Urban fantasy demon/demon summoner AU. NC-17.
tumblr archive - on AO3.
Demon FAQ.
–
Three AM on a Sunday, he’s dressed to the nines and trying to pour his best beloved partner into a taxi. Jade’s butt swings along with the muffled beat they can still hear from the club.
“It’s all your faaaault!” she yells as she flops down into the backseat, shaking her fist in the air.
Dave takes her wrist and folds her arm so he can close the door. “Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m never taking you clubbing again,” she adds through the window – no, wait, that’s Feferi, the pout is distinctive, Jade is not half this lippy. They’ve been switching all night, it’s a bit dizzying.
Okay, it’s also kind of fun. He hasn’t spent fun partner time with Jade in literal ages.
“My heart’s broken,” Dave says as he goes around the car and slips in. “I will cry myself to sleep, see if I don’t.”
He gives the driver the address and settles in as the taxi leaves the curb.
“She’s not gonna upchuck on my seat, is she?” the driver asks.
“Nah, she’s not half sloshed enough, it’s kind of amazing.”
“The body does feel pretty steady!” Feferi chirps, poking her head between the seats to grin at the poor man. “Wavery and all, but hardly any nausea. Which is good because I’d leave if there was, and she still owes me back pay.”
The driver blinks slowly, slips Dave a querying look in the mirror. Dave looks carefully bland. Was there something weird here? Surely not.
He checks his phone, in case he missed some messages, and then checks… other things, all hail smartphones. Karkat’s twitter activity shows a spate of reblogs and comments starting half an hour ago. Huh. Dave shoots him a message.
whatcha doin up at this hour i thought youd be asleep by now
He gets an answer almost straight away. I FUCKING WISH. ARE YOU BACK AT LALONDE’S YET?
YOU *ARE* GOING TO LALONDE’S, YES?
Trusting. Not that Karkat doesn’t know exactly how much it annoys Dave when he’s barred from his own apartment for cause of insufficient backup. Warded up the wazoo or not, it bothers Karkat to leave him alone in it. The other solution was to be a dick and cockblock Karkat’s sleepover, though, and that…
Well. Their contract is still that shitty unbalanced mess. Dave doesn’t want to drag his feet and lean on it too much.
chill dude promised i would
even tho it chafes my ass so red i could be a magical reindeer tbh
were en route, fefjade failed to hook anyone for a night of carnal lust so im dragging their drunk butt along
hows gamzee?
SOME IDIOT INTRODUCED HIM TO POT BROWNIES. HE’S BEEN OOZING AROUND BEING EVEN MORE USELESS THAN USUAL ALL EVENING.
THE TV AT THIS HOUR IS ABYSMAL. I DID NOT KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLE TO REACH THESE BORED HEIGHTS WITHOUT A SPACESHIP MADE OF THE PUREST ENNUI, SLOWLY PRESSED INTO TEDIUM DIAMONDS OVER UTTERLY EMPTY EONS.
Huh. Biting his lip, Dave types, erases, and then types again, you want me to come pick you up?
Jade is leaning against his shoulder, eyes closed. He tries not to be the typical clingy boyfriend as he waits for the answer.
NO, HE’S GOING TO WAKE UP FEELING SHITTY, I’D RATHER HE DOESN’T WAKE UP ALONE.
… Yeah, okay, trying or not, that stings a bit.
It isn’t like Karkat and Gamzee are dating. Even if they were dating it would probably be one of those incomprehensible demon ones Dave doesn’t get at all…
Even if it was one he’d get, it isn’t his place to feel lonely and replaced. (Doesn’t help the ‘feeling it anyway’ thing.)
It’s been weird, these last two weeks. Karkat has been looking at him more, speculative, oddly not hostile but at the same time not… not anything Dave would call flirty either. Just intrigued, a bit amused maybe. As Karkat was spooning him and jerking him off the other day Dave’d had a mental image of a farmer milking his favorite cow; he wishes it didn’t feel so apt, he can’t get the comparison out of his head and it’s making getting it up a bit of a problem.
“Eugh, Feferi!” Jade says, and giggles, sneaking Dave a look.
“What?”
“She thinks – no, I can say – okay fine. I think you owe me twice over!” Feferi says. “First because no one would bite because they thought you were my buoyfriend, right? And two because when someone did bite, you said no!”
“He thought we were shopping for a threesome,” Dave grumbles, and prays the taxi driver didn’t hear them, but from the sudden snickering cough it’s a fair bet that Buddha is not feeling merciful today.
“Well, it would have been a threesome!”
Dave side-eyes Feferi. “Not that he would have known it.”
“Well then, I wasn’t going to ask you to partifishate, but you could have sat in the corner and watched–” She giggles, Jade’s face flushing a violent red, and Dave’s partner crumples against his side snorking like a piggy being tickled.
“So many worlds of no. Universes of no. Plural no. Noes.”
“Whale, he’s gone now at any rate. And I’m still hungry, aaaand you owe me–”
“I will sic Karkat on you, don’t even think I won’t.”
He picks up the phone, types vengefully, karkaaaat feferi is making a pass at meeeee. He doesn’t mean to hit send but the car swerves and his finger swipes. Whoops.
WELL IT’S NOT LIKE I’M GOING TO BE ABLE TO FUCK YOU TODAY.
… Oh.
Well.
Yeah, there’s… there’s that.
AT THE SAME TIME I DON’T REALLY WANT HER MIASMA ON YOU.
your choice bro, he types back, as if he would fuck Feferi even if she wasn’t inhabiting his best, platonic partner.
“I was jerking your fins!” Feferi dissolves into giggles. “I know sex between you two would be too weird and probably get you all deflated,” she adds consolingly. Dave snorts, startled.
“Hey, now, Jade is plenty fine and–”
“Don’t you dare tell her she’s wrong,” Jade says, briefly surfacing to narrow her eyes at him, before she goes back under and it’s Feferi’s delighted grin again.
OH, GOODIE, MY CHOICE. I DO LIKE CHOICES!
TELL HER TO RESPECTFULLY FUCK OFF, THEN.
will do
Dave closes his phone.
“Lord and master says no,” he relays.
“Poo.”
“Sorry. Wait, not sorry.”
Feferi lets out a long, soulful sigh. Dave pats the top of her head.
“I thought he was chumpier. I mean nicer.”
“He was nice with your crab,” Dave points out, and she shrugs like that was centuries ago. Granted, it’s fairly inconsequential.
“No but even so! I mean he rants, but he’s more crab than shark. Like. Soul-wards.”
Dave is glad the cabbie is entertained. He scratches Jade-Feferi’s skull with his nails and she makes a little pleased, breathy noise. “You know him pretty well, huh.”
“Yeah.”
“Interesting. Thought you’d never met him before he incarnated, do you talk to Meenah a lot after all?”
“Oh, no, that was before–”
She snaps her teeth closed.
“Before?” Dave prompts, one eyebrow up, but nothing more comes out. “Did you and Meenah used to be besties and then you had a huge row and swore to be bitter enemies forevermore, or what?”
“… Somefin like that!” she exclaims, and then she’s rearing forward to peer at the taxi driver. “Hey, hey, mister Cabbie, sir, you wouldn’t happen to be really nice and willing to feed a poor young demon?”
–Jesus, he almost swerves them into the other lane. “Um?” At this hour the road is fairly empty, but wow. Dave grabs for her shoulder and wonders how drunk Jade is, that she’s letting it happen.
“Not anything freaky,” Dave says, cringing a little bit. “Just… things you would not do anyway on account of you’re wearing a ring.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” the cabbie replies, strangled, half-relieved and half-disappointed.
“You know, just basic… demon-feeding methods, no sacrifice or – okay I should… shut up now. She’s too drunk now at any rate, so I’m noping that shit.” He elbows them in the ribs. “Hsst, Jade, wake up.”
“I’m awake!” Jade protests. “It’s just funny is all. Also I don’t mind older men! But yeah, wedding ring and all that…” She lets out a jaw-cracking yawn. The cabbie is staring in the mirror like he’s expecting to see fangs, and perhaps also to be suddenly molested, but like, not in an unwelcome way. Dave has never been so glad to recognize Rose’s street.
He shoves Jade past the cold iron gate before he turns to pay the guy, making sure to be utterly wall-faced to discourage any attempts to get a phone number or make a lame racy joke. The cab departs; Dave follows Jade to the front door. Evening out concluded, and he survived to the end! He feels like he should get some points. Even before all the pick-up failures it was a bit tedious, in between the funny bits. Seriously, he wonders when he became the boring one of the whole group.
No, wait, he was never the cool party dude, he was pretty much faking it from the start. Remixing stuff for public consumption from the comfort and safety of his home would be cool, he’s not saying his teenage self was entirely misguided about his dreams of stardom, but actually having to perform them? Super urgh. Listening and dancing in public without anywhere to retreat to from time to time is barely less urgh.
Before he walks inside the Lalondes’ house he looks at his phone a last time, to make sure he’s not leaving anyone hanging, and there’s a last message from Karkat: WITH YOUR PAIR BONDING THING YOU WOULDN’T ENJOY THAT, RIGHT? He doesn’t know how to take it.
Better not think about it at all. He closes the phone without answering, walks in after Jade, and tries to keep her quiet as he navigates her to the couch.
–
Monday morning, weekend over and everybody back to their rightful homes. Dave barely had time to enjoy it. (It had nothing to do with feeling kind of rootless stuck alone and without his tunes or his demon at his sisters’ home, either.)
“Dave! Get your ass over here!”
The holler isn’t exactly necessary – Dave’s in the bathroom, not in the next building over. Still, he pulls his pants back up and goes to wash his hands immediately, yelling right back over the sound of water and pretending he’s not still going eee! over Karkat using his actual name. “Yeah, coming!”
Not that Karkat never calls him fuckface or “the asshole over there” anymore, but.
When he comes out, the front door is open and a pimply kid in a UPS uniform is on their doorstep, electronic doodad in hand and looking at Karkat all nonplussed.
“Neither of us knows if his bosses would count me as a pet or as underage,” Karkat complains, sitting up on his haunches to glower powerlessly up at the guy. “Sign it for me, okay?”
Blinking slowly, Dave gets to the door. At least the guy must not wish them any harm or he’d have gotten nauseous stepping onto their floor, probably.
“So that’s the thing you used my credit card for,” he comments as he takes the doodad and signs, eyeballing the package to try to figure out what’s in it. It’s generic as all hells and he can’t guess jack shit. Hm.
“I like how you assume I only used it for one thing,” Karkat says casually, and accepts the package from UPS guy, who gives them a bland “have a good day” and shuffles off to the elevator like all this surprise sentient demon shenaniganry only matters inasmuch as he’s now late on his delivery route. Dave closes the door, puts the lock back on, and since Karkat is already absconding to the mezzanine with his treasure, goes back to the bathroom to shave the little he’s got of mustache.
It’s not like he’s gonna be in contact with the public today either, but any non-Demon Crimes superior he meets will be riding his ass about the stealthiest sideways fart, so. May as well be pretty.
“What did you buy?” he calls out as he gets dressed in the bathroom.
… The waistcoat is perhaps overdoing it a little, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to roast at work, but fuck it, he hasn’t really flaunted his impeccable sense of style in much too long. Okay, no, he had a waistcoat on Saturday night, but really all it did was make him miss it; the dancing crowds didn’t seem to appreciate it properly.
“I bought an item of torturous mystery,” Karkat says back, but idly. “You’re forbidden from looking in the box, by the way.”
“Aw. Okay, fine. You ready to go?”
Karkat hops off the mezzanine, lands with a bounce; he’s wearing his shell, his police shield armband, and his reinforced fanny pack that contains things like his smartphone and keys to the house and emergency hard candy. The keys are wrapped up in a handkerchief so they won’t crack the phone. Dave just waits for the day he’ll try to stuff a first aid kit in there.
Super chic. Dave tries to imagine Karkat in anything that might be called fashionable and his eyes cross a little.
“Thought we were going, slothbrain.”
“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses.” He unlocks the door again, and they go.
Downstairs, officers Sengupta and Morozov are waiting in their car to escort Dave and Karkat to work, which is not a thing the good Captain has eased up on yet. Karkat waves casually as he climbs into the backseat of Dave’s car.
At least they’re also Demon Crimes, so Dave knows for sure they wouldn’t yawn and drive extra-mindful of traffic laws if the Felt decided to go for him and Karkat in transit.
“This rap music is the least musical type I’ve heard yet,” Karkat muses, chin propped up on Dave’s seat. “You’ve got lots of faster-slower rhythm plays, true, but a bare handful of ups and downs and then monotone for a whole verse.” When Dave glances in the mirror he’s got his ass on the very edge of the backseat, like he’s ready to slink back into the footwell in a hot second.
“You philistine, you just can’t read the subtleties. And it’s also the wordiest, snarkiest musical type, so hey, you could also shut your face hole.”
“Pff. Didn’t say I disliked it, but it’d make more sense to either marry the genres better or divorce them entirely.”
“Yeah, you’re describing epic poetry, which is a genre that went out with the Romans – whoa, shit.”
Traffic – pretty sparse in this area so close to the borderlands – just stopped cold; Dave almost rear-ended someone. His arm going up without thought to keep Karkat from diving between the seats, he braces for a butt-bump from Sengupta, but she manages to brake in time, too.
“Goddamn, some people–”
Karkat’s hand closes on his shoulder.
At the end of the street there’s a bus – line twenty-two, the only recourse of high schoolers living on the dangerous edge of town; school buses don’t come out this far.
It’s starting and braking and starting again, trying to swerve right and left like a…
… horse that’s trying to shake something off its back…
… what the fuck is that.
“Siren,” Dave says as he extracts himself from his lane and floors it. Some lady coming from the other direction stands on her brakes, yelling, to let them through.
Sengupta and Morozov are right on their heels. Good. Karkat worms his way to the front seat, fishes Dave’s cell phone out; Dave listens to him call Dispatch.
“–Demon is in or on city bus twenty-two–” (Bus suddenly swerves down an unplanned street. Dave follows.) “Going up – what street is – Carlisle and–”
Dave stands on the brakes.
Jesus. The bus just hit a fire hydrant. At least they won’t have to chase it all the way across town? Dave and Karkat are bursting out of their car and running in the next second. They can hear people screaming.
Low-level demons don’t come into town; crowds scare them. “Felt trap?” Dave hazards.
“It’s got civilians either way,” Karkat growls back, and keeps galloping at the problem like a tiny, angry tank.
Dave loves him so ridiculously much. He cracks a tiny, tiny grin, and as they go around the back of the bus, he says, “Karkat?”
He calls up Karkat’s Name, the whole of it that he can hold in his mind, all the blood-like lava of it, the crumbling obsidian towers, the immense heart beating under the ruins. All the rage and guilt and will-to-prove-himself. Karkat stumbles, all eyes gone wide.
“Hey, buddy. This is for you.”
Dave has no gun on him, but that’s okay, he’s never truly disarmed. He tugs on Aradia, who swirls up and shimmers his body into gears and painted metal skin – a challenge – and he calls out; “Demon Patrol – everybody clear the area!”
He’s pretty sure the people escaping through the bus doors, pouring onto the pavement screaming, aren’t really hearing him at all.
It’s not what matters. This? This is right, this is his job, and it’s Karkat’s Price.
Karkat, whose eyes have started to glow red.
“Something of Breath,” Sengupta says as she catches up at a jog, as the four of them press their shoulders against the back of the bus. She has her gun out and up, and so does her partner.
“Backup coming, ETA two minutes,” Morozov says, but then someone screams and it’s a different sound – not just terror, but also pain.
Dave flicks his fingers at them, directs them to go around the bus on the outside; he follows Karkat on the sidewalk, between the bus and the building, aiming for the doors. In the flickers Dave catches through the windows the demon is a see-through coil of fluttery tendrils, an amorphous, shifting mass.
It’s hovering over a preteen girl, fallen on her side, entangled in her backpack, and there are smoky, blurry-edged tendrils drifting up her body toward her head. Her dark skin comes up in violent rashes at every touch.
Aradia seizes the tentacles – just one second, to let Karkat aim.
The thing screeches, echoing and weirdly faraway; it floats away like a torn banner in a storm and then Karkat is standing over the kid, Dave is moving behind him to grab the wriggling girl by the wrists – she’s trying to batter Karkat with her little fists and knees in the chest plate, her spine is definitely not broken. Dave crumbles her bag’s shoulder straps to dust with Damara, pulls her down the corridor right between Karkat’s feet, and then Sengupta is there at the door to help her down, help her up, lead her away. Behind them the driver is also gone with Morozov. The bus is empty.
“Okay,” Dave says, moving into a crouch, and freezes a molecule-thin slice of air in front of every open window he sees. “Fuck it up.”
Karkat starts laughing, bristled all over spines and his wings flared. Dave cannot see his face but he can guess at it. Feral. Happy.
It’s hard to hit – wispy, floating – but it’s contained, unable to pierce through metal and really hating the time-locked air Dave is holding onto, and then Karkat creates a cage of thorns that encompasses the whole back of the bus and – snickt.
“Did you just make an iron maiden out of blood, buddy,” Dave mutters as he cranes his neck over Karkat to see the remnants of the thing twitching on the floor. “That’s so ridiculously metal it’s almost turning back into emo tryhard, careful there–”
Karkat crackles with red power, once, twice, and turns to grin at him. His eyes are glowing like embers, all his white teeth on display in that gray face; Dave forgets his words for a second.
“… It’s… dead, right?”
“It was fucking delicious.” He actually flaps his wings, oh lord, too cute. “Thief of Breath! God do I hate Thieves.”
Dave anchors himself to the seats on both sides of the aisle to crouch at his level. The dead demon behind them has deflated to a couple handfuls of plastic bag-looking ribbons. “How do you feel?”
Karkat laughs again, eyes crinkling, stretches his arms over his head. “Fucking amazing. Oh god. And apart from the girl no one got hurt, and her life force is intact, and the bus didn’t wreck–”
Dave pats his shoulder and pulls himself back up, knees creaking a little. His heart is still going fast, though it is slowing down. It’s over. They did good. After riding a desk for the last two weeks it feels amazing.
Technically they weren’t supposed to be off the desk jobs today either, but when something like this happens under your nose, it’s not even a question. Officers Sengupta and Morozov might have managed to handle it alone – Sengupta is a high Level Three summoner, and the demon was barely a two, maybe even lower than that – but they’d have had to abandon Dave and Karkat.
Possibly people will bitch that Dave and Karkat did it anyway, but Dave hardly cares.
“Okay, let’s go out and wait for backup,” he says.
Karkat nods, very seriously. “Proper backup is very important.”
They snort at the same time.
When Dave offers his fist for a bump, Karkat rolls his eyes, but raises his gauntleted hand and bumps his shelled knuckles into Dave’s.
–
Two hours later it happens again.
Dave is at his desk and typing up his report about the most satisfying commute ever when the boss-man shoots out of his lair, calls up two detective teams, sends them off. A pair of Level Twos wandered into a habitation building.
Karkat gives them a wistful look, and then goes right back to matching papers from five cases that spilled out of Jade’s folders that the jerk has no time to sort out herself, while jeering at her over the partition. (Karkat is being paid in sugar and banter and seems pretty content with it. It’s funny that he used to be scared of her.)
A half-hour later John and Rose are sent out to check out a demon at a car wash.
When noon comes around there have been six incidents, two of them double incursions. No deaths, but three people are in the hospital and Karkat has gone from swishing his little tail on Dave’s carpet to mantling and flaring his wings in tense flickers as they watch all the other teams go out in turn, as they end up almost alone in the labyrinth of empty cubicles.
Dave tries to keep his head down and field paperwork.
“… Thank you again for the heads up, by the way, Rose!”
Dave looks up. John is looking back over his own shoulder as he walks into the precinct.
“Hey, he wasn’t wearing that before,” Jade says as she peers over the partition. Dave rises from his chair, and – huh, she’s right, too. Those are jeans. Captain Egbert’s scion in jeans at work? Gasp.
“It was my pleasure,” Rose is telling John, not quite smirking.
“Really timely, too! Watch out, that guy’s a slimer – just on time! Jade, you wouldn’t believe how useful my partner is, seriously, best Seer ever!”
“The demon exploded all over him, didn’t it,” Karkat says to Dave and Jade, peering out through the door gap. He sounds amused.
Pfff. “Fair bet.”
Rolling his eyes, Kankri pads away from his mistress and her teammate. “I do wish Detective Egbert had assumed we understood the breadth of his displeasure in the first ten minutes of grousing,” he says, in a display of perfect hypocrisy. Karkat snorts explosively.
“Like you’ve never groused for more than ten minutes, you snot-nosed windbag.”
“Under-appreciative of my staying power as you might be, you will admit that at least I don’t spend that time repeating the same limited arguments in the same limited vocabulary.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that one. Mostly for the vocabulary part, though.”
They sit on the carpet face to face, Karkat inside the cubicle and Kankri just outside, and they turn to watch Rose being berated by John like it’s a show. Jade props her elbow on the partition to heckle; Dave watches everyone and snickers. Well, inwardly.
He’s waiting for them to drift this way and chat – Kankri is here, Rose will gravitate to him unless she has something pretty urgent to do – but instead the boss walks into the room, a frown under his hat.
“Detectives,” he calls out to the entire (nearly empty) room, “to the meeting room. Time for a strategy session.”
John straightens up. “Aye-aye, sir!” he snaps; Rose’s eyes narrow in interest and they both turn away. Kankri drags himself back up with a little sigh and goes to follow. Jade sneaks Dave a little regretful look and starts moving out of her cubicle; well, sure, she’s not grounded, she could be loaned out any second…
Bleh. Back to work for Dave, then.
“You too, Detective Strider, Karkat.”
“–What, really?” Karkat says. Dave keeps his mouth carefully closed, and stands, trying not to look too eager to get the hell away from this papery hell.
–
The meeting goes as Dave had expected, only a bit worse. In six hours there have been nineteen incursions; not enough data yet to figure out if things are worsening or speeding up or what, and no one has an idea yet as to the cause, except that the ether is severely perturbed. A couple of Class Threes have showed up, too.
Also they may be getting permission to use animal sacrifices on a case-by-case basis, if some spells could do with a boost.
Ayy, hombre! Aradia says like two seconds after the bossman announces it, popping into his mind space like a goddamn jack-in-the-box. Dave is so glad for the poker face training. So glad.
Come on, babe, you’re hella badass already and I’d feel super bad slashing a cute little goat’s throat.
How about an asshole old goat’s?
Shit, girl, even worse, asshole old goats are my homies.
Haha, that’s right.
He tries to listen – organizing patrols, evacuating a few buildings too close to the zone, checking the no man’s land for hobos – he supposes they’re used to dealing with stray demons but if the numbers and/or power levels go up…
No one miss old goat man with smell of piss and brew, Damara says, from what feels like the other side of his head. Dave groans under his breath. Give me a hobo, I ruin demon shit all day.
Oh hell, he can feel Aradia’s attention sharpening, her casually friendly presence become…
Hey, how about he sacrifice youto me? she throws, all smiles. Whatcha say, Dave-man? She’s untrustworthy and also boring.
Um. Okay, first of all I don’t know how to kill an incorporeal demon–
Yappy bitch cannot fight her own battles, Damara says darkly, and Dave winces.
Nah, I just don’t think you’re worth the trouble! Or anything at all, actually.
Goddamn. Why does this always happen. He throws a thought toward Latula’s Name, her wind on razor scales, freedom and free fall.
Latufreakingla reportin’ for duty! –Oh jeeze.
Dave sighs under his breath. Yeah, can you tell 'em we’re closed for business, please–
Oh, come on, like you couldn’t tell me yourself! Aradia says. Damara sneers.
Lizard bitch and that one will not tell me what I –
Jesus. He could disinvite them all, but what a headache. And if he dissolves the contracts now, who’s to say they’ll ever come back? Or that they’ll offer the same terms? Outside of his head they’re talking patrol routes and he hasn’t heard his name yet, which is lucky but goddamn.
In all that snark and snarling he barely notices Karkat peering at him from the corner of his little eyes.
He sure notices when a clawed hand lands low on his back – and then when it tugs his shirt out and slips up against his skin. Whoa, um, that’s forward. What the h–
Ow. Prickle.
“Latula,” Karkat says quietly. “Power boost?”
He tugs on her name and tugs on Dave in the middle and Latula perks right up.
Dave isn’t sure she even has time to do anything, Aradia goes Oh, whatever! Talk to you later, Dave, and disappears, and Damara isn’t far behind, growling all the while. Latula ripples amused disappointment at Dave, and fades out.
Karkat’s hand is still on the small of his back. That’s starting to get kind of embarrassing for a work conference–
“Strider, Vantas…”
–Shit. Dave absolutely can’t read the glance the good Captain sends them. Welp.
“Stay behind afterwards.”
Double welp. Dave nods as coolly as possible and wriggles his hips a bit to get Karkat to take his hand off already, which he does with a total lack of either guilt or stealth.
Jade, John, and Rose linger as everyone files out. The boss doesn’t tell them to clear out – is he planning to ream Dave for being felt up by his demon in public in front of them or…?
“So what’s up?” Karkat asks, propping an elbow on the table carelessly. “Also why were we even here, there was nothing for us. Not that I mind the change of locale, because cubicles are where imagination and freedom go to die, but I’m still wondering.”
“My request that you be put back on the front lines is still being studied,” Egbert Senior replies dryly, “but between us–”
“Yesss!” Jade goes, both fists pumped. Egbert side-eyes her and then chuckles.
“–Oh.” Everyone looks at Dave. He clears his throat. Yeah, so not telling them he was still thinking about the casual fondling-and-blooding. “Oh yeah. I mean. I figured it’d be something like that.”
Shit, what did he miss from the meeting? There better not have been anything too important. Teach him to get distracted by Demon Theater Hour.
“Yes, well.” Egbert shrugs casually. “Nothing sure yet, but I really don’t foresee the good Chief keeping a Class Four detective pushing paper for a small-time discipline issue when we’ve had to cancel vacation time for a half-dozen lower-level summoners already.”
Yeah, it’s kind of stupid to bench a strong summoner and demon pair when this shit is going down. Especially when Jade is also losing efficiency by playing not-very-necessary third wheel to other teams. Briefly he thinks about asking if they’re going to revoke Dirk’s suspension too…
… Considering what Dirk did to deserve it, probably not until civilians start dying. Argh.
Dave makes a very small note in the back of his brain to ask Rose, later, if anyone is keeping Dirk informed. They probably shouldn’t, but.
“By three PM if you still haven’t officially had your punishment postponed I will take it upon myself to go and … grease the wheels, so to speak.”
“Does that mean 'yell at people’?” Karkat asks, eyebrows up, a faint smirk on his face. “I could help, sir, I’m good at explaining stupidity to stupid people.”
John snorts. “You’re good at yelling 'why are you stupid’ in a lot of wordy ways, you mean.”
“Oh, shut your nonsense hose, Teeth McGee, we’re not in need of your expert dumbing-down services.”
“Hehe, see?”
“Yeah, that was a pretty good example!” Jade concurs, nodding, lips pinched.
Karkat narrows his lower eyes meanly. He doesn’t mean it even one bit.
“Friendship is a beautiful thing,” Rose says, syrupy. They all turn to glower at her. Dave tries not to snort.
“I’m glad to hear that!” Captain Egbert says, cracking a faint smile. “Because as you might have gathered if I manage to get them free in time I will be assigning Harley and Strider to the two of you as backup.”
“Backup for what?” Dave asks without thinking. Karkat arches the fuck out of his right eyebrow.
“They just got done talking about the science people who wanted a closer look at that mess, sloth-brain.”
“–Oh. Right.”
“The researchers, Dave. From the university. With the big books and things?”
Dave glares at Jade a tiny little bit. He feels ganged up on. “Sorry, I had a brain fart, okay?”
Rose is smirking; John’s lips are pursed. “Dude, we drew escort, remember? We’re not gonna send anyone into the danger zone with only two people, especially officials.”
“Okay, I know I’m slow today but I don’t need it explained three times either, guys.” Dave totally remembers and was in no way distracted by his harem from hell. “What about Sengupta and Morozov? Are they supposed to come with?”
“I’m sure I’ll have no trouble reassigning them for the duration,” Egbert the Elder says with dry amusement. “If that’s all?”
“Actually,” Kankri says, one finger pointed up like a smug douche in horn-rimmed glasses. John and Rose both blink at him, like this wasn’t planned. Huh, Dave wonders, is Kankri taking interest in the job too? That’d make it two Vantases who can’t help being helpful and interested out of contract. Hee.
“Yes?”
“My apologies for risking triggering you, as I can perceive that this association is unpleasant to you, but alas it is both too, let’s say, murky and muffled for its nature to become clear to me without something that might be construed as prodding, and too closely related to my summoner to let it go without investigating.” He pauses, sitting straight up on his haunches, his chin lifted like he dearly wants to look at them all from the same height, or possibly higher. “Why are you associating Detectives Lalonde and Strider personally with current events at all?”
Egbert stares down, polite smile and relaxed eyes gone from his face.
“At least I assume it must be current events, as the feeling arose most strongly during discussions of such and it would make very little sense otherwise.”
Silence. Kankri starts to frown.
“… Was I mistaken?”
“Um. Do you think the Felt did it?” John asks, rubbing the back of his neck. “Only I don’t know how they’d mess with the ether so much, I mean.”
Jade nods, brows knit. “Yeah, to me it sounds more like a flash-flood on the other side, some kind of low-scale natural disaster maybe? I don’t know how a human or even ten humans could affect the ether like that. And the demons in town, it feels like they’re running scared, they’re not being controlled or anything. Then again I guess it could be another mass breakout like Gamzee…”
Egbert the Elder sighs, shakes his head, his wide shoulders slumping slightly. “No, that’s not… Not the Felt.”
He rakes a hand through his thinning hair, eyes on the carpet. Dave frowns. He looks… sad?
“From the preliminary data there’s no real link to what happened twenty-three years ago – back then there was no sudden invasion – but at the same time, the last time the ether was so badly stirred we went from a middling, stable hell gate to one in constant expansion…”
“Yes?” Rose prompts quietly – not gently, though it sounds like it, and when Dave looks at her, her eyeballs are red in full.
“The last time the gate acted up, we lost your – we lost two good officers and friends.”
There’s a moment of silence. Dave stands there, awkward, with no idea what to say to that.
“Oh,” Kankri says, like he’s a little disappointed, a little embarrassed that it wasn’t something a bit more nefarious.
“Oh, that’s right,” John says, and leans into his dad to bump their shoulders, eyebrows knit in sympathy. “That’s pretty sad.”
Dave sticks his hands in his pockets, makes a little grunt of agreement, doesn’t look at Jade when she bumps her shoulder into his. Hey, look a carpeted floor, how interesting. Nice diamond pattern there, very… regular.
What is he supposed to feel about his unknown parents’ death anyway? It’s not like he knew them personally. Not like Captain Egbert.
He probably wasn’t even a captain at the time. Incredible.
“But that’s probably not why you reacted, Kankri,” Egbert says suddenly, like he wasn’t sure if he should say it, still isn’t sure, but is going to say it anyway.
He firms his voice, settles his weight, braced, steady.
“There’s no real proof that they stopped it – they didn’t talk to anyone before they went, and no one knows exactly what happened. But I… I always believed that they ended it somehow. Slowed it down, at least. We were able to evacuate nearly everyone. They never came back.” He looks up, spears Rose and then Dave, eyes narrow with an odd tension. “I watched the two of you grow up alongside my son and my nephew and nieces, and I really don’t wish to see history repeat itself.”
Dave blinks, taken aback. “It’s not like we even know what they did and whether it would work now–”
“Dave!” Jade exclaims, and makes big 'what the hell’ eyes at him.
“It’s the fact that the first thing you jump to is 'we don’t know how’ and not 'we would never’ that worries me,” Egbert says, a little rough, a little pained.
Rose opens her mouth, and then closes it, looks chagrined. “To think I just yelled at Dave about this very thing barely two weeks ago. I suppose we come by this tendency honestly.”
“Hah. I suppose you do,” Egbert says, and cracks a tiny, lopsided smile, and then he straightens up. “Alright… my apologies for cutting this short, but we all have jobs to do today, Detectives.”
“If they’ve got more questions about their progenitors, they can ask them later, right? I mean, off the job.”
Dave and Rose throw Karkat the exact same look. What? Asking someone to make time for a personal chat about potentially important, awkward things? When they could be ignoring the fuck out of it and pretending they don’t care, or trying to trick the answers out instead? Jesus, it’s like he doesn’t know them or something. Dave nudges Karkat’s hip with a foot, and Karkat looks up, one eyebrow arched in confusion like he doesn’t get the massive etiquette breach he just committed.
No but seriously, it’s… It’s not like Egbert has never mentioned their parents around them, but John and Jade’s dad-slash-uncle or not, he’s still… they’ve never been personally close? Not the way they’re close to each other in the Harleybert family. It’s just… It’s. Well.
Awkward.
It’s never been something Dave felt he could ask a ton about, is all.
Maybe it was the locked-up, angry-to-hide-grieving faces Bro made every time Dave brought it up as a kid that trained him out of wondering.
“Ah,” Egbert says, visibly just as startled by this novel approach. “I… Yes, that would be acceptable. And now I really must go,” he adds with a little nod, and gathers his files and walks out. Dave rubs the back of his neck and hopes John comes up with something silly that misses the undercurrents by three miles so they can put things back under wraps.
“… That was kind of weird!” John says instead, because of course he gets insightful when you least want him to.
“Was it?” Rose inquires with complete insincerity. John elbows her.
“You know it was!”
“I don’t think so?” Jade says, worrying at her thumbnail with her teeth in thought. “I think he just misses them.”
“Yeah, maybe.” John shrugs. “But anyway, it’s maybe time to do some actual policing around here.” Oh thank god, a topic change.
“I’m driving,” Rose says immediately.
“What? Hey, no, it’s my turn. Kankri, tell her it’s my turn.”
“I cannot speak deliberate falsehoods to my Master, you are aware?” Kankri says piously. John splutters, and then narrows his eyes.
“That wasn’t a 'it’s totally Rose’s turn’! It was a non-sequething.”
Kankri gives him a thin smirk as he gets up on all fours and stretches his ridiculous sails over the conference table and across the room. “Non-sequitur, and well-spotted, John. For once.”
John slaps Dave in the shoulder as a friendly goodbye as he follows Kankri out, still bickering. Rose shrugs. “Well, have fun with your paperwork, Dave, Jade. Hopefully you’ll be free from this hell before we’ve cleaned the whole gate of demons without you.”
Dave makes a yappy hand at her, and she leaves too, smirking.
“Okay. Guess it’s back to work, then!” Jade says, and slumps a little bit, the way Dave feels like slumping inside his soul. He kind of wants to tell her that she can take a call with another team if she wants to, but then she might not be right here when they give Dave permission to get back to field work… Anyway, he already knows she would say no, staunchly faithful.
Karkat stretches his wings too, without thinking – Dave is sure he’s not trying to copy Kankri, or puff himself up. He manages to make them look about a half-inch longer, for a brief optical illusion moment. Dave smiles down at him.
“Oh, work, awesome. I still have all those papers to sort through. Hey, Harley, do I get a jawbreaker if I correct your fucking typos and abysmal punctuation? I swear to God if I see another full paragraph without a single lost comma somewhere in the middle I will go mad, piss all over your folders, and make everyone wear them as jaunty hats.”
“That’s gross! And one jawbreaker per ten pages, and if you piss on anything I’ll put your nose in it. Don’t even try it, I’ve had dogs all my life, I have training.”
“Sexy,” Dave opines as he ambles back to the cubicles after them.
It only takes their miracle man of a boss another hour to spring them.
–
“By the way, I hear you’re seeing the shrink now? How badly did he faint when he saw you come in?”
Dave ducks under Jade’s suddenly swinging line of fire and lets her snipe the bee-slug demon he was angling for, disgruntled. “Do we have to do this now?”
She laughs, uses Porrim’s power to throw a pebble in the air and have it come down huge and heavy on top of a knot of more slug-bees. Slubees. “You got anything better to do?”
Yeah, okay, they’re not exactly hard to get rid of. This is pest control. Even Karkat is going at it with a pole he found instead of either his claws or his powers, whacking away with grim, but bored, determination.
“Didn’t faint, but he did go on his knees and pray to the Almighty, which is coincidentally–”
“–What you call your penis,” Jade and Karkat chorus – accidentally, and both sounding bored.
“Hey.” Dave slips them both a disapproving look in between two hits of Damara. “Just because you guys have heard it before doesn’t mean it’s not still true.”
The sheer scorn he feels from the both of them is unreal and also very hurtful. Dave is not the type of guy to pout, but he’s totally pouting inside. Okay, he’s too busy stomping a slubee that managed to sneak up to him out of existence. Eugh, his nice dress pants. Teach him to come to work in classy duds. He hopes the slime comes off.
“So if you’re all sorted out and with, you know, adult supervision now–”
“Oi, oi–”
“Can I ask what the hell it was about, that thing with John having to fly Rose to you?”
… Oh. Wow. Mood falling fast. Dave turns away to look over the street, scanning the abandoned car for the rest of the infestation. “… What’d he tell you?”
“Everything he knew!” A brief pause. “He didn’t know much.”
Dave snorts despite himself, briefly amused. Karkat snorts too, but more out of irritation.
“Do you guys have to know everything about everyone you ever talked to?”
“Yep!” Jade replies, shameless. “So what happened? It didn’t sound good, but Rose wouldn’t talk and Kankri made the judge-face at me–”
“Shit, you asked Kankri?” Dave says.
“Well, who else! I wasn’t going to ask you–”
“We freaked each other out due to cultural miscommunication,” Karkat drones, and briefly crackles a cage of red spines to open himself some floor space. “Then we sorted it out, and now all is sunshine and butterflies. I still don’t know why sunshine is in any way considered positive instead of eye-burning and annoying,” he mutters, “and the butterflies are even more useless, but there you are.”
He crackles a last time to get rid of the guards around the nest, Dave crumples the abandoned truck to rust, and once she has a visual, Jade uses the rust flecks to compress the leftover slubees and the slubee queen who was shitting them out into a nice little gory cube. Infestation destroyed. Their third just this evening alone. Dave and Jade high-five, and then she turns and goes into a crouch to offer her hand to Karkat, who snorts but goes up on his haunches to cautiously tap her palm.
Dave sighs, re-holsters the gun he did not use, and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “It’s what Rose was saying earlier – I kinda accidentally said stuff that sounded hella like I have some passive, you know, suicidal urges. Which,” he forced out, “turns out to maybe be an actual thing, not just another thing that looks like a thing. Which I don’t want to be a thing, and I didn’t notice it was a thing. Or at least not a huge one. Um. You feel me?”
Jade turns to look at him, expression sober – a little sad, but when he meets his eyes he finds no judgment there, just a tiny quirk of a sympathetic smile. “I kind of maybe had a feeling that the thing was indeed a thing. I’m, um. I’m glad it’s being… you know. Shrinkified.”
“They met twice so far,” Karkat says, stretching his arms over his head until his shell – or maybe his spine – pops. Urgh, gross. “And the first time was just to say hi. Anyway I haven’t seen a difference yet. When are you seeing your Witch of Mind again? Someone should tell him to hurry up.”
“He’s a shrink, not a demon or even a summoner,” Dave says with a groan.
“… Well no fucking wonder it’s taking so long, then.”
Jade giggles into her hand.
They start walking again; there’s been another demon sighting a few blocks to the east. Dave follows his partner (best friend) and his demon (not boyfriend) and thinks how glad he is that Karkat didn’t mention mating urges or a courting process.
Not that he is courting Karkat.
… Not that he’s not courting Karkat.
He has no idea how to flirt with a normal human, never mind an extraplanar being, all the people he’s dated before came on to him first; he has no idea or where to go from here, regarding the two of them – if Karkat wants to go anywhere at all. Mixed signals are Vantas the Stouter’s dominion.
It’s not like this weird thing will have anywhere to go once the Felt are dealt with and Karkat is back in the incorporeal plane.
“Dave?”
Dave blinks down at Karkat, looks for Jade; she’s striding ahead, a hand on the butt of her gun. Hm. Okay.
“Was just wondering if you’d like to ride, some day when you’re properly disembodied again.” Could be cool-ish. Kind of a long-distance relationship with zero hope of meeting again in meat space, only the skype window is his brain.
Karkat gives a slow blink, and a quiet snort. “Let’s see whether I’ll even want to acknowledge your existence ever again before we plan on getting me inside your gross unshelled body,” he says casually.
Ouch. Hah. … Ouch.
“… Still waiting for the sex joke,” Karkat says a few seconds later, and cranes his neck to arch an eyebrow at him.
Yeah, Dave super wants to joke about bottoming for Karkat. Urgh. Being in love sucks, everything hits way too seriously, it’s making him so unfun.
“That’s too easy,” he says.
“'Like your mom’ is the proper answer, right?”
… Yeah no okay that one’s funny. Lame, but that’s what makes it funny. Dave cracks a tiny smile to match Karkat’s floating half-smirk, and Karkat’s smile widens.
“Too bad I’m not Light, I’d climb two levels just from figuring out your weird mammalian kinship jokes,” he says, and actually chuckles.
“Too much power corrupts,” Dave intones wisely as they go, for lack of anything better to say.
–
“It was a good day, huh,” Dave says when they get home, at half past midnight. They stopped to eat at a Chinese buffet on the way back and he’s full and bone-deep tired, ready to roll into bed and sleep.
Karkat is still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and not even his full stomach will make him stop prancing. Heh. From time to time when he gets too excited – like with the breaded shrimp, oh lawdy – a red tendril, thin like a single hair, rolls like slow-motion electricity along his side or up his wings.
“Wasn’t bad!” Karkat said, but even though Dave’s back is to him, he can hear a smile in Karkat’s voice and knows it for the oh my god yes it is.
Gun in the gun safe, he hangs his crumpled but cleanish jacket by the door, bats some dust off it, then turns to go to the bathroom, already unbuttoning. His pants are a loss, splattered with slubee juice. Maybe if he goes to a professional cleaner…
As he pushes open the door to the laundry closet he’s composing his outfit for tomorrow – can’t substitute another pair of slacks if he’s using the same jacket, so it’s gonna have to be jeans. Not not the slim ones if they’re going to escort scientists into the no man’s land, though–
“Hey,” Karkat says right in his ear, plastron pressed against Dave’s back. Dave almost takes a header into the laundry basket.
“Huh,” Dave says, voice a little wobbly from surprise. “Hungry?”
Karkat snorts, but it sounds indulgent, amused, like he’s keeping a laugh behind his teeth. “I could eat.”
He nibbles on Dave’s neck. Hffgh.
Dave stares at the wall. It’s a very nice wall, no okay it sucks and probably needs repainted but. Karkat is standing behind him, which means he’s leaning hard, or he would fall back down. Wouldn’t take much to bend Dave over, heavy as he is, which Dave is failing not to think about. “How can you be hungry, you’ve had your Price all day long…?”
“I just said I could eat, I didn’t say I was hungry, because as a stupendous, rare coincidence, I’m actually not.” He nips Dave’s neck. Awghghghg.
“… I thought you’d. You’d prefer your own Price?”
“Oh my little Level Seven,” Karkat mutters, and falls back onto all fours.
He yanks Dave’s undone slacks down on the way.
Okay, now Dave is standing in socks and button-up shirt with his pants around his ankles. Suave as balls.
“It’s not solid food,” Karkat explains as he sets his claws into the leg of Dave’s boxers and pulls them down past his ass. “I can’t blow up my flesh food pouch if I overeat.”
“Oh. Cool.” Wow um. He should maybe get with the program then.
…So tired though.
But Karkat is so cheerful tonight. It’d be… it’d be nice to see more of that.
He steps out of his pants obediently, starts unbuttoning his shirt. “So what would happen? Can you even overeat as a demon?”
Claw tips tickle the small of his back, Karkat’s hand gone up the back of his shirt just like earlier in the meeting room only without the blood, and his spine arches.
“Aha. Knew it.”
Dave glowers down, and shrugs out of the shirt and lets it fall onto Karkat’s head. So there. “You smug little jerkface.”
Karkat pulls the shirt up to glower at him, throws it into the laundry basket – then hugs Dave around the thighs and lifts him off the ground. Dave lets out a totally manly yelp.
“Hey what the fuck no no no don’t drop me–”
It’s – this deserves the ten-dollar word – discombobulating as hell to suddenly be sitting in the laundry, but at the same time the way Karkat controlled his fall was – strong. Hot.
“Okay, I draw the line at fucking in smelly socks and crusty underwear,” Dave says as he tries to haul himself out, face heating up a little already. “You’ve already ruined the washing machine for me, there is a line, Karkat, the line is right here–”
Oh hey demon hovering over him, both clawed hands braced on the edges of the basket. Karkat is smirking down at him. If Dave were still wearing underwear it would catch on fire.
Dave plants a foot in Karkat’s thigh and pushes him back, wriggle-rolls out of the basket, which almost flips over. A startled laugh escapes Karkat; he doesn’t think to grab Dave before Dave is out of the closet door. Dave dodges out of the bathroom, hopping onto one foot really fast to take off his socks one by one, because what if Karkat chases him, not that he has ever chased Dave but – oh shit there he is.
There really isn’t much to hide behind in the apartment. Dave speed-walks a circle around the main room, Karkat following at a careless amble, snickering and shaking his head even as he lazily goes about trying to cut Dave’s escape routes.
“No. No. Help,” Dave drones as he dodges behind the coffee table; his pulse is beating in his ears. “I’m being chased by a devilish fiend. Gasp, my tender virgin body.”
“Well, your meat isn’t at risk, I bet it’s chewy like an old shoe – hah!”
Whoops! Demon on top of the table. “That’s cheating,” Dave protests. “That is so cheating. Disqualified, bzzt.”
“It’s not cheating,” Karkat counters, mock-offended, but his eyes still relaxed, his mouth still smirking a little; “it’s thinking in three dimensions.”
He doesn’t even seem to think much about the fact that Dave is running around his apartment while completely naked, whether to laugh at it or look at him, but Dave’s skin is prickling with awareness; every gust of air makes his spine tingle.
“Whatever you say, you cheating cheater,” Dave says, and sidesteps really fast.
Karkat lands on the ladder with a rattling thud when Dave’s foot has barely touched the second rung and he’s still mostly on the floor. There are armored arms bracketing him, armored feet with their murdertoes curled around the rungs by his knees.
“… Caught me.”
Karkat snorts into his hair, nips at the top of his ear with pointy little teeth, pauses. “This was what you wanted, right? You’re stinking up the ether with your lust but–”
“Oh my god, don’t ruin it,” Dave groans, bumping his forehead against the closest rung.
Teeth close on his neck, just firm enough to feel the pressure without breaking the skin. He wishes they were duller right now, having a chunk taken out of his muscle is not the sensation he wants.
Still good. He tries not to shiver, fails.
“You’ve got some serious crossed wires about sex and survival,” Karkat muses, his mouth traveling along the side of Dave’s neck. “Then again, play-hunting is fun for us too…”
Karkat hunting him. Hngh.
Dave leans back a little, leans into him. He’s warm, solid, he doesn’t budge. Won’t let Dave run away. It’s good. He doesn’t really want to.
“Yeah I. That was nice. Bit short but.”
One of Karkat’s arms lifts off the rungs, comes around Dave’s chest, his shoulder; Karkat shifts his weight forward for balance, pushing Dave against the ladder.
“Okay, this is one place in the apartment we haven’t done it before I guess,” Dave says, voice hitching a little.
“Touch yourself,” Karkat says in his ear, low and contented like a huge purring tiger, not even bothering to acknowledge Dave’s nervous blather.
Dave touches himself.
He curls a hand around his dick and starts pumping it slowly, rocking just a little bit against the demon molded against his back. He’d like Karkat’s hand instead but he’s holding himself up with it, he’s holding Dave around the chest, possessive and warm, and it’s good too. Eyes closed, Dave imagines him watching (and more interested than amused for once, as long as they’re making things up.)
“Bossy little fuck,” Dave mumbles, lower lip caught between his teeth. “Don’t even get why–”
Shit, there’s demon crotch against his ass, Karkat’s mound rolling slow and steady in time with Dave’s hand, and it’s not wishful thinking that Karkat is breathing a little deeper. Dave’s hand mysteriously speeds up. Oh, fuck yes, please.
“Which one do you want more?” Karkat asks; his voice is doing that little background ratcheting cricket noise. “You fucking me or me fucking you?”
“Going down on you,” Dave pants, head bowed, forehead pressing against the wood. It makes Karkat’s shelled arm press hard against the underside of his chin, makes it feel a little like he’s holding him by the neck. “Tonguefucking you and then whatever you want, bending me over, s'good but Jesus just ride my face, ride my ass I don’t even care which I just–”
“Yeah, okay,” Karkat breathes, right in his ear, “I’ll think about it.”
Dave’s core muscles clench like a fist around his guts, curl his back, rock his hips. The noise he makes is breathless and strangled and high. Shuddering, he leans his weight into Karkat without thinking, but the demon holds him up without a word, doesn’t even hint that he’s about to dump Dave and his sudden weight on the floor; Dave allows his eyes to close, his body to loosen, allows himself to rest like this.
“… You serious, or did you just say that to make me shoot my load?”
His head is rolling limply on Karkat’s shoulder; he cracks an eye open, squints sideways.
“Are you kidding me, if I had known it was the magic orgasm button I’d have mashed it weeks ago.” Dave feels a smirk against his cheek. Mmmm. “I thought you were tired, too.”
Dave groans, closes his eyes again. “I’m fucking exhausted, it’s killing me that you’re so goddamn perky.”
“You big baby.”
“Mm.”
They stand a moment in silence – well, Dave stands, sort of, most of his weight on Karkat; Karkat hangs off the ladder like a monkey or maybe a cicada, almost more at ease than on flat ground. Dave likes it though, likes having their heads at the same height. Likes the cuddles.
So of course Karkat makes his shoulder jump to bounce Dave’s head off it.
“Come on, asshole, time for all good little summoners to be snug as a bug in a fucking grub, or something.”
“I shot my jizz on the underside of the stairs,” Dave mutters.
“You know what? Because I’ve had a fucking awesome day and I’m not sleeping for a while and you’re going to crash if I don’t put you to bed right now, I will be the soul of generosity and go back to clean it up. I will clean your baby batter off the stairs, Dave, now if you don’t put your foot on the ladder and make with the climbing I am going to clean it up with that limp mop you call your hair. Come on, up, up, I’m not carrying you.”
Dave really wants to be spoiled right now, but Karkat kind of is spoiling him already. Sighing, he reaches up. “Why aren’t you carrying me, though. You stole all my strength with your wiles.” Yawn. “You succubus.”
His ass is about level with Karkat’s face and he wasn’t really thinking about it until Karkat thwacks it with the back of his knuckles. Whoa. Then the demon is climbing the ladder around him somehow, freaky insect strength–
“Oh, fine. Don’t move,” Karkat says, and wraps an arm just under his ribs, and hauls him the rest of the way up.
It’s awkward and ridiculous and Dave rubs and bumps into things he would rather not rub and bump into when his dick is not even contained by any underpants, and when Karkat shoves him over the edge of the mezzanine Dave hurries to roll onto his hip and drag himself free of Karkat’s body by his hands, and laughs a little.
“There,” Karkat says, vindicated, “you happy?”
“Yeah,” Dave says.
Yeah.
He rolls onto his futon, makes a half-hearted attempt to pull the comforter out from under himself… Nah, hopeless. That’s cool. He’ll just sleep here, bareassed and all.
Clicking his tongue, Karkat rolls him onto one side, tugs the comforter down, rolls him onto his other side, onto the fresh sheets underneath.
“I love you,” Dave says, because fuck, when someone tucks you in and they’re not the asshole contractually obligated to wipe your ass or face the Child Protection services in mortal combat, you tell them that.
… Also because it’s true, but it’s truer right now, because…
Because.
“I know,” Karkat says after a little pause.
The ladder creaks under his weight. Gone cleaning, maybe.
“Still don’t entirely get it, but I know.”
He doesn’t get into bed with Dave when he comes back, but he doesn’t jump off and go watch some TV instead, play a game, run laps around the apartment, even though his foot taps absently on the futon. He sits against the headboard and pulls out his laptop, and his knee touches Dave’s back, between the shoulder blades.
Click. Dark.
“Get some sleep, you ridiculous twit, you’re shattered.”
“You’re the one who’s too… mnh. Gone mad with power. Shoulda known your Price would do that.”
“I wish I had known,” Karkat says, absently amused. The lights change on the wall as he scrolls down.
“You’d have done something different?”
A short sigh. “… Yeah, okay. Apart from bitching more, not really. Oh well, that’s over now, and I’m not going on a diet any time soon.”
“Mm. Blimpkat the Terrible.”
“When I evolve to Level Five and take that as my by-name you will be the sorriest asshole on any plane of existence that ever existed.”
Heh.
–
He dreams. He’s being cradled in a titanic Karkat’s hands, a handful of sun-warmed water, and it feels safe.
He’s had that dream before, he thinks briefly, but of course he would have, it’s such a nice one, why wouldn’t he? He sleeps.