Urban fantasy demon summoner/demon AU.
Archive - FAQ (spoilers)
This chapter: blood, gore, violence. (Not lovingly detailed though.)
—
It’s not a bad explosion, as those things get. Blows the shit out of his hinges, and makes the decorative door panels shudder and fall out of alignment like a linebacker rammed them, but it’s a foot that finishes the job of knocking the door down.
His gun is — stupidly — all the way downstairs in the gun safe by the door. It’s out of reach the second the first man rushes through — a huge wall of a man, square and meaty — and then the second man comes in on his heels and Dave gives it up for lost.
Under him on the main floor Karkat starts snarling, steps forward to meet the threat, but there’s a machine gun in the first man’s hands and Dave can see nothing but the confettied mess it would make of his non-shelled face.
“Get out of here!" he yells, and shoves the half-open windowpane out of his way and swings himself out and onto the ancient straight ladder bolted to the outside wall.
Two men on the fire escape’s last landing, just under him; he hears glass breaking. One of them looks up, gun up —
Aradia rushes through him with barely a thought; the gun jams, trigger frozen in time. Dave beats Olympic records of ladder-climbing.
"Follow me!" he shouts with the breath he has to spare — not loud, but he grabs onto Karkat’s Name and refuses to let go. Get out get out Karkat has to get out fucking shit oh Jesus Dave just abandoned him — he reaches the roof’s edge, heaves himself up, scrambles for the corner (almost slips but no time to slip so he freezes the sole of his shoe in place until his momentum has taken him away, a flicker of a spell and then gone.)
He hides behind the slope of his roof and goes for his back pocket and his phone and he left it on the couch.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Latula will be here if he needs her but against physical assaults she’s useless. He tries to concentrate on Damara — Jesus bitching shit they’re breaking his windows some more, he can hear fighting in there, what’s going on? He has no weapon to save Karkat. He needs a fucking weapon stat.
Damara gives him the equivalent of a busy ringtone. Shit.
He belly crawls around the slope, tugs and yanks onto random tiles trying to pull one out, peeks over the edge.
Visualizing what’s going on inside his apartment just from the noise is almost impossible, but he strains. There haven’t been more shots yet. The struggling noises start sounding closer, like they’re fighting on the mezzanine ladder.
There’s a guy left on the fire escape to guard it, a tall, stooping guy with what Dave is suddenly certain will be a gigantic under-bite, courtesy of a pistol-whipping in the face some years past. Trace.
It’s the Felt.
A heavy thud on the wooden floor, screeching glass, Karkat’s inhuman snarls.
Dave grabs onto the dark ruins and lava of his Name and visualizes him coming out through the lower window, and then he drops his brick right on Trace’s head.
Karkat bulldozes through what’s left of the glass, rattling like a pressure cooker about to explode. The Felt is wobbling, a hand pressed against his bleeding scalp, gun wavering. Dave hisses, “Up!”
The ladder doesn’t go all the way down to where Karkat is. Karkat solves that problem by leaping as high as he can and sinking his claws in the brick. Dave yanks another tile out and chucks it at some asshole trying to peek out from the mezzanine.
They don’t want to kill Karkat, he tells himself with his heart in his mouth, they didn’t shoot him earlier inside, they don’t want that.
Karkat lizards his way to the ladder and climbs, and Dave retreats fast so he has the space to climb onto the roof.
They came up here that one time on a walk, feels like a century ago, but it was mid-day; now it’s nighttime, with only the sodium lamps in the streets underneath to halo the way with faint yellow. He drops over the edge onto the lower, flat cement and gravel roof under there; he already hears the ladder rattle behind them.
They have to cross the whole expanse of it before they can jump over to the next roof. He gets ready to dash.
Karkat lands beside him like a sack of potatoes and Dave blinks at him — he’s holding his cell phone in his mouth. “I need fucking pockets!” he snarls as he thumbs through his phone, clicks something, and lobs it at Dave.
Oh. The panic button app. Good demon, best friend. Dave shoves the phone in his pocket and they take off running.
"Dented the fucking casing — was brand new—"
They’re in the middle of the roof when a flash of light arcs overhead and blinds them when it comes crashing down onto the roof. Dave blinks spots out of his eyes and oh. Oh, fuck. One of the spots slowly resolves into three men, a small, blond, smiling one in the middle. The other two have him by the shoulders.
Okay. Something of Light. Probably Heir. That’s Clover, alright. He’s going to be a pain in the ass. More or less than Machine Gun Guy, though, Dave can’t tell yet.
Dave steps back, slightly to the side. They can’t climb back to the apartment from here, even if it wasn’t taken over by the enemy. The ground is far enough on this side that he’ll break a leg at best. But there’s traffic in the street, not a lot but enough to deter them. He hopes.
A quick, squinting glance confirms that the last two assailants are set up on his apartment’s slanted roof in prime sniping positions. Fucking — argh. This isn’t fair, it was supposed to be a cuddly domestic evening, this shouldn’t be allowed.
"So I notice you guys haven’t shot us down yet," he says casually, still stepping slooowly back toward the edge of the roof and trying to decide if there’s any way out that isn’t a straight-up jump over the edge. Jane or Jade won’t let him become a paraplegic, but they can do jack shit if he dies of internal bleeding or head trauma before they get here.
"We care jack shit about you," the guy with the machine gun — what’s his nick again, Dave can’t even remember his real name right now — replies. It’s hard to tell in the dark but Dave feels like his eyes are on Karkat.
"So then what—"
"Hey. You. Demon."
Karkat rattles his spines, teeth gritted. Dave tries to remember the schematics of the guy’s weapon, all the weapons he got to see, to jam them with the least effort, the smallest moving piece. (The thing with Aradia’s magic is it won’t stay jammed indefinitely either. He’ll have to time it just right.)
"Dead is second best after captured," Machine Gun tells Karkat, "so we don’t want to kill you that much. But if you don’t come along nicely we’ll just shoot him in the head."
And then both Dave and Karkat will die.
No.
He is not letting him go. No.
Karkat has gone stiff; his eyes glow in the dark, crimson highlights dancing on his nose, shining off the lick of armor over his cheekbones.
"I—" He looks up at Dave, and he looks — trapped. Anguished.
No.
"What do you want with him?" Dave asks, like he cares to know, like it might change his mind.
"C’mon, you don’t think we’d tell you!" the blond kid says.
From behind on the roof Trace calls out, bored, “He doesn’t, he’s trying to buy time.”
The kid snickers. “Wow, haha, good luck with that — ow.”
Machine Gun Guy just elbowed him in the ribs. Cute, squabbling, what an adorable team feeling. They take him so seriously, wow.
Then again he is pretty much weaponless, and all the leverage is on the other side.
"All playing for time will do is piss us off," Machine Gun Guy growls.
"Yeah! ‘cause all the cops on call are at your bro’s place right now!"
For not even a second Dave thinks they mean Bro, but how do they even think he relates to—
Dirk. Kurloz.
Jane. Jane was going there. Was she still there when they attacked? Did they catch her unaware as she walked in? She’s — no, she’d heal herself, heal anyone, he’s not going to worry, they’ll be fine. They’re a good team, they have support.
Dave and Karkat don’t. By the time anyone manages to divert a police car and get here it’ll have been at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and a lot can happen in ten minutes when one of the sides is loaded for bear.
He doesn’t know what Karkat is going to choose, is the thing.
Dave doesn’t want him killing people who aren’t actively trying to kill them first. It’s in his contract.
So is the fact that guaranteeing Dave’s life trumps any other order Dave might give.
Dave likes his head unexploded, but if he lets Karkat go with them he will never see him again. And if that were all, he’d grit his teeth and bear it, but they don’t want Karkat to play patty-cake with. The chance that they’d let Karkat live indefinitely and in a state where being alive is worth it is vanishingly small.
"I forbid you to go with them."
It’s worthless as orders go. Disobeying Dave will hurt. Getting him killed…
Karkat snorts, quiet, breathless. “Whatever you say.”
That’s a ‘yeah, fuck that’ if he’s ever heard one.
"Well then," one of the guys on the roof says.
Weapons come up.
Dave grabs Karkat by the quills. Blood slicks his hand. Karkat yowls — offense, surprise.
Aradia!
Laughing, she feeds from him.
Dave freezes everyone’s right soles where they are and charges, without a pause to think (stupid, stupid, but surprise is his only weapon).
“Quarters!”
The machine gun is aimed at his face. No time for finesse; Dave and Aradia freeze it en masse.
Machine Gun Guy hits the trigger. Jammed. And then Dave is running up to a huge hulking brute who specializes in beating up people, but at least the guy is now unarmed…!
Flash of light. Clover dematerializes out of his shoes. Machine Gun — Quarters — lets the gun drop, pulls out a knife.
Dave dodges the fuck out of him and tackles the third one instead.
Or he would if the guy didn’t flash cracked porcelain skin and bent gears, rust and dirt, and then Aradia is yelping in his head and — Dave is committed, so he hits the guy, but instead of tangling him up and hopefully breaking his leg, they roll, Aradia’s hold on his shoe undone. If Dave gets pinned down he’s so fucked —
He doesn’t even feel the hits. He just knows when the sky lights up red and they stop rolling to flinch because they don’t know what side it’s from.
Machine Gun Guy — Quarters — falls to the ground. The top half of his head is missing.
His hand is clenched on his weapon. Dave is a detective. He detects that Quarters picked it back up, and Karkat took exception.
Karkat goes from a standstill to a gallop in two seconds, a cannonball of spikes and shell. The guy on top of him jerks, up on his knees, fisting his hand in Dave’s collar to haul him close bodily and—
"Get ‘im to Clover!"
Dave is shoved back. Hands on him. Flash of light — he’s blind. He kicks — gravel under his feet — arm around his throat, shoulder lock, no, no, fuck; he struggles, a hand wedged under the guy’s arm by instinct and old training so he can’t choke Dave out.
He’s pushed face down on the ground and he fights and nothing works.
Aradia would take that death as a sacrifice if he froze the heart of the man holding him inside his chest.
He’s never used her on anything living before. He’s not sure how, he can’t concentrate. He chokes, blinks sweat out of his eyes, black breathless stars. Karkat is still standing (breaking that rule must have hurt) still standing and there are snakes of red, glowing — blood — flickering around him. It’s his attack, it’s fine, he’s still fine.
Dave wants to tell him to run but nothing will save him when they kill Dave.
"You assholes!" the blond kid yells. Someone — no guesses who — kicks Dave swiftly in the ribs. Ow. He’s not sure if anything’s broken. Thank fuck the guy is still shoeless. "Shit, Quarters — Trace, can you—"
"Not with his brain vaporized, kid," Trace says from higher up — probably he’s still on the roof. Dave turns his head a bit in the gravel and sees the wall fairly close by.
His couch is just on the other side of it. Maybe his laundry room. He can’t believe that was just a few hours ago.
The boulder on his back has got to be the fifth guy, since the kid weighs about the same as Dave or less and would never manage to keep him pinned that hard.
They’re not killing him yet, even though Karkat has decided to kill them first.
He’s a fucking hostage. He’s so mad he could scream.
At the other end of the roof Karkat is still trying to hit the other guy, but fur seems to flicker around him and then he dashes and dodges with bursts of inhuman speed that Dave can barely track. Can’t close, but Karkat is going to fuck up the roof enough to ruin structural integrity long before he manages to hit him —
Oh. Oh.
"Break the roof!" he yells, muffled into the gravel, at the same time as Trace snaps, "Clover, grab him!"
Karkat’s red spikes slam into the roof in a wide circle around the man. One second, no more, and it drops out from under him. (It’s a storage business underneath.)
Flash of light. Of fucking course. They reappear at the edge of the hole, and Karkat attacks again.
So long as Clover can teleport it’s completely useless. Until they run out of roof, or one of them runs out of juice.
He can’t afford for it to be Karkat.
He cranes his head as much as he can against the hold. His hair is glued to his forehead with either sweat or blood, he’s got a lock barring his eye so he can’t see the guy right.
"Last chance to surrender," he says. "Release your demons or I will use deadly force on you."
The meaty guy on his back shoves his chest into the back of Dave’s head to force his face cheek-first back into the gravel.
Aradia is purring.
It’s actually pretty easy to do flesh, he finds out. He finds the heart of the man on the roof — the strategist, orders-giver — and freezes it, just like that. It’s a relatively big volume, thick with solid flesh and flowing blood, lots of atoms buzzing around doing their thing until he tells them to pause for a sec.
The only difference is how eagerly Aradia leans into his will.
(If he kills with her, then the power of his victim’s death is hers.)
One second, two, three, ten, and Dave is struggling with the man on top of him, who’s trying to choke him out anew. Dave is fighting to keep his hold on his power, come on, another second, he can hold on, he has to.
Something heavy lands with a meaty thud behind them. Dave can’t see him, but the noise is clear. The man on top of him jerks in surprise, almost wrenches his neck (Dave’s muscles hurt) and Dave manages to catch a glimpse of the body, sprawled out, tremors kicking its feet, spraying gravel.
Good.
I think that’ll do it! Aradia chirps, eager. Dave lets go all at once.
The body stops shuddering.
The guy on top of Dave says nothing, does nothing, apart from watching. Dave figures out why when the almost-a-body lights up in deep red scars that were pink and shiny a second ago and they all start bleeding again.
Foul! Aradia yells. Damn it. Hey, hey, can I have the next one?
Yeah, she totally can, except Dave is dizzy with lack of oxygen and the hit to his reserves wiped him out. Can’t, he says, thinks, swears.
If he pulls on Karkat again — but what if Karkat needs that power now — how did he even do it again?!
Trace pushes himself up on his hands, sits, wipes gravel off his face. His nose is broken. The look he sends Dave is…
"Okay. We’re done. Kill him."
Dave is vaguely aware that Aradia is going uh oh, but he can barely hear his own thoughts behind the blood pounding in his skull. His ears are buzzing and his vision gets dark and he can’t tell if it’s the restricted blood flow.
It doesn’t actually matter.
He goes for muscleman’s heart this time, barely wonders how many years he is going to lose. The man does a full-body flinch over him, sways, but his grip only goes tighter, desperate. Dave holds onto the spell. With everything he has, he holds on.
In a corner of his hazy vision he sees the dark shape of Trace leaning in, pulling something out of Boulder Man’s pocket. It gleams. Dave knows that one.
Yup, sure is a gun, Aradia says from very far away.
He’s not sure how he manages to jerk the man forward until his meaty body topples on top of him. Probably wrenches something in his back. Now he’s a turtle with two tons of meat for a shell, he kicks, pushes. He needs to back up flush against the wall so Trace won’t go around to shoot, win two seconds, one second, any second at all.
Not shot yet, his nerves sing as they wait for it, not shot yet. He can’t see, can’t breathe, buried under dying meat that shudders and kicks and —
The arms around his throat go slack.
He’s learned better. He doesn’t let go yet.
He thinks people are yelling out there but it’s dulled, far away. He thinks it’s Karkat.
He’s going to suffocate under here.
More yelling. The dead body on him sways like a sumo heaved against it, and drops back on him. Sumo must have given up. Black stars burst under Dave’s eyelids.
He’s not sure afterwards if it’s actual lights he’s seeing, or just fancy oxygen-plz brain sparkles.
…real lights, bro, he thinks he hears. Hey, Latula. Cool. Long time no see. Hear.
Uh, feel? Something.
"—floor, hands behind your head, now!”
Okay wow he really is hallucinating. That’s Jade’s voice. Jade’s ‘I can put you on the floor or under the ground, bub’ voice. It hasn’t been anywhere close to ten minutes. Has it…?
… did she teleport in…?
He breathes. He’s still getting squished, but he can breathe, he can — turn his head, even if his neck hurts, yeah, come on, he can.
Fuck, what if he gets shot.
"He’ll forgive me for destroying the apartment," Karkat rasps from some feet away. Dave blinks fuzzies out of his eyes.
Huh. Karkat’s crackling. Well, kind of, the way the tendrils weave and branch out around him it feels as if it ought to crack like thunder, but the sound comes when the red tendrils score the roof under him, pieces of gravel rustling and shuffling to fall in the new gouges.
John and Jade stand beside Karkat, John with his back to the rest so he can watch the hole in the roof of the storage building. Huge butterfly wings are fanning from his back. Jade glows a white so cold every single pebble is thrown in stark relief; shadows travel on her skin at a slow glide, making her look alien.
Oh hey, it’s the cavalry. They’re early, for once.
"No I won’t," he says — or rasps, more like. His throat is swelling.
From the direction they’re looking in, Trace is standing by the dead body’s feet. Bit close for comfort. No idea where the other two bad guys are, so either they both got hurt falling through the roof — unlikely, Clover is demon-guaranteed lucky — or they ran away, or they’re about to burst out of the hole for a rescue. He has no clue how close they are to Trace and how pissed off their boss will be to see the survivors come back home empty-handed.
Okay. Did he let the spell go…? He doesn’t remember when, but. Yeah. He releases the heart, and it twitches, once, twice, arrhythmic, before Dave loses track of it; the brain has got to be fucked by now…
He was delicious, Aradia assures him. You should have taken me harvesting sooner, Dave! This’ll pay for so much.
Okay. Kill confirmed.
You could always reuse the meat, if they don’t take it away.
Ugh.
He’s not sure either Karkat or Jade heard him; hard to project his voice with his ribcage flattened like that. He tugs on Karkat’s Name, as light as he can. Karkat’s eyes flick to him; his eyes widen briefly when they meet Dave’s, and for a second his quills and the blades along his spine sag.
Okay, so what can they—
"I don’t think so," Trace says, and aims his gun at Dave’s exposed head.
Fuuuck fuck fuck. Dave tries to jam his gun, but he can’t get a grip, something slashes at Aradia when she tries — John is yelling “Freeze!” but he’s turned the other way, not Dave’s concern when the muzzle of a gun is —
… is turning…
… really tiny?
The strangled chuckle that leaves his throat at the expression on Trace’s face is totally involuntary, more than a bit crazed. Trace drops the gun — Barbie-sized; it gets lost in the pebbles. On Jade’s skin the light dies down, just enough to see the long muzzle of a backlit wolf tattoo crawl up her neck and over the corner of her jaw.
It’s a lot cooler an effect on Captain Egbert’s Celtic knots than on her Three Wolf Moon back piece, Dave has to admit.
"The next thing I resize will be your belt, bucko. Leather, right?" She glares, fierce. "Looks pretty solid."
Did Jade just threaten to cut Trace in two at the waist? God but Dave loves his partner.
Dave braces and heaves, wriggles halfway out, and then Karkat frog-hops the rest of the distance and grabs him by the arm to yank him free. He keeps dragging Dave on the gravel until they’re back with Jade, and thank fuck for jeans or his knees would be mincemeat instead of bruised.
Karkat bundles Dave up under him; Dave ends up curled on his side under his plastron, clawed paws surrounding him like a cage. A shelter.
It makes him feel things a bit too warm and liquid for the occasion. “Let me up,” he says, coughing to clear his throat.
"Not a fucking chance. And give me permission to kill them already, it fucking hurts.”
—Oh, man. He’s been dealing with the backlash all along. Dave needs to fix his contract, if there’s a way. He’s — not sure how, or what exactly needs changing, but… “If they won’t surrender, or endanger Jade or John or you or me, you can kill them. Now let me up, c’mon.”
"No."
"Can’t fight if you’re —" he coughs; "—brooding me like a hen, dude — and I can’t either, I…"
He’s running on empty. Maybe he should stay down, out of the way. What can he do? He’s bruised and aching all over, weaponless, down to one demon, and Aradia was just countered by…
Aradia? he starts asking.
He only gets the backlash from the gust of wind John called up, and not even much of it, shielded by Karkat like that. It’s like a slap of air, and for not even a whole second before it dies down he thinks 'he is taking the air from my mouth.’
Something on John’s side goes thump. Dave starts trying to sit up again. Karkat leans back just enough to grab his upper arm and sit him up, stays close, chest to Dave’s shoulder, wings spread like the membranes will stop an attack.
"You’re too drained—"
"I’m a sitting duck,” he rasps. “We’re sandwiched, I—”
Something twinges down his senses, he’s not sure what, if he heard or felt it with his hands, his body. Some kind of odd vibration.
The roof is about to come down under them.
Oh, that bitch. Aradia says with ferocious glee. Use me!
But he can’t, he has no power left and —
Karkat grabs Dave’s face between his gauntleted hands, makes Dave face him, and kisses him full on the mouth.
He tastes like blood. When he pulls back there’s a second where Dave can see the places Karkat bit through his black lip, beading with a red that gleams odd in Jade’s spell-light.
Power, pushing at him, here I am, use me.
Something is savaging the underpinnings of the roof in a way that has nothing to do with the material world, with the easy permanence of physical things. Something is yanking them toward decay, toward spreading cracks and damp, cement falling to sand, attacking the Time wound into them to—
Aradia surges through him, laughing with such abandon he feels his own lips spread with the force of her grin. They seize the whole roof, bring it to a dead stop; nothing can touch it now, not even gravity, not even that bitch.
(No wonder Damara was unavailable today.)
They stand up and it’s like his joints really are gears and clockwork, his skin truly the painted metal it looks like; he’s up on his feet with a smooth-inhuman jerk, without pain.
He turns around to see which one of them is the Witch of Time. Not that it’s much of a mystery — Clover is Light through and through, the lucky son of a bitch. The scowling, rat-faced man standing with him glares at Dave, skin gone cracked porcelain all over, rusting gears and broken strings showing through the holes in lieu of flesh and nerves.
It’s a much more complete effect than Damara has ever showed on him. No bet on the guy being her perfect match.
Barely clearing Class Four, though, or they’d already be dead.
We can take them, he thinks.
One hand behind our back! "Hey, Damara!" Aradia calls out, and hoots when the man’s mouth twists in tired disgust. "Wanna duel? Loser gets to be dinner!"
She’s brimming with power, with the death she just took and everything Karkat is channeling straight into them. Damara sneers.
"Duel is stupid bitch playgame!"
Her power grabs for Jade’s heart, for her brain. Aradia and Dave parry without a thought, Dave gliding along on Aradia’s awareness of Time like he was always meant to have that sense, like all this time he just forgot to open his eyes.
"To the side,” John sing-songs, jaw clenched, and crowds into them. “We’re stuck in a sandwich, this is not good.”
Oh right. Yeah. Um. “Welp.”
Hm. Well.
"Can you bring them flying?” he asks sotto voce. “‘Cause if we dodge there’s this nice brick wall over there, and then they’re all trapped…”
John blinks at him over his glasses, and then bursts out laughing, short and loud. “Oh my god, that’s mean, that’s so mean. Deal!”
“Run!" Trace yells from behind them. Augh fuck if Clover flashes away again—!
Karkat spears at him with his red attack, and Clover of course just happens to trip and dodge it purely on accident. Fuck.
He does flash away when John’s wind comes rushing at them from the back, when the very air picks his friend up and throws him right across the hole in the roof Karkat made. Karkat grabs Dave by the waistband and manhandles him to his other flank; they brace against a furious gust of wind, and Dave, bent double, has to grab at the root of his good wing for a hold so as not to end up on his ass.
The Witch of Time guy passes by rolling like a tumbleweed in the gravel. Dave feels sweetly vindicated.
Thud. Walled.
"Surrender your demons or we will use lethal force!" Jade says, extremely authoritarian for someone whose ponytail has ended up all over her face like a black bush of thorny blackness cosplay.
Dave might be a little punch-drunk. Just a little.
He moves back to John so they can stand in a loose triangle formation, scans the roofs all around for Clover. His method of transport is kind of flashy — har har — but Dave was a bit too busy trying not to get bowled over to keep track of where he landed, and if Dave were him he’d be quick to move under the cover of darkness the second he touched down.
"Dave, you good to go?" Jade asks from the side of her mouth. "Gonna need you on the Time one—"
"They’re both Time," he says without thinking. He’s not sure what Trace is — either Sylph or Seer, but he pings Aradia’s ethereal senses in a pretty heyyy babe way.
Which is frankly kind of gross, but.
"The one with Damara,” Jade grits out.
Figures Jade recognizes her too. They’ve had some fun partnery times trading her back and forth, after all.
"Got her in my sights, Cap’n," Aradia chirps. Dave is done getting embarrassed about it (he will totally be embarrassed later.) He just shuffles around so he’s facing the wall more, waves his robo-fingers hello at the two Felt members over there.
"Count of five!" Jade yells at them, gun up and skin still flaring white. "Four!"
"Dude, your cow tail’s ghosting through my ass," Dave mutters to John.
"Three!"
"Umm," John mutters back over Jade, "you know you have this giant wind-up key on your back, right, you perhaps shouldn’t talk."
"One—"
"We surrender," Trace says, hands rising in the air.
Dave doesn’t believe him until the guy still groaning on the ground releases Damara and her afterimage on his skin dissipates.
Poo, Aradia says. Oh well, I’ll bite her later.
Jade nods firmly. “Face down on the ground, hands behind your head. Tell Clover to either come join you or fuck off. Dave, handcuffs—”
He goes fishing for them in her back pocket (hello butt cheek of partner.) “Got ‘em.”
"Give ‘em here." She wriggles her fingers. Dave frowns.
Karkat digs his claws into his pants leg, click-chirring in a not super happy way.
Sigh. Dave gives her the handcuffs. Just because he was the target and got thoroughly tenderized… He doesn’t even feel it anymore, can’t be that bad.
Uh, yeah, it legit can.
… Damn it, Latula, can’t you let me have my dreams.
Noppers. Also you gotta let Aradia bounce the second you can, all this syncing ain’t doing you any favors.
Urgh. He doesn’t want to lose the giddy enthusiasm — or Aradia’s sense of flowing time, either, the way he’s aware of it everywhere, of the places where they just need to reach out to bring it to a stop.
He killed a man today. Karkat killed another for him. The Felt is moving against them, violated the safety of their apartment. He doesn’t want to have to sit and think about that. He wants to crack jokes with John and strut around with his borrowed badassitude.
Every second of Aradia’s time is paid for with Karkat’s power.
He takes Jade’s gun to cover the suspects as she moves forward with the handcuffs in hand.
Something twangs against the grain and Aradia flinches her — her sensory tendrils or whatever they are — back, and then space tears over the slanted roof of his home. For a second he thinks Captain Egbert — he’s got to have Kanaya today, if Jade doesn’t.
And then the woman materializes on the roof.
She’s tall, dark-skinned — which means, with the weak light from Jade’s skin and the street lamps far down below, that picking up any better identifying features is a lost cause.
Jade raises a hand toward her — “Identify yourself!” — and the glow of her skin goes out, just like that, the tattoo of her wolves disappears like it was never crawling all over her body.
"—What the hell?!" John goes. Jade’s hands clench into fists at her sides.
"She left,” she says, incredulous. “Porrim left.”
"Trace," the woman says from the roof, "Report."
"Cans and Quarters are dead," Trace says, bitter and restrained.
The woman considers it for a second — and John sends a huge gust of wind her way.
Some of the loosened tiles rattle, one falls into the street below; her hat doesn’t even shiver.
“Holy blistered anal thunderfuck,” Karkat rattles out. The wind went right through her.
Something of Space. Yeah. Hell.
Does she have a prior contract with Porrim? Be a big coincidence otherwise…
Clover blinds the fuck out of everyone flashing back; he lands on the tiles a little way down from the woman, it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on with all those spots dancing in his eyes.
"Snowman!"
"Oh Christ on a cracker," John mutters. Dave grits his teeth. Jesusfuck. The mythical second-or-third in command of the Felt, whose existence was never 100% confirmed — they didn’t even know Snowman was a woman, but the shape of her body is, yeah. Fuck.
"Snowman, they killed Cans and—"
Space tears again right under their noses and Dave throws himself back, falls to a knee and Karkat is backing into him and snarling and —
—falling silent.
"The fuck?!" Karkat barks, like he’s offended.
"Bec?!"
Jade’s dog noses at her insistently, whining. He’s still crackling, misted in odd green.
He turns toward the Felt at the bottom of the wall, starts growling. Jade grabs his collar and hauls him back against her leg; he goes, but his ears are flat and he’s whining strange, half confused and half angry.
Dave sort of sees when Trace and Damara’s guy blink out and reappear on the roof; they’re at the edge, he can see them in silhouettes against the sky.
"Right," Snowman says. "We’re going."
"Wait! The Knight of Blood!" Trace says, and Dave’s insides freeze solid.
If she can blink him off like she just did her guys — his hand finds Karkat’s shoulder spine and closes tight on it; Karkat’s arm locks around his knee.
"No," she says after a small eternity. Dave still can’t read her body language or her voice worth crap. Is she annoyed, worried, angry? No clue.
"Hey, hold on a minute!" John calls out, offended. "You’re under arrest—"
But the lot of them wink out before he can even finish the second word.
Bec’s snarls slowly die out. Jade releases him, slow, cautious. When he doesn’t disappear again, she takes the gun back from Dave’s hand and follows the dog to the base of the wall.
They left the bodies behind. Dave thinks his must have been Cans, since Quarters was the one Karkat got in the head. Bec is currently snuffling at the corpse’s stomach.
It’s a pretty clean corpse, apart from the unavoidable bowel movement there at the end. Not like Karkat’s. He doesn’t really want to go look that one in the lack of face.
John sends a gust of wind all around — trying to locate watchers, probably — and Jade flickers back on like a lamp on a generator. Dave just…
There’s someone’s hand on his back pocket. Oh hey, it’s Karkat.
"You better not have sat on my phone," he says as he fishes it out, but his tone is odd, he doesn’t meet Dave’s eyes full on.
Sitting on the roof, he turns his phone on, worrying at his bitten lip. Dave watches him, hands hanging loose at his side. Aradia is slipping from him and he just…
"Who do I… Dispatch? What’s the number?"
Oh. Yeah. Calling it in.
"I’ll do it," John says gently, and pulls out his own phone. He turns away to call it in; Dave can see his eyes linger on the second corpse sprawled in the middle of the roof.
A soft, human hand touches his arm. Jade leans in, eyebrows furrowed in worry.
"Can you sit down?"
"Better not," he says, and regrets it vaguely when she winces. Too much honesty.
"Can you give me a status update? And Karkat? You okay? Did you hurt your wing again?"
"My wing’s fine," Karkat says, and flicks it, dismissive. Dave pretends he doesn’t see a wince there at the end. "All clear. That bastard tried to choke him out," he adds. He sounds a bit indignant. Heh.
"Yeah, I… can see that, wow, Dave, nice necklace. I just don’t know if Feferi’s going to be free yet, I’m sorry, but if Jane—"
She goes quiet all at once.
If Jane needs her more. Yeah. He nods, and regrets it a bit. The pain is starting to come back. His throat feels raw, the muscles of his nape radiate “nope” vibes down to between his shoulder blades, worse on the left side.
"D’you have any info about the situation?" he asks. She shrugs.
"Sorry. We were barely in Dirk’s parking lot when Rose all but threw us in the air and told John to haul ass."
Well.
Thank God for Seering sisters, he guesses. Also brothers, because Terezi doesn’t do either foresight or farsight; it must have been Kankri.
"Okay, they’ll be sending in people as soon as they have enough free to secure the scene," John says. "I’ll just… put up some tape…"
He eyes the roof around him with a frown. Yeah, not much to tie it to.
Dave almost offers to help, but then Jade walks him to the corner of the roof, upwind from the corpses, and gets him to lean against the brick. After a long, queasy minute Dave sits cautiously on the little wall that goes around the gravel roof, and says nothing when Karkat pretty much sits on his shoes. Yeah, if he loses his balance… you never know.
His ribs ache. His face aches and stings, his hands are raw in places.
He wonders how much time the roof has before it gives in and crumbles. They stopped it before Damara could speed it up too much, but there’s still a big-ass hole in it, and gouges everywhere that probably weaken the whole structure. This is going to cost a lot; Dave hopes everyone’s insurance is up to it…
"I said,” Karkat snaps, “get those pebbles out of your hands, fuckface!”
Then — having deposited his phone carefully on the ground — he takes Dave’s left hand in his, tugs so it’s in the yellow light of the street lamps, and uses his claw tips as tweezers. Oh, right. Ow.
It stings. Dave doesn’t pull away. His mouth twitches a little when blood wells up and Karkat leans in to flick his tongue at it.
"Don’t you need permission to feed from me, bro."
"I’m cleaning it. Phbbt.” He spits off to the side, eyebrows furrowed in offense. “Dust in blood is fucking gross. What a waste of perfectly drinkable hemoglobin.”
"You’re gonna give me an infection."
"Good."
Dave watches Karkat’s bowed head over his mangled knuckles, dark hair tumbling across his wrinkled nose, eyes doing their glow-in-the-dark thing. He teases out another two or three pebbles. Dave touches his chin with his free hand, brushes a thumb against the underside of his bitten lip.
When Karkat lifts his head to stare at him Dave folds in and hugs him around the neck, wrists slipping between his blades. He presses his forehead against Karkat’s shoulder and spends a few seconds just breathing.
He knew the Felt were after Karkat and Kankri since Kurloz. He knew, but he didn’t even think about it, didn’t plan for them escalating shit, like if it happened in the no man’s land it was still just a job to everyone, no hard feelings and let me clock out until tomorrow, I’ve got a pizza date. He’s a fucking moron.
"If you knew what they want from you," he says quietly in his neck, "you’d tell me, right?"
Karkat cricket-crackles right in his ear in annoyance. “Of course I would, I’m not a brain-dead husk of stupid. They don’t want to strut down the street with me and brag about the number of double takes and selfies.”
"Heh. Guess not." Sigh. He releases his demon, straightens up — cautiously, his ribs hurt. Urgh.
Karkat is staring up at him like he wants to keep talking and he can’t; his jaw is all tight and his nostrils flare every two seconds like a little annoyed metronome.
"Kankri knows, though."
Karkat sighs sharply through his nose. “He as much as told us he does, and can’t talk about it. And I’m starting to fucking wonder who even told the lot of you that I even existed.” His eyes hood a little, cynical. “Wanna bet Kankri dangled my possible existence under his ride’s nose until she thought it was her own idea to go looking for me?”
Jesus.
Karkat knows Kankri, for all that they both profess they spent absolutely no time together in the demon world. But that pompous, awkward windbag pulling one over on Rose? When she’s always run circles around him, when she tricked him into revealing himself, into contracting to her—
He can see it, is the thing. “Yeah, no bet.”
"And now here I am, a lovely present from your littermate…"
"She wanted Sollux, though."
Karkat glares at him. “How hard did she object, really? Like, do you ever get your way with her when she doesn’t let you?”
… Point.
"And Kankri just happens to decide to follow me out here, and as Rose figured out, he was looking for protection from someone we totally don’t know is the motherfucking Felt, which is also totally not his previous contractor, but nah, no nefarious plans here. Nope. Oh hey, I really want to follow them home to see what’s going to happen. Probably an amusement park!"
He’s waving his hand around expansively. Dave pets him between the horns, careful of his quills. He’s too exhausted for anger.
Maybe later. Yeah. Definitely. Right now he just…
Mnh.
They sit around silent for another minute, and then Karkat growls to himself and starts picking dirt and things out of Dave’s skin. A little while later Dave looks up to voices he doesn’t recognize, coming from the roof over them.
"Over here!" John calls, and then has to go and Windy Thing some of the older cops coming through Dave’s apartment so they don’t break an ankle trying to jump down.
He watches the scene get processed, people bringing in lamps and looking around for evidence, the two bodies — even the headless one — being officially proclaimed dead on arrival.
An officer walks up to them, notebook in hand. Dave nods a hello, goes through the routine — name, badge number, time of the assault, as precisely as he can…
He talks on automatic, dispassionate, bland. He doesn’t want to think about what he’s saying and colorful metaphors would definitely not help.
"Okay, thanks. You know how this goes…"
"Mm." Well at least his part is done, now. Maybe he can shower and — oh, no, his apartment is a crime scene. Fuck.
"You’re not taking my statement?" Karkat asks.
The officer — Dave thinks his name is Anangua? something like that — looks down at Karkat and quirks an eyebrow, looks back up at Dave like they’re the only two people in the conversation.
"Oh. Yeah." Dave swallows. Karkat doesn’t have a legal standing but they do interrogate kids, when their parents give the okay, and… "Maybe you could do that."
"Sir… He’s under contract. His testimony is useless, remember? You could be ordering him to say just about anything."
The man nods firmly to him, and goes to talk to the officer in charge. Dave closes his eyes so he won’t have to see Karkat’s face.
He knew that. He did. He just… hoped?
Yeah, right. He just didn’t want Karkat to hear it from him.
As if Karkat would have forgotten he’s —
"Rude," Dave forces out. "He could have looked you in the eye."
He still can’t look at Karkat either, Karkat who isn’t ranting, who isn’t getting angry at the snub — either the man’s words or his attitude — Karkat who shifts his weight and sits back against the wall, five inches farther, five inches too far to touch Dave.
"Mm."
Fucking shitty day.
"Dave!" Jade calls as she jogs to them, her dog trotting at her heels. "Forensics wants pictures of your wounds, but there’s shitty lighting around here. You mind going back inside?"
Why the hell not. He allows her to grab his hand and haul him onto his feet. “So are we parkouring our way down to street level or…?”
"John will pop us over. C’mon. Karkat, you coming?"
"No, of course not, I’m going to let him out of my sight right now, that strikes me as an awesome plan."
They trudge back to the other side of the building — Karkat limping along awkwardly on three limbs as he’s holding his beloved cell phone in his hand and hasn’t even tried to hand it back to Dave. John lifts them in the air with a wave of his hand and a long, exhaled “Haaaaaaa!” — what if he loses the note while they’re in mid-air, doesn’t he pay in advance usually? Dave really hates flying. He’d probably like it if he controlled it, but being in the grip of someone else’s demon… nope.
It doesn’t last more than a few seconds before they’re on the fire escape, at any rate.
Dave steps across the open (broken) window and climbs down into his apartment and there’s glass everywhere, the coffee table was shoved away from its spot and is clawed to hell and back. A pile of CDs is on the floor, some of the cases cracked. All in all they didn’t stop to, like, ruin his TV just for fun or anything, so the damage isn’t that huge.
It’s just dirty. Invaded.
He makes his way around the edge of the room, follows the photographer into the bathroom — still safe and pristine and he doesn’t want any of his colleagues here — and takes off his shirt, his pants, tries not to grimace when he tilts his head back to show off the puffed up marks around his neck.
Karkat has slipped in with them, ends up in the shower stall so that he doesn’t get in the way of the woman, staring with his burning eyes. A few hours earlier they were sitting together on the washing machine.
Dave looks pretty bad in the mirror. There are bruises over his ribs and on his face, there’s grime, a few streaks of dried blood.
When the photographer leaves Dave wets a washcloth and sponges himself down perfunctorily. Karkat nudges him aside to get at the first aid kit under the sink and Dave stops him, a hand tugging lightly at the curve of his horn.
"Don’t bother, bro, I’ll do that once we’re where we’re going."
Karkat blinks up. “What? We’re going somewhere?”
"Crime scene. We’re not staying the night here. They’ll be busy until fuckall in the morning at any rate. I just…" He shrugs. He wants to be in bed already, but there are so many things to do first. "It’ll wait, okay?"
He pops open the washing machine’s closet-room. There’s a basket of clean clothes there, he left them here because the TV was on and… things. He forgets.
Karkat scowls. “Then I want to take my stuff.”
"Yeah, sure. Just tell ‘em first so they can note where it all was."
Dave changes clothes, gets clean underwear, a t-shirt to sleep in. He leaves his dirty clothes folded haphazardly on the machine.
Jade is waiting when he comes out. (He sees Karkat’s head popping up quickly over the railing to check on him.)
"Alright, you can go for today," Jade tells him. "I’m almost done, so if you want to stay at my place you can wait for me, and we’ll drive together?"
"Rather stay at Rose’s," he rasps. Fuck, his throat hurts. "Minimize the target area." Also he’ll have intel on the Dirk and Jane situation the second she comes home. Perfect.
Also she’s in the middle of a pretty active area of town and has fucking awesome wards. Mm.
Jade purses her lips in thought. “Okay. I’ll drive you.” It’s gonna be Dave’s car they take, not much choice here, but she doesn’t bother saying she doesn’t want Dave driving right now. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t want to drive either.
“‘Kay.” She turns away, calls Bec from the fire escape, leads him to go around the glass. Dave locates a backpack and stuffs his change of clothes, house keys, and wallet in.
Everything that was on the coffee table and on the couch is scattered across the floor.
"Hey, Karkat, mind calling my cell? I don’t see it."
Three seconds, and it trills. He finds it stuck between the couch and the wall.
"Okay, cool. Thanks."
And he’s all ready to go. He waits for Karkat to negotiate the ladder with his armful. For a brief instant he’s stuck in a moment of perfect clarity where he expects Karkat to turn around and the dildo to poke out of his arms, but—
Oh Jesus shitting dick nipples, it was on the windowsill, Karkat left it on the windowsill. The windowsill that the Felt broke through.
It’s got to have been kicked farther into the room. There is no way someone is not going to find it, the second they start lifting the mess up to see what’s underneath.
He is never going to live it down. He’s tired enough that he mostly feels a muted sense of faraway doom, inevitable, nothing to fight against.
When he spies the base of it peeking out from under a magazine, he violates crime scene etiquette by kneeling down to fix his shoelaces and disappearing it into his backpack.
"Here," Karkat says, handing him the laptop. One of the officers follows him down and drifts by to nod — your pet demon didn’t mess anything up, good, good.
The dildo is lodged at an angle and will not let the laptop slide all the way in. Hffffffuck.
"So…" The officer says, casually polite, as she watches him fight with his bag.
"Hmm?"
"What’d you sneak in here?"
Goddamnit.
Never living it down. He’s almost tired enough that it makes him want to cry a little. He’s just tired enough that he almost thinks, so what? it’s confusing to feel both at once.
Karkat looks up, an eyebrow up. “What?”
Dave gives in. The officer is still leaning in close, being discreet, but she’s gonna start raising her voice soon.
He cracks his bag open and shows her.
She somehow keeps a straight face. Ish. For three seconds. Then she bites her cheek hard, looks up at his face — he sees her stopping on the bruises at his neck — and she softens enough to smile.
"Reasonably sure that’s not evidence, then?"
He dredges up all the snark he’s got left. “You might say that.”
A quiet, sympathetic chuckle. “Okay, Strider, move along.”
Saved.
Until he has to go into work at the end of the internal investigation for lethal discharge of demon. Yeah, he is going to take it from both ends on the dildo front, he’s pretty sure. He breathes out and quirks her a tiny smile in thanks.
"Hey guys, you ready?" John asks, dropping in through the window. "Because boy, I sure am." Dave has never been so glad to see his toothed face.
Jade excuses herself, rolling her eyes. “Says the latecomer!”
"I’m ready," Karkat says, eyebrows still quirked in puzzlement, like he’s not the one at the root of that stealthy little debacle. "Dunno about dumdum over there."
"Born ready," Dave says, and absconds through the exploded doorway.
(He tries very hard not to estimate the price of the damages.)
(In the elevator he realizes the evidence question was the perfect set up to go “You might even say it’s my… intimate conviction.” He huffs a silent laugh through his raw throat. It stings.)
(He killed a man today.)
—
Rose and Roxy’s little townhouse is dark when they arrive. It feels a bit wrong to let themselves in.
He’s all over dust, and they have a nice bathroom. He unlocks the door and ushers Karkat in.
John and Jade follow him.
He almost says something. It’s late. Thought you were just dropping me off. Don’t you have homes to get back to.
He doesn’t want to be alone, so he doesn’t say anything.
He turns the entry light on and keeps going down the corridor.
"Hey, Meowgon," John says behind him. He sounds like he’s bending down to pick up Roxy’s black cat before he can get out.
"His name is Mutie! Why do you always insist on renaming their cats!" Jade demands. The door locks.
Dave turns at the stairs and goes up, backpack on one shoulder. Karkat follows, claws ticking on polished wood.
"I’ll be fine in Rose’s bathroom," Dave says, without much hope. Karkat shuddered enough making his way past the wrought iron gates to know the house is as protected as it can be.
He wishes he’d taken his gun out of the safe. Just after killing a guy, though, that would not have gone over well with the colleagues.
"You’ll be fine until you trip over your own feet and drown in the shower drain," Karkat replies, and cricket-hops past him to the last landing.
Dave gives in.
He walks into the bathroom, drops his bag, gets undressed — shirt off, it aches everywhere; bends to take off his shoes and his ribs twinge.
He lets his jeans and underwear drop to the floor, steps out of them.
Showering would be faster. Some scrubbing, and done. He gets into the tub instead.
He turns the water as hot as it’ll go without burning him and reclines, waiting for it to fill.
They almost took Karkat today. (Almost kidnapped him. The way Dave tricked and enslaved him; no, not the same, not for the same goals but he —)
"Are you okay," he rasps, eyes closed.
(Is Karkat still off-balance, still scared?)
(What does he feel about killing that guy?)
Karkat huffs quietly, like he finds that question funny, more in the stupid-unexpected sense than the amusing one. His claws click on the tiles until he steps on the bath mat; Dave can almost feel him leaning an elbow on the edge of the tub.
"What kind of fucking question is that."
"One where I’d hella like an answer," Dave says back. He cracks his eyes open to observe his toes. They’re getting submerged.
"I’m — what do you want me to say? I’m not happy we got attacked. I’m extremely not happy that they’re escalating and it’ll happen again until either I’m dead or they all are. So what? I’m not injured, you’re alive, no neighbors were harmed, what else?"
Dave turns his head to look at him and the expression on Karkat’s face kills him a little — bewildered, annoyed like Dave asked him a trick question.
Lost, too.
"No, I meant in." Dave wets his lips. "In your feelings. Like. I don’t know. Shock or… Anything. Bad feelings."
Because Dave feels like that, and he wants to talk about it with someone, and he doesn’t want any of his friends to hear it — it’s too much to unveil, too much to burden them with — and he wants Karkat to tell him he feels the same, wants to be the one Karkat tells things like that.
He’s Dave’s slave, not his — not his friend. Not his shrink.
"Never mind. Forget I asked."
Who says Karkat feels so stunned stupid, so empty over any of this, anyway? The first meal of demons is other demons. Ain’t no way he hasn’t killed to survive before.
"You’re brooding," Karkat notes. Dave watches him step into the shower stall and prod at the controls.
"… Yeah, well."
Karkat unhooks the showerhead, blasts himself over the back, the wings, sits to rinse off his legs. He doesn’t bother with soap or shampoo, only his shelled parts are dusty. Dave watches.
"You ever kill someone?" he asks. "… Same level as you."
Karkat pierces him with a red look, deadly serious, for a long second before he answers. “You ever give a second’s thought to wondering why Blood demons are so rare?”
"Uh. No." Dave blinks. "Low birth rates? … You’re tasty?"
"Mm."
So, both, but not only.
Karkat sits in the shower, ankles crossed, hands casual on his knees. His eyes are so sober, so pensive. Dave stops breathing a little.
"On this plane, not as much — but back home, we make other demons nervous. They don’t like us. They do like eating us.” He lifts his chin a little — he was already looking Dave in the eye but it feels like he’s doing it more. “It’s — a bit strange. How you don’t expect other humans to try to eat you.”
"Oh."
"I think I’d only… If I thought they were my friends, if — if Terezi hunted me, for real I mean, not for a joke, it would bother me. To kill them, I mean." He frowns a little, little eyes blinking in doubt. "Well, there’s an element of betrayal there that shouldn’t exist for you here, I mean, those assholes were already your enemies… Or maybe it’s just the size of the betrayal? Since humans aren’t supposed to hunt each other… Hm.”
"Huh." Dave blinks slowly. Karkat is doing comparative anthropology. That’s… Oh.
The demon blinks, scowls. “Long story short, yes, I’ve killed people.”
His mulish look is a challenge. You gonna take human exception to that?
"Not friends, though," Dave says.
For a second it looks like Karkat wants to get angry, tell him — Dave isn’t sure. Yes he has, he’s fearsome and heartless? Of fucking course not, who’d kill their friends? (People who are friends with their food, probably.)
"… No, not friends yet."
Dave doesn’t know how long they could have spent looking at each other if someone didn’t knock on the door.
"Yeah?"
The door cracks open and Jade peeks in. “Hey, guys. Do you want tea? Or like, hot milk?”
"You guys helping yourselves to Rose’s kitchen now," Dave drawls without thinking. It’s not like Rose and Roxy would mind.
"I’m not! John is." She shrugs. "He’s her partner, he can deal with her wrath — Dave.”
He blinks. “Uh. what?”
She pushes the door open in full and walks in. “No, seriously! What are you even doing, that can’t be allowed!”
She lobs a little washing glove thing at him. He hurries to drape it over his genitals. “What?”
"You didn’t even light a single candle! You can’t have a hot bath and not have candles, okay."
She continues to berate him, tone playful and eyes soft, and finds matches.
There are indeed candles in the room (and a loofah, and like, decorative things.) Jade goes around lighting them all. Karkat blinks at Dave like what the fuck. Dave shrugs back, and hunkers down in the tub when she leans across to light the ones against the wall.
Then when she’s done she gets a little wooden stool from the corner and sits.
"… Harley, please, I know you yearn for partnertime but my family jewels are kind of bare under this towelette."
"Pffff. Like I’ve never seen them before. It’s okay, zero temptation to thieve here!"
He watches her pick up a box of salts and pour some in the water. “You saying there’s something wrong with them? Are you insulting my family heirlooms, Harley?”
"I knew humans were weird but the pair of you are breaking all records," Karkat comments from the shower stall. He restarts the water and resumes rinsing off. Jade smiles at him.
"Need anyone to wash your back, Karkat?"
Dave splutters. “Hey. Hey. No making passes at my demon.”
She waggles her eyebrows at him. “I wasn’t offering my services.”
Dave makes a choked-off little sound that he will deny was trying to be a laugh to the end and beyond. Jade grins, wide and bright, and keeps teasing him, sitting on that ridiculous stool in her t-shirt and gun holster.
She would mow down anyone stupid enough to try it again tonight.
—
Booboos disinfected, band-aids all over him, he joins the lot of them in the kitchen and suffers being fed hot milk — fuck tea, it is for herbivores only.
Dave is watching Karkat stuff another spoonful of cocoa powder into his saturated bowl when the front door opens. John is on his feet and has his cup on the table and his gun pointed at the door in about two seconds.
"It’s me," Rose says from the front door, out of sight. John holsters his piece with an awkward giggle.
Kankri appears in the doorway first, scans the lot of them and Karkat twice. Karkat kicks John’s chair out from under the table without a word.
"Hot chocolate?" John asks.
"I’ll have chamomile tea, please."
He climbs into John’s chair. Rose finally appears, dragging two more chairs from the living room. She took off her jacket at the door, but like the rest of them she still has her holster on. Dave feels mildly underdressed.
Something in his guts unclenches, watching her. If Dirk were hurt or worse she wouldn’t bother with the chairs, she wouldn’t look like this. Jane must be fine as well. They’re all fine. Everyone lived.
She looks tired, and when she meets Dave’s eyes she stares for a little too long before cracking a tiny smile. He quirks the corner of his mouth in return.
She and John sit. “You two are spending the night, then?” she asks John and Jade, who glance at each other and nod. “Good. Roxy stayed with Dirk. Jane, Jake too.”
(It’s always weird to hear the skips in her speech where “and” would go. He hopes she relearns it fast-ish.)
She looks so weary. So does Kankri.
"I… must say, I’m glad. You two were in time. For a while we…"
Her shoulders slump. Kankri is fiddling with his cup, waiting for it to steep.
"You didn’t know it was gonna happen," Dave says, and bumps his foot into hers through the tangle of limbs under the table. "It’s fine."
Rose hooks his ankle with her foot. He lets her have it, where no one else will see.
Kankri’s brows furrow as he stares into his cup with great attention. “You’re right, not until it was already happening.” He hesitates, one second, two. “… It shouldn’t have happened.”
Jade leans in. “Wait, wait. Something blocked you?”
"Something must have!" He looks up at her, still scowling. "I guess it’s good to know th—it can’t prevent me from being aware of Karkat — which would be extremely alarming! — but I couldn’t see Detective Strider at all, and that’s not right.”
They sit in silence for a moment.
"You monitoring your brother’s human, Kankri?" John asks, trying to smile. Kankri huffs.
"I’m monitoring my master’s important people!" he blusters. Karkat’s eyebrows are up.
John nods. “Uh huh. I’m just saying, buddy, I’m not the one who said it would be alarming.”
"I meant that entirely in terms of what it would mean for their blocking abilities. Considering — well. Considering… things."
Karkat rolls his eyes, and drops a sugar cube in Kankri’s cup.
"—I don’t like sugar in my tea, Karkat."
"Don’t care. You need sugar. Your brain’s going downhill. Eat a waffle or something."
Kankri scowls at him, lips pursed, cheeks just a little puffed up with all the words he can’t find to tell Karkat off.
"You’re our early warning system. Maintain your fleshy hardware, okay? You need to be able to tell me where they are if we want me to kill them properly."
Dave and Rose find themselves smiling at each other for some reason.
—
John makes waffles. Dave eats a waffle. Karkat eats three, bullies Kankri into matching him. It’s two-thirty in the morning.
Jade draws first watch. Dave doesn’t remember discussing the fact that there would be a watch, but there is. Okay.
She unloads and reloads her gun. Click, click, clack. Her hands are sure, precise. Ready.
"You boys get to share Roxy’s poster bed," Rose decides. Which is fine until Karkat climbs in between John and Dave, because John doesn’t know how to sleep with someone spiny, and bitches about it.
"Well, let’s just put Da