Work Text:
You scowl at your laptop screen, rocking the chair back and forth on its back legs as you wait for the page to load. This is absolutely ridiculous and Amazon should feel bad. It should just feel bad for existing at this point, honestly, because fucking forbid it give you the damn tracking number or load the damn page so you can see where the hell your motherboard is.
“Stupid piece of broken down, godforsaken, shitty…” You mumble, clicking impatiently on the refresh icon at the top of your screen. The page flashes your Amazon account page briefly before it registers the refresh command and vanishes to reload the page. You let out a strangled scream of pure frustration and push away from your desk angrily, jackknifing to your feet and stalking to the kitchen.
You’ve been trying to build your own desktop computer for months now, piece by painstaking piece, ordering them online and inserting them into the tower yourself because, quite frankly, your laptop is a piece of shit and you deserve better. You’ve done hours of research and finally finally decided on a decent motherboard when Amazon decided to be a piece of shit and refused to function for more than five minutes at a time.
You grab a glass from the cabinet and thrust it under the faucet with more force than is necessary, slopping water all over your hand, before you shut it off and knock back the glass. Your older brother would tsk at you, you know, and probably make some snide comment about “Really, Karkat, have a little decorum, there’s no need to drink your water so angrily” but he’s not here. Kankri left yesterday, leaving you to watch the house all alone while he went off to some social justice convention downstate with his “not my girlfriend honestly, you shouldn’t use such words, they might be offensive to those who don’t identify as—” friend Porrim. She’s Kanaya’s older sister, and while you love the shit out of Kanaya (because hey, she is sassy and fabulous and you’ve never seen anyone casually reapply lipstick after destroying an old tree stump with a chainsaw before), Porrim has the unfortunate tendency to pinch your cheeks (both your face and… other parts of you) and wink lasciviously when Kankri isn’t looking.
You shake your head and put the glass in the sink. Well, there was nothing for it. If Amazon was going to be a dick-munching sack of elephant shit, then you’ll just head for the mall. Maybe you could solve what you’ve been calling the Great Fucking Graphics Card Catastrophe in your head.
See, on the one hand, you’d love a computer that actually just functioned the way it was supposed to without trying to melt your desk with all the heat it kicked out of its fan or the weird stuttering whine that the processor made when it started up. On the other hand, if you were putting all this time and effort into building your own desktop, then you were gonna be damn sure that it was the most impressive machine that God or man had ever created.
Hence the GFGCC.
You didn’t exactly spend all your time gaming (you weren’t obsessed with that new MMORPG like Vriska and Eridan were) but you did like to settle down after dinner some nights and play a few rounds of whichever game your laptop decided it was up to handling before it got too hot and crashed.
Stupid laptop.
So you’ve been wrestling with yourself for what feels like forever over whether or not to splurge and “go big or go home” as Strider keeps telling you, or tone it back and buy a middle-of-the-road Nvidia which will probably be more than suitable to anything you might want to play or stream, especially since this entire fucking project is already going to put you so far into the debt-hole that you’ll be lucky to ever see the sun again.
You spend the bus ride to the mall contemplating your life and cursing the internet with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The bus is cramped and the guy sitting in front of you smells vaguely like cheese and maple syrup, but you would rather ride the bus around the world in eighty fucking days before you’d call your brother and ask to borrow his car.
You get off the bus and walk the extra block or so to the mall. It’s the biggest shopping center within miles and is typically packed with people rushing around and bumping into each other as they drag their screaming kids through the food court. You don’t particularly like the mall for specifically those reasons, but it has this awesome little electronics store hidden in a back corner between a Hot Topic and an Orange Julius that you don’t completely hate.
You enter the mall and are instantly smacked in the face with the shrieking of children. You frown at the group of kids arguing in front of the vending machines and march up to the directory. The damn mall likes to switch up where its stores are like it’s playing a game of roulette and you always double check where the electronics store is after the one time (one. time.) that you didn’t and ended up walking halfway around the mall to the Victoria’s Secret.
It takes you maybe ten minutes to walk around the mall to the electronics store – Bits and Bytes, it’s called – and when you get there you have to fight through a group of black-clad teenagers who are laughing way too loudly for all the black eyeliner they’re wearing to get to the freaking door.
You stumble inside the blissfully quiet store and huff out a breath. Shelves line the walls, neatly labeled and full of parts. In the back of the store, a few high def televisions are fixed to the wall, playing Tangled silently with subtitles. You watch the movie for a few seconds (because the animation is spectacular, ok, it has nothing to do with the look Flynn Ryder gives Rapunzel under the lanterns and damn it, you swore to yourself you were done crying over those two assholes) before tearing yourself back to reality.
Alright. Computer parts. Computer parts. Computer… parts. You skim the shelves with your tongue between your teeth until you spot one that looks promising. Then you stop. And stare. And once again, you curse the internet. If it hadn’t decided to be a cocksucker, you could be home with a bowl of soup tracking the progress of your motherboard.
There are little packaged pieces of computer all over the wall. And to you they all look the same – little and black. You blink, reaching forward and picking one up.
“Uh.”
None of these are the ones you researched online. You’ve never even heard of half these brands.
“What the fuck.”
Well, shit. You’d use your phone to connect to the internet and google it, but hey, look at that, you’re still toolin’ around with the old flip phone you had in high school because someone thought it would be hilarious to steal your iPhone to take pictures of the “wicked awesome Faygo fountain, bro, I made it out of cardboard and old PVC pipe and look, man, it spurts motherfuckin’ orange soda ten feet!” and now your phone refuses to unlock and is covered in a weird sticky film and of course, AT&T couldn’t possibly help with that, you need to go through Apple, sir, for iPhone related problems and just the thought of dealing with Apple’s customer service makes you want crack your iPhone in half and jam the pieces down a toilet with the back end of your plunger.
You realize you’re crunching the packaging and that the little sharp end is digging into your palm and that, fuck, that kind of hurts. You release the fist and the packaging springs back into shape.
The idea sprouts that, oh, fucking duh, you could maybe ask someone that works here. Smooth thinking, Vantas, gold fucking star for you.
You glance around and realize you’re alone. Like, really alone. There is not a single other soul inside Bits and Bytes. You put the graphics card back on the shelf and head for the unmanned register. There’s a little bell on the desk, with a small handmade sign that says “Plea2e riing me for 2erviice!”
You frown at it. There’s something weird about the way the s’s are written, and it looks like every word is spelled with two i’s. What the actual hell, they couldn’t pick an employee with good penmanship to write the sign?
You ring the little bell. It makes a sharp, satisfying dinging noise, and you decide to ring it several more times, just for fun.
“Ok, ok, geez, cut it out, will you?”
The voice comes from behind you and scares the fucking shit out of you to the point where you jump practically to the ceiling. You clap a hand to your chest to try and contain your heart from where it’s trying to rip its way from your chest and make off through the mall and out the doors to freedom, leaving you in the electronics store as nothing but a bitter husk of empty regrets and no graphics card, and whirl around to face the source of your most recent heart attack.
He’s lanky tall and is wearing a black polo with the words “Bits and Bytes” emblazoned in happy yellow stitching over his right breast. His eyes are sharp beneath a head of messy black hair, but you can’t tell what color they are behind the obnoxious blue and red glasses he’s wearing. You take a moment to absorb what might be one of the most ridiculous fashion choices you’ve ever laid eyes on, and take another moment to appreciate what Kanaya might have said about it were she here with you.
“’bout time!” You huff, irritable about your entire life at this point. “What do you know about graphics cards?”
The employee snorts. “I know everything about graphics cards.” He speaks with a strange lisp, slurring his s’s into a th sound and that makes you notice his overbite. His front teeth protrude over his lip semi-permanently, which gives him this weird kind of half grin even when he isn’t grinning. It is strangely adorable.
Except you absolutely did not just think that because holy fuck, Karkat, get it together right this second so you don’t make a blithering idiot out of yourself in front of the sort of adorable Bits and Bytes employee.
… Damn it.
You shake your head slightly and try to remember what you were talking about. Oh yeah. The Great Fucking Graphics Card Catastrophe.
“I’m building a computer.” You blurt out.
The employee raises an eyebrow. “Congratulations.”
Your eyebrows meet in the middle as you frown impressively. At least, you assume it’s impressive. Kanaya’s girlfriend has told you that you “have the kind of frown that could move mountains and make congressmen defecate themselves”.
Yeah, she’s kinda weird. But hey, she loves Kanaya and Kanaya loves her, so you’re gonna zip your lip and take congressmen defecation as a compliment.
“I came here to look at graphics cards.” You launch into an abridged explanation of the GFGCC, complete with hand motions and punctuated liberally with your feelings on the point of computer part manufacturers in general. You wrap up your spiel in under two minutes, which you think is pretty damn impressive considering your feelings on the matter.
The employee stares at you for a second before he snickers. “Wow, there, tell me how you really feel. What’s your name, anyway?”
You fold your arms, not super thrilled with being laughed at. “Karkat.”
“I’m Sollux.” And wow, what an unfortunate name to have in combination with that lisp.
Sollux is examining the wall of graphics cards with his hands on his hips, clearly thinking. “Do you have the rest of the specs for your computer? What kind of CPU are you gonna be running?”
You blink. You haven’t researched CPUs yet. Honestly, you were a little nervous to start that whole adventure because hey, if the CPU was shit then the entire computer was shit. It wouldn’t matter what other stuff you buy if the CPU bottlenecked every damn process.
Sollux is watching you. “You don’t have a CPU yet?”
You shrug, feeling a bit defensive. “No! I’ve been looking at… other stuff.”
Sollux snickers. He hides it behind his hand but it’s definitely a snicker. Well, that’s about that then. You’re about done getting laughed at by the (not at all adorable) Bits and Bytes guy. You glare at him and spin on your heel.
“Thanks for all your help!” And if your voice is a bit higher pitched and more shout-y than usual, well, you don’t particularly notice.
“Wait, wait, wait.” The smile is still in Sollux’ voice but his snickers have quieted down. He goes to the desk and rips a sheet of paper off the little pad next to the bell and scribbles something down.
He trots back over to you and shoves the paper into your hand. “Here. That’s my phone number. Call me when you pick out a CPU and I’ll help you out with the Great Fucking Graphics Card Catastrophe.” He grins. “Or, you know, if you have any other computer issues.”
His lisp comes out strong on the word ‘catastrophe’ and you can’t honestly say if you’ve ever heard anything fucking cuter than that.
Damn it.
“Uh, thanks.” You crunch the paper in your hand nervously and all but flee Bits and Bytes, taking off at a fast walk. You don’t stop until you have at least passed by the Banana Republic, putting a good healthy distance between you and Bits and Bytes. Then you open the paper, crumpled and damp from its prison against your sweaty palm.
2ollux – 842-2422
Holy fuck, that’s a lot of twos.
You spend the entire bus ride back alternating between staring at the scrap of paper in your hand and crunching it between your nervous fingers. By the time you get home, it’s practically disintegrated.
You yank your phone from your pocket as you walk up your driveway, hurriedly punching in the numbers before you lose the paper or the ink fades or your constant folding and unfolding and crumpling and smoothing wears the thing out.
It helps you pretend that you didn’t memorize the string of digits within like five minutes of getting on the bus.
You stride into your kitchen and make a deal with yourself – you won’t call him until you’ve picked out a CPU because you are a strong, independent adult who don’t need no cute lispy employee.
So instead of going to your computer, you make a sandwich, wash the dishes, wipe down the counter, rearrange the chairs around the dining room table, and wonder if you have time to fucking save the whales and solve world hunger.
Ok. This is ridiculous. You need to stop putting this off or you’re never going to get it done. You set yourself all up on your laptop and crack your fingers, determined to research the shit out of some CPUs.
And you do – you’re up until the ass crack of dawn, reading reviews and trying to sort out the two-star idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about from the people who rate everything five stars because their packages got to them in two days.
Finally finally you think you’ve got one chosen. It’s in your shopping cart and everything, and all your credit card information is entered. Your finger hovers over the mouse. One click and it’ll be ordered.
Is it possible to get buyer’s remorse before you’ve even bought the damn thing?
… Damn it.
You take your hand off the mouse and bend your fingers, trying to work some feeling back into them before you reach for your cell phone. It takes you a second to scroll to Sollux’s name and then you just sit and stare at it.
It stares back.
Your thumb hovers over the little green phone that will connect the call and you swallow, hard. You’re beginning to sweat a little bit, you can feel it, and you panic, wondering if that’ll gross Sollux out before you remember that duh, he can’t see or smell you over the phone, dipshit.
This is it. You’re going to call him, and the two of you are going to have a perfectly civilized conversation about computer parts and you’re not going to put your foot in your mouth because you can do this, damn it! You are strong! You are fierce! You—
You call Dave instead.
He answers the phone with a grunt and you slump backwards in your chair, pressing your hand to your forehead. “Alright, listen up, cock-muncher, because I have a problem and you are gonna help me solve it.”
There’s a sigh on the other end and then Strider’s voice comes through, thick and gritty and low. “Karkat, bro, I love you. You know I do. Seeing you gives me the warm fuzzies like a classic Disney movie marathon with all the little singing animals and shit, but it is three forty in the goddamn morning, so your ass better be on fire.”
Oh. Shit. You totally didn’t check the time. A quick glance at your laptop confirms that it is indeed three forty in the morning and you just woke up your best friend to bitch about your love life.
Oops.
“Uh—”
“Call me in like, eight hours, and I will be perfectly happy to sit down with you and feelings jam about your relationship woes.”
You blink rapidly. “How the hell did you—?”
“I’m actually a god and I know everything.”
“Shut up, asshole.”
“Dead serious. And this god needs his beauty sleep, so peace out, Vantas.”
Dave hangs up with a click and you snap your phone shut and put it on your desk. You should probably sleep too. You can’t call Sollux at four am and expect him to be pleased to hear from you.
You put your laptop into sleep mode and stretch, feeling your spine pop and head towards your bed, falling face-first into the mound of pillows and blankets you’ve collected over the years. You love your little pile of blankets – it is comfy and warm and you quickly burrow under it like a crab into sand.
Tomorrow. You’d call Sollux tomorrow. Just to get his opinion on the CPU you’d picked out.
Yeah.
You fall asleep almost instantly and when you wake up, it’s well into the afternoon. The sun is falling through your window just at the right angle and it is warming the crap out of your blanket pile. You are a ball of pure comf and you’ll be damned if you’re gonna move.
Across the room, your phone begins to ring.
You take a moment to curse the universe and everything in it before you groan, slithering out of your pile and puddling down onto the floor. You drag yourself across the room and grab your phone off your desk, not bothering to check caller ID before you answer.
“Whaddya want?”
“It lives! Wake up, asshole, we’re going to the mall.”
You frown. “Strider, what the hell.”
“I said we’re going to the mall. Get in loser, we’re going shopping, and all that jazz. Put on pants, I’mma be, I’mma be, I’mma I’mma I’mma be at your place in T-minus twelve minutes.”
You blink at the wall, inches from your face where you settled down onto the floor. “I don’t want to go to the mall, asswipe, I was just there yesterday.”
Dave snorts on the other end. “I thought you wanted to talk warm fuzzy feelings until we couldn’t feel our masculinity anymore.”
Oh yeah. You called him at like four am to bitch about your crush like a whiny romcom protagonist.
Ok, so Strider’s kind of a kick-ass awesome friend.
You sigh dramatically. “Fine, I guess if you’re making me… You’re paying for food though.”
“It’s a date, babe. Ten minutes!” Dave crows and hangs up. You shake your head – he’s a dork, he really is – and stand up, still a bit asleep. Pants. You need pants.
It takes you eight minutes to find your pants, put them on, and brush your teeth. You’re just trying to do something about your hair (that’s a lie. You’re basically just staring at it in the mirror) when you hear Dave leaning on the horn outside. You grab your jacket from where it’s hanging on your doorknob and thunder down the stairs.
Dave grins at you from the driver’s seat of his shitty car. He has the top down even though it’s way too cold to be riding without solid walls of car all around you. “Ah, my fair lady. Your chariot awaits.”
You throw your jacket into the front seat and jump in.
Strider drives way faster than the bus and you’re at the mall in like ten minutes, much to your mortal, piddling terror. You peel your fingers off the door handle where you’ve been hanging on for dear life and shoot Dave an irritated grimace.
He grins. “I’ve been getting better, right?”
He’s going to kill you both someday in this death trap of a car.
Inside the mall, Strider beelines for the food court, and you follow only semi-reluctantly. You’re not one for mall food – it’s overpriced garbage, in your humble opinion, but Dave has this thing for the greasy burgers that only the mall food court can provide so you suppose you can choke one down in the name of friendship.
You wait as Dave orders enough food to feed a small army and then follow him as he heads for a table near the middle of the food court, a few tables away from the large play area. In the middle of the food court there’s a large play area for kids, complete with giant plastic food for the kids to climb all over. There’s what feels like hundreds of kids screaming and chasing each other and falling off of giant plastic ice cream cones and you feel a headache coming on.
You sit across from Strider who has already begun to stuff his face full of burger. You wrinkle your nose. “You’re an animal.”
Dave grins through a mouthful of burger. “In bed.” He completes, waggling his eyebrows at you. You roll your eyes and he swallows. “Ok. So. Tell me about this dude, dude.”
Oh. Shit. You totally forgot that’s what Strider had dragged you here to talk about. Shit on a shit stick.
“No.”
Behind you, kids scream and throw each other off the plastic bananas. Strider raises an eyebrow. “No?”
You steal a fry and munch on it in a completely casual manner. “He’s not a dude. He’s just the guy who works at the computer place. And I don’t even know him, so there’s really no reason to talk about it or even bring it up ever again.” You swallow the fry. “Oh wow, look at that, we’re done talking about this! Where did the time go? Oh well, I guess that’ll have to do. So how are you?”
Dave snorts, grabbing his soda and slurping it. “D’aw, you think he’s cute.”
“I do not!” You hiss.
“That’s adorable as shit.”
“Shut up.”
Dave grabs another handful of fries and munches. “I’m glad, man, I was starting to worry about you. You know, last thing I need is my best friend growing old and dying alone in his house with no one there to stop his sixteen cats from eating him.”
You throw a fry at his head and he dodges effortlessly. Stupid fucking Striders and their parkour bullshit or whatever the hell it was.
You glance up to check where the fry landed and oh shit on the biggest shit stick in the entire damn world of shit sticks because speak of the devil, there is Sollux, the Bits and Bytes guy in the flesh and blood standing in line to get a hot dog.
You’re pretty sure you wheeze or rasp or something because Dave looks at you with concern, a French fry halfway to his mouth.
“Vantas, are you choking?”
“Shut up.” You hiss, and begin scanning for escape routes. Maybe you could somehow manage to knock yourself unconscious with Strider’s cafeteria tray.
Dave twists around in his chair to follow your line of sight. “Dude, what the hell are you so freaked out about?”
You lunge across the table and grab him by the collar, yanking him closer. “Turn around you asshat! He’ll see you.”
A huge shit-eating grin splits Dave’s face in half. “He’s here?”
Uh-oh. “Nope! No, no he is n—”
“He’s the one with the weird ass glasses on, isn’t he?”
“Fuck you.”
“Man, those are some kickin’ shades. I want some. Here, I’m gonna ask him where he got those…”
“Don’t you dare, Strider, I’ll fucking kill—”
“Hey, Sollux!”
You are going to strangle him. And then probably yourself.
Sollux turns around, brows creased in confusion. You decide he absolutely cannot see you under any circumstance and sink as far down in your chair as you possibly can.
Dave starts waving at him. You really are going to kill him. Your friendship has clearly run its course – it’s time to move on. Branch out. Kill this one and upgrade to a newer model and—
Oh shit, Sollux is walking over. He is walking over to the table. Putting one foot in front of the other and making his way in your immediate direction.
All rational thought flees your mind and all that’s left is that you need to get the fuck out of there right that second. You slither down in your chair and half run, half crawl towards the first thing you see, which happens to be a massive plastic honey pot in the middle of the play area. It has little openings in the bottom for the kids to crawl into, like a fort.
You think you shove a kid – you’re not completely sure – and dive for the opening, tucking into a ball and hiding.
There. That was totally inconspicuous. No one saw a thing.
A little girl with pigtails runs into the honey hut, spots you crouched against a wall and races out again.
That’s fine with you. You could live here – this will be your palace. Run a little wiring through there, build a door and maybe a toilet and you’ll be all set and never have to come out ever again.
Two minutes pass and you start to feel like climbing the walls. What were they doing? Were they talking? Was Dave telling him every little insignificant detail about your life? Were they eating all your French fries?
You resist the urge to peek out of your honey hut for all of ten seconds before you huff irritably and get on your hands and knees, crawling towards the little opening and peering around the corner.
There’s no one by the little table. Strider is gone and so is Sollux.
Ok, so you panic a little bit. Confusion and a sick, nervous, fluttery feeling duke it out in your gut and you scramble backwards into the honey hut. Where the hell did they go?
Your butt bumps against something that is most certainly not wall and you absolutely do not stifle a shriek.
Sollux is crouching behind you, grinning like a maniac. “Hi.”
“Holy shit!” You squeak and then clap a hand over your mouth. “You fuck, you scared the hell out of me!”
Then you realize exactly what’s happening – where you are, what you most likely just rubbed your butt all over, and you think you might be sick.
That tears it, you’re definitely going to kill Strider.
“Nice place you got here.” Yep, his lisp was still there, still going strong, and still just cute enough to make your ears get hot.
“Yeah, I was supposed to get carpet put in but the asshole never called me back.”
“What a dipshit.”
“Right? It’s so hard to find decent help these days.”
This is by far the most ridiculous thing that you’ve ever done. The honey hut is too low for you to stand up straight in, so you’re crouched on your hands and knees. Sollux is even taller than you are, and looks supremely uncomfortable from where he’s kneeling facing you.
The silence is stretching, punctuated by the shrieks of children and the sizzle of shitty mall food.
You decide to break the silence the same time Sollux does because of fucking course, you’re going to just fulfill all the uncomfortable romcom clichés aren’t you?
“Uh—”
“So—”
You clamp your mouth shut and Sollux smirks. You glower at him and motion for him to go first.
“Ever get that computer up and running?” Sollux asks, shifting uncomfortably as he tries to stretch his long legs.
You shake your head, remembering last night’s research and the phone call you almost made. “Nah. I got a CPU finally picked out though.” You hesitate. “I was gonna call you, you know. Last night.”
Oops. You hadn’t really meant to say that. You were going to make some sort of witty joke about the internet. Or something. You suppose you hadn’t really thought your sentence through.
Oh, this whole conversation was just Really Fucking Super.
For his part, Sollux looks kind of surprised. “You were?”
“Well, I tried. Actually. But it was three AM and I’d been surfing the internet for a billion fucking hours and I accidentally called Strider instead. You met Strider? He’s an assdick.”
Sollux snorts out a laugh at the insult and you feel a rush of relief tinged with pride. You made him laugh, fuck yeah, four for you, Vantas, you go, Vantas.
Sollux shakes his head and you realize he’s inched just a titch closer. Your heart rate shoots through the fucking moon.
“I could come look at your CPU choice.” Sollux offers. “You know. If you want.”
Hell. Fucking. Yes, you want. Ok, play it cool, Karkat.
“Hell yes, I want.”
Damn it.
A wry, smug smile crosses Sollux’ face and you groan, falling backwards onto your butt and staring at the ceiling of the honey hut.
“Shut up.”
Sollux snickers.
“I’m serious, shut up, asswipe.”
“Make me, shorty.”
You jerk up, defiant and ready to snap, when Sollux leans forward and pecks a kiss on your lips.
You rear back in shock, spluttering and red as a fucking cherry. For a second, you and Sollux stare at each other in a weird combination of amusement and shock and nobody moves.
Ok. So he kissed you. That’s no big deal.
That was a lie, this was a major big deal.
But, since he kissed you, and without warning you either, the sneaky bastard, you should be allowed a freebie.
And you’ll be fucked sideways if you’re not going to take your freebie.
You shuffle forward on your hands and knees and grab Sollux by the side of the face, yanking him down and kissing him firmly and, you hope, somewhat nicely.
He tastes inexplicably like honey and you decide that he’s officially ruined any and all honey flavored products from here on out. Bastard.
Sollux does not appear to care at all that the two of you are essentially making out surrounded by plastic food and screaming children, and one of his hands slips up your cheek and buries itself in your hair.
This is awesome – this is perfect. This is that moment, at the end of all those movie you like to watch when Kankri’s not home, where the guy gets the girl and they kiss and everything is warm fuzzies and rainbows and—
“Smile for the camera, lovebirds.”
There’s a flash of light and you and Sollux break apart with a strangled gasp.
Dave is crouching in the side opening of the honey hut with his iPhone in hand and the biggest, smarmiest grin plastered all over his dumb fucking face.
You wonder if you could kill him with your mind alone.
“What?” He asks, still grinning as wide as his face would allow. “I woulda thought you’d want something to remember the moment by.”
“You are by far the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.”
“Ah, you love me.” Dave lowers the iPhone. “Just wanted to let you know, though, that they’re sending security over. Somethin’ about a couplea crazy kids gettin’ it on in the Honey Hut of Love.”
You groan. How the hell is this even your life?
“Oi!”
Dave jumps and dives into the honey hut with the two of you, nearly knocking Sollux into you. “Go, you idiots. I will sacrifice myself for the greater good.” He grins.
“The greater— Strider, you ass, this isn’t a fucking war—”
“Dude, do you seriously wanna explain this to Kankri?”
Shit. Point taken.
You grab Sollux’s hand in yours and wow, his fingers are long and thin and they feel just perfect curled around and between yours and—
Ok, if you start thinking like this all the time, your inner monologue is gonna get pretty damn ridiculous.
You peek around one edge of the honey hut and spot the security guard heading going around the other side.
“Now.” Sollux hisses and the two of you make a break for it, around the giant banana and past the giant hot dog slide thing.
You just manage to catch the beginning of Strider spinning a tale of epic proportions and think maybe you won’t have to kill him after all.
“So, my friend, right, he sort of shit his pants…”
Nope, he’s a dead man.
You manage to make it out of the food court and back into the main thoroughfare of the mall before you stop to catch your breath.
Sollux is still holding your hand and looks completely incredulous, a faint grin still lingering on his face.
“You’re gonna get me fired.” He says. You think he tries to sound serious but he can’t quite wipe the smirk off his face and it totally ruins the effect.
You shrug. “That job sucks anyway.” You pause, licking your lips and tasting honey. “So…”
“So.”
The mall-goers chatter and you wish you were better at small talk.
“Wanna go to your place, build a computer, and make out?”
You blink, warm blush rushing up the back of your neck and making the hair prickle in anticipation. Damn him.
“Well, gee, if you’re offering, it’d be hella fuckin’ rude to turn that down, wouldn’t it?”
You curl your fingers with his and resolve from this moment out to never forget a single second of the rest of your entire life because you want this moment to last forever.
Hey, maybe you do owe Strider for snapping a pic at such a shitty time and ruining your kiss. It’ll make a great memory.
(Of course, even the nostalgia of the photo doesn’t stop you from screaming yourself hoarse while Sollux laughs himself sick when you find the picture all over your Facebook newsfeed).