Demon summoner urban fantasy AU!
This chapter contains mostly porn. Mm, porn.
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—
Dave Strider @turntechgodhead
#springcleaning yo peeps who wanna feast their eyes on this choice domestic babe in an apron and authentic feather duster http://…
Dave snaps another pouty picture, uploads it, then puts the phone down for five minutes so he can finish dusting his vinyl records shelf.
He is totally wearing an apron. The feather duster is synthetic though. Neon green. Hey, it was cheap.
It’s a nice afternoon outside; all his windows are open wide to let in a breeze, though since they’re all facing the same side of the building he’d only get a real one going if he opened the front door too.
Then again there’s a lot of loose paper he hasn’t put away yet, so he probably shouldn’t.
Wow, what a perfect time to check his phone again.
@turntechgodhead LOSE THE SHIRT YEEEHAW
man ur cute @turntechgodhead
@turntechgodhead #gayyyyyyyyyyyyy
@turntechgodhead ok good now the same in NOTHING but an apron ;3
@turntechgodhead Where’s Karkat???
Yeah, ever since Karkat’s follower count passed his, he’s been getting followers through him, but they’re here mostly for more domestic demon shenanigans. Pssh. What about following Dave for Dave? Posers. Noobs.
He snaps a picture of Karkat sitting up on the window seat gazing at the sky and scratching idly at the tendon bits under his knee spur, and attaches it to his reply.
#fuckyeahpetdemon guess whos slacking while others toil endlessly to render his living arrangements as dust free as humanly possible http://…
Fifteen seconds later he’s getting pinged back.
@turntechgodhead WANT MY HELP? SURE THING. I COULD GET RID OF THOSE POINTLESS DUST TRAPS FOR YOU *AND* FURTHER MY UNDERSTANDING OF GRAVITY. HOW’S THAT FOR EFFICIENCY.
@cruorGuardian touch my jar collection and you will be its replacement
@turntechgodhead SHOULD I EVEN MENTION HOW EASY IT’S GOING TO FIND A JAR I CAN FIT IN.
@cruorGuardian seein no problem here bro if you dont fit in a big one i can fit you into many small ones easy
@cruorGuardian did u see my katana ps i got a katana did i mention that
@turntechgodhead YOU MEAN CHEAP STEEL CENTRAL? YEAH, GO AHEAD. THAT’LL BE FUNNY.
@cruorGuardian oi oi its so not you wouldnt call it cheap if you knew how much it flattened my wallet k
@turntechgodhead BOY HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU.
@turntechgodhead *HONEY*… IT DOESN’T EVEN STING WHEN I TOUCH IT.
@turntechgodhead I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S MADE OF BUT IRON DOESN’T SEEM TO BE A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF IT.
Dave takes a quick selfie of his own sad pout and uploads it. He hears Karkat huff quietly through his nose and imagines him smiling at his phone. Maybe smirking in smug victory. Brat.
They’re five steps away from each other. Dave guesses he could turn around and talk to him directly, too.
Eh. He likes boosting Karkat’s ego, and nothing does that like winning an argument in front of his adoring army of fans.
Karkat calling him honey, even if it’s with the utmost derision… It’s giving him this pang of awkward yearning, of “I wish.” If he pretended hard enough that it’s nice, though, he could totally tease him for that choice of endearment. (why not darling while youre at it you dork <3)
He spends a whole and entire second gazing soulfully at the word before he makes himself refresh the page so it’s not visible without scrolling anymore. Pff. How stupid.
Here he thought the dramatic sorry-for-myself, finding-tragic-meaning-in-an-abandoned-chewing-gum-wrapper stage was a byproduct of being a teenager at the time. Welp. Sorry, Jane.
Well. He actually did write her three-years-older glory a rap where the words MILFness and I Crave A Woman Not A Girl featured prominently, along with eyes both cornflower and cerulean. At least he hasn’t written Karkat anything that embarrassing yet.
He wonders when so many of his dead things in jars got relegated to boxes and corners behind other trinkets. (Was it at the same time he figured out that cables everywhere across the floor were a dudebro hazard and started laying them out smarter?) He takes out the jars to dust, and then spreads them out properly, so they’re all nicely visible. Ahh, his Janus kitten fetus. Hey there little guy.
Dusting gets almost meditative after a while, but there’s a finite amount of apartment to flay, and he has just realized, doing the ladder, that if he washes the floor first and then does the loft he’ll have to do the floor again.
Sigh.
He climbs, strips the comforter of its quilt cover, and the sheets off the futon, rolls them up to chuck to the ground. Might as well wash them today while he’s at it. Okay, and this is trash, that has a designated spot just five inches farther on the shelf, these cables only need twenty seconds to untangle and wind up properly…
He shuffles his way on his knees around the futon, head bowed, clearing off the floor.
"Hey, Karkat, gonna have to dismantle your nest so I can wash the sheets, okay?"
Ow, his spine is going to hurt soon. Stupid slanted ceiling. He plucks out the marshmallows to put them safely in the center of the mattress, and then moves Roxy’s laptop that Karkat has kept since the hospital next to it; he tugs a blanket free, throws it overboard, goes back for the next.
He really should have expected the dildo to tumble out eventually. Yet when it rolls to a stop against his knee in all its silvery glory he can only stare at it.
"Huh."
Okay, does he still have cloth to pick it up with… looks like it all went overboard. Haha. Damn it.
He’s being ridiculous, it’s not like Karkat uses it in any way that would make it gross or otherwise boundary-breaking to touch. He still uses the bottom flap of his apron as a shield between his fingers and the base.
Really, nothing to freak out about! He lifts it, blasé as hell, and drawls, “Wow, haven’t seen this in a while, when I think of how often you forgot it in plain sight, wonder wh—”
“Give it to me.”
The ladder rattles with a noise like a herd of rhinos over a rickety bridge. Perched on the last rung, Karkat glares at Dave, eyes glowing, wings folded cramping-tight.
"Haha, c’mon, bro, like you care what I… think of…"
Karkat snatches the dildo out of his hand and flings himself straight off the ladder. Dave is left sitting on his haunches, trying to tell himself that Karkat hadn’t been wearing an “if I could blush I’d be blushing” face.
Whoa. Um.
Whoa.
Okay, let’s not jump to conclusions here.
@tentacletherapist rose rose you evil fiend from hell *i think hes started actually using it*
@turntechgodhead Hmm? What could you be referring to?
@tentacletherapist NEVERMIND.
Jesus. Okay he uh. Needs to be doing things now. Things that are not thinking too much about Karkat’s private sex life. Because what Karkat does with Dave is feeding, they are not lovers, it is therefore not Dave’s business whether he presses that vibrating thing around secret, tempting places he does not want Dave to touch.
Jesus.
Dave would be so fine with not touching if he could watch. Or even just know for sure it happens, his imagination can take care of the rest.
Even without any basis whatsoever, apparently. He shakes himself and punches the mattress to wake himself up, and stomps decisively toward the ladder, inasmuch as one can stomp while walking bowed from stupid ceilings.
He makes sure he makes noise to warn Karkat he’s coming down, so he has time to hide that thing Dave is absolutely not thinking about.
"Okay! Time to get a load of laundry started! You got any clothes you okay never mind I’m retarded. Be back in ten! Have fun with your — your. Bird watching. Cloud watching. Sounds cool. Yeah."
What sounds even cooler is plunging head first into the laundry machine and washing his shame away with the sweat stains on his used underwear. Yep. Dave is a trendsetter.
As he bends over to gather an armful of bedclothes the dildo draws his eye like a lightning rod. Because it’s pretty much erect like one, a metal love pole perched on the window seat right there next to Karkat’s hip.
Karkat is sitting with his arms crossed and his chin set down, and the glare he gives Dave is mulish to the max.
"Um."
Dave finishes gathering cloth. A pillowcase flops free because he was doing it like clumsy ass. He bends over again.
"So do you, like, actually—"
"You dropped a sock."
"Fuck." Where is that escaped sock — aha. He turns away. His face is prickly hot. "Thanks. Found it."
He straightens up by the coffee table with his armful and glances back, mouth open because he apparently has some none-of-my-business-BUT subtype of reverse-tetanus going on here that means his jaw muscles are aching to flap away.
Karkat is still staring straight back at him, arms still crossed and horns aimed at him like he’s thinking serious headbutting thoughts. His nostrils are flared in anticipatory outrage.
Dave closes his mouth. Pinches his lips together, rolled inwards. There, no more mouth for stupid. Yep.
"Okay. I’ll just. Ten minutes. Yeah."
He makes his escape toward the bathroom, the laundry rolled in a ball against his breast and held like it’s his precious children that he almost lost in a flood.
"Uhh I hear you can wash them in the dishwasher if you wanna it’s great for germs and I’ll be closing this door here behind me as soon as I can figure out how to — aha, there." He manages to juggle the laundry in one arm so he can close the bathroom door behind him.
Then he goes and hip-checks the laundry closet (it’s not a room at this size, sorry) open, and dumps the laundry on the floor, and flops down on his haunches to hide his face in his old sheets.
He is the stupidest motherfucking dweeb there ever was. Look out, coolness, here comes Dave Strider, here to utterly destroy you. Emperor of losiness. Lose attitude. The person who cool goes to to die.
Blurghghghruuuuuuuugh.
Still in a crouch, he pulls open the laundry machine’s door and puts in the detergent, then starts shoveling it all in.
The space is narrow — long as the bathroom is wide, but only a bit wider than the laundry machine — and not super well lit either. Dave uses it as a darkroom when he wants to develop his own pictures, which he hasn’t done in about six months or a year now and he really should get back to it some day.
Anyway the point is that when the light changes because the door was pushed open, he notices.
"Yeah?" he asks, standing and closing the door with his knee. He fiddles with the settings, head bowed studiously, bangs falling over his face. Jesus, his face is heating up again. He wonders if Karkat abandoned that poor saluting dildo on the windowsill, like a monument to unashamed pervs everywhere.
Vrr. Vrrr, vrrr, vrrrrrrr. Badum, badum, laundry on the way, sir. Karkat still isn’t saying anything. Did the door just move on its own or what?
He straightens a bit to look over his shoulder.
Two hands close on his hips.
He makes a noise he couldn’t describe afterwards. Maybe a yelp, maybe a groan. Embarrassingly high-pitched.
He chokes, hands grabbing for the machine, fingers going white-knuckled on the edges as his knees threaten to dump him on the floor. Karkat is pulling him back, tugging his hips back, bending him over. He tilts Dave’s hips. Dave falls down on his elbows. He gasps, a sudden release of breath he didn’t control, almost silent but not silent enough.
The walls are so narrow around them. It’s so dim in here, it’s, it smells of detergent and faded photograph chemicals, developer fluid. The machine is starting to rumble and thump under his forearms, in the space under his chest.
Karkat hauls himself up using his hips as a handle. He drapes his weight on Dave’s back, and Dave’s knees almost fold once again.
Soft belly against his ass. Armored thighs pressed to the back of his thighs.
Karkat is so warm, even the shelled parts of him. His gauntlet hands still keep Dave’s hips trapped.
"Jesus," he chokes. "Jesus." A laugh, not amused at all, because it’s a laugh or a whine at this point and he just — he just. "That’s a. Hey. Hi."
For an answer, Karkat snake-rattles against his back, a buzzing counterpoint to the machine’s gravelly hum.
"Yeah? Oh, really. That’s. Interesting. No, tell me more." He’s going to go crazy.
He’s expecting Karkat to growl at him to shut up. Karkat doesn’t. He pulls himself higher up Dave’s back instead, body rubbing hard against his, and he bites the back of his neck.
Dave chokes, and his legs do fold until one of them hits the washing machine. Karkat heaves with his hips and thighs — startled, awkward, but all Dave really thinks about it afterwards is that he’s pinned against the machine and thank fuck for that because if he wasn’t he’d end up on his ass.
Karkat huffs in vindicated annoyance against his spine and nips him again.
"Fuck me," Dave hears himself begging, "fuck me, god please, fuck m—"
A hand covers his mouth, light, almost tentative, and he falls silent like a switch has been thrown. It presses a bit harder; he makes a sound in his throat that’s strangled and weird and hungry.
"You’re so fucking weird," Karkat says against his back, but he sounds oddly pleased about it. Dave still twitches, almost turns his face out of his hand, and then — doesn’t, because Karkat tightened it, pulled his head back, arching his neck.
Pushing him right into the washing machine, which stutters for a couple of beats and then enters another earthquake cycle.
The stimulation is too much, too fast for how all over the place his mind is; he jerks right back into Karkat’s crotch and his smooth absence of anything to fuck Dave with, and Dave could damn well weep about that right now.
"Hand, shit, touch me,” he groans, curled over the top of the shaking machine. The tip of his dick is brushing against it, through the pants and the fuckstupid goddamned apron; he goes on tiptoes to avoid contact. Karkat is heavy, draped on his back like a fat, lazy Persian, and doesn’t seem interested in doing anything about it.
(Maybe he’s not sure what to do. Maybe he doesn’t get it. Maybe—)
Maybe he rocks his hips right into Dave’s ass and pushes him back so his dick glides across the surface of the shuddering machine.
"You like that," he muses as Dave chokes on a yell.
"No fucking kidding!" Dave spits back, and buries his face between his arms, shuffling his elbows higher so he can cross his arms over his head — so Karkat’s weight can bow his back until his stomach is pressed into the machine. His toes curl ineffectually against the tiles.
No foothold to be gained here, no way to brace, Karkat’s weight has him pinned, trapped, and the washing machine shakes and rocks his whole body, indifferent to his reactions.
It’s ridiculous how he’s going to be pretty much fucked by a laundry machine and a demon who barely even gets why what he’s doing is even working at all.
It feels good, and he doesn’t even have to do anything, and — fuck.
It’s mortifying.
"Jesus fuck, you don’t even know why this is hot, you’re not even—" he’s not even, not mounting Dave, even like this; he’s not thrusting, just resting there like he’s totally missing the implications of the position he’s chosen. “Of course you wouldn’t, shit, fucking body instincts—”
Karkat’s hand finds Dave’s mouth again; his teeth close on the back of Dave’s neck. Dave goes very, very still, a bit shocked even though it’s not even the first time and he really needs to explain to Karkat when and how he can get away with it because—
"You don’t want to talk about my body instincts,” Karkat growls. “I don’t want to talk about my body instincts. I have no body motherfucking instincts.”
And then he rocks into Dave and if he had a dick he would now be balls deep.
God. Yes.
"Sounds — ff — sounds like — a lie," he manages to say somehow, five or ten seconds later.
Shit, it feels nice all over, warmth and full-body contact and vibrations — his head is almost in the gap before the wall and there’re spiders and he doesn’t even care.
And then Karkat’s hand pushes its way under him and he really doesn’t care.
It cups him in full, balls and all, and he ruts into it for several blind, uncontrolled thrusts, belly pressed heavy against the hard column of Karkat’s forearm.
"So much cloth," Karkat grumbles against his shoulder blade. A tingle runs down Dave’s spine.
"Ngh?"
"Apron and pants and underwear? I guess I don’t have to worry quite as much about stabbing you in the taint."
Dave smothers a sudden burst of laughter in the crook of his elbow.
That fucking apron. “Kinky housewife roleplay,” he manages to choke out between two crazed giggles.
Karkat uses his weight to slowly, patiently rock Dave and his boner into his hand, and goes “what the actual fuck, you humongous imbecile” against his bumpiest vertebra a bit like he’s muttering endearments.
"Welcome home, honey, dinner’ll be — ah, hh, fuck.”
Fucking machine switched gears on him again. His dick might be cradled in Karkat’s hand right now but the vibrations still go through him, only slightly muted. Shell? Maybe shell. Yes. Fuck. Dave starts to rock his hips as well as he can, thighs too close to the washing machine to set his feet and brace, and having to move Karkat’s weight alongside his to boot.
He grunts or gasps or something throaty and constricted like that when Karkat starts shoving back against him, starts rocking in counterpoint so his thighs impact Dave’s ass with each slow, lazy thrust. Karkat is not — he doesn’t have the rhythm down, not quite, but he’s doing it anyway and oh fuck, Dave wants him inside, wants himself inside him so badly he sees black holes and dying stars under his closed eyelids.
“Yes yesyesyes fuck me fuck me please—”
"You’d like that," Karkat growls in his ear, breath hot against the bite marks he left on Dave’s neck. "You’d like it if I had a stupid protruding pleasure organ and I stuffed it right up your shit chute. It’s not even the right fucking hole, you absolute moron."
Face mashed against the washing machine, Dave replies, “Nooo, don’t say it like that, s’not hot,” and still can’t help imagining it and finding it hot as the sun.
What’s hotter is when Karkat thrusts against him, and bumps a little harder than he did, probably on accident, and then grunts.
It sounded like pleasure. Dave moans. Shit, wouldn’t that be nice —
Another. Karkat shifts his weight, thighs rubbing against Dave’s as he spreads his knees some, as he — “Mnh.”
Oh. Oh shit, shit, oh yes. Dave frees an arm to feel behind him blind, finds Karkat’s bracing arm, the one that isn’t cupping him right now, squeezes his hand hard enough to bruise himself on his shell. He tries to pull it under him to hug against his chest but it’s awkward and he unbalances them both and then Karkat tugs free, no, damn it —
Then Karkat straightens up until his chest isn’t touching Dave’s back anymore and he puts his hand back on Dave’s hip — both hands, he abandons Dave’s dick like an orphan in winter, growls, “touch yourself,” grabs him by both hips and uses them like handles to yank him back into his crotch, as if he —
As if he felt
As if he were grinding against Dave, making quiet little breathy noises almost smothered under the washing machine’s rumble, he is grinding, back curving, trying to press closer, and Dave can’t push a hand down his pants with the apron in the way so he just grabs himself through a fuckton of layers of clothes and fucks his own grip until his thighs are bruised along the top angle of the machine and he comes.
A washing machine isn’t super comfortable for afterglows. He tries to endure, but the vibrations to his spent dick make him want to go on tiptoes to get away, and he has to feebly wriggle in Karkat’s grip until the demon lets go and steps back.
Dave doesn’t slip to the floor like wet undercooked noodles slopping off a wall but it’s a close thing. He manages to brace his hands on the edge of the machine and turns around, props his ass. Wow. Phew.
Karkat has fallen back into a crouch in the narrow space but he’s not looking at Dave, he’s kind of… Dave isn’t sure. Stealth-twitchy, like he wants to fidget but won’t let himself, but.
"You get enough to eat?" he asks, voice a little rough from pleasure and sleepiness.
"Yeah, sure," Karkat grunts, dismissive, and doesn’t look up at him. He still looks…
Frustrated?
Oh.
Oh.
Wasn’t imagining it.
Dave’s lips are dry, his throat is a desert. He swallows.
"You uh."
Karkat glares up. Dave slides his ass to the corner of the machine to make space, considers pushing off.
"Want to sit up here?" he finishes, and doesn’t manage even a cheap facsimile of casual.
Karkat doesn’t move but his wings quiver; he snaps them closed with a twitch, glaring still at Dave, though the frustrated sense of unfairness in his eyes has changed to suspicion, confusion.
"Why the fuck," he starts to say, and then falls silent.
Dave controls his slide into a crouch, his back pressed against the machine, so they’re eye to eye, and he waits. He doesn’t want to push, can’t pressure Karkat, and right now with his body all slow and sated all he wants is to gather him close and kiss his face and fall asleep on him.
That, and for Karkat to feel good, too, the way he made Dave feel good — or perhaps not that hard, but still to give back a bit of something.
Karkat wets his lips, bites them.
Dave holds out a hand.
"You can use my knee as a stepladder," he says, voice quiet against the rumbly purr of the machine, the soothing swish of the water inside.
"I don’t need your hand," Karkat says, once he has already taken it, and eyes him like he doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to do with it now. Dave tugs him closer and sets his legs so Karkat’s weight won’t wrench his knee.
Then he leans in to kiss his forehead, right between his smaller eyes. “C’mon, get up there.”
Karkat growls under his breath, but he climbs, barely resting a fraction of his weight on Dave as he hops and scrambles up.
He turns around to sit with legs dangling where there isn’t a wall in the way — not a lot of choices — and Dave puts a hand on his knee spur to help himself up and leans in to kiss him on the lips.
"Why do you even—"
"Three, two, one," Dave interrupts, and moves between his knees so Karkat doesn’t risk clawing him when the washing machine kicks up again under him and he jerks.
"Holy —" Karkat bends at the waist, breathing in through his nose, for a few seconds before he makes himself sit back up, gingerly. The vibrations haven’t abated yet and he’s taking his sweet time settling down. Dave watches his face through it and memorizes everything. "Shit. Wow. I — maybe need a cushion."
Dave cracks a smile. “I’d offer my lap but it would get pretty cramped. Want me to go get you one?”
His demon lifts his head to stare at Dave. “… No, it’s fine, I wasn’t really — it was a joke, stupid.”
He relaxes when the whirring and thumping slow down, wings loosening; his smaller eyes are almost entirely closed. Dave watches him, a hip canted against the washing machine between his knees.
"Good?" Uh, does that sound arrogant or assume too much… "Or ‘okay that’s a lot so I can’t tell yet’ maybe?""
Karkat rolls his eyes at him, though he seems a bit distracted.
"Good. I guess. Mostly."
"Hmm?"
Karkat chews on his lower lip, eyes downcast. “It — almost hurts. Not quite, but. Why are good feelings and bad feelings so tangled up for you flesh assholes? This is completely illogical.”
Dave blinks, briefly stumped. “Uh — same nerve endings for both? I dunno, man.” He rakes a hand through the hair at the back of his head thoughtfully, a bit embarrassed that he has no better explanation to offer. “Do you want to stop?”
Karkat snorts. “You don’t need to ask that, when I want to stop you’ll know it. Because I’ll — ah.” Oh. That face. “I’ll have jumped off it. I mean. Yeah.”
Dave turns to face him fully and leans in, forehead almost touching his, cups his jaw. He just. He wants. He feels.
"I’m good for now," Karkat tells him, eyes closed and jaw tight.
Dave kisses his face and Karkat is the one tilting his chin up to offer his mouth. They kiss long and slow and Dave thinks about how fast he could get hard again if Karkat showed any sign of wanting them to go at it, but while he sighs into Dave’s mouth the pleasure it expresses doesn’t… there’s no urgency in it.
"How does it feel?"
Karkat headbutts him in the chin, half-heartedly. “Like sexual arousal I fucking guess, how am I meant to tell? Tingly. Kind of like a sneeze. Kind of like nothing else I’ve felt. I don’t know!”
Dave laughs a little. “Okay, yeah, sorry.”
They sit-or-stand in silence for another two minutes. Dave is listening to Karkat’s breath hitch. It’s gorgeous. He can almost measure the slow crawl of his arousal, each and every single surprise sortie and creeping advance.
"Okay, I. Plateau. Kind of. Gonna get off the ride now, move off."
Aw. Dave steps to the side. “You don’t wanna, like. Let it climb any higher?”
"No," Karkat barks, and then shudders. "No."
He jumps on the floor, shakes his wings out like they’re wet. The first step he takes is a drunken stumble. Dave wants to gather him up and curl next to him in bed, under the skylight where they can just breathe and be.
He follows him out into the bathroom first, and out in the living room, and when he gets under the mezzanine and pats the couch at his side Karkat follows, climbs up and hugs his knees, huddling against the arm of the couch, thighs squeezed together.
"You gonna be okay? Can I do anything to help?"
Karkat blinks up at him like he just woke up and is wondering why he’s here, and then says drolly, “You can let me do the laundry from now on.”
Dave cracks the fuck up.
"Are you even serious?" he asks between giggles.
"Nah. No. I mean." Karkat sticks a hand into his hair and gives it a good ruffle. He still looks totally baffled, it’s so adorable it kills Dave a little bit. "Sometimes yeah? Like I fucking know. But I’m not taking a chore on full time just so I get to ride the magic box, I can do that on my own time."
Pfffffhahaha. Oh baby Jesus, he’s fucking perfect, why is he perfect.
"Yeah," Dave capitulates, "okay. But no turning on the machine when there’s no load inside."
If he ever manages to do the laundry without popping a boner ever again, he’ll be hella surprised.
—
Nine PM, apartment cleaned, all limbs deliciously sore, apron buried in a closet so deep it will never sashay out again, and Karkat has the remote.
"This is so boring. Skip?"
"Hmm." Karkat makes a show of fishing a single Dorito out of the bag by his claw-tips, crunching it between his teeth, and licking the orange dust off his fingers fastidiously. "Nope."
"It’s ads for cars and alcohol and alcohol being drunk in cars, come the fuck on."
"How will you ever find a chain that shows actual programs if you never wait for the end of the ads?" Karkat asks in a display of so much TV wrongness that Dave doesn’t even know where to start educating him.
Then Karkat changes the channel anyways, and it’s local news. He switches to the next before Dave has had time to even ask.
Probably tired of it, too. They’ve seen Rose and John’s press conference already. Yeah.
No need to check if they’re talking about anything else yet. Not Dave’s business.
He crosses his arms and oozes sneakily closer to the Dorito bag and also Karkat’s pointy shoulder. Karkat isn’t awesome to cuddle up to from the side if he’s not careful — spiky! — but, well.
"Do I have something on my face?"
Dave makes sure he is gazing indifferently at the TV before he goes, uncaring, “what?”
"Isn’t that what you’re supposed to ask in those cases of what the fuck are you staring at me for?"
Welp. Dave gives in and looks openly at Karkat, who is staring back, slumped into the corner of the couch and his arms crossed over his chest, squinting up at him. His mouth is pinched tighter on he left than on the right, twisted a little. Cute.
Dave opens his mouth in order to be the most suave motherfucker any side of the Atlantic, and his phone rings.
He’s been ignoring calls since yesterday. Twitter conversations, sure — they’re public, can’t be too full of family secrets and ongoing investigations. He doesn’t want to cut all contact, he just wants to not hear about his brother’s stupid life decisions right now.
Ain’t like anything he says or does will or would have budged Dirk one fourth of an inch, so. Why the fuck should he give himself an ulcer trying.
"You picking up or what?" Karkat asks, and picks up the phone himself, checks the display. "Huh. It’s Jane."
Augh. Dave can’t ignore Jane. Just… nahh. He’d be worried for his life expectancy. Hell, the only woman in his little group he feels wouldn’t make him rue the day he crossed her is probably Roxy. Even Aunt Romy gets a bit worrying sometimes.
Also Jane is like the one other person in this little clusterfuck he feels understands him in full right now. Dave gives in and answers his damn phone.
"Yeah, hi. What’s up."
“Dave." Wow, she sounds exhausted. "Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
He grimaces. “Is this about Dirk? Because yeah, I’m not working on that, conflict of interest and—”
“Don’t be daft, he’s still your brother, you have a right to be informed.”
Urgh. Dave supposes that not knowing something won’t make it unhappen. “Bad news, then.”
“Psyche!" she says with biting, fake cheer. "The good news are the same as the bad news. Dirk will not be fired for his stunt.”
"…Huh." Karkat is watching his face, one eyebrow up, but Dave has no idea how to update him. He does feel a hard knot of tension release, but it’s not as if that was the only thing he was — okay, no, he wasn’t worrying. Of course he wasn’t. Fuck Dirk, seriously. "That’s… Okay? Why is it bad news?"
“Because he set his experiment up in a building full of civilians!" she yells into her phone. Dave jumps. "Because he deserves to be sacked for monkeying around with forces no one fully understands and putting innocent people on the line for the sake of his ego, and he won’t be! I’m so mad I could run over his foot with my car. I’m mad at him, and I’m mad at me for being glad he’s staying onboard after all, and if I didn’t love him so much I could wring his inflated head straight off his neck!”
Dave blinks slowly at his phone.
"Um, okay."
"Not to mention he dragged a baby off to this plane and caged it in that circle," Karkat mentions, not sounding impressed with the lot of them humans.
"Okay, that is an angle I hadn’t considered. How much does it bother Kurloz to be around, though, really?"
"How should we know, when no one’s—" Karkat says, and Jane growls over him, "Who cares about that blasted Kurloz?”
"Dirk obviously does," Karkat replies, eyebrows scrunching down.
“Right now that is not an endorsement!”
"Uh, do you guys want I hand the phone off to Karkat and let you talk or…?"
Jane harrumphs into the phone. “No, that will be all." A short sigh. "Sorry for yelling.”
"Nah, it’s fine." Sigh. Wow, does this conversation make him sigh a lot. He supposes since they’ve started talking about it… "Anything else? Is he gonna get punished at all, or what?"
“Two months of suspension without pay is what I heard; there might be more, I don’t know. Definitely a black mark on his record. But it’s not like we can cut him loose for two months with that creature in his apartment and his rotten habit of tinkering, and it can’t be moved. So… I don’t know how things will go from here.”
"Yeah, hard to supervise his demon time when the circle’s in his guest bedroom." Dave is so damned glad he doesn’t have to figure that one out.
At least Jane is quieter now, anger spent, though it sounds more like weariness than calm.
"So, uh. How’d he manage the… not fired thing, exactly?"
“Well he sure as heck didn’t grovel for forgiveness!”
Okay, never mind, she’s angry again. “Oh no,” he groans. “Jesus. Don’t tell me he was an arrogant dickwad who had a point.”
“All demons are inherently dangerous and amoral," she sing-snarls. "Kurloz was acting according to his nature and isn’t any more dangerous if properly corralled, which he will be from now on, because I took him in hand! Because if I hadn’t, the Felt would have!”
"Jesusfuck." Dave pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. "Would Kurloz have even survived without him? Wouldn’t he have gotten munched instead?”
Jane gives another short, harassed sigh. “Apparently. The professor they have on call confirmed that it’s been known to happen with Rage-aligned demons. They’ll just… respawn. I don’t know how likely it is, but it was convincing.”
Dave side-eyes Karkat. “Really? Rage dudes respawn?”
Karkat shrugs noncommittally and changes channels, pretends to be absorbed. Wow, reality TV. Okay, no, it can get pretty funny, especially when… is that a goat. Damn. Dave is missing the show.
“Alright, I should go. I’ve got things to deliver to Mister Knows-Better from the station, and then I’m going straight home to put my fish to bed.”
Dave chuckles into his phone. “Right. Don’t forget to give your crab a goodnight kiss from Karkat. Bye, Jane.”
Karkat hmphs and turns the sound on the TV back up. “Finally.”
"Yeah." Dave reclines against the couch, lets the phone drop onto the armrest. Then he tilts his head to sneak Karkat a look from the side of his shades and smiles a little bit. "I notice you said nothing about the crab."
Karkat heaves an annoyed sigh. “Can I watch my show?”
Bluh. “Okay, okay. Mean.”
They watch the show. It’s nothing special, people being stupid and gross for no reason, reality TV at its finest. Dave refrains from heckling out loud. If he can’t heckle, though, it’s actually pretty boring, who’d have thought?
He oozes. He’s been pretty active all day; he supposes he can … relax. Yeah. A spine? Who needs that. He is jello. Jello Strider. It is him.
"Why do you keep leaning so close?" Karkat grumbles, and twitches his shoulder pointedly.
… Ouch. Dave sits back up, crosses his arms. He can’t even say he’s feeling horny and does Karkat want to feed. Dave doesn’t. He’s kind of still a little bit afterglowy, even. “I just… C’mon, humans get cuddly sometimes and you’re here, is all.”
"Cuddly? More like clingy." Karkat huffs, blows dark bangs out of his little eyes so he can side-eye Dave better. "If you don’t want to see your human friends then how about you spend some time on your other demons? No, seriously, feed the Time ones at least, if you’ve got nothing better to do and can’t appreciate this masterpiece of absurd comedy."
"It’s Who Will Date The Men of Monte Carlo," Dave replies incredulously. Karkat actually turns his head to glare. "… Okay, okay! But do you know how difficult it’s gonna be concentrating on Aradia and nothing but Aradia if you’re sitting right here?"
Karkat actually throws a pillow at his face. “Then go upstairs! Fuck’s sake. What do you even want, don’t tell me you want to feed me again, I won’t believe you. Your baby tube is just as limp and not even half as energetic as a freshly dug out earthworm.”
"…I can’t decide if I should feel insulted or laugh," Dave admits after a second of thought.
"You should go upstairs and let me watch my fucking show."
Bleh. Yeah, okay, Dave guesses they got in a lot of togetherness today. And it’s not like you can really have privacy from each other in this apartment, unless you want to hole up in the bathroom or the kitchen.
He heaves himself off the couch and gets his candles and matches from the shelf over Karkat’s head — Karkat ducks with a little rattlesnake crackle — and climbs up to the loft.
It’s a bit difficult at first to corral his thoughts, but he’s been calling on Aradia for a long time and he falls back into it eventually. Pretty much like meditation, the way the seasons turn and how it feels when winter gives away and the air warms, fresh green leaves unfold…
He’s not very surprised when she pops up toward the end. It’s not like she visits every time he pays her retainer, but… well. He could kinda feel her tickling at his brain meats in real time instead of just his memory of her.
Hey, Dave!
Hey Aradia. What’s shakin’? Getting in lots of good eats? What does a demon even do for fun?
Haha wow, you are bored.
Dave gives a mildly offended mind-pout, face impassible. You say that like I never call you up just to chat. So mean. I thought we had a real thing going here.
Of course we do, Dave! All my real things are important to me.
You cad. Admitting you’re juggling my affections so callously. She laughs in his head. Dave sighs. You’re a pimp.
Shh, it’s okay, you’re at least my third favorite bitch.
Dave snorts. I’d better be.
He is so, so, so bored.
You wanna ride?
Sure! Aradia oozes closer, until he can feel her looking through his eyes, and he lets her run his hands against his pants to feel the cloth. Whatcha got to eat? Ooh, ohh—
"No peppers! Jesus, what’s with you guys’ obsession with killer foods. I got crackers or chocolate, if you want. The Doritos are downstairs and I don’t think Karkat’d share."
Bluh. I guess tabasco sauce is out too. You suck. Hey, let me have the body for a sec?
No throwing me off the mezzanine, he cautions, and allows her to lean over the railing, though he makes sure their hands are clenched on the guardrail.
"Hey, Karkat!" she calls out cheerfully. Karkat jumps a little bit, and stares up at the both of them with all his eyes narrowed warily.
"Aradia, right." His frown doesn’t lessen exactly but it turns a bit less personal, though he taps the remote pointedly against his palm. "What do you want?"
"You mind if I get Dave to jerk off for m—holy shit, no! What the hell, ‘Radia!”
She pouts in his mind. He shoves himself back, away from the guardrail. Is he blushing? Jesus, he is. What’s wrong with him.
Downstairs Karkat is not even answering. Urgh.
"Yeah, actually."
Dave totally doesn’t jump when Karkat’s head pops up by the stairs. He’s looking a bit apologetic, as he looks at Dave in that way that means he’s looking through him more.
"See, he’s got a limited number of shots per day — flesh things are so fucking inefficient, I swear — and I’m not giving my Price to him. So I can’t really share those. Sorry. I… guess you could have blood?" He makes an unconvinced moue. "As long as it’s not too much of it."
Hmm… Okay, sure!
"No, not ‘okay sure!’ Like, what if I didn’t want to bleed myself today, what if I was tired of bleeding myself, what if the doctor told me no—"
"That was almost two weeks ago."
"Human blood doesn’t fill up that fast, dude, you of all people should know."
Karkat pauses in the middle of climbing down the stairs, looks him over critically. “You could be topped off more, I guess, but you’re full enough for a few drops.”
"And what if I don’t want to give a few drops," Dave grumps, but Karkat isn’t listening to him anymore and Aradia is doing the yay dance in his head. "Aradia, hey, I didn’t say yes, remember that?"
"Is he going to knock or what?" Karkat mutters from the floor, muffled. "He’s been at the door for—"
The detonation startles Dave so badly he almost takes a header through the window throwing himself away from it.