Urban fantasy demon summoner Dave/demon Karkat, dubious consent issues, magical slavery, action, mystery, angst. This chapter: 13k.
archive.
——
"Wakey, wakey, Lord Lazybones the Sleeps-A-Lot!"
Dave comes to already knowing he doesn’t want to move. He has it confirmed when he bats his eyes open and his cheekbone twinges, and then again when he tries to lift a hand to push John off him. The jerk is looming over him and grinning with far too many teeth for this hour of the — oh hey, it’s noon.
Dave lets his arm flop down on the mattress. Yeah, abort this shit, all his muscles went so crazy tense yesterday to keep from being strangled and smothered, he’s sore even in the places he didn’t get hit. He is going right back to sleep.
"G’off, Egbutt," he grumbles, "this princess don’t need kissed."
John chuckles and leans closer in. “What pretty eyes you have, your majesty.”
Wh — fuck, where are his shades. He forces his protesting arm to feel around for the nightstand, finds it, doesn’t find his shades…
… Ooooh, hell. He slumps back, tries to merge with the bed, eyes scrunching closed. He was home yesterday, he wasn’t wearing them.
Thank fuck for that, because wearing them at night on that roof might have gotten him killed for real.
"Davey-poo~"
Dave cracks an eye open to glare. John and his giant teeth are about two inches from his face.
It’s pretty hard to miss the way his expression goes from teasing to a mild, baffled quirk of the brow.
"Dave? Look at me, buddy?"
Aw, fuck. Dave looks over the room. Karkat is sitting beside him in bed, laptop on his knees, and looks so completely absorbed by whatever it is he’s reading or watching that he isn’t even paying them enough attention to mock.
Dave so doesn’t want to talk about the faint but unmistakable clock gears circling his pupils like a shitty etch-a-sketch. Nope. He’d been doing fine pretending they didn’t matter one bit.
"I don’t know, that’s a lot of — ow, fuck — a lot of commitment, Egbert, I don’t know if I’m ready for a big step like that—"
"Dave, stop being bashful, it doesn’t suit you at all," John replies placidly.
Dave gives in and turns his head — oh Jesus his neck hurts. He turns his shoulders with it and his back twinges hard instead, so it takes him a couple of seconds to bring himself to meet John’s eyes. (This time it isn’t even because he’s trying to avoid it.)
John peers at him for another two seconds, and then goes “Huh. Yeah, Rose has them too.”
Then he straightens up, puts his hands on his hips, and says “Now get up, we’re having lunch!”
Karkat looks up from his laptop and then starts closing up windows. Dave sits there and maybe gapes a tiny little bit.
"Hey!"
"Hmm?"
"Oh my little Jesus, you humongous dick, I know I underreact to everything but that’s because I know you’ll make a fuss for me! Is that it? ‘Oh yeah, Rose has them too?’"
"I said ‘huh yeah’," John rectifies.
"That’s even worse!"
Karkat closes his laptop with a decisive slap of noise and knuckles him under the ribs, where he’s ticklish. Not in the bruises, those are on the other side, so really Dave is the one who hurts himself jumping when he knew that his whole body is a charley horse waiting to happen.
"I hate you both with the fiery intensity of a hella pissed off phoenix," he mutters, slumped over the very edge of the mattress, one hand over his ribs. "Seriously this phoenix was dating a hellhound that was literally on fire and she left him for, like, I dunno, something cold and I don’t even remember where the fuck I was going with this but I really hate the both of you a lot."
"We’ll remember that next time you invite us for a threesome," John replies, pursing his lips sternly. "Dad’s waiting for you at the station at two sharp, by the way—"
"I’m up, I’m up."
He is… approximately up. Sort of. He’s standing on his feet, at least. He’s just standing pretty crooked. Everything from the base of his skull to the small of his back is one big pulled muscle. He has pulled muscles he had never felt in his life before and would have been pretty sure he did not use.
"Could have brought me painkillers, fuck, such poor service…"
"Jade has Feferi until twelve-thirty," John replies, and gives him an innocent look.
Dave limps his torturous way out of the door and down the staircase at a hopping, yelping run.
More of a jog.
Maybe a fast shuffle. At any rate, he moves.
"When you trip I will laugh at you," Karkat informs him almost placidly. "And walk on you entirely accidentally."
"Dun care," Dave replies doggedly, without turning his head. "Jade will fix it."
"She might not want to pay an actual whale."
Dave tries to be grumpy about it for a second, and then he’s on the landing and offering his fist for a righteous bump, despite the way his shoulder bitched him out.
Karkat pauses on the last step to blink at him in confusion. Oh, right.
"This is where you apply your fist to my fist — gently! — in recognition of the righteous comeback you have unleashed."
Karkat rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’ll pass. You’ve got pus and shit in there, it’s gross.”
Dave eyes his skinned knuckles. He cleaned them yesterday night in the bathroom but they might indeed be a little infected. Yuck.
"Jade, it’s an emergency," he says as he limps into the kitchen. "Karkat won’t fistbump me for cause of pus."
She levels a long stare at him over her coffee cup, and then heaves a dramatic sigh and eyeroll and gestures him to the chair next to her.
"Good morning to you too, partner! My, it is nice to see you!" she chirps as she turns to face him.
"Yeah, yeah. Hi. Ow."
Her long dark hair is already starting to wave with underwater currents that don’t even exist.
"Feferi is telling me she wants a mantis shrimp," she says, absently but smiling. "Which, I really don’t know how we’d keep it contained, but she says it’s fitting because Karkat."
Dave blinks. “… Mantis shrimp.” Aren’t those the ones with the sonic punch? “Yeah, okay, I can see it. Karkat’s not the one who’s hurt, though.”
Jade twists her mouth a little, pensive, eyes looking inwards. “… Then some kind of white fish, she says. Blind cave fish? Honey, I don’t know where I’d even find one. Also Dave isn’t even blind. How about one of those fighting fish with the long froofy fins — okay, good. Hang on.”
The last bit was for him, Dave can tell. He gives the smallest nod he can and holds out his hand. (It’s kind of crazy how many muscles are involved in just lifting his hand. He can trace the weave of them up to his neck and shoulder blade and spine just from the pain twanging through them.)
"Good news, it’s all just muscle strain and scrapes and bruises. Hurts like hell, but easy enough to fix."
For a moment when she heals him it’s almost like an afterglow, his body so relieved of pain it feels like pleasure instead. At least he’s used enough to the effect not to embarrass himself; he used to blush like an idiot when they were teenagers.
"Phone’s ringing," Karkat says, and takes off at a gallop. Dave strains, and hears it muffled from upstairs. Whoops, they did leave everything in the bedroom, didn’t they.
The healing glow fades in a few seconds; he checks his knuckles, flexes his arms, straightens his back.
"Oh thank fuck. I live. I liiiiive."
Karkat comes back a bit slower, claws going thump-thumpclick on the stairs one by one; Dave leans out of the door (without pain!) to watch him get down sideways on his hind legs, back hunched awkwardly, the phone pressed to his ear.
"I’m getting there, doucheprince, hold your metaphorical douchehorses. I’d like to see you operating staircases with my design—"
He turns at the foot of the stairs and sees Dave just as he drops on his usual four-legged stance
"… It was just yours," Karkat says, and hops to Dave and drops the phone on Dave’s lap.
Uh huh. They don’t have even vaguely similar ringtones. Dave smiles a little bit.
Jade snickers and shoves a sandwich at Dave along the table. He bites down as he checks the phone display. Oh.
Swallow. “Hey, Dirk.”
“Dave." A brief pause that is completely not relief. Dave isn’t relieved at all either. Nah. It’s not their thing. "Status?”
"Remade anew. Jade is a goddess. I have the best partner ever, fight me."
She snorts and rolls her eyes, but he can see her smiling too.
Dave asks, “How about you guys? Any wounds I should know about?”
“We were fine,” Dirk says. Dave isn’t too sure he believes that.
"Oh, really? Considering everything they threw at us, I’m kinda surprised to hear that. I fail at detectiving. Also at kicking ass. An embarrassment to the Strider name, you might say."
Dirk snorts. “Dave, my apartment is like Fort Knox, except not centuries out of date.”
"Or they just didn’t try as hard."
He expects a snappy comeback, but instead he gets a long pause.
"Dirk?"
“… Could be. Could be that they could tell early on they wouldn’t be getting in, so they didn’t bother trying any harder…”
"Could be you were the distraction," Kankri says from the doorway in a clear, carrying voice that goes through to Dirk just fine. Dave can tell. Brother intuition.
"I didn’t want to say, but," Dave adds blandly into the phone. Dirk makes an annoyed noise.
"My apologies," Kankri adds smugly, "the secondary objective."
“That is much better,” Dirk says just as blandly. “Is it a seer’s knowledge?”
"It’s a seer’s logic and good sense," Kankri replies, and drags out a stool to perch on.
Karkat goes “Pff.”
"Do you wish to say something using actual words?" Kankri inquires fake-politely. "Perhaps we could attempt to figure out a few syllables? Alternately I could write you the alphabet and you might try to point and grunt. Now don’t be ashamed, everyone has their limitations…"
"Shut your dribbling trap, turdface." Karkat appropriates the chair on the other side of Dave. "And yeah, that was my analysis too. Did they try for you once you and your Master got there?"
"Could you please refrain from using derogatory names?"
Karkat blinks all his eyes, slow and mocking. “Could but won’t.”
Kankri huffs. “You are ridiculous. And no, they didn’t, but to be fair we were surrounded by policemen and their cars and quite safe, as we had the enemy caught between us and Detectives Crocker and Strider.”
"That how it happened?" Dave asks his brother.
“Mm. We’d been defending a while, but the assailants started trying to escape about five minutes after reinforcements arrived.”
"D’you catch any of them?"
“…No.”
"Oh, so we still win," Dave says, and then hears himself and.
Yeah, they sure did. Two body bags. High score.
“Dave,” Dirk says, a little quiet, a little too intense, Dave already wants to not hear it. “You’re a cop. They attacked you in your home, and if I know you at all, you still tried to retreat and warn them first. Nobody blames you.”
I blame me, Dave doesn’t say, because he’s in the middle of the kitchen and Karkat and Jade are sitting right there and he is not whining around them any more than he already does. “I guess. Yeah. It’s not like I regret shooting them so much that I’d rather let them get away with offing us, so.”
Wow, awkward silence.
"Anyway. How’s Jane?"
“She’s okay,” Dirk replies, in a tone that means that is the end of it, which means she isn’t.
"Dirkie-poo," Dave says. "My favorite middle bro. Do I gotta ask Rose and Terezi over?"
There’s a long moment of tense silence. Dave braces.
“Let me rephrase. She’s physically fine and was never otherwise than physically fine, and if you can make her talk then more power to you. In the meantime, she’s my partner, so feel free to butt out.”
—Whoa. Um. Wow. Dave throws Jade a glance; her eyebrows are like, way up. She quirks them at him and then nods; she’s on it. Dave supposes she’ll be less clumsy than he is. Plus they are cousins, so.
“Gotta get back to work. I’ll see you this evening." Dirk doesn’t wait, just hangs up.
Dave sends his phone a nice pointed look, mostly for Jade, Karkat, and Kankri’s benefit.
"Today for the what the fuck section of the news…"
"Yeah, seriously." Jade turns to Kankri. "Could you get anything off him?"
"Naturally." He’s eating a sandwich, cut into small hors-d’oeuvre sized pieces. "Could you provide payment?"
"Make sure to determine what exactly you’re paying for," Karkat interjects. "Bet you what he knows is stuff like whether that other asshole has strong feelings on pizza toppings."
It’s gearing up for another sniping battle, but then Rose comes in and she has an armful of Chinese takeout and everyone gets distracted.
(Kankri refuses to even touch the pork buns, pigs being ‘so close to sentient beings,’ and meat is totally murder, but apparently cows and birds don’t count and Rose still ends up with all the vegetarian stuff.)
—
bluuuurgh
okay whats the problem now?? :/
problem what problem who said there was a problem my life is problem free its smooth sailing all the way down
and why are you *texting* me dave, youre at work too, i know you are i **drove you here**!!
and theres the rub
im technically in the building
but the ia peeps got here early and capn was like yeah imma be too polite as is my wont heres your dude
spent like seventy hours rehashing yesterdays shit and NOW im free of their nosy clutches and can chew the fat w/ him and ofc hes busy
so im cooling my heels in the waiting room
so why cant you wait for him to be free in your cubicle with your late reports and things again? :/
guess i could also wait in my cubicle but
jinx
jinx!!!!
aw damn! >:O
im noticing a lack of explanation for your slacking ways, you slacking slacker
meh
no reason
im just gaining slacker points i dont have quite enough for the slacker crown
huh. :/
so howd the IA thing go?
it
went
that good, huh D: do they think you uhhhhhh did something wrong?? i cant even imagine what but
no no
just
did not enjoy having to reminisce about being buried in mountainous bodybuilder in his death throes is all
yeah, thatd be bad enough :(((
*sends shoulder pats of manly partner support*
*holds shoulder like a stoic manly man who got his shoulder gently dislocated*
and plus they made karkat wait outside those jerks
what? why??
hes not a dog okay wtf!!
it wasnt the dog thing so much
>:?
more of the weapon loaded and ready to fire in my hand thing actually
….. oh right. yeah i guess if you dont know either him or you and or have no reason to trust either one hed look pretty weapony…
mm
also i had to explain latula
……. did she do anything last night? :/
no but they had a idk either prince of space or something of mind to make this little summon free zone just in case
i mean itd be useless to ask me to take off my gun and my karkat but not stop me from bringing aradia down on their asses
and they found her p much inactive but already nested in my brain so
yeah hi btw this is my knightly bro shes on a semi permanent rent dealio on my real estate howdyoudo
….. yeah :X
how *did* you explain her? D:
whats there to explain
shes my anti mindfuck insurance is all you know its the kind of stuff you always regret but too late when it turns out you dont have it
im just being smart and preemptive
also after the kurloz clusterfuck well fuck me twice if you can say i wont have any use for her with a straight face
anyway they didnt mind her after all
mmm
and its not like karkat was bored out there he had his phone and all
hell hes still on his phone now
k capn is wrapping up time to explain to him that i dont want no safehouse to cower in & let me get home already brb
you don’t WHAT??? DD:<
*DAVE*!!!!!!!
—
"Come in, gentlemen," Captain Egbert says, holding the door open. He’s watching the both of them and Dave isn’t too sure what he’s looking for. As Dave gets up and walks through the door he keeps his face perfectly neutral, just in case.
Karkat hops lopsidedly after him, on one hand and two feet. They really need to figure out some kind of bag setup for him that he wouldn’t shred or bump his various limbs into…
Maybe a fanny pack. With like, a reinforced leather strap. With luck his back spines would take a while to saw their way through it.
Dave is waved into one of the two chairs in front of the desk; Karkat ignores the second, climbs into the armchair in the corner. He curls sideways in it, wings and spines tucked tight so he won’t mangle the already worn leather. His back is to the door, his side to the two of them, it surprises Dave a little. He tries to read his face and finds it written in a language he doesn’t speak.
He’s still not sure how Karkat took to being told to wait outside earlier. If he minded at all. It’s got to be boring as hell to be dragged into Dave’s meetings. Dave would get out of them himself if he could.
"David," the man says, almost gently, and Dave foregoes reminding him that his name is just Dave and was never more than Dave, because from him it somehow doesn’t grate.
It feels like paternal concern. It’s not a thing he’s used to. He kind of wishes he was.
"How are you feeling?"
Dave is not a teenager anymore, so he doesn’t start to casually and coincidentally pick at his pants.
Egbert won’t take ‘I’m good’ at face value, and Dave would rather he didn’t ask again. “That’s kind of a hard question, boss.” He gives a little shrug, looks away. “Body’s fine.” His mind, now.
I could give you the rundown, Latula offers, a whisper at the back of his mind. Might not like the deets though.
He can guess. No. He’s fine not having his nose put in his shit where he can’t denial it away. Yeah, thanks, I’ll pass.
Silence, for a minute. Egbert doesn’t break it either. Dave gets the feeling it’s because he doesn’t need Dave to verbalize to get an idea of the problem.
"Would you like to make time with the psychologist?"
Dave’s stomach muscles tighten, his nostrils flare just a little. He swallows his first answer — hell-fucking no — it’d get the good Captain to go from suggesting to ordering him for sure.
"I’ll be fine, sir." He shrugs, a bit self-depreciative, gazes down at his linked hands between his knees. Look at him, he is sincere Dave. "Rose and Jade are keeping a tight watch. It’s — I’ll be fine."
He hopes he looks sincere. Because he is. Totally sincere. Yeah.
Captain Egbert scrutinizes him for a handful of seconds, and then sighs and nods, not in a very convinced way.
"You know it’s not supposed to hurt, to speak candidly with someone."
Dave snorts before he can stop himself. Shows what he knows. He tries on a smile. “Uh huh.”
Egbert sighs, shakes his head. “Just… Don’t leave it until too late.”
A last look — direct, serious, and Dave doesn’t like that he’s not wearing his shades, even though he would have met it anyway. That the man can tell he’s meeting that sincerity, taking it in, is embarrassing.
And then he looks past Dave, and he says with the same quiet, serious concern, “Karkat? How are you doing?”
The demon blinks, sneaks him a suspicious look. “That’s kind of vague.”
"About yesterday’s home invasion," Egbert says — low, quiet, gentle, "how are you feeling?" and Dave stares over his shoulder at some decoration he put up on his wall so he won’t catch glimpses of Karkat’s face off the side.
He’s talking to Karkat like Karkat is one of his men and Dave thinks — it’s not even a thought. It’s knowledge. If that man wasn’t his captain Dave wouldn’t enjoy being a cop. If it’s not him…
Fuck, he could ask Dave anything. Dave would be fine with it.
There’s no answer for a while; just as Dave starts thinking Karkat’s silence is hostile, he grunts quietly.
"Does it matter?" Karkat grumps, but like he’s a little hoping it does.
"It does." Softly. "You’re a thinking, feeling being. Of course it matters."
"Yeah, in all the ways except the ones that’d change jack shit," Karkat mutters under his breath, but then he sighs, relaxes against the arm of his armchair. "I’m irritated, my brain is stuck in watchdog mode, which is annoying and also I really don’t need to look at the donuts lady like she’s a Felt plant, and I’m hungry, which doesn’t help, because it makes me feel like I’ve got an even bigger target painted over my chitinous frame than I already do, which makes my trigger even hairier."
His head tilts back until the back of his skull presses against the padded arm, and he sighs, weary, at the ceiling. Dave watches the play of interlocked shell bands around his neck.
"I’m not feeling weird about killing strangers who tried to kill us first, though. Especially assholes who have got a plan to use me and Kankri for who knows what ends. Yeah, I’m not playing, I’m not a toy or a spell ingredient, they can fuck off. The only thing that’s weird is that I don’t get to eat them. That seems pretty wasteful."
"Urgh. Dude, you don’t know where they’ve been."
Karkat makes a grouchy moue. “Even if we knew where they’ve been you wouldn’t let me eat them.”
"You got that right."
Captain Egbert is smiling a little. It makes Dave want to squirm and also to smile back, a tiny, stealthy one. He’s an adult and a professional, so he doesn’t.
"Well, if you’ve got concerns, Karkat, you may feel free to bring them to me, and we will try to talk them out."
"Really?" Karkat replies, pointedly dubious, his voice grating, crackling with harsh inhuman rasps. "Because I do have a concern, and it’s that we didn’t nail them all."
"Oh?" Egbert asks, perfectly neutral, as Dave winces.
Karkat snorts his disdain. “They wouldn’t be coming back.”
"… True."
"I guess now we hope the living ones take it as a warning and decide not to try their luck a second time, but I don’t think the guys in charge are going to let it stop them pushing mooks at us. How many are there in that group, anyway?"
Egbert shrugs. “The core group, anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five. They also employ runners and other people who aren’t strictly part of the gang but hope to be allowed to join fully if they prove useful. The ones who attacked you were all core members, though, which seems to indicate the leaders think this is a matter too serious to leave to unaffiliated people. Or they might change their minds tomorrow and decide on an overwhelming attack, bring in everyone they can talk into it.”
… It’s not like Dave doesn’t know that.
So now the choice is basically to kill or jail them all, and he doesn’t give good odds to jailing them all. Or maybe…
"Give me their boss," Karkat says shortly, still curled up in his chair. He’s not hugging his knees, but he’s close. "We one-shot him, problem solved."
"Yeah, maybe not," Dave says, still without quite looking at him. "If it’s a plan that will bring in serious money, someone else will pick it up."
"Then we kill those too," Karkat snaps. "Can’t be easy to set up if it requires Blood demons, or someone would have tried it before. The know-how has to stop after a certain point. People have to start thinking it’s not worth the trouble if we kill them enough. Give me the order, we’ll go right now.”
"Don’t fucking joke with me, you’re half-starved, I’m on administrative leave, you want we go alone? We’re not fucking cowboys, we’re not gonna cut a swathe through the whole gang with just the two of us! It’s not a fucking boss run, we will die!”
They’re glaring at each other and Karkat looks as angry as Dave feels. They both twitch when Captain Egbert clears his throat.
"Am I ever glad to hear that, son." He leans in a little, looks at Karkat, who stares back defiantly, jaw tight. "Karkat… First, we don’t know who the boss is, not for sure. Second, if we want to act legally, we need a warrant. We need to bring in proof enough to convince a judge to deliver it; if we had that much hard proof, we would be en route right this instant.”
Karkat hisses back. “It’s not about the law, it’s not even about protecting other people, it’s about survival now. They’re ready to kill us. We waste time pussyfooting around, they’ll get us. And I can’t let him die.”
Dave flinches.
He… can imagine why Karkat is angry now. I’mma hobble you right and left, and now don’t let Dave Strider die no matter what, okay? But this method won’t do, that one either, oh no, you’re forbidden to do that…
One of the orders will break at some point, and he knows which. “That’s got to be last resort,” he says, voice raspy a bit, and doesn’t look at Karkat. “We’ve got other things to try first. Legal things.”
"Detective Strider,” Egbert says, frowning. Dave turns to meet his eyes again, only this time it’s not something awkward-nice.
"It’s not like I can order him to stop caring about my life, sir. It’s the cornerstone his whole contract is built on."
He knows Egbert understands, but he hammers it in anyway. He needs it on the table where everyone can see it. Where Karkat can know he sees it, too.
"It doesn’t matter what else I tell him to do or not do. When there’s no more choice, I’m. I’m not gonna be able to stop him."
"Nice of you to admit the obvious," Karkat rasps, bitter and not soothed. "Fat lot of good it’ll do us, once they’ve boxed us in and are ambushing us like we’re stupid cows who went on a walk through a crocodile park. I just hope we both die before they get to use me! That’s the only fucking thing I’ve got left now, the hope that I fail you and die early enough to at least fuck them over on the way out. Stellar. I’m enchanted."
"May I conclude," Egbert says dryly into the ringing silence, "that you are feeling quite frustrated over your current situation?"
"No, of course not!” Karkat yells back, throwing a hand in the air and twirling it like it’s got a marionette on it. “I’m happy! Ecstatic! A touch more joy in my life and I’ll be pissing out rainbows and barfing sparkles by the mouthful! My shits will come out enshrined in mother of pearl, flowers will spontaneously grow in my footsteps, and the power of my belief in the inherent fairness and positivity of the universe will somehow grow my wings to an actually useful length! I will fly on that belief, sir, I will fly to the moon and back and bring back moon cupcakes and a case of alien herpes!”
"… Who you plannin’ to get herpes from, bro," Dave replies after a few dazed seconds. "Aliens still don’t exist."
“Who the fuck cares, I will fuck a moon rock if that’s what it takes.”
Dave pinches his lips. Karkat looks exasperated to the max, top eyes narrowed to slits, eyebrows scrunched down hard. Dave tries very hard not to think of him grinding against… yeah okay he can’t really go there with his boss on the other side of that desk, but his brain still twitches to try.
"Gentlemen," Egbert says, drier than a desert.
"Sorry, sir."
"Sorry, I guess," Karkat mutters, and turtles down into his seat, shoulders up around his jaws as he crosses his arms over his chest. The chair creaks a little.
"We don’t plan to let the two of you go alone," Egbert assures Karkat, soothing now. "You will have backup nearby at all times. And we will set up an operation as soon as possible. They are gearing up to something nefarious and I for one am not planning to wait around for it. Administrative issues might slow us down from the immediate retaliation you would prefer, I know, but that is an unavoidable downside of abiding by the rules and regulations made to protect us all," he finishes, tone firm once again.
"Mngh. Yeah, yeah." Karkat looks away. His hand twitches like he’s touching the leather band around his biceps, on his other side, the one that’s got his badge. "… Guess I’ll wait. For now. Not much of a choice anyway."
Dave slowly relaxes into his seat. He’s still sitting a bit sideways and it’s not proper, but turning his back on Karkat now …
"We can, at least, make the situation more secure," Egbert broke into the silence, gently, "Which, I believe, brings me to the security measures."
Oh. Right. Yeah. That part.
"I’d rather stay home," he says, before the boss can start talking safehouses. "Half the apartments in my building are vacant, a team could stay right there."
Egbert blinks at him, mild but surprised. “The place where you already got trapped once?”
Dave’s shoulders tighten. “My home,” he grits out. “And as if most places over the ground floor have more escape routes than this. Front door, fire escape, that’s pretty much it.” A short sigh through his nose. “We could get other stuff ready, if they tried it again. We could — I can get my bro to come by, set some defensive spells. You’ve been in his apartment, it’s—”
"He’s suspended, David,” Egbert tell him quietly. “That means his license to practice summoning is suspended as well. We’re looking the other way on the Kurloz front, because Kurloz is already summoned and mostly just requires upkeep, but that’s as far as we can ignore it.”
Dave cautiously says nothing, because he knows Dirk, and Dirk will come at ass o’clock in the morning if he needs it, in ninja garb and full stealth mode, and he will fix Dave’s apartment whether Dave gives the okay or not. Laying wards is hard, expensive work, and they were doing some stupid sibling “I’ll do it but you have to beg me first” “nah I don’t need it bro” rivalry bullshit, but now? Now Dirk will come — and come to think of it so will Bro, who has zero license to start with.
"Rose and Roxy will do it, then," he says instead. "You know their place is solid, we spent the night there, it was tight. Karkat?"
"By how much it itched under my shell to cross, yeah, the spellwork’s pretty strong." He shrugs. "Don’t know how hard it would be to redo. Or what good it’d do against another incarnate demon, for that matter."
"It does make a difference whether you’re welcome in," Dave tells him. "Though yeah, probably wouldn’t stop a Class Four cold. At worst they’d bring the walls down."
"Someone who’s willing to bring a wall down to get in, I’m willing to shoot through the head and be done with," Karkat says, draped like a lazy cat on his armchair, eyes narrow.
(Dave is struck, briefly, by the elegance of his body shape, the design of his armored shell. He is so incongruous on old leather cushions.)
"I really can’t recommend this, gentlemen. Karkat, your opinion?"
Karkat frowns — the thinking one, not the angry one — and looks at Dave’s face for a second.
"Be safer if we went?"
"Ideally, no one would be able to find you."
Karkat snorts at that, explosive and wet. “Yeah, except apparently there’s a google alert for me-sightings. Kinda fucks with op-sec. Guess when I’m signing autographs I could ask my fans to keep it on the down-low.”
Dave snorts. “Diva.”
"Jealous plebe."
Egbert coughs pointedly, though he’s smiling. “Another advantage of hotels and rented housing is that they would only have a short time to locate you and prepare before you were gone again, but certainly it isn’t ideal. I suppose you may also stay with Detectives Lalonde and Lalonde for the duration…”
Dave grimaces. “No can do.”
"Why not?"
He’s wondering if it’s stupid sibling infighting or other cohabitating issues, Dave can tell. Which… Oh lord, if that were only it. “… Let me put it this way, sir, I refuse to feed Karkat under my sister’s roof.”
Karkat sits up fast. “You what?”
Egbert closes his eyes and sighs, and Dave isn’t sure if he’s despairing or amused. “Very well. Hotel room, then?”
Sigh. “Hotel room until our apartment is warded? However long that takes.”
"Hm. Karkat? Opinion?"
The demon’s brows furrow, and he perches at the edge of his seat, long feet planted wide and ready on the floor. “Safer to keep running and hiding, switch hiding spots every day, right?”
Augh. Dave hides a wince. “I guess…”
"But I will be fucked up every hole with broken glass if I let them chase me away." He scowls. "Agree with the dickwad. Hotel until it’s warded, and then we’re going home.” He spears Dave with a hard, vindicated look. “And then I really want to review the part of my contract about not killing trespassers.”
—
They catch a ride back to their place with the two Level Three Officer-Summoners Captain Egbert assigned to their protection detail. Dave has a beanie hat on his head, more because it’s funny than because incognito; he is riding with uniforms, that’s not exactly low profile.
He’s in the backseat and Karkat is in the foot well, but he keeps glancing up at Dave, and at the windows, powerless and irritated. Poor dude can’t see shit from that angle.
"We’re here," he tells Karkat as Officer Morozov starts looking for a parking spot.
Dave would rather use the underground parking but he doesn’t have his card with him, so the car disgorges them on the sidewalk some distance away from the front door. He waves at a familiar-looking person who probably lives next door and ambles his way down, Karkat slinking at his side and eyeing every corner grouchily. He can see Rose’s car, and he’s pretty sure it’s Bro’s Vespa chained to her rear bumper. Welp. Time to look at his phone for reasons of twitter addiction.
hey bro im comin up with my bros in law can you make sure you look extra legal or smth plz
if that puppet is in his fuck the police shirt id appreciate if you could lock him up in the nearest cupboard
or chuck him through the window thatd also be cool
He doesn’t get a reply by the time they’re cramming themselves into the elevator. Oh well.
No more Keep Out ribbons, and his front door has been repaired — new door, new hinges; hell, the wall has been redone too, the cement finish is patchy, barely dry, hasn’t been repainted yet. He sort of knows why, too — the magic wouldn’t hold if it’s still open to all comers. Wow, he’s gonna owe someone some money.
It’s cracked open. He doesn’t like it. He knows Rose and Bro are inside, are the ones who left it like that, and he still doesn’t like it.
Officer Sengupta knocks, wary, a hand on her holstered gun. Something flickers like static around her head, and then she nods, even as Rose calls out, “Come in! We’re in the kitchen.”
It’s not like his apartment is awesome at cover. From the front door you see the whole of the main room, and some of the mezzanine; there’s only the kitchen and bathroom to hide from people. It’s not the best defensible place ever, but damn it, he likes the light here, he loves the ridiculously tall windows, they are his.
Kankri is on the mezzanine. Ok, how did he climb there. More importantly, how will he get down again.
The second Karkat sees him he makes his cat/rattlesnake noise, eels between the officers’ legs, and arrows for the mezzanine, crossing the room in two long galloping strides.
"…Lalonde," Sengupta says, pointedly ignoring the demon shenanigans, and nods a polite greeting, which Rose gives back. Rose’s hands are splattered in… he’s gonna go with ink. He just hopes his kitchen table is salvageable.
Half of the floor is still all over dust and footprints and tiny speckles of glass. Bro appears in the kitchen door behind Rose, and he’s wearing an apron Dave sure as hell does not own and carting around a broom over his shoulder. It’d look almost harmless if the stance didn’t remind Dave of the mock-careless way he holds his swords.
"Right," he remembers to say for the officers. "This is my brother. You here for cleanup?" he adds, a bit doubtful, as he drifts to them.
"Dude, I’m so used to picking up your shit by now, it’s like some kind of masochistic reflex. Oh no, little Davey took a shit on my wooden floor, better break out the Lysol."
He sounds casual, but when Dave walks in close enough, he is reeled in by the neck and half-strangled.
"You little turd, coulda called. Hey, Bro, by the way, I haven’t died today either! Shit, I’m gonna instate mandatory daily check-in if you keep this up."
He purses his lips at Dave like he thinks he’s a disapproving auntie. Dave makes half-hearted clucking hen noises and leans against him for at least a whole half-second before he straightens up and pulls free.
He saw Rose at noon, so he doesn’t hug her. He looks over her shoulder and she nudges him back with her elbow to his ribs. Oof.
"Ow, the heck?"
"Tssk. If you disturb my spell I will disturb your hair — with industrial-strength gel — until you resemble the unholy offspring of Karkat on Dirk."
— Mental picture. Urgh. Bitch. He glares; she smirks. She chose that alternate to ‘and’ totally deliberately.
And she’s still blocking the way. Aw, come the hell on. It can’t be that sensitive, can it? Is there something she doesn’t want him to notice about the pattern? But he doesn’t even know how to read those. Is she sacrificing a lamb over his fridge or what? “… But what if I wanted to eat?”
"I’ll give you ten dollars for McDonald’s," she says, and pats his shoulder and nudges him off.
And with that he is summarily banned from the preparations. Blurgh. Okay then. He’s not going to be signing in at the hotel for another two hours, there’s time to pack and then some. He offers to get Rose to get his escort a coffee if they want it, and then lets them set themselves up as they wish, and goes make himself useful.
Bro is damn quick to hand him the broom, he notices.
(Karkat solves the Kankri-and-ladder problem with vigorous application of his foot to Kankri’s ass. The landing goes… well, Dave didn’t like that poster anyway.)
—
Dave Strider @turntechgodhead
#springcleaning of fucking course the second youve cleaned is when assholes invite themselves over for an all night party extravaganza
#springcleaning my apartment was so pretty
#springcleaning for like four hours #fml #neveragain
Karkat Vantas @cruorguardian
@turntechgodhead BY THE WAY, THE LAUNDRY HAS GONE MILDEWED.
—
The hotel room is fairly okay, as these things go.
Gray rug, brass bedframes (not fancy, but the bars are unbroken, not visibly dinged), the walls painted that color that isn’t even cream or beige but some undecided muddle of inconclusively neither. There’s a ratty red chair in the corner by the TV, but at least it’s clean.
Two beds. The Force is fine paying for a room to fuck his demon in, but not if they have to be reminded that fucking is explicitly going to be happening. Separate beds means plausible deniability is still vaguely a thing, if you squint a lot and look the other way entirely.
Okay, so maybe the king bed wasn’t as cheap.
The second the door is closed, Karkat hauls his laptop bag out of the luggage pile and plugs it, boots it up. Dave got his demon addicted to the internet, good going, Detective.
Karkat doesn’t want to talk now. Okay. Dave considers the TV for a few seconds, and then gets his second best camera instead.
"You open the window, I will do mild harm to your dick."
Karkat is sitting on the bed nearest the window, laptop balanced on his knees, and doesn’t even look up.
"That’s not really a deterrent," Dave lies, on automatic.
But the conversation dies there. It’s not dinnertime yet and there’s nothing else to talk about.
Dave doesn’t have the right lenses with him, but he busies himself taking macro shots of random shit in the room, the pattern of frayed cloth on the chair, the wave-like shape of fake wood laminate curling up on the edge of a shelf. Then he goes for a selfie from a high angle, perched on the bars at the bottom of his bed.
For a minute he almost wants to topple backward onto his mattress and take more selfies while making duck lips and posing sexily. It’d be funny…
He’s not feeling it. (Karkat might sneer. Or worse, turn away without saying a thing.)
"Can I take pictures of you?"
"Oh, so now you’re asking.” His demon sneaks him a glance, all four eyes narrow, cynical.
"No, I mean—" Fuck. "Yeah. I’m asking."
Karkat’s eyebrows twitch up minutely under his bangs, but he returns to his screen without comment. “Knock yourself out, I guess.”
"You’re the most interesting thing in this room," Dave mutters, a justification that sounds stupid the second it’s out. Stupidly true.
It’d be true anywhere else.
He circles the bed, snaps shots at various angles. He avoids aiming straight at the face. Karkat isn’t paying attention to him and it’d feel like an invasion of privacy somehow.
He doesn’t get on the bed. Back crooked, he bends low to take a shot of those long raptor claws spread out on Hotel Chic cheap-ass cotton, the smooth shell, the violently red, so organic tendons.
The pose is pretty boring, though. The composition is complete shit.
He circles between the two beds; Karkat sits hunched in the middle of the mattress, though he can’t sag as much as Dave could, with all the armor on his back. It’s gorgeously intricate. Dave takes pictures from above, bowed black-haired head and then all those interlocking segments, that line of flicking blades.
His damaged wing still shows the cracks in a puffy texture, though the white of the new shell has been graying out. Dave wishes he had better light; he zooms in close to document it anyway. It’s a crack in perfection, marring, sad, gorgeous.
He snaps a picture of a round, human ear with its whorls half-hidden in tousled black waves and matte quills, the brick red of the horn emerging and running out of the frame. Heh. It almost makes his horns look bigger. He lets out a quiet chuckle; Karkat steals him a glance.
"You mind posing a bit?"
"What do you call posing, exactly?"
"I’m not gonna ask you to put a rose in your mouth and bat your eyelashes. Just, like… Can you sit against the headboard and lean back?"
Karkat types for another thirty seconds, and then shuffles backward without a word. His shell clinks quietly when he leans into the brass bars of the bed.
Dave starts firing away as he circles the bed again, then he goes all the way to the door and takes a side view or three. Karkat moves one of his knees up, reclines more, and oh yeah, casual portrait of demon checking on his stock options.
He still vastly prefers the shot of his shoulder and clavicle with the metal bars behind. Now the beigeish wallpaper adds to the incongruousness of him, but at the same time Dave is almost disappointed that it’s not something that fits the color scheme better.
He steps back until he’s touching the other wall and takes the same picture, only with part of the laptop in the frame. Now it’s incongruous everywhere. Cool.
Karkat closes the laptop and leans sideways to slide it down and onto the floor. Dave misses the occasion to take him stretching, the curve of his ribcage —
"Um? If I’m bothering you, I could have stopped, you didn’t have to…"
"I was done."
"Oh. Cool."
Dave raises his camera again, hesitates. Karkat is staring at him wordlessly.
He takes a shot, checks it out in the viewer. Yeah. Okay. A lot more powerful when he’s looking at you, even otherwise at rest.
"Can you… like… fan your toes?" He rolls his eyes, but he does it. "Cross them? Like — oh, yeah, that looks nice, love the crisscrossing thing. Uh, not so high, I’m gonna—" He almost snapped a picture of Karkat’s crotch. That’s… no.
Just. No.
"You’re documenting me,” Karkat says slowly, still staring at him, hands resting on his belly with his fingers interlaced the same way his toes are. Dave snaps a picture of that, too. “I don’t get why.”
"It’s gorgeous," Dave says, without thinking, but it hurts his throat on the way out. "You’re gorgeous. You — the, I mean. Not just in the ‘yeah, you have a cute face’ sense. Like. Aesthetically? Your armor bits, they’re. I dunno. Elegant? Badass. Both. It’s, it’s hella fucking artsy, but in a powerful way, not in a pressed flowers and kittens way and. Shit, I could just look at you move all day. It’s odd, but it’s satisfying somehow, the way you’re put together. You’re like. I don’t know. Armor porn, but alive.”
His face prickles. It takes him a few seconds to realize he’s gone red, all over, from ears to throat. He busies himself with his camera, fiddling with the settings.
"… Huh."
A pause. Dave’s ears feel like burning.
"Are you being even vaguely objective here, or is this your deviant leanings at play again? Not that I’m sure I give much of a damn for the physical appearance of this body, but you’re still not a trusted news outlet on that shit."
Dave makes an irritated noise, though he still can’t look up. “I’m not saying it’s the kind of aesthetic that would appeal to everyone, especially not people scared of spiny things or bare asses or who have a problem with, like, anthro animals because blah blah purity of the human form, never mind demons of any stripes. But you want we put some of these on twitter? See how fast they go viral, shit, you’re living fucking art and I will headbutt anyone who disagrees in the nose.”
"Hm."
When he sneaks him a glance, Karkat looks like he’s contemplating it. Dave feels another wave of heat, thinking of Karkat posing for him, Karkat exposing —
Not his fucking demon cunt; his body, his pride, his self. Just that. Showing the world that.
"That’s pretty objectifying," Karkat says, but he’s smiling that faint, sarcastic smile that makes Dave pinch his lips lest he smile back like a tool. "Are you taking more, or are you done?"
"I can stop if—"
"I didn’t ask you to." A shrug. He’s still staring at Dave. It’s strange. It’s good, too. He’s paying attention, yes, you exist for me right now.
Dave takes more. Closer. Farther. Close-ups of the overlap of scales on the side of his ribs, the dip in the bands around his neck that let him bow his head.
The lick of armor over his cheekbone and the unreal eyes over that, all four staring right at him.
He slides down the sheets, reclines farther under Dave.
Faint smile. Teeth. (Dave presses his finger down on the button. He will never post it.)
Dave puts a knee on the bed. Karkat stretches, spine arched, arms over his head.
From the expression on his face, he’s taking very detached notes on Dave’s response to visual stimulus.
Dave photographs that, the flashes of red between his armor plates and the remote, thoughtful look on his face and the tousled midnight hair on that starched hotel pillow.
He takes the hand casually splayed open on that belly and the armor over that hip and the look on his face, catlike, amused.
Karkat reaches up for him and tugs on his shoulder and Dave goes, on his knees, straddles his thigh and the sight of the folds of Karkat’s wing membrane catch him right in the metaphorical ribs, wine in water over wine in water, fragile skin layered until it goes opaque and red. It would hurt, he thinks, maybe tear, if he lost his balance and put his hand on there; core muscles straining, he makes sure he doesn’t.
Indulging him, Karkat bends the armored fingers of his hand in a slow wave before the camera, claws glinting deadly, beautifully curved. Dave represses a smile.
"I guess it’s a good thing my meat costume just happens to play right into your fetishes. Maybe the incarnating spell took it into account, making it."
… oh.
Dave lowers his camera. Karkat frowns. “What?”
"… Nothing. Pretty sure the spell didn’t, though. It’s just how you translate."
"Hm." Karkat takes it into account, shrugs. Quirks his eyebrows at Dave. "Are we going to fuck, or what? I was going to wait until after room service, but I’m too hungry after all."
"… Yeah. Sure."
He puts the camera on the nightstand and leans down.
He makes sure he doesn’t think of anything.
—
In the morning the next day they have a conference call on the topic of the Felt. Dave can’t contribute much. He’s glad he’s being kept updated. Otherwise he sits on his bed and surfs aimlessly on the internet.
Karkat makes him come twice, once when he wakes up and once at eleven, pointing out Dave took a lot out of him to keep a hold of Aradia and he’s nowhere near topped off. (Takes them almost twenty minutes for Dave to even get it up. Fifth time in two days, his dick is like ‘aw, mom, do I gotta.’)
At noon, room service. After he’s done eating he fucks around with cell phone games.
Rose and Bro and Aunt Romy (that one was a surprise) don’t want him in his apartment. (Like his space wasn’t violated enough.) He’s got nothing to do, to the point he’s even counting the time until three PM, where he bets Karkat will somehow decide he must be recovered enough for another feeding.
He’d rather bleed himself at this point, but then he’d have to explain why.
"Huh."
Karkat hasn’t really talked to him for the last couple of hours, apart from ‘pass me the salt’ and the like. Dave arches an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
"Remember that journalist who stalked us to the dog park?"
Dave sits up, legs crossed. “Oh. Did she finally get back to you for that interview?”
"Just now." He throws Dave a quick side look and pretends to be completely absorbed in something nevertheless boring. Interested in Dave’s response? Nah, surely not.
"You wanna meet her?" Dave asks. "It’s your choice, I don’t care either way."
He would kill for an excuse to get out of the hotel room for a few hours.
Karkat frowns at his screen, unsure. “Would the boss go for that?”
"So long as we get an escort and stick to public places… I’ll call him, might have to get directives from the public relations peeps first."
Karkat grunts a careless agreement that totally fools Dave into thinking he doesn’t really care. Dave makes the call.
Captain Egbert is busy, and foists him off on the highest ranked person he can find in the PR division, who lists for Dave all the dos and don’ts and then adds a cautious, “if this goes well it could have a pretty positive impact on the community perception of this program.”
… Man, if things work out well with Karkat, are they gonna want to try it again? In a couple of years, like, once everything is ironed out? Fuck, Dave doesn’t even know if he can recommend it in good conscience. “Yeah, I hope so. Thank you for the tips, and I’ll have the journalist contact you for the pre-publication review. Have a good day.”
He hangs up. Karkat, grinning, is already typing up a storm.
"I told her we’d meet her today, we’re too fucking bored to live, it’s hideous. Where do we go though, the dog park? I don’t fancy having my ass sniffed by nosy grandpas again."
Dave opens his mouth to say that’s not quite how it happened, and then thinks that, hey, close enough, and closes it.
—
An hour later and they’re in a Starbucks. The backup is in a car parked outside; he’s paying for their drinks for as long as it lasts, so they’re not bitching much.
The inside is pretty big, and not too busy at this hour, and there’s a split-level thing going on; the manager had it roped off but when Dave calls ahead to explain, she agrees to let them access the second level.
She ropes it closed after them again and Dave feels a bit like a show biz star. Nope, sorry guys, no sitting in the booth next to the incarnate demon, you’ll have to make do with watching him from afar and taking paparazzi shots.
#fuckyeahpetdemon omg omg omg @cruorguardian just walked into my starbucks????
Dave retweets that one and adds a thumbs up emoticon.
"Don’t stalk my fans, turdgobbler."
"Pff. Ms. Standish, hi."
She’s sitting at a table by the guardrail and she smiles wide when they acknowledge her, though she’s not sure who to look at first and the difference of levels between Karkat’s head and Dave’s is a bit too big for her back and forth to be discreet.
Karkat holds out his hand for a shake. Dave pulls out a chair for himself and sits, shakes as she sits back down. (He doesn’t like having his back to the staircase, and he likes being without his gun because he’s being investigated even less, but having a bird’s eye view of the room is pretty nice.)
"Can I thank you again for agreeing to this interview?"
Dave makes a high school English teacher face. “I don’t know, can you? Karkat? Whaddya think?”
Karkat settles into his chair, wings flitting open on both sides of his backrest before they close again. “You can thank me with something to drink. Preferably sugary as fuck. With sprinkles. Do they put sprinkles on drinks here?”
Standish laughs politely. “I don’t know, but some have a drizzle of chocolate on—”
"Sold."
"For the love of God keep the coffee levels low," Dave mentions, jaw resting on his fist as he watches his demon and the journalist. "He’s never had any."
She is still bottle-blonde and conventionally pretty and forgettably ordinary, and Karkat is still very, very much not, and it’s oddly fascinating to see them looking at each other with mirrored undisguised interest.
He wants to take a picture. He didn’t bring his camera.
The manager comes up to ask for their order and Dave is pretty sure this is not the usual kind of service they should expect, but he agrees that he doesn’t want to leave Karkat alone or have him wander through the three-quarter full room below, so hey.
"Strawberry and crème frappuccino," Standish orders for Karkat, "and can he have a mocha drizzle on it, yes, I’m sure you’ll like it, there’s more to life than just chocolate all the time, I promise," and Karkat rolls his eyes but seems game enough.
Dave places his order, and they’re alone again.
"To start with, would you tell me how you wish to be addressed — your first name, a nickname, a title? Mister, Mrs., Knight—"
Karkat blinks. “Karkat’s fine. Closest to my actual name you can get at. Though someone called me Knight Vantas once, that was pretty alright…”
She nods, makes a little note. “Also, do you have a gender identity or preferred pronouns?”
She has done her homework, looks like. Kankri would enjoy her. Karkat just shrugs again. “I guess not ‘it’? I don’t personally care about specific mouth noises, but I care what some assholes use it to mean.”
"I get you. No preference otherwise?"
"Got used to ‘he’ but your genders kind of make zero sense to me." A thoughtful frown. "The ass spelunker over there said he decided on male because I had no cleavage."
Dave clears his throat. “Um. That was mostly to mess with Kankri.”
It’s been a while since he’s seen the potential girl in Karkat’s face. He remembers he used to find it androgynous — pretty for a guy, handsome for a woman, generally confusing. But Karkat is too… huh. Okay, now his head hurts.
"Your body type seems pretty male to me," he tries to explain, groping for words. It’s not like he’s never heard Rose and Kankri holding forth on the topic, but he wasn’t, like, paying attention. "And you have a pretty deep voice. And I dunno, you ping as a dude. Looking like that, I’m not sure what you’d have to do before you started pinging as a girl, though, so maybe you’re just not either one."
He’s not sure why they’re wandering onto this topic. That was really not what he was expecting.
Oh, right. “Ah, before we get any farther into it…” Standish looks at him. “The two ground rules; no questions on current investigations, and Public Relations gets to see the article before publication.”
She nods. “Yes, of course.” She’s probably signed the paperwork already. Karkat grunts. “Yeah, whatever.”
The manager comes back with their drinks. Dave thanks her, and is a little impressed at how hard she pretends Karkat is just a normal patron. Usually people don’t want to get within arm’s reach even when they’re friendly enough otherwise, but it’d be hard to put the drinks down if she didn’t.
Then again, free advertising.
She leaves. Standish waits until Karkat has taken a sip of his strawberry confection to start again. “Good?”
"Hm. I don’t know yet. Not bad so far."
She chuckles. She’s pretty good at doing the harmless-friendly thing. “Alright, so I have a few questions for the two of you… For example, what is a typical day like? Who gets up first, are there bathroom schedule conflicts—”
Karkat’s eyebrows quirk. “You’re interested in that sort of stuff?”
"I want to have a more complete idea of the kind of life you lead, so I can represent it properly. It’s very likely not even half of the answers you give will make it into the article."
"Huh. Okay." He glances at Dave, who shrugs. "I don’t know if either one of us always gets up first. We wake each other up, moving around, I suppose, then breakfast if he’s got morning w—"
Dave elbows Karkat and clears his throat pointedly, and tries not to think too hard about what he’s going to say, or he’ll blush.
“Right. I feel I should warn you now before it casually comes up but for Karkat sex is a sometimes food, and pretty much nothing else. It’s nothing to get coy about for him, and likely he’s going to end up being pretty frank on the topic, but personally I would hella prefer polite euphemisms and leaving some things to the imagination.”
She pinches her lips, he’s not sure if she’s annoyed or about to laugh. “We are not actually the National Enquirer, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Before he can figure out if that was a joke or what, Karkat grumbles. “You don’t want me to mention sex, order me not to mention sex. But I don’t see what’s so interesting about it. Most of the time it’s boring as hell. He keeps feeling up my armor,” he complains, and Dave makes a face. “Like I can feel anything through it!”
Wow, ouch. Dave groans and lets his face drop in his hand. Standish is cough-laughing in her hand.
"Yeah, this is doing wonders for my ego, I can tell you," he says dryly.
Huh, she’s gone on neutral face. Her normal journalist face is already pretty neutral, even when she smiles — it’s the pleasantly professional look, but— “So Karkat’s magical needs are met with…?”
Oh. “He won’t give me his specific price,” Dave says, maybe a bit drier than he meant. “And as a member of the police force I don’t sacrifice animals on ethical grounds. So it’s got to be other staple stuff — blood or sex.”
"Plus there’s how I can’t eat death energy anyway," Karkat continues, but he’s looking at Dave like he’s not sure why Dave has gone twitchy. Yeah, he’s not gonna know why he should care that the journalist thinks Dave fucks his pet demon as a recreational activity.
Blurgh, she’s hard to read. She just nods and takes notes. Dave reminds himself he doesn’t care what she thinks so long as it doesn’t make it into the article, and lets them get on with it.
Daily routine — it’s pretty boring. Dave cooks, unless Karkat is hungry for pasta, or they call for takeout. The one who complains about the TV program the loudest gets to change the station. No pets, don’t want any. Dave cleans. Karkat might not be opposed to helping with laundry, even though he doesn’t even wear clothes, but ‘sometimes he’s just that bored’… (Hee.)
"So, pretty ordinary. Detective, you’re still taking care of most of the domestic chores…?"
"I didn’t bind a Knight to act as a housemaid," Dave replies dryly. "Wow, would that be adding insult to injury."
(Dave could, too. It’d be so easy. He’s acting like Karkat is his roommate, but he’s not and they both know that.)
Karkat rolls all his eyes, and doesn’t meet Dave’s. “Thanks so much for that, I am ever grateful.” (He is not.)
(Dave is having too many feelings, in too many directions. He should have guessed a stranger coming to poke her nose into their epic tangle would bring it all back up. He pretends he’s feeling pleasant and a bit bored and that’s it.)
"How does it go when you go outside?"
Oh, an easy one. “Karkat hates cars, never figured out why —