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“-and it seems like she’s being totally honest about her feelings, but I’ve got suspicions, Karkat, I’ve got some ideas bouncing around that she is not being totally honest, and not just because of that cutscene with the dagger that was totally in her hand, this movie ain’t nearly subtle enough to hide that. She’s scared to open up, Karkat. She’s so scared, why is that, why’s she scared? She’s got a knife right now, if shit goes south she can just get stabby with this situation.” Dave takes a breath, still gesturing at the screen.
You say nothing, despite Dave having said your name and posed questions, which under normal circumstances with other people might just mean that they wanted to get your attention and get an answer to a question. Dave, of course, is not other people. You’re not even convinced he needs you to be here in order to go off on these tangents. Not that you think he regularly watches troll romance movies without you around. No, it’s usually a fucking fight to get him to watch them even when it’s your turn to pick the movie, Dave, you picked the last two times because you pretended to be human sick with “Texas Flu” and therefore deserve the right to “not watch another troll romcom with a title the length of Rose’s ‘light treatise’ on the differences between a velvet pillow and a velvet-lined pillow and that was so boring Karkat please don’t do this to me I’m suffering and the only cure is watching the shitty bootleg version of Click that I accidentally half-overwrote with Spy-Kids 2.”
When Rose told you “Texas Flu” wasn’t a thing, you’d gone off on Dave so long your throat was actually getting kind of scratchy and then -
Well. And then you’d stopped because he said “Ah shit, sorry Karkat, I didn’t mean to actually make you upset,” and it sounded so genuine and you could tell that he really didn’t want you to be mad at him and all of a sudden he looked so soft to you, so real and warm and soft and infuriating and maybe precious? And then you didn’t want to talk at all so you just grumbled something about not being a dick next time and burrowed into the couch while he dicked around on his inorganic husktop next to you.
Burrowed into the couch sort of like now, because that’s what you do on movie nights. You and Dave sit on the couch in the common room for hours watching movies of varying quality and usually it’s nice but lately there’s been a charge in the air that you don’t know what to do with. Right now it means you’re really, really aware of the shockingly tiny amount of space between your bodies. Your pulled-up knees could nudge his arm if you shifted. The hand he’s waving through the air keeps nearly brushing your hair, and you tense up each time he almost, almost touches you and you don’t know if you’re disappointed or relieved each time he doesn’t, but it’s frankly exhausting and the bulgemunching fucker is still talking .
“I just don’t see why she can’t open up, it’s obvious that she needs someone who understands,” He says.
“It’s more complicated than that,” You insist, because okay, movie talk, character analysis, you can do this. “She’s got trust issues, you saw how things went with her moirail, she’s worried that she can’t keep anyone close without fucking up.”
“So what, she takes the coward’s way out?” Dave’s voice starts getting a bit heated. “If she’s feeling these things, she should talk about it with the person she’s obviously been having a back-and-forth with, she might have been burned before, but that’s no reason to keep everything inside forever, that’ll just suck more in the long run!”
“You know,” You say, pausing the movie. “I didn’t expect you to get so involved with this.”
“Oh shit,” Dave says. “Is that, like, bad? Am I talking too much? I’m totally taking too much, shit, you like enjoying movies without my constant commentary, no matter how good the commentary might be, though I now realize this was possibly pretty bad commentary and maybe insensitive, now that I think about it. Um. Whoops.”
“Shut up,” You say. “Or, don’t. Whatever. I don’t care if you talk during movies, it’s not like I don’t get into it, too. I just didn’t expect you to care, I guess.” You cross your arms, feeling both bristly with irritation and uncomfortably vulnerable, which has been happening kind of a lot when you and Dave hang out lately.
“I mean, I don’t really care about some of them. This one has a good plot, at least, which is nice.” He says. “But I’m not gonna just ignore what’s going on, even in the shitty ones. It’s something you care about, and it’s movie night, man. We’re hanging out. Of course I care.”
His voice had gotten progressively quieter during all of that, until he was almost mumbling at the end. But you heard it all, which is why your bloodpusher is pounding and your face feels hot, very hot, too hot, maybe, shit, you’re blushing, dammit, fuck, you can only hope he doesn’t notice.
“Dude, why’s your face so red?” Dave asks, and shit, fuck, of course he noticed. The motherfucker sounded more awkward than he has in a quarter sweep earlier, but he’s still observant enough to see the shit you don’t want him to notice because he wouldn’t be Dave Strider otherwise.
“No reason,” You say, trying for normal and coming out squeaky.
“Okay, no, I know that’s a lie,” He says, turning directly towards you and looking at you over his shades, which have slipped low enough that you can clearly see his gorgeous, painfully red eyes.
You’re fucked.
You can pretend you don’t know what that bristly tense feeling is all you want, but you actually do know yourself pretty well. You’ve watched a lot of romance movies. You meet up with Kanaya every other week to talk about the trashy romance novels you both love even though they’re objectively complete garbage. You have spent sweeps in your own head, examining every part of yourself that you hated, and even if you maybe hate yourself less now, you still know yourself more than well enough to know what this is.
None of that means you have any idea what to do about being this painfully attracted to Dave fucking Strider, though.
You’re friends. Good friends now, best bros, bosom buddies. You’ve cried on each other and you know more about his increasingly fucked up feelings about how he grew up than maybe even Rose. He knows about how you’ve started realizing that it actually might’ve not been okay that you would’ve been culled if anyone found out about your blood color, and maybe Alternia was sort of horrible, even if it’s still yours.
You’ve seen his eyes without those shades in what you know were painfully vulnerable moments for him, and sometimes you lay awake at night thinking about how much you used to hate that color red and now it takes your breath away.
“Hey, are you okay?” Dave says, looking genuinely concerned now. Shit, you were quiet for way too long, weren’t you? Fuck, hell, shit, what are you supposed to do here, how do you act? You’ve never been this attuned to someone else before, never been so aware of every point of almost-contact and desperately wanting to both be nearer to him and just hear the sound of his voice and also run away as fast as you can and never speak to him again.
He shoves his shades up into his hair so he can see you properly because he’s a good friend and he cares about you and is also an unintentional sadist with a pretty face and how have you not been cosmically tormented enough yet? How is there always more? Why does paradox space just keep finding your squishy parts and stabbing into them?
“Karkat?” Dave says. His forehead is all furrowed. You don’t know the last time you were this quiet for this long around another person.
“Fuck you,” You say. It just slips out, half-strangled and yet almost gentle.
“Uh,” He says, eyebrows lifting, stupid and beauitful red eyes wider with confusion. “Okay? Did I do something wrong? Are you feeling sick, should I be worried? Are you all in your head about shit again, do we need to do a feelings jam thing abou - ”
“Fuck!” You shout. You throw your arms up. You are done. You are so done. You are going to do one of those acrobatic fucking pirouettes off the handle you’ve heard so much about because this is it, you have found your limit, and your breaking point is Dave fucking Strider being a soft and sweet and attractive idiot.
“Yeah, I’m in my head! Good observation! Congratulations on knowing me so well and being such a great friend that you can tell when I’m feeling weird and then not just letting me sit in on my own so I feel even worse! It’s great how much you care!” You’re yelling and throwing your arms wildly. His face is a mix of confused and (motherfucking goddammit) fond. There’s a smile twitching at his lip. You want to bite it off. (You want to shove him into the couch and kiss for hours.)
“Okay, so, all of that sounds like good shit but the yelling is giving me some mixed signals, Karcrab.” Even his voice is fond. Fuck. Goddammit. Shit.
“It is good!” You shout. “That’s the fucking problem! You’re great and I like being around you and you care about me and it feels really fucking good and your dumb face is sort of beatiful and I want to hold your stupid hand so badly that I can’t concentrate on remembering to breathe like a functioning fucking person, much less the movie!”
There’s a pause that’s probably just a breath, just a second, but it feels like an eternity. It’s not enough time for you to panic, but it’s more than enough time to be really aware that your chest feels like it’s going to burst open.
“Shit, I’m gonna have to read Rose’s fucked up wizard fanfiction,” Dave whispers.
His eyes are even wider now, and he’s got his own blush blossoming. His mouth (which you’re trying not to keep staring at) is parted just a bit.
He’s surprised.
He’s not disgusted or angry or uncomfortable, he’s…
Wait.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I pour out my heart and soul and you bring up Rose’s fucking textbook of a fiction story?” You ask. “What the hell, Dave?”
He goes absolutely scarlet and looks away from you.
“I made a bet with Rose and now that it turns out I’m not unlovable or whatever and you’re out here looking to make all my Disney princess dreams come true and sweep me off my feet like Troll Prince Charming, there’s no way she’s letting me weasel out of my end of the bargain,” He says, clearly self-conscious.
You can’t help the snort of laughter that comes out of you. He looks back at you with a half-hearted glare. His face is still pretty red, and the glare shakes away quickly as his lip starts twitching up into a small smile.
“Fuckin’ worth it though.” He says. He blinks, glances away like he’s shy. You’ve never known Dave to be shy like this, to be soft and hesitant in quite this way, and it is doing things to your bloodpusher that’s starting to get you concerned you might be dying.
“So, uh,” You say, eloquently, like a romantic person who knows about romance and confessions and how to make them nice and beautiful and sweep the object of your affection off their feet instead of just blurting out all your gross feelings like a mess. “You...um.”
Now Dave’s the one laughing and you’re the one who can’t keep up a glare, even though you’re really fucking good at glaring at people. The best. You are the grumpiest troll in paradox space.
And then Dave’s grinning at you and he says, “You’re kinda really beautiful too, Karkat,” and actually you’re dead fucking wrong.
You are the happiest troll in paradox space.
“I don’t know exactly where this all fits like, quadrant-wise?” Dave says. He’s nervous. It’s adorable. “I don’t wanna disrespect your whole deal, I mean, I don’t care about it myself but I know you’ve got all those tangled up feels about everything from Alternia and you and Rose have gone on some deep dives into the intricacies of quadrants and I want you to be happy - ”
You put your hand on his face. He stops talking.
“Stop your blabbering, you make my bloodpusher go soft and you’re infuriating and perfect and we’ll figure out words later. Now’s the time where we kiss because if we don’t I’m going to lose my fucking mind,” You say. “Uh, unless you don’t want to do that now. Fuck, I don’t - ”
He reaches out, grabs the back of your head, and pulls you to him. Your lips meet and it’s -
It’s -
Fuck. It’s amazing.
You have to pull back because you’re both smiling too much to let your mouths move properly. He makes a soft sound, half a laugh, and just looks at you, so obviously fucking happy. You shift, trying to get closer to him, maybe shove him into the couch like you’ve wanted to for ages, and then your knee hits the remote and the movie comes back on, blasting the score of the tense fight scene you were in the middle of. You flail and a bit and half-collapse onto Dave in surprise, and you’d feel like an idiot but he’s laughing now, really laughing and he takes your breath away.
You can see all of his face, his shades still shoved into his hair, and you can tell it’s gonna be a pain to untangle them later. And then you’re not thinking about later at all because he’s kissing you again and it is everything you couldn’t help but hope it would be.
He’s everything you couldn’t help but hope for.
And even if he’s an infuriating piece of shit sometimes, even if he makes you want to tear out your hair or sit him down and shove some real culture into his thinkpan, he’s right.
It’s fucking worth it.