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Dave woke up from his dreams of wandering through fields and arguing with ghosts before Karkat, which was probably a first. He found himself looking at Karkat a few feet away from him on the pile of pillows they'd settled into the night before. As little as Dave actually slept, he had only actually seen Karkat sleeping once or twice. They were both in the troll’s room, which would've seemed an odd place for Dave to wake up just a year prior. The two boys had been sleeping over here for months, more and more as they got closer. A few times, they'd actually fallen asleep touching, when one of them had a panic attack or just needed actual, physical contact.
And Dave was furiously trying to ignore those memories, because he did not need to start spouting some sort of gay shit when Karkat woke up. He'd only come to terms with his maybe a little bit (okay, a lot) gay feelings he had for his best friend a few months ago, and he didn't want to risk letting Karkat know just yet. That would be weird, and it might make him lose his best friend, and that just sounded like a really shitty situation to Dave.
And speak (think?) of the devil, Karkat was suddenly glaring at his fellow knight. "What the fuck, Dave, have you been watching me sleep?"
Dave jolted a bit, feeling his body temperature rise. "What, no! I just woke up, dude, and I was wondering when you would wake up, 'cause there's a bit of your hair sticking in a funny direction, and I wanted to fix it but I didn't wanna wake you up, ya know?" He tried to smile, but it definitely looked forced as all fuck. Luckily, Karkat was quick to skirt around the topic, promptly flipping Dave off.
"Whatever, you dumbass. How long were we asleep? Do you know?"
"Uhhhh..." Dave thought for a moment before the number settled in his mind. "Decent amount of sleep, actually, about seven hours for both of us."
"Huh. I haven't slept that long in weeks. Wanna go get some gross energy sludge?"
"Ugh, fuck no." Dave made a face at Karkat. "I dunno about you, but I'm in the mood to just sit around all day. Like a slug or something, but less gross, and less likely to die because of some fucking salt."
"Yeah, I get what you mean." Karkat sat up, sighing and fiddling with his sylladex. "Do you want to read or something?"
"Oh, fuck yes." Dave sat up and put his shades on so the lights wouldn't hurt his eyes, whenever those things decided to come on. "What part are we even at again, dude? Like, oh my god, are we gonna get treated to another fifty-page rant about some blue-bloods and their weird fucking tendencies that just get passed off as "natural," or is it gonna be another fucking ridiculously overpowered psychic battle that would be physically impossible in so many different fucking ways, or–"
"Dave, do you want to let me read or not?" Karkat narrowed his eyes at Dave just a bit, the reading glasses that he didn't actually need perched on the tip of his nose and his lips pushed into a pout. Dave immediately lost every convoluted train of thought going into his weird babble-session about troll books and just nodded, looking down so the troll couldn't see him smiling.
"Right. Yeah, okay, yes, you do that. Sorry." Dave took a deep breath and adjusted his sports bra a bit, actually making an effort to shut up. That troll would be the death of him, with those weird little glasses and his pretty eyes and his soft, messy hair, and Dave just wanted to hug him and kiss him and listen to his beautiful, tired, cracking voice– and, there he went again with the gay shit. Dave was just going to have to content himself with leaning back into his bit of the pillow pile and clutching one of the smaller ones to his chest.
Karkat started reading, telling a story that Dave wasn't really following. He was really trying, but it was sort of badly written, and if Dave zoned out just enough, he could just listen to the way Karkat's voice rose and fell, and watch the way his lips moved and he occasionally reached up to fix his glasses, and feel the way the pillows shifted every once in a while–
"Dave. Dave! Meteor to Dave, dammit. Your head's in all those pillows, can you even hear me?"
Dave sat up a bit straighter and smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking, and... I dunno."
Karkat huffed exaggeratedly, rolling his eyes. He was used to this by now, but it didn't stop him from being irritated. "Well, maybe you should move over here and think about the words that are being piped directly into your fucking thinkpan for a minute." He patted a pillow next to him.
Dave just sat for a second before figuring out what Karkat meant and scooting over next to his friend, feeling his face heat up a bit. "Right, okay, yeah. That seems... That seems like a wonderful fucking idea."
"I'm glad you agree with me, for once. Dumbass." Karkat nudged Dave softly before going back to the story. "So, like I was saying earlier, the girl stood alone in the rain..."
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Karkat finished reading the chapter he was on and sighed, leaning back. "This shit is making my eyes hurt, what else should we do?"
Dave laughed a bit and pulled Karkat's glasses off, sticking them back on top of the troll's head. "Your eyes would feel fine if you didn't wear those dumb glasses. Come on, man, you at least need to find some that're your actual prescription!"
Karkat scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Right, sorry, I forgot you we're a certified goddamn eye doctor. Oh, wait."
"Wow, fuck you, man." Dave leaned into Karkat's chest, sighing softly when he felt Karkat's steady heartbeat. "You're just mad 'cause I'm smarter."
"You're being such a nerd, fuck, dude." Karkat pushed his fingers into Dave's hair, kneading softly at his scalp. "But seriously, I don't wanna just lay here all day, can we at least play some stupid game?"
Dave laughed quietly. "I mean, I'm down as long as it isn't SBURB again. But what should we play?"
"Ugh, I don't know. Anything but truth or dare. I'm getting really sick of licking random objects."
"Hey, it's not my fault that I'm bad at coming up with dares!" Karkat laughed a bit, but Dave went on. "We could always play some other party game, I guess. I mean, there's Never Have I Ever, there's uh, Twenty Questions, uh, Spin the– Wait, no, you probably don't wanna play Spin the Bottle, that would be, uh–" Dave winced at his fumble. "Well, anyways, we could–"
"What the fuck is Spin the Bottle?" Karkat's hand stilled, and Dave sighed. It was unavoidable now, wasn't it?
"It's, like, this game that stupid teenagers play, where they sit in a circle and they put an empty bottle in the middle. And they spin the bottle on it's side, and the person it points at has to kiss the person who spun the bottle. And then the person it landed on spins the bottle, and the whole thing keeps going. It's, uh, I didn't mean to put it in the list, I just don't know a lot of games, and how would you even play that with two people, and why would you want to– I mean, like, with–" Dave stuttered as he sat up, hoping he wasn't blushing.
"Hey, dude, calm down, okay?" Karkat held his arms up by his head, to show Dave he wasn't going to hurt him. "I'm used to you sucking at talking, Jesus fuck! And anyways, if you did want to play that with me, I mean, it, uh, couldn't be that bad, right?" By the end of his sentence, Karkat's arms were crossed, and he already looked like he was starting to regret what he'd said.
Dave shrugged a bit, comforted by Karkat's awkwardness. "I mean, maybe, and it's not like I would chicken out if you wanted to, but it didn't really seem like something you'd really be too enthusiastic about, and, I dunno. I mean, if you want to, though, I wouldn't exactly mind playing Spin the Bottle with my best bro?"
"Yeah, and what else is there to fucking do on this damn rock?" Karkat's mouth grew into a weird, crooked smile that Dave could only describe as reckless nihilism, which could boost pretty much anyone's confidence.
He gave Karkat a matching smile, though it was a bit more awkward, and decided to take a gamble with his next sentence. "I mean, yeah, is there really any reason not to play it?"
"I mean, do you have a bottle?"
Dave's heart raced as he fumbled through his sylladex for the bottle that had held Rose's final attempt at apple juice a few months ago, feeling his face heat up. "Yeah, somewhere in here, just let me– Here we go." He handed the bottle to Karkat and then moved to sit on the floor.
Karkat sat down across from him and put the bottle between them. "You go first, dumbass, you're the one who knows how this shit works." He was still smiling a bit, but it seemed a lot more nervous. Dave was glad he wasn't the only nervous one. It felt like the whole meteor could feel his heartbeat.
"Yeah, alright." He tried not to let his hands shake as he set the bottle spinning between them. It stopped faster than Dave expected, and, of course, it managed to actually point directly at Karkat. "Well, fuck, looks like it's pointing at you! Out of all the people here . What are the chances?" Dave tried not to let his nerves slip into his voice, because he was just then realizing that he was about to kiss Karkat Vantas, his best bro and crush, on the lips. And they'd both agreed to it. And it wouldn't mean shit.
"I mean, how would that even work if it landed on you? I mean, okay, I guess since it's you–"
"Yeah, I could send a future self back to kiss current me, but that would be pretty weird, and–"
"Dave," Karkat cut him off, "Are you actually going to kiss me or not?"
Dave nodded mutely at Karkat's words, words he didn't think he'd ever hear, then remembered how silence freaked Karkat out sometimes and spoke up. "Yeah, yeah, sorry, just kinda rambly today..." He trailed off as he planted his left hand on the floor between him and Karkat, and his right hand on Karkat's cheek, doing his best to imitate all the cheesy movie-first-kisses they've watched together on any random couch or pile. "This okay?"
When Karkat nodded, swallowing just enough that Dave could see his Adam's apple bob, Dave leaned forward to press their lips together. The kiss was depressingly chaste, but they both stayed there for a full six seconds, eyes closed, Dave's hand still on Karkat's cheek. At some point during the kiss, Karkat's hand moved to the back of Dave's neck, where it rested even when Dave pulled away. It seemed like the troll sighed softly against his lips when they parted, and Dave was determined not to let that get to him the way it already was. Karkat was just such a hopeless romantic, it was probably just from all the novels he read, an instinct earned from pages of every kind of kissing under a million Green Suns.
They stayed there for another second or two, with Dave touching Karkat and Karkat touching Dave, their foreheads pressed together and their eyes locked over Dave's shades. When Karkat leaned back fully, clearing his throat, Dave felt a bit like the troll was stealing his air supply from all the way over there, a foot away, with that tiny little smile.
"So," Karkat broke the silence, licking his lips and swallowing nervously. "I believe it's my turn to spin the bottle, right?"
"Yeah." Dave spoke just a bit softer than usual, leaning back into a straighter posture. While the bottle spun, he noticed Karkat looking distractedly at a point just below his shades, and then realized that point was probably his lips. Dave felt them twitch up into a small smile at that, and saw Karkat smile back. When the bottle was done spinning, it was pointing at a random point in the room. It was nowhere near either of them, but Karkat just shrugged.
"It's closer to you, so," Karkat smiled a bit wider as he cupped Dave's face in both his hands, "We'll just have to make do." When their lips connected this time, Karkat's moved gently against Dave's in a way that the human didn't quite understand, but sure as hell could imitate. He ended up with a hand on Karkat's thigh during the kiss. When they first pulled apart, it wasn't even a full second before their lips were back together, as gentle as ever. They were both breathing shallowly when they pulled apart.
"That was– That was good, dude. That was a good kiss." Dave and Karkat's foreheads were still pressed together when Dave made his breathy remark into the air between them, and Karkat laughed incredulously at him and pushed him back into his personal space.
They played a few more rounds full of those same gentle touches and breaths before they become confident, but after a bit, Dave was prodding at Karkat's mouth with his tongue, and Karkat opened his mouth just enough for their tongues to slip against each other, hot and wet and new. When they pulled apart that time, there was no doubt when they pushed back against each other, again and again. Energy built the whole time until the hand Dave had on Karkat's chest was fisted in his sweater and Karkat's hand was tugging at the hair at the nape of Dave's neck. When they pulled apart to gasp shallow breaths into the (little) air between them, Dave muttered a soft "wow," and Karkat took it as an invitation to nip at his bottom lip again, but without any real pressure. Dave made an embarrassing little noise into Karkat's mouth, and the troll pulled back, looking dazed but still worried.
"Are– You're okay, right?" Dave smiled woozily at his friend and nodded. Karkat hooked a claw under those stupid shades of his and pulled them off, setting them with the bottle that had gotten pushed to the side when they started making out. He grinned at Dave, running the pad of his thumb gently over the human's cheek. Dave swallowed the last bit of restraint he had and leaned forward, pulling Karkat into another deep kiss full of tongues and teeth and lips. When that kiss ended, Dave had been pulled into Karkat's lap, and both of his hands were tangled in the troll’s hair.
They both sat there for a while, until their breathing slowed and their heart rates were back to normal. Karkat slid his hand out from where it had pushed Dave's shirt up, just enough to feel good, not enough for him to be anywhere near Dave's chest. Dave let his hands fall out of his friend's hair, pressing a last little peck to Karkat's lips. Karkat gave his friend an affectionate smile, muttering a soft "fuck" into the air between them.
Dave slid back off of Karkat's lap, fumbling with his shades until they were settled onto his face. "So, uh, good game, dude, that was... That was really, uh, really good."
"I liked it too, dumbass. You're a good kisser."
Dave laughs incredulously and grins, saying, "You too, dude. Fuck, you too." The adrenaline running through his veins gives him just enough willpower to blurt out the next thing that comes to his mind, which somehow manages to be, "Can we do that again sometime?"
"Oh, fuck yes." Karkat is giving Dave a shiteating grin, but it's a lot less intimidating than it used to be because Dave is never going to be able to get this new image out of his head– Karkat, with big pupils and red cheeks and messy fucking hair, a bit of saliva smeared below his bottom lip. "Yeah, just message me whenever you want to make out or play a game or what-fucking-ever, why the shit would I not want that?"
Dave feels himself shrink a bit when Karkat says "make out," because, yeah, that is definitely what they just did, but it's just so casual in Karkat's voice. The most hopeless romantic left in paradox space, and he manages to pass off making out with his best bro as casual. "I mean, yeah, this is a cool thing. Can't believe it took me this long to end up kissing my best friend, you know?"
Karkat's grin gets wider, and Dave's smile grows a bit more genuine at that. No harm was meant, and even he can tell that much. "Yeah, I can't believe it either."
Dave sighs, adjusting his shades and thinking about the taste of Karkat on his lips– mostly like morning breath, since they've only been awake for an hour, but with hints of dried cherries and the over-sweet iced tea they had in Texas– and decides he needs to process what just happened.
"Hey, dude, there's some stuff I've been working on, and I think I oughta go to my room and make some actual fuckin' progress. Just text me if you wanna hang out, alright?" Dave stood up and held a hand out for a fist bump.
Karkat bumped their fists together, smiling a bit. "I've got some editing to do, anyways, so I guess I'll see you later?"
"Yeah, have fun I guess?" Dave laughed awkwardly, walking back towards the common areas of the area. He stopped before he was going to have to interact with others to slump against the wall, grinning. He'd made out with Karkat. He'd better see him later.