Demon Summoner Cop Dave/Demon Karkat urban fantasy AU.
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Or on AO3.
—
"You know, you guys could have been ordered off the field entirely!”
Dave dislikes Roxy immensely right now.
There she is, sitting on the low windowsill of what used to be a hairdresser’s shop window, wearing that stupid Venice mask with the feather and swinging her legs. The thing is violently pink and sequined, catches every ray of light that manages to pierce the grime. Dave keeps losing track of her every time she stops talking.
Dave makes sure his tush is extra-cocooned in this here creaky old chair, and tries not to think about the old crusted-dry gunk marking the edges of the hair-washing basin he’s propping his head against.
"We could have been ordered to be goddamn useful, too,” Karkat replies before Dave can. “Not that I mind being hidden away and doled out penny by penny like the peerless treasure I fucking am, but if we’re that precious, the fuck kind of sense does it make only having the two of you as guards?”
"All the sense in the world!" Roxy replies — huh, she’s still in the same spot. The feather wobbles with her nodding, the tip almost two feet over her actual head. "I got Horuss to make sure no one finds y’all…"
"And I’ve got my good old buddy Eridan to shoot anyone who finds you anyway full of holes!" Jake continues for her. They both turn from the window to grin.
"And if they’re not dead when Jakey and Eri are done with them, I’ve also got Equius to beat them into the ground. Tadah."
Karkat stares at them, and then turns to stare across the dusty floor at Dave to share his total absence of admiration.
"And the brass don’t have more people to spare for us," Dave finishes cynically. "Since everyone they could spare is already on that demon’s ass—"
Roxy’s phone beeps, once; Dave loses her, and then finds her again without her saying a word — her spell is down. A second later a crackling cage of red materializes around him.
The air tears green inside the room, and then Jade pops through, holding an officer in an elbow lock. The second she’s landed on the wooden floor she kicks the struggling man in the back of the leg, pushing him down on both knees.
Dave sighs, doesn’t even bother to extract his head from the basin’s neck-holder thingamajig, and waves at Karkat to do his job. Karkat bounces forward, tail shaking happily, and bites the struggling man in the meat of the shoulder, right past the kevlar jacket.
Done and extra-done, Latula says, trying for chipper. Scope out that tight shield-weave, hellz yes.
The man blinks, shudders. Jade peers over his shoulder. “You okay now, Biggins?”
"Um. Yeah. Sure." Still on his knees, the officer blinks dazedly at the rows of hairdresser’s chairs, the cracked mirrors. "What the hell happened? Where—"
Jade waves at Dave, who is still surrounded by Karkat’s creepy blood vines, and winks them right off. Roxy waits a beat, and goes Waldo again.
Bleuuurgh. Worst. Fucking. Day.
C’mon, flameo, could be worse.
Oh yeah. I could stand around with both thumbs up my ass while other people work.
Latula sighs and subsides, uncomfortable. Damara is still sulking in the back of Dave’s brain, radiating insulted vibes and ignoring Latula so loudly he’d almost prefer she try to take a bite out of her. Dave has no idea why his favorite Timefucker hasn’t fucked off yet.
You’re a liar, Damara pipes up, right on time.
How am I a liar now, I promised you jack shit with a side of nothing.
You tell me get ready fast on the draw, but then you get not a chance to draw. Unfair.
Dave isn’t really concerned with going out of his way to be fair to Damara. Especially when moving closer to the action will get Captain Egbert and Captain Vaughn from Major Crimes to land on his back like a ton of bricks, if Jade doesn’t get him first.
The new demon is not Kurloz — Karkat is so sure of that that when they asked him to confirm he stared for a whole fifteen seconds and then asked them if they’d managed to fling dog shit into their eyes or what. It’s got the same body type and the same shape of horns and the same skin color and the same everything but it’s completely different from Kurloz!
It’s still a corporeal Class Fucking Four of Rage.
An unbound one, if they believe Hobo Dean.
The homeless people around the area were terrified of him when he started to drop by to listen to their impromptu street concerts, but he never devoured any of them. Dave is pretty sure the awkward evasions were implying that Hobo Dean believes that he did eat other people, but they were either from an enemy hobo gang or from some mafia trying to shake money out of them, so good old Dean wasn’t planning to bring it up.
"How do you think he feeds himself?" he asks the room at large. "I mean, if no one feeds him."
Jake looks up from the gun he’s polishing — this is not even a metaphor, the guy is a bit obsessed. “Do you figure he could receive his Price even without a bond to channel it through?”
"There doesn’t need to be a master-slave contract," Karkat replies, mouth pursed in thought. "Does need to be at least a temporary contract set up first, or the spillover would be so bad as to render it useless, depending on how fiddly his specific Price is. I don’t see how flesh would make that moot.”
"Or he could get his needs met in, idek, dead pigeons? Rats?" Roxy says — huh, she’s moved to the other side of the window. "Lost cats, purse dogs—"
Karkat snorts. “Yeah, no. Class Four. You’d need a cartload a day to make a dent. Now, you see a drop in the local zoo’s gorilla or porpoise numbers and we’ll talk.”
Okay, Dave muses, if animal sacrifices aren’t it, what could…
"… And now I’m thinking of a hobo harem relay-race and since I love you all, here I am sharing it. Enjoy."
"Augh! Strider! You fiend!”
Dave waves his fingers gently at Jake, who splutters.
"Could work," Karkat muses. Dave and Jake both wince. "They’d all have to pitch in though. The spillover rate is hard to figure out but I’d be surprised if—"
”Karkat, oh my god, no.”
The smirk Karkat flashes him has Dave’s eyes widen; his guts tighten just a smidgen.
"You jerk, you knew what—”
Oooh, don’t even, snarls Latula without warning.—Dang it!
Space tears again but with no heads-up phone call first in the street, a few houses down, and Karkat leaps across the dusty planks. Dave extracts himself from his chair in an awkward hurry, rapping the base of his skull against the headrest on the way out. Ow.
Latula, what’s —
She’s barely listening, all coiled watchful and bristly, like a cat at a mousehole. Ooh, the nerve. He wants to throw down, fine! I’mma make him eat it!
Out there in the street a woman screams, half-pain, half-rage, and it’s Jade.
Someone’s hand closes on his arm — Roxy, can’t see — he yanks.
"Harley!" Karkat yells through the closed door, his hand on the handle, but he slinks Dave a glance and, no, can’t go, Dave comes first —
"Go!" Dave snaps, and pulls his gun out of its holster.
Jake and Roxy are telling him to stop but that’s his partner out there with a great ugly bruise-skinned dolphin-assed demon coiled around her and he can feel the way madness scratches against Latula’s scales in the back of his head, the scales he and Latula and Karkat lent Jade.
He is going to spring this fucking trap with both feet, is what he’s gonna do.
Damara surges through him with barely a thought — he can feel her draping herself over him like a fur coat made of fire and decay. He wraps her closer.
Karkat gallops ahead like a small tank. Jade stumbles, bats at the demon’s coils — and the demon blinks down at Karkat and his bristling, and tumble-flops right off her. He rolls on the pavement. (Dave thinks, irrationally, of a play-doh tube.)
Karkat swerves around Jade, wobbling on her feet, her brown skin gone ashen, and hisses at the other demon with all his spines out, wings flared.
Dave has a sudden image of a possessed Jade grabbing for them and breaking them again. “Karkat!” He points at Jade. “Gotta—”
No, wait, I still got her! Latula cries out, triumphant. Score!
Dave smoothly points at Dolphin Glutes instead.
He pauses briefly by Jade — doesn’t touch her, what if it’s a trap, he trusts Latula but — and Jake catches up, catches his cousin by both elbows before she can topple to the ground.
Yeah, yeah, it ain’t cracked, I’ve got her, gogogo!
Dave starts after his demon again.
Karkat and the other demon are doing a snake and mongoose thing — Rage-chan swaying on his tail, not floating, Dave isn’t sure why, as Karkat circles back and forth with aggressive almost-pounces. Dave goes around a bit so he can cover Karkat, and feels Roxy’s hand on his shoulder.
"Jake’s got Jade," she says, "I got backup coming, now you stay with me.”
"Yeah, sure," he says. He doesn’t mind being invisible in the process of kicking ass, he guesses.
"You really ought to surrender," Karkat is saying, which might be a straight-up lie as demon patrol out here is pretty much demon extermination and nobody ever bats an eye, not even the animal protection leagues.
Granted, rogue corporeals are usually Levels One or Two and thus as sentient as potentially-rabid stray cats at the very most.
"I don’t see as to how I should do that, brother," the other demon tells him — with his voice — and sure, it echoes weird in Dave’s skull but it doesn’t burrow like Kurloz’ mind-voice did. “Those brothers with them bullet things up and got hella salty on me.”
(… Most annoying speech pattern ever award goes to…! Sorry Damz, sorry Meulin.)
Feels like it could get through his shields, with a little more push, but Dave is suddenly not sure that this demon has quite as much push to dish out. Smaller body, smaller horns, shorter hair — reminds him of the differences between Karkat and Kankri.
It’s hard to judge power levels between an active and passive class, but Kankri feels older, as demons count these things, the way Kurloz looked subtly older and bigger than this one; does it affect anything but the body shape? Level Four covers a lot of ground… Latula? Damara? Whatcha think?
Either way he’s still hella dangerous! I don’t like what he did to J-dog much, he almost broke through, and he did manage to get her to bring him right to you—
Who cares! Prove stronger. Prove you a man. Devour him. You have allies. Gangbang him until death.
"They’re twitchy ‘cause an asshole whose flesh costume looks a lot like yours laid the beatdown on their asses some time ago. You wouldn’t happen to know a Kurloz, would you?"
"Um, not as suchlike," the other demon lies, eyes squinching and zipping off to the side in the most blatant tell since Tavros-in-John.
"Uh huh. Anyway he fucked them up, now they want to fuck back, it’s an orgy in these streets and you have been cordially invited.” Karkat smiles, or bares his teeth maybe. “I, personally, have no stakes in this mess, save that my idiot summoner is of course standing right in the middle of this shit pile dancing a lively polka. Who’s your summoner?”
Awkward silence.
"Um. I ain’t sure I can up and tell."
"You’re not sure? How vague is your contract?”
From here Dave is fairly sure he could… okay, move a few meters forward, and then boom headshot.
Actually Roxy would be an even better bet, though she doesn’t have a rifle on her. Girl’s aim is unreal.
He’s not sure why she doesn’t take the shot.
He knows why he han’t. This dude is only different from Karkat because of chance and circumstances. He doesn’t want to kill him on Karkat’s lap unless he has to. There have been a couple of bad injuries so far, but no deaths. Jade is alive, he doesn’t know how injured.
(The Felt man dying on top of him as Aradia fed—)
"Was a group summoning thing?" the other demon says, hesitant, and they’re staring at each other and not even swaying-posturing much anymore, just… Just talking. Tense, but — talking. There’s pale gray spread roughly on his face like chalk or ashes, no skull hat like Kurloz, but underneath it’s just a raw-boned, utterly human face. Maybe something other in the flattish nose… “Only I got me this asshole to call mine, but the loop was all, I dunno. Dunno who held it, dunno how much is left, but I can feel ‘em tugging their dirty leash at my neck all trying to call me to heel like I can be motherfucking tamed—”
Oh Jesus. Dave takes aim.
"Hey, hey, calm your tits," Karkat says — he sounds oddly at ease, oddly patient. "None of them are here and it’s obvious it’s not working anyway, why do you care if they want to waste their strength trying?"
"But it’s all up and harshing my mellow, man," the other demon whines. “All with the tug tug motherfucking tug, skittering in my nug like those itsy bitty eight-legged sisters. I whacked all down at one of ‘em calling infidels already but fuck if that helped much. Can’t barely be listening to what sounds that my street brothers make for me all pretty.”
"Guess that would suck," Karkat says very reasonably, and something twangs in Dave’s chest about the total lack of hostility or matter of fact wariness in his tone. He doesn’t even know the guy. “Wait — is that your price? Street music?”
The Rage demon shrugs. “I guess.”
"Does it sustain you, meatstick?!" Karkat tugs on a fistful of his own hair in brief irritation. "Urgh, never mind, either it’s that or something else. You kill any humans for food?"
"Uhm."
… It’s a bad time for laughing but the ‘welp’ face Karkat pulls is hilarious.
"They was bringing the hurt to my street bros first, though, disturbing my music, can’t all up and let at those motherfuckers—"
"Okay. Okay." Karkat sighs, sits right there on the ground, rakes a hand through his hair. "That’s fair."
"E-T-A two minutes thirty," Roxy breathes in Dave’s ear. Fuck, that’s long…
Karkat frowns to himself, and then gives a decisive nod. “If you swear on your Name to only feed from your Price — and like, blood and sex I guess — I think I can talk the police into not shooting you dead—”
What.
"Karkat, what the shit!" Roxy protests. The other demon glances their way, visibly startled.
Karkat ignores her completely. “—If you answer me this,” he growls suddenly, and briefly crackles red, and grabs everyone’s attention right back. “Was it the Felt that summoned you?”
"… Yeah," the other demon says, staring helpless and fascinated.
… Oh. Hey. Extracting information. They’ll make a real cop outta him some day soon.
Though really he should know better than to make promises none of Dave’s colleagues will want to agree to. Yeah, there’s that.
"Only then they was like, hey, Rage lives through some hella stuff what hurts a fuckload," the Rage demon continues cautiously, "and then I bailed."
Karkat makes an encouraging noise, head tilted. One minute, fifty seconds left.
"Kurloz was all for it and I was like why fucking not, right, sounded interesting, but I don’t rightly know how they meant me to stand there and not break anyone’s fucking head when they were putting that hurt on me, opposibro, you get me?" A helpless shrug.
Karkat snorts in honest amusement. “You’re Rage and you can’t take some pain?”
Dave is fine letting Karkat stall for time, but the more they chat and the less he knows if Karkat knows they’re just stalling. It’s… Fuck.
There’s no way he doesn’t mean to intercede on this guy’s behalf, and Dave’s colleagues, his bosses…
Egbert would be fine, his usual peep squad would be fine, but…
Captain Vaughn is going to be a pain already; Dave doesn’t even want to think of the Chief of Police or anyone else.
"Aw, c’mon, brother, ain’t fair, I was all fresh up meat-wrapped, hardly knew my tail from my horn-tips yet."
Karkat’s wings and all their blades and claw-tips slowly come down; his face does something complicated and then goes soft. “You panicked, didn’t you.”
"Um, yeah." He coils himself small against the ground. "Could take it now, I think, but like, I don’t even got any want to do it for any of them now. It’s nice here. I got my bros to watch out for who watch out for me,” he says, kind of shy, kind of earnest behind the wavery-drunk vagueness, and then three cars burst past the corner, motors entirely silent.
Dave isn’t sure what alerts the demon of what’s coming up behind him — sixth sense, Karkat flinching, the sound-killing demon’s aura, the heated rubber smell — but he flips.
The street empties of air; Dave’s knees wobble. He needs to run away, he needs to run but he can’t move—
Latula doesn’t even speak, just snaps her fangs, and he can breathe again. “Karkat, dodge!" he yells, as some fucking asshole on loan from Traffic or who-knows-where pops out of his window, gun already out.
Roxy drags him back to the sidewalk; Dave lets her, watching as the Rage demon rushes to the other side of the street — window, metal shutter, what does he — oh fuck.
The window-length clay planter full of weeds and dandelions goes flying like it weighs nothing at all, lands on the car’s hood and not through its front window; the driver braked just in time. The second car glances off the first car’s side, brakes as well, and then the Rage demon is flowing up alongside the wall like he’s swimming in a waterfall in reverse.
Three stories. Plenty of time to aim.
Damara surges, and Dave crumbles the brick over his head, showering him in brick and dust.
No! His back was to us! Aim me right! Damara howls as the demon falls, like whatever was dragging him upwards has been suddenly cut. He catches himself one story up from the ground — gunfire, then. Blood splashes the wall — glancing hits, the angle is bad.
Dave advances in the street, yelling at the officers to keep their fucking guns down, Karkat’s in the middle of this, who are these fucking clowns — oh fuck, it’s the goddamn cowboys borrowed from Major Crimes.
"Net!" Jade yells, and sure enough there she is dragging a long-ass tangle of braided steel cables. Jake catches another corner, hovering off the ground with Rufioh’s wings fluttering behind him, but then they pause and…
Flicker off. Flicker on — three stories up from the ground, both she and Jake, holding the net open between them, and Jake can fly and she can’t.
The pair of them plummet down to the ground, catch the rising demon between them face-on and Jade is still falling oh Jesus—
Flicker off — just her; the demon lands with a meaty thud, and Jake touches down in a gust of wind that rattles nearby shutters.
"And you’d better stay down, Mister!" Jake says, pointing a shining finger at him like a gun, as his hair starts to wave choppily in a sea nobody else can feel.
Where is Jade, where is — Oh. Hey. Back of partner, found, just under his nose.
"You are going to get such a talking to,” Jade tells Dave, without even looking at him.
Then some idiot with the trigger discipline of a Halo player lets loose a single, badly-aimed shot and all the daylight seems to go out of the street. They’re lost in a canyon with wolves howling, they’re alone in the dark and something is tracking them down, is going to tear them apart and mash the remains into puree, they’re —
No. Latula can handle it, he tells himself, and then she does.
He briefly wonders why none of the idiots shot again while so terrified, and then he finds Karkat in the middle of them with his hand grabbing someone’s wrist, forcing her down to a knee as he keeps her gun pointed up.
”Breathe, you turd-flingers, if you can’t handle spellwork then what are you doing stinking up this operation, where’s your training, don’t aim at a thing you’re not even sure is there,” he’s ranting away, conveniently ignoring how bad Kurloz got to everyone last time this happened.
The demon in the net snarls fit to rattle the shutters again — and then Roxy appears out of nowhere, kicks his tail further in, and tightens it like a string purse.
"Is it over? It feels too easy to be over. He’s gonna burst out of the net like the Hulk, isn’t he. Anyone can seal this bitch?"
Jade shrugs. “We did reinforce the net since last time, but I dunno. I’ll go get Sanchez and Demmler, they can do it — oh, wait, here they are.”
Karkat checks on Dave with a glance and then trots up to the net. Dave sighs, and moves to intercept the Captain coming up at a stomp with the wave of summoner-officers.
"Why is that thing still alive?!" is the first thing Captain Vaughn says upon arriving on the scene, though he stops by the cars, well away from where Sanchez and Demmler are racing through a sand-and-ash pentacle.
"Captured works too," Dave says. "Where’s Captain Egbert? I’ve got to ask him—"
A flicker of something cold and pitiless rushes briefly through him; the demon howls in frustration and flips around on the ground, though the net is pinned to the ground everywhere the braided steel cables touch down. Karkat, crouching by the edge of the sand line, calls out to the captive demon, short and no-nonsense, and then starts murmuring at him. The feeling abates.
"Put it down,” Vaughn says, shuddering, lip curled up, and visibly steels his spine and stalks closer, trailing a pair of uniformed officers.
… Karkat promised he’d try…
Dave follows. “Sir, Captain Egbert needs to be consulted on this—”
"At this hour he’s racing back to town to be with the mayor, he has better things to do than to supervise demon disposal. What’s taking so long?"
"Well, it’s hard to shape a spell when he keeps disrupting it," Roxy says when they stop by her to observe. "Rage peeps are pretty much pure chaos like that, sand absorbs it some but — oh, sorry, no lecture. It’s going to take a good half-hour at this rate and frankly I don’t like the odds of him sitting pretty through all of it, sir."
"What’s wrong with a bullet? Landers.”
Landers lifts his gun. Dave tenses — Karkat is in the line of fire, the people drawing the mandala are in the line of fire, they see him and retreat at a gesture but Karkat just — stares back, disbelieving, frowning a little bit. Dave reaches across Captain Vaughn for Landers’ arm.
Landers doubles over before Dave can touch him, crumples to the ground and throws up, hiccups like he can’t even scream.
Dave nicks his palm on his pocket knife and slaps the beading blood across his cheek. Latula rushes through him to harry the other demon off.
People rush by to pick the guy up, drag him back. Dave looks up at the Captain, who’s standing there with his eyes showing whites. Shit, he knows this guy has stood his ground before hostage takers with automatic weapons and deranged serial killers but — demons? Not his thing, apparently. Hell.
"Let’s move back a little," Jade says, and the demon in his net bursts out in deranged laughter.
”Ain’t nowhere far enough, motherfucker!”
Chaos, people trying to drag the Captain off, trying to keep drawing the spell pattern, waving their guns around not knowing what the fuck.
”Kill it!" Dave’s current headache screams as he’s dragged behind a car.
"No!" Karkat yells back over the din. "I’ve got this, okay? If you’ll just shut your trap?!”
… And then of course as if the clusterfuck wasn’t fucked enough another hobo bursts past the corner with a half-rusted length of pipe in hand.
"Leave our Gamzee alone!" he howls — throws something, a bottle of beer, which explodes on the pavement harmless but loud, and three of the officers immediately turn to the problem they can do something about. “You fuckin’ pigs, he didn’t do nothing!”
He looks three sheets to the wind but he’s interfering in a pretty dangerous operation and they are intending to pin him with great prejudice.
The demon — Gamzee? — flops like an eel in a bucket, rears as far as the net will let him. “No, bro!” he calls out. “They’ll splash your nug on these walls—”
"Sir, you put that down right now—"
"You fucking let him go!"
Is Dave surprised when the guys advancing on the hobo wobble and one of them throws up? Nope.
I’ve got them, I’ve got them, Latula murmurs, more to herself than to Dave. I’ve — hell, so many, I need more eyes—
Hey, babe you can do it, Dave whispers back at her. She pauses, and then she smiles with his face, brave and fearless outside and inside so relieved.
Yeah, you’re right, I’mma rock this.
The surge of power he feels her fling into the spell has him blinking, and he huffs out a brief, quiet laugh. Your Price wouldn’t be confidence or something, would it.
Brief moment of silence in his head.
Just kidding—
Um. She wriggles. Actually it’s trust, but.
… Oh.
Wow. The implications of that — he has no time to think them through, he’s got a field in flux to keep an eye on, but yeah, he’s laughing again. All those times he just blindly gave himself over to her, thinking she might turn around and take a bite out of his soul or ask him to start murdering babies, wow. Shit, I must be keeping you well-fed.
You’re like the most malicious buffet I ever sat my tush at, Firetruck.
Heh. Heheh. You don’t need to jet now I’ve figured it out, do you?
Nah. It’ll buy you maybe less, but your credit is good with me — crap!
Another cloud of unfocused terror and rage bursts into existence, visible in the shudders of the people it passes over. Demmler flinches and accidentally breaches one of the sand lines; the hobo hovers uncertainly as the cops aiming to intercept him wobble.
"Everyone keep your asses parked!" Karkat bellows like the spikiest drill sergeant, sending a crackle of red racing between people, scoring the ground and not touching a single person. "Fingers off triggers, pointing up, spellwork on hold, gentlemen! And you with the mangy face fur, put that stick down before I put it up your ass.”
He turns to the imprisoned demon and his voice gentles, everything sharp and stabby about him relaxes; even his wings loosen.
"This man is yours?"
The other demon stares at him with wild eyes that can’t seem to stay, but eventually he nods.
Karkat nods back. “Alright. Trade? I will trade you not hurting any of the police for me not letting any of the police hurt you or your… human bros.”
The air is still and dead.
"By hurt I mean no killing, interfering with biological processes like sleep or digestion, or injuring. Verbal abuse may happen, I sure as hell am not taking any fucking responsibility for keeping any of these assholes politically correct. Works?"
Gamzee lets out a snort that turns into a wheezy laugh. “Sure as fuck would not, either. All kinds of poetry you can find in the lowest, earthiest words, my motherfucker.”
"Works?" Karkat presses.
"…Yeah. Sure."
"Then I swear — I, Karkat Vantas, Knight of Blood, will hold up my end of the bargain, as long as you hold up yours. Which means," he adds with what Dave knows is a smile, "we’re going to need to seal you or make you sleep while everyone discusses what to do with you, because otherwise you’re going to freak the fuck out and fry someone’s mind out of pure reflex—"
"Ain’t that the pure truth," the other demon replies, chagrined.
"—and then I’ll be bound to eat you alive, and I have no mustard on me."
Another rusty, breathy laugh, and the demon with Kurloz’s face smiles. “Then I gotta get my swear on too — on my own name, Gamzee motherfucking Makara.”
"I’m taking the ‘motherfucking’ as entirely factual and representative," Karkat says lightly, and nods at Sanchez and Demmler to finish their thing.
No, no, no, no! Damara screams. Do not have the Knight protect the fool!
Dave flinches, startled, and then frowns. Yeah, he’s not sure why it’s upsetting Damara but considering how she didn’t want to attack Kurloz, who worked for the Felt at the time, and she has a perfect match in their ranks, he’s suspecting her goals of not being quite aligned with his. Too bad, so sad, etc etc. He nudges her back.
With Gamzee not resisting any longer, Roxy and Jade can pick up sand baggies and help; the pattern is finished in barely five minutes. (During which the officers stare sideways at the hobo and the hobo sobers up enough to realize all this might have been a bad idea and discreetly scampers off.) Containment, lethargy, Latula tells him of what she picks up from it, and yeah, sure enough he is soon putting his ash-stained, heavy-horned head down and falling asleep right there on the pavement, purplish skin turning bruise-dark where the iron in the net chafes.
Karkat paces his way around the spell pattern, eyeing it closely, before he deigns to give Sanchez an approving nod.
"It’s sealed?" Captain Vaughn demands, straightening his jacket, eyes flinty and jaw tight.
"Yes sir," Sanchez replies.
Vaughn advances; Dave falls into step with him, just because he’s going toward Karkat and Dave doesn’t… like that. “Can’t fuck with our heads anymore?”
"No, sir."
"Okay. Kill it."
Every summoner in the area turns to stare at him. Dave is vaguely glad of that. Karkat’s mouth is opening and he looks outraged, and this is going to get bad, he can already tell.
"Sir, did you miss the part where my demon swore on his Name he’d keep him alive?”
"Strider, you’ve been mouthing off, you need to stop doing that—"
"Okay, I think we should wait for Captain Egbert, sir, you don’t seem to get the implications—"
"If you don’t shut your mouth and step out of the way I will write you up for disciplinary action!" Vaughn glares at him, nostrils flaring in barely restrained anger. "And get your demon to step out of the fucking way. Or do you control it so badly it’s going to attack us next?"
… Of course Karkat won’t attack them next, he’s forbidden to do that, of course he won’t.
Dave steps into the middle. Jade is coming with her worried frown and her more diplomatic (barely) words and he has no time to wait for her. He steps in between Vaughn and Karkat (and Gamzee but who cares about Gamzee. Apart from Karkat.)
"If you trap him between his orders and his oaths, his soul will break.”
He’s angry with Karkat for swearing himself over without asking, without checking whether he could even accomplish anything — is he trying to die, is that it? Fuck.
"Where’s Captain Egbert?" Karkat asks from behind him, and Vaughn snarls.
"You will order your demon to step aside right the hell now, Detective, I don’t care if he has to deal with the results of your fucking negligence! Anders, Parker—”
Dave seizes Damara and crumbles the guns to rust in their hands.
His skin has gone all oxidized tin and old bent gears, flaking paint. Damara nestles close, suggests — yes, good plan, he turns the pavement under one of the men’s feet into sand, to keep him from trying to sneak any farther around.
No living flesh, absolutely none, but he lets her nudge the presence of metal and cloth into his mind, everything she could get at. Pretty useful to track them, anyway.
"I will have your job for this,” Vaughn breathes, fists almost shaking from rage.
"Okay," Dave replies, calm but for the blood beating in his temples, deafening him, Damara’s low, bloodthirsty croon pooling, knotting inside his guts. "Fine. Fire me. I’m still not ordering Karkat to crack his fucking soul for you. Because you’re too afraid of one piddly demon to—”
— No. Can’t say that. Said too much already, shit he can’t take back.
Why not? He weak, scared shit. Making you oathbreaker. How dare he open fat shit hole mouth?
Dave shakes his head, teeth carefully closed.
Behind him Karkat is entirely silent.
"Sir, we’ve got evidence that Rage demons respawn," Roxy says, meek and apologetic, from the side, and both Dave and Vaughn twitch and neither one takes his eyes off each other. "We kill him now, we might be handing him right back to the Felt. Are you sure—"
He’s a little dizzy, a little buzzy still.
Not being a cop anymore. Shit. Vaughn might push it, he’s so tight-lipped his mouth is turning white.
… Fuck him.
They would have been staring at each other forever if another two cars hadn’t turned the corner and come to park on the sidewalk, and—
"Where the hell have you been?" Karkat yells, exasperated, as Captain Egbert takes in the scene, the immobilized demon, Dave and Vaughn borderline chest to chest like bulls about to lock horns (and doesn’t Dave feel manly right now, shit, someone give him an armful of chest hair and tennis balls for testicles already.)
He is buzzing with adrenaline and resentment and things he doesn’t want to look at, not yet, not ever.
When Egbert and Vaughn step away for a quiet little conference of their own he turns away to go check on Jake. Karkat watches him walk past and says nothing.
—
So the mayor called Captain Egbert back, and while Vaughn was fouling up everything the good Captain was tied up on the phone trying to explain why no, it was not more urgent that he not stand up the mayor for some impromptu press thing. Yeah, okay, cool, I’m just busy actually doing the thing you’re bragging to the press about eventually doing, you know, taking the crazy-making demon off the streets?
Dave barely cares.
He stays with Jade shoulder to shoulder and they watch until Gamzee has been loaded into a truck and Karkat has been promised that he can visit the facility they’re going to be keeping him at first thing tomorrow morning and Egbert is taking personal responsibility for that and Karkat can tear out his throat if he doesn’t come through.
Anyway then they’re driven back to the station, and they write some reports, and then Dave gets to shed the loving bodyguard that is his own partner and go back to his own car.
Karkat gets in the front seat, for once. He even sits on the seat instead of disappearing in the foot well.
Dave doesn’t really look at him. He’s got to concentrate on driving.
Right and another right and a left, two stops, a crossroad…
"… You love your job," Karkat says, quiet and a little lost. His spiky gauntlet hands are playing with the seatbelt. Dave pretends he doesn’t catch Karkat’s glance.
"Yeah, well," he says, and turns left.
Karkat opens his mouth and closes it again. He’s going to find his words eventually and Dave doesn’t. Won’t. Nah.
"Could go on vacation for once. A longass vacation. Tahiti, like. Nice photo occasions, nice beaches, there’s diving sites and drinks with seven layers and little umbrellas."
"You love your job,” Karkat repeats, because he can’t pass a dead horse without whacking it a couple times to make sure it doesn’t need the hospital or something. Dave closes his eyes briefly behind the shades. Thankfully they also happen to be at a red light, it’d be maybe a problem otherwise.
"Okay, we could go vigilante, I guess. I bet I could rock the underwear-on-the-outside look. There’s no way I wouldn’t look like a totally different person with a half-mask on instead of my shades, oh fuck, I’m like a superhero already, aren’t I. Also I’d again never have to file a report my entire life. Yeah, okay, sounds good, I’m sold. Knightman? Timeman? I feel like Dashingman would probably hint at the wrong set of abilities, I mean, it’d be representative of my fine visage but pedants might think it means something else and mislead themselves into thinking I’m a speedster, and I guess there’s worse superheroes to be mistaken for but they’re never all that—"
"If they fire you, you can’t keep me — can you?”
Dave loosens his hands before he manages to strangle the wheel.
"Yeah? How do you see that playing out?" he replies, staring ahead. It’s a deflection, and so fucking what.
"Well," Karkat says, brow knit in doubt, "you’d lose your license, right? Isn’t that what happened to your brother?"
"So I’d get a fine for unlawful possession of demon, maybe some jail time if they catch us crime-fighting under the moonlight. Can you drop it?"
Karkat twists in his seat to glower at him. Dave isn’t sure what he sees in his fine profile, because he just… sighs through his nose, and then he deflates, sits back against the door to glare sullenly at Dave.
"I’ll pick it back up later," he warns. Dave shrugs one shoulder. They’re almost home. He’s got so many movies to watch. Fuck yeah. Friday the 13th marathon.
—
He eats ravioli straight from the can and watches bad movies.
Speeds through bad movies. Eh.
His life is not really going well. Hasn’t been for a while. He’s casual and careless and fun.
He’s low-grade angry behind everything.
He’s not angry at the Felt. It’s not personal with them. Must be about the only thing that isn’t.
He’s angry at his bosses and angry at his job and angry at Dirk for being so fucking Dirk, he’s angry at Damara for being Damara, he’s angry at Karkat for pushing, and for getting himself into messes that force Dave to jump in to drag him out without even a look back, and for—
He’s angry at himself.
I could maybe, Latula says.
No. Thanks, babe, but no. He shuts her, gently but firmly, out of his brain.
Click, clack, Karkat comes down from the mezzanine to use the bathroom, crosses between Dave and the TV. Water noises. Click, clack.
Stop. Dave turns his head to look an instant before the couch dips, and the demon is climbing onto the cushions, casually just happening not to look straight at Dave.
"Can we still not do it now," Dave asks, without too much hope.
"We weren’t doing it until you started doing it," Karkat replies cynically, and then shrugs, avoids his eyes. "Yeah, whatever, I’m tired too."
… Well. Good. Dave stares at the TV.
He’s expecting a comment, a request to explain what’s been happening, some heckling maybe, but Karkat stays quiet.
Then he sighs, and leans against Dave’s shoulder all at once.
He’s heavy, solid; the edge of his shoulder plate is digging into Dave’s shoulder.
It’s warm. Not squishy, but.
"… Hungry?" he asks, and tries to… this is kind of, almost physical affection, he could do it for that, maybe. If they keep it slow and. Careful. That. If Karkat puts his arms around him maybe and. He doesn’t want to starve Karkat, and the dude has been using his powers today and needs —
Maybe if Dave manages sex they can cuddle afterwards.
"Mnh?" Karkat says, and shifts so he’s sideways, so his jaw rests on Dave’s shoulder. "No, I’m good."
Shit.
"Okay," Dave says.
Okay.
"What are we watching?" Karkat asks, five or ten minutes of senseless gore and random cheerleaders later.
"Fuck, I don’t even know." Dave changes channels. Yay for surreal music clips. Better. Easier to not-follow at least.
"…Thought Egbert was around," Karkat says, voice veiled in tiredness. "That one was my mistake."
Dave still doesn’t want to talk about it, but they’re going to have to do it at some point. It’s… good that Karkat admits his part in it. He guesses.
"Still did it without checking with anyone first," Dave replies. Pauses, sneaks him a glance. "Were you testing me?" Seeing if… what? Dave would have his back? If Dave would order him to disregard that dolphin-assed wobbledick? If Dave would…
Karkat weighs his answer before he gives it, slow and measured. “The testing was a side effect of doing what I needed to be doing anyway.” He slants Dave a look from under his bangs, upper eyes almost closed. “…I don’t get you.”
"Yeah, I’m a mystery. Have you tried asking?" Dave says, because he’s the kind of assturd who loves to shoot himself in the foot if he can get a good zinger off it.
Karkat snorts, turns his face so that it’s against Dave’s neck and oh. Breath. Lips. His heart kicks.
Kicks again when Karkat makes a little intrigued ‘hmm’ and presses his nose to Dave’s skin to inhale.
Then he shuffles his weight a little and returns to propping his chin on Dave’s shoulder.
"Okay, sure. Explain why you don’t punish me. Everyone expects you to. I expected you to. Is it still your weird guilt thing about tricking me into contracting with you?”
Dave closes his eyes. After a few seconds he takes off his shades, drops them on the couch.
It’s so close to physical affection. Might be physical contentment, but Dave knows it’s body warmth and the rush of blood in his veins. He could be a life-sized flesh puppet and achieve the same effect.
"I’m in love with you," he says, because he knows Karkat won’t get it.
Wow, listen to that silence.
"It fucks with me, having to force you. Knowing you don’t — feel the same. It really fucks with me."
He rubs a hand against his face.
"I am hella not enjoying it," he concludes, to the sound of still more silence—
"What love?"
Oh, wow. Nice. Here Dave thought it couldn’t get worse. “Fuck. See. I knew you wouldn’t — just because you’ve got the vocabulary, what do demons get of—”
Karkat sits up to stare at him and Dave misses the warmth against his side, the cold and absence like a slap in the face.
"Of course I don’t get it; what love? Love?” he says, and it sounds like a Name, it resonates; it’s… watching-from-afar, never-approaching, happy-they-exist-whether-they-thrive-or-fail.
"Love?" (binary suns in a stable orbit, racing in a neverending spiral through the universe. Oh.)
"Or maybe," he adds, biting, teeth bared, "love?”
This one comes through as ‘courting your own destruction.’ Dave stares. “… Say that one again?”
"Love," Karkat repeats, still staring right into him with the intensity of a red sun.
It’s a terrible, craving admiration, please-use-me/use-me-up. It’s subsume me, it’s let me merge into you, it’s devour me…
"Is… that it?" Dave says, still rolling it around in his head. "Those are the types of love you can feel…?"
"Of course that’s not it! There’s the lesser love—” (coming together, summer vacation, separate bright and laughing and happy), “and there’s the love of sundering—” (live, live, live) “—and see!" he explodes, a hand flung up, wings canted like he’s about to do battle. "You don’t understand any of them, how am I fucking meant to know what yours implies?!"
Dave nods, slowly. “I like the stable orbit one. But it’s not…” It doesn’t feel right, either. “… I do want to touch you,” he says, and his voice breaks. “I want — maybe it’s more like the other one in practice. I want the summer fling that never ends and I want — I want to fucking die rather than hurt you more and I — shit.” He rubs a fist at his eyes. “Shit.”
Love of sundering, huh? Love where you could watch them win or you could watch them crash and burn and think the exact same ‘what a gorgeous disaster.’ He’s not even surprised at the way Karkat watches him, wary, absolutely unbending. Dave sure as fuck wouldn’t want those aimed his way either.
Maybe it’s different when you’re loved back. Maybe it’s welcome then.
Being loved in the human way is not that much better when it’s unwelcome, really.
"It’s not really any of those. It’s just like some, some parts, some sides of them. It’s not. I’m human, it’s not—”
"Yeah," Karkat says with terrible gentleness, "I can tell."
"Can we have the conversation about Gamzee instead," Dave asks the ceiling. Karkat ignores it utterly, too busy frowning his anthropologist in the middle of savages frown, the one that purses his lips a little and squints his left eyes more than his right ones all lopsided and cute.
"What is it like, then? Mating — what, fondness? Mammalian pair-bonding? I’m not equipped to carry your offspring, much less rear it, that’s some misaimed feeling."
Dave lets out a wet, raw laugh.
"What do you expect from—"
"Nothing, alright? I can’t start expecting shit from you, I don’t have the fucking right — don’t bring up your Name. It’s abuse, okay? It’s abuse to force someone to stay with you and do what you say or else and it’s even worse to pretend you’re forcing it on them because you care — and I don’t care if some abusers think they’re in love, it’s gross and it’s wrong — I’m wrong—”
"Oh, no, don’t start to leak, we were having a perfectly reasonable conversation like two logical sentient beings — hey!"
He’s tired. Angry and tired and it hurts, but at least it’s all out now! (At least he’s asking absolution from the victim without taking a single step to fix it first but hey.)
"I’m going to bed," he says, already standing up. His nose is already clogging up. It’s unreal how often Karkat brings him to tears.
Karkat snarls. “Stop being a fucking martyr for one fucking second and stand your ground!”
”What ground?!” Dave snaps back, whirling around to glare. Karkat is up on one knee on the edge of the coffee table — almost high enough to meet Dave’s eyes properly like a fellow human being.
"So that’s it? You’re just going to make a declaration of, of feelings, and then fuck off and pretend it never happened? You told me to ask, I’m asking, now sit your flesh cushions down and explain!”
"Why do you need me to explain?! It’s not—"
"Shut up!" Karkat barks right over him. "Not my business? You make it my business every time you foul up a perfectly workable professional relationship—"
"Do you mean slavery?!”
"—With your goddamn wibbling! And — you know what. Fuck this.”
Dave blinks, unbalanced — hurt.
Then Karkat grabs his wrist, twists, yanks and Dave ends up on his back on the couch — and then a demon armored like a pocket tank lands on his midriff.
Oof.
"Karkat—"
"Order me off or talk, but either way stop waffling.”
Shit. Fucking hell.
He throws an arm across his face. Much better, he can almost pretend he can’t feel Karkat straddling him that way.
It is better.
He’s getting his sleeve wet. Welp.
"…Okay, shoot."
He’s not sure if Karkat doesn’t know what he wants to ask, or if he’s surprised Dave folded so fast. It takes him a few seconds, armored hands on Dave’s chest to brace.
"What does… that type of love imply? Exactly. I’ve been watching tons of movies but some of the cultural shortcuts are confusing and none of them really examine all those not so basic assumptions and… I don’t know. I feel like I’m missing huge chunks of context."
"Romantic love — not familial or friendship. It’s — you want to spend time together," he says, lifting his arm so he can draw vague shapes in the air with them. "You want the other person to be happy — when you’re in, when you feel that, if they feel a thing, usually you feel it too, and your own feelings are kind of… stronger? It can be good and bad." A helpless shrug. "The ethical angle would be a problem either way but I dunno if I’d be a goddamn snot fountain over your situation if I didn’t…"
He said it once and it won’t come out again; he thought it’d be easier now that it’s on the table already.
He pinches his lips, tries again. “You smile and I want to smile too. I want to do things that make you smile — only it’s not my place. I want to do things that make you happy with me, because of me — because, you do things and I like them and I want it mutual, yeah? It’s not like your… watching from a distance thing. It’s not that.”
"….Mm?"
"I want us to be a team and to help each other and I want you to enjoy me because I enjoy you, but you enjoy nothing here and I’m keeping you here by force and it’s fucking horrible. I want it to stop. If you were human I’d just stop hanging out with you and wait it out but here we fucking are."
"… Ah."
He makes himself look at Karkat. TV colors dance on a side of his face, the other one in shadows. He’s watching Dave right back and he has never seemed more alien, more remote.
"I’m not hearing mentions of helping rear your offspring," he says clinically, and Dave both flinches and groans.
Fucking figures. “Raising sprogs is a thing for people it’s already a life goal for. If you’ve got other life goals, ideally your lover would help you with those instead, I dunno. Or you’d break up because — love isn’t enough. Sometimes. I guess.”
He almost rests his hand on Karkat’s thigh when he’s done waving it around, just because he’s touched him dozens of times before, has gotten used to it being a thing; when Karkat is straddling him it’s okay to fondle. It’s not the same today. He ends up folding it awkwardly against his chest.
"Sometimes people just aren’t compatible," he finishes awkwardly, "even if they want to be."
"We do have relationships," Karkat tells him, wry but not mean. "I’m familiar with that particular pitfall. Remind me to tell you all about Terezi and Vriska one day. Or hell, just Vriska and Tavros, but that one was pretty one-sided. Talk about people who should never have bred ever."
"Heh."
Dave watches Karkat watch him, and wonders what he’s thinking about. If it’s awkward for him too, to be straddling him like that and it’s nothing like either hugging or sex.
"Karkat," he says eventually, quiet and tired.
"What do you want to do about it? Ideally."
Can’t they be done already. He likes the way Karkat bites into something like a bulldog and never lets go until it’s dead, in theory, but it’s so exhausting to deal with. “Ideally all the skeevy job-mandated obedience bullshit falls off when you spontaneously transform into a human,” Dave says, monotone, “which is bullshit when it’s the fact that you’re not human that makes you you.”
(Ideally he releases Karkat, but Karkat decides to stay.)
"Yeah, you’re bullshitting."
"Yeah." A sigh. "Disincarnating you — there’s no way the brass will give the okay without a major battle, and even then, nothing is certain. I’m talking involving the press and making a major stink about it. And then the program we’re alpha testing will be sunk either way, and the thing is, it’s not a bad program in itself, it’s just — you were a bad fit. A really bad fit."
Karkat glares. “Hey, I’m awesome. I’m terrifying and powerful and your program should be glad to have me.”
"You don’t want to be here."
"… Yeah, but I’m still fucking awesome."
"Yeah," Dave agrees softly, because now he’s got nothing to lose for doing it. "You’re pretty cool."
Karkat looks thrown, blinking with his upper eyes and staring with the lower, which is funny and adorable because usually they kind of move in tandem.
"I could get it started, if you want. It’ll be an uphill battle, but we could get it started."
Be kind of a relief. Also kind of horrible, but at least eventually it’d be over. In a few years.
"Or I could talk Rose and Dirk into helping disincarnate you without asking for permission. Faster, no risk of being cockblocked by red tape."
"You’d never work as a cop again."
Dave shrugs. “Vigilante still sounds good. I could be a photographer by day. Have art galleries.”
"We’re ignoring the Felt here," Karkat points out, hook-tipped fingers splayed over Dave’s ribcage. Dave briefly imagines him plunging all of them down in between the bones, prying him open, and then berates himself for being melodramatic. He’s not even worrying about being scratched. "Bet your collection of mediocre films they’d find a way to get to me. They wouldn’t try so hard to bump you off if you having a hold on me wasn’t a pretty big obstacle."
… Fuck. Yeah, there’s that.
"And I’m your only reliable means of attack right now. Latula is purely defense, Aradia is mostly support with a side dish of instant kill, and Damara would rather be working for the enemy. You cut me loose, whether they grab me or not, you can’t fight anymore, and they implement their plan — the one they seem to think is worth pissing off the entire police force openly."
He sounds cynical, looks unsurprised. Dave cringes, a bit. “… If you’re willing to wait until after the Felt are dealt with…”
"Hm."
"… Yeah, okay. Fuck."
Karkat stares down at him, all glowing red eyes and flat-lined mouth, heavy brows and teeth.
"What I’m hearing here is, you can’t stand having control of me, and if you could free me, you would… But right now you conveniently can’t."
Yeah. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Dave twists himself into knots about this bullshit and how intolerable he finds it, and then limps along, tolerating it.
"… I will. If you ask. I will. I’ll go to Rose right now. Tonight? I bet she’s still awake."
Huh, he’s leaking again. Karkat tracks the tears falling down his temples, says nothing, doesn’t change expressions at all. Dave remembers his voice gentling for Gamzee, for Erisol; it burns.
"You have my Name," Karkat says, quiet and cool like a brush of silk. "You’ll always have my Name."
Dave finds nothing to answer to that but “Sorry.”
Because — yeah? He will. He knows it in intimate, exquisite detail, it’s burned into his mind — lava flowing like blood, or blood like lava, thick and bubbling; obsidian islands, brittle and sharp, gleaming. Desolate and in ruins but still alive despite it all. The contract might break and Karkat might fuck right off to the depths of the hell plane, but Dave will always be capable of dragging him back, if he tries hard enough.
And then Karkat leans in, staring, weirdly intense. Dave blinks.
"Give me yours."
"What?"
"You don’t like the imbalance, and you can’t cut me free. Alright. Give me your Name."
… Karkat having as deep a grip on Dave as Dave has on him. Willing and able to give as good as he gets, to undo any damage Dave might order done, to…
It’s ridiculous and suicidal and —
"You know humans can’t," he says, and his throat knots up and he sobs, just once. Why’d Karkat even say that? That asshole. "I can’t.”
"What if there was a way?" Karkat asks, inches from his face, soft like a secret.
Dave stares, and stares some more, and can’t believe — everyone knows flesh roots the soul, entangles, hides it, you can’t know a human’s soul name until the instant they die, and then they unravel anyways.
He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, if it’s grief or hope. It’s a knot under his breastbone, squeezing down on his lungs, it’s all the hair on his arms standing up, his hands and feet suddenly feeling cold.
Handing over his soul. Just — entrusting it to the demon he enslaved, the demon who feeds on other souls, who wants to go home.
"… Then I’d have to call Rose," he concludes. His lashes are glued together; it takes some blinking to see the way Karkat’s face has closed up but it doesn’t take seeing to feel him rearing back, shifting his weight to get up.
Dave grabs his wrists.
"I’d have to call Rose, to warn her, in case — she has to put me down — or if you kill me, so she isn’t the one who has to find my corpse."
He licks his dry lips. He’s trembling.
"There’s really a way…?"
Karkat slides off his lap, tugs a wrist free; Dave lets him go. He stretches across the table, picks up Dave’s phone.
Dave sits up and takes it.
His hand is shaking. He should take the time to think this through. He should weigh the consequences (Karkat kills and eats him — at least he’d be done; Karkat enslaves him — he’s adopted Dave’s people, he wouldn’t use Dave against them (until they pushed it) (wishful thinking, how can he ever be sure); Karkat… does nothing with it…)
'Courting your own destruction' was maybe apt after all.
He brings up Rose’s number, starts typing up a quick message.
yo sis im giving my soul name to karkat
see you on the flip side maybe
xoxoxoxoxo
He looks up at Karkat, who’s watching him and looks like a statue, nothing like the snarling, eyerolling, pouting, smirking menace he knows.
He hits send.
Karkat takes the phone out of his hands, delicately, turns it off, and puts it back on the table. Then he reaches out and brushes his hand against Dave’s temple, and caresses his hair.
Dave’s hands are clutching each other between his knees so tight his knuckles are about to crack. “…So…? How’d…? Karkat? How do I. How?”
Karkat wraps an arm around him and pulls him closer — it’s a hug, he thinks, but Karkat doesn’t…
"It’s not actually possible, dumbass," he tells Dave, muffled against the tender side of his neck.
"… Oh."
"Blood," he says, "is the element of bonds and oaths."
It’s so far from anything Dave expected to hear next, he doesn’t know what to do with it. “—Oh. Huh.”
"I protect bonds," Karkat says, briefly peevish. "I am not bound.”
"Huh," Dave says, bewildered, being hugged. "Yeah. Guess that would grate."
"Mmh."
"… So you…? I mean. What did. Why…?"
"Now if you tell me, for example," and his voice shifts to a nasal parody of Dave’s drawl, “‘we’re redesigning the contract between us, and it’s totally going to be more in your favor, but you’ve got nothing to protect yourself from being fucked over even worse, but I won’t abuse it…!’”
Dave winces.
"Well, now maybe I’ll believe it."
He butts his forehead against Dave’s.
"Am I to understand you want your contract redesigned," Dave drones, a quick, automatic papering over the bubbling mess of feelings about to erupt all over the place.
Karkat just… tested his word. How much it was worth. How far he’d…
"Gee, that’d be swell," Karkat says dryly, "especially if I actually get to negotiate."
"Taking a leaf from Kankri’s book now?" Dave gives a dry chuckle; it scrapes a little, his throat is raw.
”All his ideas can’t be horrible. It’s a statistical impossibility. If only because there’s got to be a chaos-causing demon somewhere messing with the fabric of the universe until black comes up white.”
Dave nods slowly, yeah, sure, that makes perfect sense, and wraps an arm around his waist. He keeps his touch light, he’s not sure if… he’s not sure.
"Not that I mind, but why are you cuddling? It’s kind of… mixed signals?"
Karkat nips him. Dave feels like he should have seen it coming. “What’s mixed about it?”
"See, if you were human, I’d take it as, yes, Dave, I’d love to be your boyfriend—"
"You didn’t even ask me to be your boyfriend—"
"Would you even say yes if I did?"
"No," Karkat replies offhandedly. "Because I don’t understand shit about it and also you haven’t even been courting me, do you think I’m that easy?"
Dave sighs loudly through his nose. His other arm is creeping up Karkat’s back to press between his wings. He’s so, so warm. He’s here deliberately.
"Do you want me to court you?"
"Do whatever you want, I don’t care. It’s just nice to finally be able to understand what that thing was. Just a fleshy asshole reproductive tactic, okay, whatever."
Dave starts laughing against his temple, silent, his whole body shaking with it. “You say that, and all I hear is oh please yes, seduce me with flowers and chocolates.”
"—Wait, that’s right, your courting processes have chocolate. Fuck yes. Does eating them obligate me to jack shit?”
Dave’s mouth does a maneuver he did not authorize it to do. “Nah.”
"Okay, then. I’m sure after enough Hersheys I’ll have an epiphany of love and suddenly come up human gravid."
"I would love every single one of your myriad hellspawn and ruin myself on their college funds," Dave promises solemnly. As solemnly as he can when he can’t stop smiling, which is stupid because Karkat didn’t say he’d love him back — not even like him back, he didn’t say he forgives him, he didn’t say…
He’s on Dave’s lap.
He told Dave what Blood friggin’ does.
"… So…" he mumbles, tracing the soft edge of his wing membrane where it disappears between armor plates.
"Hm?"
"Why’d you trust me with that. I don’t get it. I did nothing, I just—"
"You’d have gone through with it." Karkat shrugs, leans back to look at Dave, knees bracketing his hips on the couch.
"Didn’t give you an oath."
"… Bonds, oaths, and commitment. You were pretty determined to give me your Name.” He looks briefly awkward, eyes darting away from Dave’s face, and almost squirm. “—But if you want to give me an oath,” he adds, eyes sparkling with secret amusement, “I’ll take it.”
"Um," Dave says very intelligently — he is not at all distracted by that look on Karkat’s face, that faint, closemouthed smirk, those hooded eyes. "Yeah, sure. What oath do you want?"
"Right now? Hm. How about…" He hums, black lips briefly pursed. "We’ll redesign our contract no later than seven days after the Felt have been dealt with, barring hospital stays, mental trauma that renders either of us incapable of sound judgment — to be determined by Terezi, not Latula, Latula has just about half the horses in this race — and of course barring the death of one or both of us.”
"Yeah, sold," Dave says, watching his lips move, all the little folds in them and the points of bear trap teeth behind. "Uh, did you need me to say it back? Or prettier, I guess."
"… You’re the most annoying slob I have ever met. You’re so loo