a second, and then you’re through. Sometimes you’ll meet a chain of bubbles and
bounce from memory to memory in an electric storm of dreams.
Sometimes the bubbles are larger. They can stretch for a few hours, or a few
days. In the distance you can see even larger ones, week-long ones, perigee-
long ones, massive slick things that are only visible in the void of space as a
faint iridescent reflection of starlight.
Terezi has taken it upon herself to sit on the roof and sniff the approach of
the bubbles to give you all advance warning when possible. You join her
sometimes, when you know Dave is elsewhere, although you don’t usually stay too
long. Spending time with Terezi is like punching yourself in the face. It’s
painful and embarrassing and you have no one to blame but your own stupidity.
You’re in the ectobiology lab in a pile of alchemized pillows, reading a
romance novel (for the five millionth time—if you’d known the world was going
to end, you’d have captchalogued more books) when Terezi’s voice comes over the
loudspeaker.
“Attention,” she says. “This is your captain speaking. We seem to have a
problem.”
There is a pause. You captchalogue the book and sit up. Problems are your
jurisdiction.
“The stars are going out,” Terezi says.
You scramble out of the pillows and get to your feet. Your lab is two
transportalizer-jumps from the roof. You sprint.
Your first jump takes you to the communal room where the eleven other
transportalizers are located. Dave is just appearing from his own quarters,
which used to be Tavros’s.
“Vantas,” Dave greets you, stepping off his transportalizer.
“Asshole,” you reply.
You set off at a purposeful walk for the next transportalizer. Dave trails
behind you, his hands in his pockets, looking like a douche with his stupid
sunglasses on, even though it must be really fucking dim around here with his
human eyes. The cape of his god tier pajamas swirls around his ankles in a way
that makes you want to punch him in the face.
“Go on, run,” Dave drawls. “The stars going out sounds like a perfect job for
your leadership abilities.”
You flip him the bird and reach the next transportalizer. It breaks you down
and remakes you a quarter of a mile away.
There’s a stairwell here that leads up. You’re halfway up the first flight when
you hear Dave materialize. You want to make it to the roof before he does so
you can get a grip on the situation without his asinine commentary, but then
you reach the landing, where a window looks out into space. You stop.
And you stare.
“Holy shit,” you whisper. Dave joins you at the window.
There are no stars left in the sky. Nothing but blackness and a faint soap
bubble sheen.
“Is that a dream bubble?” Dave says.
And then it swallows you.
===============================================================================

There is nothing but white and cold. You have both your hands clamped over your
eyes as you hunch against the wind. You haven’t stopped swearing yet, but
you’re running out of things to say.
“Holy fuck, shut up,” says Dave, somewhere off to your right. You peel one eye
open to a slit but even that sends jabbing pains straight into your skull.
“This must be your miserable clusterfuck of a dream bubble because I’ve never
been anywhere so bright,” you say, squeezing your eyes shut again.
“Looks like LOFAF,” Dave says. Oh, of course. The Land of Frost and Frogs.
Jade’s planet. It had seemed so comfortably dim on your computer screen.
“Weren’t you killed here once?” you say.
“After Jade got the forge working,” he says, sounding unconcerned.
It is so fucking cold. The wind is cutting through your shirt like it isn’t
even there. You wave a hand out toward where you think Dave might be standing.
For a second your fingers brush his shirt, but then he flash steps away.
“Find us shelter,” you snap. “I’m going to freeze to death.”
“Right away, your majesty,” he says. “Let me get right on that.”
You carefully open your eyes open just a crack. They immediately start to
water, but you can keep them open enough to see blurry images. Dave is a dark
red shape to your right. Everything around you is white, white, white.
“Where is her hive?” you say.
“Fuck if I know,” Dave says. “No need to cry your pretty pink princess tears,
Vantas. We’ll find it.”
“I’m not crying, nookrot. It’s bright out,” you growl, wiping viciously at your
eyes. “Don’t you have another pair of sunglasses?”
“Nope.”
“Of course you do, you dick. Give me your fucking glasses.”
“Nope.”
“You have human eyes! You can see better than I can!”
“I’m not giving you my glasses,” he says. “It’s too bright out.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m a little busy right now.”
He rises up out of the snow. You hate these god tier kids and their stupid
powers. The sky is a swirl of blue and purple aurora. It’s too bright to look
at so you just cover your face with your hands and peek out between your
fingers. Dave is a smeared red dot in the sky. He hovers there, buffeted by the
wind, before dropping back down.
“Looks like there might be something that way.” He points, a wavering shape
against the tears in your eyes.
“Fine.” You wipe at your face again and start stomping in that direction.
The snow is knee deep, and your pants are soaked through within a minute. Dave
is drifting over the snow, his sneakers barely brushing the top of it.
“Stop showing off,” you say.
“If I had to die for it, I might as well enjoy the perks,” he says.
Your nose is running almost as much as your eyes are, and it’s starting to
freeze on your face. You scrub at it with your hands.
“Like dying for it was really that hard,” you say. “You didn’t even do it
yourself. You just stood there.”
“How would you know what dying feels like?”
“I died once, dickbag. On Prospit. It sucked but it wasn’t difficult. Anyway,
just because I didn’t reach god tier doesn’t mean I don’t know what it
involves. Someone kills you on your quest bed, your dream self and your real
self merge together, and while you’re so busy with that hard work, the totem
animals of your planet gather to feed.”
Dave turns to stare at you. “Wait,” he says. “Feed?”
“Obviously.” You tuck your hands into your armpits and hunch over, trying to
warm yourself.
“I don’t think that’s how it works, dude,” Dave says, sounding unimpressed,
which is really his default way of talking so it’s hard to tell. “Hell, I don’t
even know what my totem animal would be. The nakkodiles, maybe. That would have
been something to see. A bunch of nakkodiles standing around my hot corpse,
nakking and day trading.”
You swipe at your nose angrily and then hunch over again. “Those were your
consorts, dumbass, not your totems.”
“Consort? Like… spouse?” There’s a pause. “Man, I wasn’t playing this game
right at all, was I?”
“I don’t even know how the fuck you managed to get this far,” you mutter.
“What was your totem animal? Oh, right. God tier was a fucking cakewalk but you
couldn’t even manage it.” His cape snaps in the wind. He tugs it around
himself.
“It wasn’t a part of the alpha timeline, asshole. If I’d reached god tier I’d
be doomed right now. That’s probably the only reason you were able to manage
it: because it was fate. This is probably the only timeline where you managed
to get this far.”
“What was your planet, anyway?”
“The land of fuck off and die.”
“Suits you.”
You wipe at your eyes again. The horizon doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.
You’d almost ask Dave to pick you up and fly with you but you’d rather beat
yourself to death with Gamzee’s clubs. “It was the Land of Pulse and Haze, you
utter bulgesucking moron. It was one big fucking joke. Oceans of bright red
blood everywhere.”
“Oh man. Was your totem a vampire bat? No, wait. It was a mosquito, wasn’t it.
Fuck yes, that’s it.”
“What,” you say flatly.
“It’s this tiny annoying insect that’s obsessed with blood and makes this high
pitched whining noise. There is literally no better totem for you.”
“Is there a name on your planet for an animal that thinks its jokes are funny
when they’re really not?”
A harsh wind batters the two of you before Dave can respond and you both sway.
Your eyes burn with the sheer blinding brightness of this miserable world. All
of the snow is cheerfully reflecting the hateful sun into your eyes wherever
you look. The wind keeps whipping scintillating sheets of ice crystals into the
air, which flay away the top layer of skin on your face when they hit you.
“How far away is it?” you say. At least the effort of struggling through the
snow is keeping you warm.
“Maybe a mile?” Dave says. He rises up again into the air for another look,
then sinks back down. “Yeah, it’s… pretty far.”
“Fuuuck,” you groan. You’re trying to think of warm memories in the hopes that
the dream bubble will get the hint, but it seems to be taking its sweet time.
“I’m going to freeze to death in this fucking bubble.”
“Is that possible?” Dave asks.
“Is what possible.”
“Dying for real here.”
“I don’t think freezing to death is very heroic or just,” you say. “As much as
I think you’d really fucking deserve it. But yeah, obviously. Our real bodies
are here. We’re not dreaming or dead. We’re actually here.”
“So you’re saying that if we die in the dream, we die in real life.”
“This is real life.”
Another gust of wind. You’re sweating from the exertion of kicking through the
snow, although you can’t feel your toes anymore. Your spectacular life is going
to be even better once all your toes freeze and fall off. The sunlight sends
sharp pains lancing through your thinkpan. You cover your eyes with both hands,
but after three steps you trip up an incline in the ground and fall to one
knee. You drag yourself to your feet again, cursing, and resign yourself to
squinting in the light.
After only a few minutes, the tip of Jade’s hive comes into view, but it’s
nearly an hour before you’ve reached the top of the hill where her hive sits.
You are a frozen, shivering mess and your fingers don’t want to work on the
door handle. Dave gets it open and the two of you step into Jade’s hive.
The building is as cold as a tomb, and unnervingly silent. It is, however,
blessedly dark. You can feel your whole face relax.
“Fireplace in here,” Dave says. “And… creepy dead things.”
You follow him into the room. There are stuffed dead things all over the place,
along with globes and suits of armor. The area in front of the purple and gold
fireplace is oddly empty. There is nothing in the grate, but there is a
collection of seasoned wood in a niche in the wall. Dave takes out enough wood
for a fire and you find the ignition sticks, and once Dave has arranged the
wood in the fireplace, you take it apart and rebuild it to your own
satisfaction before lighting the kindling.
You both sit on the hearth as the kindling slowly catches fire. Glassy-eyed
dead things stare down at you from the walls. Your clothes are starting to drip
on the floor but fuck if you’re going to take those off. You don’t have
anything to replace them with and you’re not going to sit here naked while they
dry. You do peel off your shoes, though, and shove your feet close to the fire.
“I don’t know how your species survives in this sort of place,” you say through
chattering teeth.
“Ask Lalonde. She’s the one who grew up in a place where it actually snowed,”
Dave replies. He rubs his hands together and then holds them out to the fire.
“It didn’t snow in troll land?”
“Anyone who had the bad sense to hatch in an uninhabitable place deserved their
quick and painful death,” you say. You rub at your aching eyes. Dave is
shivering too. At least his stupid god tier pajamas actually had the decency to
get a little wet, even if they’re not nearly as wet as yours. If they’d
remained clean and dry after all that you would have had to stab someone. He’s
huddled in his cape.
“Christ, Vantas, you’re still going to freeze if you sit there in wet clothes,”
Dave says.
“Fuck you. I’m fine.” You edge closer to the fire.
“Suit yourself. But I’m not going to cuddle with you to cure your hypothermia.”
“I’ll bite your fingers off if you even try it,” you snap.
“Coming on a little strong there, aren’t you.”
“I am not flirting with you.”
“You hateflirt with everyone.”
“I do not,” you say, scandalized. “Just because I’m constantly being forced to
point out what morons you all are doesn’t mean I’m flirting with you.”
“Hatefloozy.”
“You’re the one who keeps flirting!”
“Hate flirting isn’t even a thing with humans.”
“You’re doing it right now!”
“No, you see, this is just me making fun of you. There’s nothing sexual about
this. Not for me, anyway.”
You hunch your shoulders furiously and hug your knees. “Not for me either,” you
snarl.
There is a moment of silence. Somehow the fire is making you shiver even more,
although you’re definitely starting to feel your toes so you guess that’s a
good sign. Except that your toes really fucking hurt. You rub at them gingerly.
“This is the biggest dream bubble I’ve ever seen,” you say after a moment. “We
could be here for a while.”
“Could be,” Dave says noncommittally.
“The others must be around somewhere.”
Dave just shrugs. There’s really no way to find the others unless you happen to
stumble across them by chance. Physical distance doesn’t have much meaning
here, and it’s only incredible misfortune that you ended up with Dave. You
could have just as easily ended up with Gamzee, and you haven’t seen him in a
week.
Before you can focus on your failings as a moirail, you shiver and edge even
closer to the warmth. You’re both practically sitting on the fire at this
point. It’s blazing merrily and eating through the dry wood with a voracious
appetite. Dave picks another log off the pile and feeds it to the fire. You
grab a fireplace poker and prod the logs a bit. Sometimes back in your hive it
would get cold enough in the dark season for a fire, and since your lusus
tended to flee at the sight of flame, it would be just you.
“Did you ever see my planet?” Dave asks. “The Land of Heat and Clockwork.”
“A little,” you say. You used to see glimpses of it every time you checked up
on what Terezi was doing in the lab.
“Lava everywhere,” Dave says. “But it’s video game lava, not real world lava.
Real world lava would cook you like pig on a spit if you got close to it but
LOHAC had all these clockwork gear stepping stones across the lava and it would
ruin the effect if you couldn’t even use them so I guess the game made sure the
lava was just hot-day-in-Texas hot. It could still kill you if you fell in,
though.”
You both pause. The room is still and cold. You can hear the wind howling
outside.
“Nice try,” you say. “But I don’t think the bubble took the hint.”
“Don’t say that out loud. It can probably hear you.”
“It’s not sentient, dumb fuck.”
“You were just talking about it taking the hint.”
“Oh god, shut up,” you groan. “Okay. Light season on Alternia was the worst
fucking season. The sun never set so it just stayed hot for weeks and weeks and
you couldn’t even leave your hive because you’d die of exposure. There was one
light season where my neighbor’s stupid lusus went outside for whatever reason
and died out there, and you could smell it rotting out there for days until the
smell attracted some of the undead that were roaming the area.”
“Jesus fuck, Vantas, we don’t want to get into a worse memory than the one
we’re in.”
“I would rather be warm in my hive right now listening to a feeding frenzy
outside than have to sit here in this fucking frozen tomb.”
Dave heaves a sigh. “Okay, fine. Take off your shirt and turn around.”
You turn to stare at him. “What.”
“Your shirt is wet.”
“I’m not taking off my fucking shirt.”
“It’s only making you colder.”
“I’ll be even colder without it!”
“Fine, whatever, I don’t care. Turn around.”
“I’m not turning my back on you, Strider.”
“Do you have to fight with me over everything.”
“Yes.”
He actually snorts at that. Then he rolls his eyes and edges around until his
back is to you.
“My cape is really long and it will wrap around the both of us, but I’m not
going to spoon you, Vantas. Lean your back against mine so I can wrap it around
the two of us.”
You stare at him a moment longer, caught between wanting to argue with him some
more and wanting to wrap that cape around yourself. Your physical discomfort
wins out. With a long-suffering sigh to tell him just how much you hate this
situation, you turn around and lean your back against his. He passes one end of
his cape to you. You wrap it around yourself and pass it back.
You’re now wrapped up like a god tier burrito. It is actually surprisingly
comfortable in the cape, and although your shirt is still uncomfortably damp,
Dave’s back is warm.
“Don’t tell anyone we did this,” Dave says.
“Right, because I’m such a glutton for humiliation,” you reply.
“Don’t talk about your weird kinks while we’re cuddling.”
“When you fall asleep I’m going to set your cape on fire.”
“Threaten the cape and you lose cape privileges.”
You reluctantly shut up. Your head hurts anyway, and your eyes feel gritty and
swollen. You close them and bury your face in your knees. Now that you’re
warming up, the exhaustion of an hour struggling through knee deep snow is
catching up with you.
Dave falls silent too. You can feel the muscles in his back flex when he shifts
his position. The fire pops and crackles and casts a sheet of warmth against
the side of your head. It feels nice.
===============================================================================

You jerk awake some indeterminate amount of time later. You’re still wrapped in
the cape, although you have sagged enough to the side that it’s wrapped
uncomfortably around your neck. You try to open your eyes but it feels like
someone peeled up your eyelids while you were sleeping and rubbed a handful of
sand into your eyeballs.
It is hot. For a panicked second you think that the fire spread while you were
asleep, but there is no roar of fire, just a furnace-like heat all around you.
You struggle to free yourself from the cape, your eyes still squeezed shut. You
feel Dave flinch and wake up as you do so.
“The fuck?” he says muzzily.
You pry open your left eye with two fingers. Both your eyes are swollen nearly
shut, and when you get your left eye open, it still feels like someone’s
holding a sandblaster to it. All you can see is a smear of red and black. You
let your eye snap shut again.
You get free of the cape, but as soon as your hand touches the ground, you
flinch away. The ground feels like metal left out under the hot sun.
“It’s LOHAC,” says Dave, confirming your suspicions. “Guess reminiscing about
it worked after all.”
You hear him get to his feet. There is a knot of panic in your chest. You rub
at your eyes and try to open them again. Fuck, that hurts. Your eyes are
welling up again but it doesn’t help the feeling of sand. Shit, maybe those icy
winds actually scraped your eyeballs. Is that possible?
“Where’s your hive?” you say.
“It’s right…” Dave trails off. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What the fuck does it look like.”
“You’re right, I should have been more specific. What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“I can’t. Fucking. See.”
You hear the shifting of fabric as he squats down in front of you. You start to
scoot backwards and suddenly his hand clamps down on your arm.
“Don’t move any further back,” he says flatly. Oh right. Lava.
“I must have scratched them or something,” you say.
There is a pause. When Dave speaks again, he sounds oddly guilty. “You could be
snowblind.”
“What’s that?”
He tugs on your arm, helping pull you up to your feet. “You got sunburned on
whatever the troll word for cornea is. Here.” There’s a pause, and then he
slides something onto your nose. You reach up and feel it. It’s his pair of
sunglasses.
“It’s a little late for that,” you say. You try to sound annoyed but your voice
comes out shaky instead.
“It’ll heal,” he says. “I think.”
“Fantastic,” you mutter. He’s still holding your forearm in a tight grip as if
he expects you to pitch over into the lava at any second. You actually feel
slightly grateful, although you’d never admit it. You wouldn’t have been
surprised if he’d decided to leave you to find your own way to his hive.
Honestly, you might have done that to him if your positions were reversed. Or
at least, you probably would have threatened to do that, and the fact that he’s
not being a total asshole to you right now when he has every reason to be is
making you feel strangely sheepish. And that just makes you feel annoyed.
“Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here already.”
“Right this way, princess,” Dave says. He tugs on your arm. You take an uneasy
step forward, and then another.
After a third step, he stops you again. “We’re at the edge of the platform,” he
says. “You’re going to have to jump. It’s not a big jump. The gap is maybe two
feet wide.”
You step up onto the slightly raised edge of the platform and then freeze. You
try to open your eyes but all you can see is smeary colors and pain.
“We’ll go at the same time,” he says.
“I’m not jumping blindly over lava,” you reply.
“Come on. It’s like a trust exercise. Do trolls do those?”
“Trust exercise?” you say flatly, turning your head in his direction.
“Yeah, actually I doubt it,” he replies.
“I already told you I don’t like you in any quadrant.”
“We’re not talking romance, Vantas.”
“I don’t trust you, Strider.”
“It’s fucked up that you have to have a formal relationship with someone before
you can trust them not to get you killed.”
“Humans aren’t exactly the kind and selfless people that Egbert was always
making you out to be,” you say. “I watched your stupid world history. You take
advantage of the weak just as much as trolls do. You just pretend you don’t
like it.”
“What am I going to gain out of throwing you in the lava,” Dave says, sounding
irritated now. “Seriously. Your psycho clown monorail will hunt me down and
beat me to death. Terezi will probably eviscerate me. I’m not going to kill you
for fun. Scratch that—I have no plans to kill you at all.”
You’re both still hesitating on the edge. You’re feeling that knot of panic in
your chest again, the same one you felt when you realized there was something
wrong with your eyes. But what else are you going to do? Wait here?
Dave’s hand is clenched around your upper arm. You reach across with your
opposite hand and clamp it around his wrist. If you’re going to fall into the
lava, you’re taking him with you.
“Okay,” he says. “It’s straight ahead. On the count of three, we’ll jump.”
You nod.
“One,” he says, and shifts his weight back. “Two. Three.”
You both jump, and your feet find metal. You stumble a little but your grip on
Dave helps you keep your balance. Your palms are sweating. Actually, all of you
is sweating. It is extremely hot here.
“One down,” Dave says. “Five more to go.”
“Fuck,” you mutter.
The next one goes better, and on the third, you’re actually starting to think
you might make it without falling into the lava.
“This next one’s smaller,” Dave says uneasily as you pause on the lip of the
third. “There’s not a lot of room for error. Ready?”
“Ready,” you say.
He counts down. On three, you both leap.
Your right foot lands on the platform, but your left one hits the edge of the
platform and slips. You made an undignified squawk and throw your weight
against Dave, jerking your foot back from where it nearly skimmed the lava.
Dave staggers sideways and then you’re both tipping.
You clutch at him as if that’s somehow going to get your balance back. He grabs
you back and drags you up somehow and then you’re spinning in midair, your feet
dangling. Fucking god tier powers.
His hand is still gripping your forearm hard enough to bruise, and his other
hand is wedged under your armpit. You’ve got one arm hooked over his shoulder
and one wrapped around his waist and your face is mashed against his chest. It
is the least dignified position you could possibly have ended up in.
“Christ, Vantas, you’re heavier than you look,” he says, his voice strained.
You’re still revolving gently in midair.
“You’re just as much of an asshole as you look,” you say into his chest. “Put
me down.”
“I’m moving us to the next one, princess. That one’s too small for both of us
to stand on.”
“You’re also a liar.”
“No, that wasn’t an attempt on your life. That was an accident.”
“You were lying about not being attracted to me.”
He lets out a scoffing noise. “How do you figure.”
“I can feel it, asshole.”
“Feel what.”
“It’s right there.”
“Oh my god Vantas, don’t talk about my dick. I’m not even hard so I don’t know
what you’re talking about.”
Your foot touches the platform. Dave lowers you both down so you’re standing.
“Then why is it out?”
“Out of what?”
“Out of—” You stop. “Yours just hangs there? All the time?”
“Yours… goes somewhere?” He sounds appalled.
There is a pause. You are hit with a wave of morbid curiosity and by Dave’s
silence, you have a feeling he was as well.
“There’s one more jump left,” Dave says, abruptly changing the subject.
“You couldn’t just fly us there?”
“While you were rubbing against my dick? No.”
“I wasn’t rubbing against anything, asshole.”
“On the count of three.”
If you clutch him a little tighter for this jump, it’s only because you want to
make sure he doesn’t intentionally tip you into the lava this time after that
debacle. Still, when you land, you’re shaky and grateful for solid ground.
===============================================================================

Naturally, Dave lives at the top of his hivestem. You’ve sweated through all of
your clothes by the time you reach the top.
“I’m taking a shower,” Dave says when you get into the apartment. “Don’t mess
anything up.”
“I’ll be really careful while I’m fumbling around blindly,” you say.
“Look out for all the swords,” he replies, and you hear him head into the
ablution block. After a moment, water starts running.
You grope your way slowly to where you have fuzzy memories of seeing a couch.
You find it, although you have to pry a few shitty swords and plush things out
of the cushions before you can sit down.
Dave comes out of the shower a few minutes later and you hear him moving
around.
“Shower’s free,” he says.
“I don’t have a change of clothes.”
He goes away again, then comes back and shoves some fabric into your hands.
“Here,” he says. “Never let it be said that a Strider wasn’t an accommodating
host.”
You fumble with the clothes until you’re satisfied that they’re actually
something suitable to wear. Then you clamber out of the sagging couch. Dave
takes pity on you and leads you to the bathroom. He leaves you to figure out
the ablution trap controls on your own.
Once you’ve washed off all the gross sweat and let cold water wash over your
swollen eyes, you dry off and get dressed. The pants Dave has given you hit you
at the knees, and the shirt is even worse, leaving your arms bare up to the
shoulder. You hate showing skin. Bare skin means getting found out. It means
there’s a possibility of getting a scratch or a scrape or a bruise that brings
your blood up to the surface.
But Dave already knows your blood color. Hell, his blood is the same color as
yours. And it’s extremely hot in here.
You carefully captchalogue your own clothes in case of a bubble change. You put
his sunglasses back on, just because.
“I don’t know how to treat snowblindness,” Dave says when you come out of the
ablution block. “But I found some bandages so you don’t accidentally open your
eyes.”
You make your slow, careful way back to the couch and sit down. “I’ll notice if
I open them by accident.”
“If you expose them to the light too much, you might not get your vision back.”
That shuts you up. You hear him rip open some plastic.
“Give it to me,” you say. “I can do it.”
“I’ve known how to take care of injuries since I was five,” Dave says.
“So have I,” you say.
He presses two soft cotton pads into your hand. “Hold these against your eyes.”
You take off the sunglasses and press the pads to your eyelids. He wraps gauze
very gently around your head, trapping the cotton against your face. The world
becomes comfortably dark. He fastens the end of the gauze and retreats across
the room.
You pull your feet up onto the couch and clasp your ankles. Your eyes are so
sore right now that you want to dig them out of your skull.
“I found some chips,” Dave says, returning to the couch and ripping open a bag.
He drops down at the other end of the couch and starts crunching loudly.
“Give me some,” you say.
“I’m holding them out to you, dude.”
You scowl and wave a hand out in his direction. “You wouldn’t do this to
Terezi.”
“Nah, she’d have sniffed out the bag already and would be sitting on my lap.”
You feel a surge of fury. You snatch your hand back. “Fuck you,” you say.
“Hatetramp.”
You hate him so much. You want to storm out of the room but that’s not really
possible right now. You hunch in the seat.
“You know what really sucked about being in my hive with the undead outside?”
you say viciously instead. “My lusus couldn’t go hunting so we had no food in
the house, and everything smelled like rot for days. It got into everything.
You couldn’t even think about food because every time you took a breath you
could taste rot on your tongue.”
He tosses the bag of chips at you. “If we end up there, Vantas, I swear to
god.”
You snatch the bag and shove a handful of chips in your mouth. “It would be
better than the land of heatstroke and tetanus.”
“Six hours ago you were freezing to death. Do you ever stop complaining?”
You take another handful of chips out of the bag. “You’ve known me for a
sweep,” you say.
“Yeah, guess I could have answered that question for myself.”
You busy yourself with devouring half the bag of chips. He gets off the couch
again and you hear him moving around the room. The television turns on, but
there is nothing but static on any of the channels, so he turns on a video
game.
“Just as shitty as I remember,” he mutters to himself, settling back on the
couch. “Hey, I have a second controller around here somewhere. We can do two
player. Oh, wait.”
“Still not funny,” you say.
“Funny for one of us,” Dave says.
“No wonder Terezi likes you so much.”
Dave’s voice is flat. “Why does this always have to be about Terezi.”
You grit your teeth and turn your face away from him. Of course it’s always
about Terezi.  All of your interactions with Dave have to do with Terezi on
some level.
You’d like to think that if Dave had never shown up on that stupid meteor, you
would have had a chance with Terezi. You and she have been vacillating between
matespritship and kismesissitude for sweeps, and if it had just been you,
Terezi, Kanaya and Gamzee on the meteor, the two of you wouldn’t have any
choice but to confront your feelings for each other.
Well, you’ve been vacillating, anyway. You think Terezi has been… waiting,
maybe. Waiting for you to settle down. It’s not that she’s not interested in
you. Of course she is. She’s made overtures. More than once! But you kept
rejecting them for one stupid reason or another. Romance is serious business
and you have to do it right or it isn’t going to work, and if you just rushed
into something you would ruin it. You wanted it to be perfect.
But then Dave came along and you lost her attention once and for all. It has
nothing to do with your own indecision. It has to do with Dave and his
sunglasses and his coolkid charm and his ability to stare down the unknown with
an expression of complete indifference. You can hate yourself for your own
stupidity—and you do—but when you’re looking for someone to blame, Dave is a
blazing red target.
“Just fucking talk to her,” Dave says. “Stop bringing your issues up with me.”
“Don’t give me romantic advice, Strider.”
“Yeah, since you’re such an expert,” he says. “You care more about whining
about how unfair this is than you actually care about her. If she actually
agreed to sex you up, you’d have no idea what to do with yourself.”
You are nearly speechless in your fury. ‘Nearly’ is a long way from
‘completely’, however. “You don’t know the first thing about troll romance.”
“No, I just don’t give a flying fuck,” Dave replies. “There’s a difference.”
“Then why are you getting in the middle of it?”
“I’m not getting in the middle of anything. I’m just standing here and you all
are dancing around me like I’m a goddamned maypole. Maybe if you were paying
less attention to me you could get somewhere with TZ.”
You groan and bury your face in your knees in frustration. “I am not flirting
with you,” you say.
“Are you sure? Because it’s really starting to look like it from here.”
“Fuck you, Strider.”
“Like I said.”
“Get tetanus and die.”
A hand touches the back of your head. You hadn’t heard him move, so it makes
you flinch,  jerking your head up.
“What the fuck,” you say.
You feel hot breath on your face the second before his lips touch yours. It’s
just as unexpected as the hand on your head, and for a second you freeze right
where you are.
You should really pull away. You should shove him away and tell him what a
pervert he is. You should dig your claws into his neck. But instead you find
yourself parting your lips under the press of his tongue. When he pulls back
slightly, you push forward, closing the distance again. His tongue deftly
avoids your sharp teeth (don’t think about how he must have experience kissing
Terezi, don’t think about it, don’t think about it).
The second time he pulls back, he laughs. He lets go of you.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he drawls. You hear him move away, back to his
end of the couch.
A surge of hate and abrupt shame chokes you speechless. You wipe at your mouth
with the back of your hand.
“You,” you start to say, but you stop there because you know you’re only going
to embarrass yourself.
“Go on,” he says.
You shove off the couch, getting to your feet, but then once you get there,
there’s nowhere you can go. You can’t storm off, as much as you want to. You
just stand there.
You hate him hate him hate him hate him hate him hate him.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” he says. You hear him get off the couch and cross
the room. After a moment, you hear a door close.
===============================================================================

In a few hours, your eyes start feeling a little better and you think maybe
they’re not going to shrivel up into raisins. The swelling has gone down,
anyway, though you’re too afraid to try opening them. You sleep for a little
while, and when you wake up you half-expect the dream bubble to have changed,
but it’s still the same as before. You hear music playing somewhere.
You can’t even read with these bandages on. You have nothing to distract you
from your own thoughts. You should have clawed his stupid eyes out when he got
close to you. He should be the one suffering right now, not you.
Everyone else would always listen to your plans. During the game, you were the
leader and you made sure everyone did the things they needed to do. They may
have hated it and complained pretty much constantly, but they did what you told
them eventually. And somehow you've all managed to remain in the alpha
timeline, even if more than half of you had to die in the process.
Any false move could throw you out of the alpha timeline, though. You might
have made it this far—and honestly, who knows how you managed that—but there is
no telling when someone will make a choice that sends you spiraling into a
doomed timeline. And if that happens, it’s going to be your responsibility,
because you were the leader and you should have stopped it.
For the most part, you have been doing okay, except. Dave. He just doesn’t
listen to you. He is ruining everything you planned, and he’s distracting
Terezi, and he’s distracting you, and what was even up with that stupid,
stupid, stupid kiss. Why does he feel a need to ruin everything you have your
hands on.
Your eyes are still watering relentlessly. You busy yourself searching for the
medical supplies that Dave had been using, but when you peel off the bandages,
your eyes start watering even worse, so you make your slow way to the ablution
block again to splash cold water on your face.
While you’re in the middle of that, you hear the music abruptly get louder as a
door opens. Your shoulders tense.
“Any better?” he says from the door to the ablution block.
You don’t answer. You cup your hands under the spray and then press your eyes
into the pool of water. You get a breathtaking moment of relief before the pain
starts up again.
A cabinet opens. “Move,” Dave says, nudging you.
“Busy,” you reply.
“Move your ass, Vantas. I’m trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help, asshole.”
He fists a hand in the back of your shirt and pulls you up from where you’re
hunched over the sink. You elbow him in the chest. He puts something under the
spray of water, then shuts off the faucet.
“Here,” he says, slapping a wet cloth over your eyes. Water runs in rivulets
down your chin. You hold the cloth in place and sigh in relief.
“Better?”
“Fuck yes.”
“Maybe you won’t complain so much next time I try to help you.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Yeah, I thought that was probably asking too much.”
There is a pause. Dave’s still standing there. After a moment, you take the
cloth from your eyes and wet it under the faucet again. You tip back your head
and drape it over your eyes. Water runs into your ears and down your neck.
Dave’s hand touches the top of your head and you freeze, waiting. All he does
is run his thumb across your forehead, tugging your hair free from where it’s
been trapped under the wet cloth. You belatedly brush his hand away.
“I appreciate it, Strider, but I’ve already got a moirail,” you say.
“Speaking of, where is he?” Dave’s voice sounds completely disinterested, like
his hand on your face was just a casual touch that he would have done to
anyone. He hasn’t moved, though. You’re still standing too fucking close
together.
“It’s no one’s fucking business,” you say.
“I’m starting to think you have no idea where he is.”
You don’t want to tell Dave that your moirail terrifies you. That you know it
was your lack of attention in the first place that contributed to his murder
spree, even if you weren’t moirails at the time. That the less you see him, the
worse you know he’s getting, and the worse he gets, the less you see him.
“Are you trying to flirt in all my quadrants?” you say scathingly instead.
“Fucking quadrants, man. How do they work.”
You wring out the washcloth over the sink. Your eyes throb.
“Let me see,” Dave says.
“See what.”
His hand touches your face again, just lightly resting on your cheekbone.
“Don’t worry, the lights are off,” he says.
You suspiciously crack your eyes open to a squint. The room is dark, with only
a little light coming in from the open doorway. Your eyes immediately begin to
tear up, but you can see the blurry shape of Dave in front of you. He’s not
wearing his sunglasses, since he gave them to you. His irises are as red as
yours.
“Your pupils are still all closed up,” he says. You turn your head toward the
mirror. He lets his hand drop from your face. You can see the bright crimson of
your irises. The ambers of your eyes are veined through with bright red as
well. The tiny dots of your pupils are constricted as tightly as they can go.
You squeeze your eyes shut, feeling tears of pain spill down your cheeks.
“There are those princess tears again,” Dave says.
“Fuck you,” you say, but without vehemence.
“Hatetrollop.”
“Bulgemuncher.”
“So what is a bulge, anyway?”
“Oh god,” you say.
“No, seriously, I’m curious. Is it like a tentacle? Rose told me she thinks
you’ve all got tentadicks.”
“Where did the fucking bandages go.” You grope along the counter.
“Here.” Dave captures your hand and gives you the cotton pads again. You hear
him unrolling a length of gauze. “I’m going to have to tell her that your dicks
retract.”
“What is wrong with you.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not curious too.”
“Even if I cared about your alien bulge, I’m really not in the mood to drop my
pants and make comparisons right now.”
“You know how in movies, the blind person always wants to feel someone’s face
to see what they look like?”
“Don’t even finish that thought, Strider.”
Dave drapes a length of gauze over your eyes and begins winding it. You comb
your hair roughly back from your face with your fingers. The front of it is wet
enough that it stays where you put it. Dave fastens the end of the gauze.
“Good enough for government work,” he says. He steps away from you and you hear
him start to package up the medical supplies again.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” you say. “We’re not friends.”
“Why the fuck do you have to keep doing this,” Dave says. His response is
suddenly, bitingly annoyed. “You can’t trust me if we’re not in a quadrant. I
can’t help you if we’re not in a quadrant. Stop trying to put me in one of your
little boxes.”
“I’m not trying to put you in a quadrant!” you say. “But you can’t just
humiliate me one second and help bandage me the next. I don’t know what’s going
on.” By the end of that, you’re almost plaintive, and you hate yourself for it.
There is a pause. You don’t like pauses when you can’t see anything. You wish
you could see his expression, although admittedly this is Dave. Even if you
could see him, you wouldn’t be able to read him.
“I should have given you my sunglasses,” he says finally. “My eyes are
sensitive to light but not as bad as yours.”
“You’d have been snowblind too.”
“Not as bad, probably.”
“So this is about guilt.”
“Not sure. What does guilt signify in troll land? If I say I feel guilty, does
that mean I want to brood your eggs or something?”
“It means you want to suck my nook, Strider.” You nudge him out of the way.
“I’m not going to stand here in the ablution block any more.”
He follows you out. Your progress is slow and fumbling but he doesn’t attempt
to help. “Nook,” he says. “I’m assuming that’s an innie. Do all trolls have
those too?”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty,” you say, a little more loudly than necessary.
“You’re the one who can fly. If you’d been blind and I had to lead you around,
we both would have fallen into the lava.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Don’t pretend you actually think I’m a good leader, asshole.” You find the
couch and sit back down. Your eyes are already throbbing enough that you want
another wet compress, but fuck it if you’re going through all that again.
The couch springs creak as he sits down at the other end. “Being the leader is
like your one defining character trait.”
“No, shouting is,” you say. “Don’t be stupid, Strider. I sucked at being
leader. There were twelve of us when we started and now we’re down to four.
Egbert at least didn’t kill off seventy five percent of his team.”
“Alpha timeline, remember? It had to happen the way it did.”
“That’s so reassuring. I may suck as a leader, but at least my catastrophic
failure was required by fate.” You sigh. “We could go over the edge at any
second. Any decision we make could be the wrong one that gets us all killed.”
“Or it could be the right one that gets us killed because we’re supposed to
die. It’ll drive you crazy if you think about it too much.”
“Why are we even still alive?” you say. “How did we make it this far, with
everyone else dead?”
You hear the shift of fabric that could be a shrug. “Because we’re still
needed?”
“Why are we still important to keep alive when the others weren’t?”
There is a pause. You are hit with an odd surge of gratitude that he’s actually
thinking about his answer instead of giving you his usual fast talk.
“Because we’re the knights,” Dave says finally. “That’s what we’re here for. At
some point, someone’s going to need us to come to their defense.”
“And fail at it,” you say.
“Maybe. But if it’s any consolation, we probably won’t survive either way.”
He probably didn’t mean it as one, but for some reason that thought is actually
a comfort. You’re doomed no matter what choices you make. You don’t doubt that
what Dave says is true. It fits perfectly into your view of the universe to
know that your reward for dancing along to the puppet master behind this whole
game is just going to be a messy and probably humiliating death. You’ve always
known this to be true, but for the first time you realize that Dave does too.
He’s a Knight, just like you are. His death will be just as gut-wrenchingly
pointless as yours.
He’s an infuriating asshole who makes you want to shove a fork into your aural
canals just so you never have to hear his insufferable drawl ever again, but of
everyone on the meteor—hell, even everyone in the dream bubbles—he’s the only
one who has ever appeared to understand the pan-melting stupidity of your place
in the universe.
You reach out a hand in his direction, fumbling at the couch cushions. After a
second, he takes hold of your hand. You crawl across the couch, using his hand
to guide you.
When you reach him, you sit back on your heels, hesitating.
“Just do it already, Vantas,” he says, sounding almost amused. You reach out
your other hand and grab a fistful of his shirt, then drag him in for a kiss.
His free hand comes up to the back of your head when you do. He’s not pushing
you away. You’d kind of thought he might. Instead, he kisses you back almost
lazily, as if he’s seen this coming a long way off. The smug bastard probably
has.
If you could see him right now, you’d probably want to hit him, but with your
eyes closed, all you can focus on in his mouth. He tastes like potato chips and
the flat chemical taste of soda. His breathing is slow and even. You think of
him kissing Terezi like this, like he’s just doing it to pass the time, and now
you really do want to hit him.
Instead, you sling your thigh over his legs and kiss him thoroughly, like it’s
a test you have to pass. When you let go of his hand in order to cup the back
of his neck, he slides his hands down your flanks and settles them on your ass,
his thumbs resting on the points of your hips.
When his breath hitches slightly, you chase it with your mouth, trying to get
him to do it again. After a moment he laughs quietly against your lips, a
little huff of air. He tugs you forward, enough to pull you completely against
him.
“For future reference,” he says between kisses, “That’s what it feels like when
I’m turned on.”
There is something intriguingly alien pressing against you. You rock your hips
up against it once and are rewarded by another catch in Dave’s breath. He
presses his mouth against yours hard, then pulls away.
“Okay, uh, what are we doing here,” he says.
“I think we’re making out,” you reply.
“How far are we going.”
“I don’t know,” you say honestly.
“I wasn’t expecting an anatomy lesson this soon,” he says.
You start to slide off his lap. His hands tighten on your hips and he tugs you
back.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he says. “That was pretty much the opposite of a complaint.
You can just… continue to sit right there.”
You tip your forehead against his. “Tell me you don’t want to,” you say.
“I’m withholding judgement until I see what’s in your pants,” he replies.
“Good plan.”
Now that you’ve said that, though, you’re uneasy. What are you two even doing?
Is Dave your kismesis now, or is this just a one-time dream bubble thing? When
you get back to the meteor, is he going to tell Terezi? Will you? Has he done
this with Terezi? No, that’s not possible—he would know how trolls worked if he
did. What if you two get naked and you can’t deal with his bizarre alien
anatomy? Worse, what if he’s grossed out by yours?
On the other hand, you’re really very turned on right now. Part of it is
because you really, really hate Dave and you might have been thinking of this
for a while, even if you would never in a million years admit to it. Part of it
is because you are seven sweeps old. The bits of your thinkpan that are hinting
that this really isn’t the best idea right now are being drowned out by a flood
of hormones that are shouting NOW PLEASE.
You reach down in between the two of you and press the back of your hand
against his groin. He pushes up against you, then reaches down and pushes your
hand out of the way so he can unzip himself.
“No claws, okay?” he says a little breathlessly. You nod and he takes your hand
and wraps it around his dick.
It’s harder and thicker than a bone bulge, and distressingly dry. That
shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, since he said it doesn’t stay sheathed
when not in use. His breathing rapidly becomes uneven when you slide your hand
up him, from base to tip.
His hand finds the front of your pants and you flinch slightly in surprise. He
starts to unbutton your pants and you let go of him to help. You’re already
half-unsheathed. When your pants are unfastened, he hesitates.
“Uh,” he says. “Wasn’t really… expecting that color.”
You freeze, and you feel your face abruptly heat up. Goddamned mutant blood.
“Fuck,” you whisper. How could you have been so stupid as to forget that? You’d
just thought that Dave wouldn’t think it was weird. After all, he had the same
blood color as you, right?
“No, hey,” he says immediately. “Give me a second to adjust to the alien
anatomy. I was just a little surprised.” His hand slides between your thighs.
“Shit, I turned you off, didn’t I. Come back, little man. Come back.”
You rest your head on his shoulder. “Don’t talk to my bulge.”
He presses his palm flat against you and you catch your breath when his fingers
find your nook. You’re already wet, more than enough for him to sink a finger
in to the knuckle.
“Too far?” he says cautiously when you shudder.
In response, you wrap your hand around his cock again. He groans and pushes a
second finger into you. You rock against his hand, pressing your face into the
crook of his neck.
It takes a while before you find a rhythm. He seems to like more force on his
dick than your own bulge could take. You work him in your fist while you rock
on his fingers. When you unsheathe fully again, he wraps his fingers around you
almost too roughly. You pull his hand away and show him how it’s done. He’s
still breathing into your hair, his head tipped against yours, just as blind to
what you’re doing as you are to him.
Finally his breath stutters and his hands freeze on you. He jerks his hips up,
his dick sliding in your grip. Something hot spills over your wrist. You can’t
imagine what color it is, if he was surprised by the sight of your own arousal.
You give him a moment, then grind impatiently down on his fingers. He chuckles
breathlessly and then pushes a third finger in, crooking them. His other hand
gives your bulge a lazy stroke.
You buck your hips, clutching at his wrist, and gasp open-mouthed against his
shoulder. His fingers work inside you, and with another roll of your hips you
come undone, making tiny little noises that you’ll never admit to. You come to
a shaky stop on top of him, still shuddering around his fingers. Your hands are
clenched so tightly around his wrists that you don’t know if you can unclench
them.
“Okay,” Dave says. His mouth sounds dry. “That was far hotter than it had any
right to be.”
You quiver when he withdraws his fingers. You’re still trying to catch your
breath, and now that you’re not distracted, the heat of the room is reasserting
itself. You’re hot and sticky and you’re pretty sure you just had sex with
Dave.
“I, uh,” you say. You fumble to tuck yourself back into your clothes, peeling
yourself off his lap. “Um. I think I…need a shower.”
“You think you need a shower,” Dave says. “I think I need to burn these
clothes.”
Oh god. This was the worst idea ever. What possessed you to do that? What is
wrong with you? Past you is such a moron. You retreat, feeling for the other
side of the couch. Can you make it back to the ablution block from here? It’s a
good thing you can’t see because if you had to look at the mutant red evidence
of your climax on Dave’s clothes, you would just curl up and die. In fact, you
probably will anyway.
“Vantas,” Dave says, apparently noticing your shift in mood. “Hey, that
wasn’t—Karkat—”
You slide off the couch and abscond to the ablution block as fast as you can.
===============================================================================
      [http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdbb713f4a1r4hnkso1_r1_500.jpg]
===============================================================================

The dream bubble shifts an hour later. You’ve been hiding in the ablution block
for all that time, leaving Dave to clean up some other way. You’re just
pressing another cold compress over your eyes when you hear a long, low groan
that makes you freeze.
You inhale slowly. The air leaves a film of rot in your throat. There is
another noise outside, some sort of whine.
Past Karkat is such a fucking idiot.
The door isn’t where you left it because you’re not in Dave’s apartment
anymore. Your memory of your old hive has eroded a bit in the past sweep,
especially without visual cues to guide you. You don’t know if the bandages
have traveled with the dream bubble, but you can’t seem to find them. You drop
the wash cloth and wipe your eyes on your hands, then feel around until you
find the door.
It’s still hot here, but it’s a wetter heat. You ease the door open slowly,
trying not to make any sound.
You can vividly remember that light season when your neighbor’s lusus died. The
revenants outside had scavenged in the area for a few long days, scattering the
bones of the lusus across three lawn rings. One of them had found a poorly
latched door in your neighbor’s hive and had picked at it for two hours
straight. You can hear it going right now. Back then, the repetitive bang of
the door rattling against its latch was terrifying, but the long silence after
the latch finally gave way was even worse.
“Dave?” you whisper.
There is no sound. Did he not travel into this dream bubble with you? Although
you’ve spent the last hour wondering whether it’s possible to never have to
face him again, you’re suddenly uneasy at the thought that he’s not here. The
danger outside this hive is real, for all that it’s only a memory. Just because
the undead didn’t manage to get into your hive back then doesn’t mean they
can’t today.
You take a moment to compose a mental map of your hive in your head. Dave could
be upstairs. If he’s smart, he’ll stay quiet.
Your respiteblock is upstairs. Your clothes could be there, as well as actual
sopor. You’ve never tried sleeping in dream bubble sopor before. Will it work?
It takes ten minutes to find the stairs. You ascend quietly, listening to the
noises outside. At the top of the stairs you whisper “Dave?” again but there is
still no response.
Your respiteblock has that stale sopor smell you remember so well. You trail
your fingers along the wall as you follow the edge of the room. You find your
recuperacoon. The surface is smooth, with a slight give to it.
Your husktop chimes. You stop where you are and listen, but there’s no change
in the quality of noises outside. You cross the room to your desk and sink into
the chair. You face the husktop.
Well fuck.
You find the volume adjustment key on the keyboard and reduce it almost all the
way. Then you frown at the screen, your eyes still squeezed shut. Who could be
trolling you?
You cover your eyes with your hands and then part two of your fingers just a
hair’s breadth. You lean in and crack one eye open slightly.
The room is dark. The husktop screen is a blur of white light. You can see red
text but there is no way that you can make out the words.
You close your eyes again and sit back. Maybe you can have the computer read it
aloud. There’s a setting here for that somewhere, if you can remember how to do
it.
After a few minutes, you find the setting. The computer starts to whisper
through the speakers. You have the volume down so far that you have to put your
ear against the speaker to hear it.
TG: youre an asshole
TG: im just saying that right now
TG: all that talk about zombies and youre not even here to enjoy it with me
TG: i hope youre back in lofaf
TG: no hot strider cuddles for you this time
CG: where are you?
TG: whoa dude what happened to the caps lock
CG: oh.
CG: wait.
CG: OKAY.
CG: SO WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?
TG: in your troll house with the undead outside
TG: at least i assume theyre undead
TG: they smell pretty undead from here
CG: YOU’RE NOT IN MY HIVE.
TG: i really cant tell one freakish troll house from another right now
CG: YOU’RE IN MY NEIGHBOR’S HIVE.
TG: ok wow im glad we got that straightened out
CG: YOU HAVE TO GET OUT OF THERE.
TG: you want me to go outside
CG: CAN YOU HEAR THAT BANGING NOISE?
TG: yeah
CG: YOU HAVE MAYBE TWO HOURS BEFORE THEY GET IN.
CG: PROBABLY LESS.
TG: ok awesome
TG: you dont get to pick the dream bubble next time
TG: you are officially off reminiscing duties
TG: if you so much as even think the words remember when
TG: ill cut you
CG: EITHER GET OUT OF THAT HIVE OR START THINKING OF HAPPY MEMORIES.
TG: remember that time we were in lofaf and you were freezing to death
CG: REMEMBER WHEN YOU ATE EXPIRED GRUBLOAF ON THE METEOR AND YOU WERE VOMITING
FOR THREE DAYS STRAIGHT?
TG: wow man you broke the taboo already
TG: let me sharpen my shitty broken sword
TG: while i think fondly of that time you got hit in the face with johns bucket
CG: REMEMBER THAT TIME THAT WE HADN’T EVEN MET YET?
CG: THAT WAS THE BEST TIME.
TG: so
TG: vantas
CG: NO.
TG: im not doing the whole chick thing
TG: im not freaking out over anything even though you apparently are
TG: it wasnt a big deal
CG: IT
CG: NO, I GUESS NOT.
TG: i dont want murderclown coming after me with a pair of clubs telling me to
marry his monorail
CG: HE WON’T.
CG: IT DIDN’T MEAN ANYTHING.
CG: IT WAS JUST
CG: IT WASN’T ANYTHING.
TG: i mean im not saying i wouldnt want to do it again
TG: you know
TG: if you wanted to
CG: UH.
CG: YEAH.
You lean down and bang your head gently against the desktop. Fuck. This.
You rest your cheek on the desktop, sighing. You feel so stupid. It was
misguided of you to even think that Dave might want to be your kismesis. He’s
not a troll. He doesn’t even understand the concept of romance.
There is silence outside.
No more banging noise.
You jerk your head up and grab the keyboard so hastily that you can’t find the
right keys.
CG: FSBR HRY PIY
TG: what
CG: HRT OIT GETOUT GET OUT
CG: THEYRE INSIDE
CG: GO GO GO GO GO GO GO
There is no answer, which you hope means that he’s getting out of there. You
shove back your chair and scramble to your dresser, where you always kept your
sickles. You hit the dresser with your shoulder and the whole thing rocks.
Something slides off the dresser and hits the ground with a clatter. You drop
to your knees after it. It’s your sickle. You equip it and then search for the
other one.
A loud banging starts up in the other block. It’s so loud and so close that you
actually physically leap backward, holding your sickle out in front of you. But
you’re on the second floor. Oh, shit.
You get to your feet and claw your way to the door, holding the wall. The
recreation block is on the other side of your hive. Its windows face your
neighbor’s hive. You find your way across the hall and into the room. You slam
your shin into a chair leg and curse as you make your way across the room to
the window.
You fling open the window and something tumbles through, hitting you and
knocking you to the floor. You get a face full of warm cape and a lap full of
very heavy human.
“What the fuck is with that sun,” Dave croaks. You hear him slam the window
shut, which is a loud enough noise that probably all of the undead now know
that you’re in here.
You shove him off you. “Why do you think we’re nocturnal, idiot?”
There’s a loud clatter downstairs. You scramble to the door and shut it,
cursing, then lean against it. It doesn’t have a lock on it.
“Let’s both think of someplace,” you say.
“LOHAC wasn’t so bad,” Dave says.
“Nepeta was in the Land of Little Cubes and Tea. Fuck if the Game can make that
land dangerous,” you say.
“I always wanted diabetes,” Dave says.
“I visited it once to help her with some of her quests. There were sugar dunes,
and when the wind caught the powder on top, you could taste it. The shores
where the sugar sand got wet was all crunchy when you walked through it.”
You hear something smash downstairs and you falter. They must have broken
through the door. They’ll be coming up the stairs soon, crawling on dead hands
and knees.
“Sugar dunes, right,” Dave says hastily. “What were her consorts?”
“I don’t know. Um. The sky was yellow, and there were teapots everywhere. This
isn’t working.”
“Keep talking.”
There’s a gentle scrape against the door behind your head. You hear something
exhale. You have frozen in place. Dave, too, is very still.
“The lakes are made of tea,” you whisper.
Something hard slams into the door behind you, shaking your whole body. On the
second slam, the door melts away, and the floor underneath you crumbles into
sugar. You flounder in a dune, inhaling clouds of sweetness.
“Jesus,” Dave says, his voice slightly shaky. You hear him unequip his sword.
“It really is sugar.”
You take fistfuls of sugar cubes and crumple them between your fingers. “Does
it look like anything’s going to kill us?”
“Not immediately.” Sugar crunches as Dave sits down in the dune next to you.
“The lake is right at the bottom of this hill,” he adds. “About ten feet away.
There’s some sort of giant teapot over on the horizon. Do you think this
sugar’s edible?”
You flop back against the dune and put your arm over your eyes. “Try it.”
“There have probably been imp feet walking all over it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Hmm.” There is a pause. “Tastes fine.”
“Although…” You trail off. You can tell by the quality of the silence that he’s
looking at you.
“…Although what,” he says warily.
“Nepeta prototyped her sprite with her dead lusus, so the imps around here were
one twelfth meowbeast.”
There is a pause. “You’re saying this land is one giant sand box.”
“How did it taste?” you ask.
You get a handful of sugar to the face for your trouble. You throw some in his
direction, but you can’t tell if it hit. Sugar hisses as Dave moves through it,
and then he crushes sugar cubes into your hair. You elbow him in the back of
the knee, dropping him to the ground. He grabs two fistfuls of your shirt and
drags you down. Your hands find either side of his head. You kiss him.
This time the strongest taste is sugar. His mouth is hot and wet. He responds
to the kiss hungrily, tugging you closer. God, you could keep doing this for
hours, except no.
You pull away and roll off him, onto the dune next to him. “Fuck this,” you
groan, curling up away from him.
“I’d kind of like to,” he says.
You scrub your hand across your mouth. “What is this, anyway?”
“I thought we agreed it wasn’t anything.”
“So we get back to the meteor and?”
“And…?” He might have shrugged. “It doesn’t have to end. I keep telling you,
I’m not even with Terezi.”
Your face is pressed into sugar cubes, which are leaving square imprints on
your cheek. You brush them away. “Does she know that?”
He sits up. “The only person who doesn’t know it is you.”
“You’ve kissed her.”
“Yeah? Christ, Vantas, are you jealous of her now?” He sounds frustrated.
“I’m not jealous,” you say dully. “I just…”
“I don’t do troll romance.”
“It’s not troll romance. It’s just romance.”
There is a crunch of shifting sugar as he moves. “Who seriously gives a fuck?
You have every little interaction boxed in its neat place on your relationship
grid. If I want to help you, I have to be in one relationship with you, and if
I want to punch you, I have to be in a different one, and I have to be careful
not to feel bad for your miserable troll ass because that means I’m moving in
on murderclown territory.”
“So you just want to fuck.”
“And you just want to check off a box on your relationship chart.”
You’re silent as you crush sugar cubes between your fingers. You hear him sigh.
“You’re irritating and you’re loud. You get in everyone’s way. You’re stupidly
attractive. I like saying things just to piss you off. I like that you’re smart
enough to hold your own in an argument. I liked it when you had to rely on me
on LOHAC, but I hate that you’re in pain, and I hate that I’m partly
responsible. I want to kiss you again. What box does all that fit in?”
“I don’t know,” you mutter.
You’ll never be with Terezi, and the reason why is because you’ve turned her
down too many times, waiting for things to be perfect. Is perfect possible?
Have all your romance novels lead you astray?
You roll onto your back again. The warm yellow light glows against the inside
of your eyelids. The breeze tastes sweet. In a sweep, you could be dead. Hell,
you could have been killed five minutes ago. You don’t have time to keep
waiting around for perfect, if it even exists. Dave’s not perfect, but.
You crack one eye open just to a sliver. Dave is a red blur.
“You think I’m attractive?” you say.
You can see him smirk before you close your eyes again. “I guess I have a
fetish for short, ugly trolls,” he says.
You raise both of your middle fingers at him and he laughs. When he moves,
sugar cubes bounce and roll down the slope of the dune. His hand lightly
brushes sugar out of your hair. You turn your face toward him.
The kiss this time is tentative, like he’s waiting for you to say no again. But
instead you just wrap your arms around him and pull him half on top of you,
where you don’t have to crane your neck and where his shadow falls across your
face, blocking the sun.
He takes that as the invitation it clearly was, dropping the last traces of
hesitation. This isn’t the lazy kiss from earlier. He kisses the corner of your
mouth and then your jaw and neck, making you shiver. You grab his hair and pull
him back up, then nip at his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. He curses and
then bites you back with his blunt human teeth. You part again, gasping.
“So we’re doing this?” he says breathlessly.
“Whatever ‘this’ is,” you say.
He drops a kiss on your mouth. “You can do it, Vantas. Fight the system. Forget
those stupid quadrants. You’re free.”
“Fuck off and die,” you say, mashing sugar into his hair.
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