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He’s sitting at a table in the common room, doodling aimlessly, marinating in his own boredom and this weird nebulous feeling of discontent. He likes to complain loudly about there being nothing to do, but the truth is, this life is a whole hell of a lot better than the one he left behind. If only John and Jade were here, it’d be perfect. That’s probably all it is. Missing the friends that aren’t here.
Rose is here, though, and thank God for that. She’s sitting on the couch, reclining slightly eyes glued to some book or another. And… maybe he’s not a friend, or maybe he is, who knows – but he can hear Karkat not far back behind his shoulder, his keyboard clacking away a mile a minute. He hits the keys way too hard because of course he does and Dave sneaks a glance over, already smirking before he speaks.
“Dude,” he says, putting his pencil down, raising an eyebrow. Karkat ignores him. “You literally are incapable of doing anything quietly, aren’t you?”
“Fuck off,” Karkat says, his eyes never leaving his husktop screen, and Dave turns around with an exaggerated sigh.
“I’m just saying, you’re ruining everyone else’s concentration. Isn’t he, Rose?” Rose will back him up, he’s sure of it.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Rose says.
“Traitor,” Dave mutters.
Karkat’s keyboard strokes become, somehow, even more furious. But he doesn’t say anything.
“Let me guess,” Dave says, since the alternative is turning meekly around and admitting defeat, and fuck that, “You’re arguing with Terezi, again.”
“No.”
“Vriska, then.”
“Fuck no.”
“…Kanaya?”
Karkat growls, shoves his seat back, and slams his weird alien bug laptop shut loud enough that Dave has to fight the urge to wince. “No! Why the fuck would I be arguing with Kanaya! Why do you constantly have to flap your incessant gums at me, bludgeoning me constantly with so many pointless and insultingly idiotic flaps of your unnaturally pink human tongue?! What I’m doing is, as ever, none of your fucking business!”
This tirade grows in volume until Dave is fairly sure everyone on the meteor can hear it, and when it’s done, Karkat shoves his laptop under his arm and ducks down like he’s about to scuttle off to who knows where.
“Man,” Dave says, keeping it real casual, “That’ll show me, taking an interest in Karkat’s life. Really learned my lesson, there.”
Karkat stops, halfway between the table and the transportalizer. Over on the couch, Rose has set her book down and is instead writing something in a new one with a solid purple cover.
“There’s nothing interesting about my life, right now,” Karkat informs him. His eyebrows are pulled down and his forehead is creased and he’s got his teeth bared at him, and it’s funny that there’s literally an alien glaring daggers at him and all he can think is shit, I need to come up with some way to make sure he doesn’t go. Fucking – why? He shifts in his seat, pushing the thought away. Karkat is still talking. “So let me spare you the agony of pretending to give a shit, because we both know you’re just looking for a quick and dirty chuckle at my expense. Well, I’m not giving you any new material today!”
“Too late,” Dave says. “You should see your face right now, bro. That shit is chuckle-worthy as fuck, right now.”
Karkat sighs, his shoulders sagging. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, then shakes his head and just kind of about-faces and goes, muttering something Dave can’t hear under his breath. Wait, Dave thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. I don’t know why I said that at all. Well, he kind of does. He was hoping Karkat would shoot back, like usual, but …
The transportalizer flashes, and he’s gone. Rose makes a thoughtful hmm-ing sound, and Dave pushes down the disappointment pooling in his guts and turns on her, instead.
“Don’t you hmm at me, Lalonde, that’s never a sign of anything good.”
“Oh, don’t mind me, Dave,” she says, and she’s smirking, he can see, still scribbling away in her stupid suspicious purple book.
“What the fuck is that thing, anyway, some kind of journal?”
“It’s none of your concern,” she says. She finishes her writing and closes it with a snap, and her smirk only deepens when she meets his eyes. “Just chronicling a few things for scientific purposes.”
His suspicions deepen. “You’d better not be writing anything about me in there.”
“Dave, really. Don’t be selfish. What if, in the future, I want to write a novel about idiots who have no idea how to flirt?”
“Uh, okay,” Dave says, heat creeping up to his ears, “Firstly, I’m pretty sure you’re a prime source of material for that bullshit yourself –”
“Oh, so you admit it was–”
“–Miss oh, Kanaya, you’re looking so perfunctorily adequate, today–”
“–I didn’t want to lay it on too thick, and frankly, Dave, restraint is something you could–”
“And secondly–”
“–Your technique, if you can even call it that, is more akin to what one would expect to find in a fourth grade classroom–”
“There’s no technique, because I wasn’t flirting!”
“If Karkat had pigtails, you’d be tugging them every time he put them in grabbing distance!”
They stare at each other. Dave is gripping the edge of the table so tight his hands vaguely hurt, and Rose her lips pursed and her arms crossed over her chest.
“I wasn’t flirting,” Dave says again, quieter. “I’m not gay.”
“Well,” Rose says, “Good for you. I wasn’t aware it was such an awful thing to be.”
He flinches back. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, but Rose is already standing up. She waves the purple book at him.
“I know,” she says. “One day, we’ll both look back on all this and laugh.” She pauses, shakes her head. “I hope.”
And then she’s gone, too, the transportalizer leaving a vaguely medicinal scent behind. Dave crosses his arms the way she always does at him, and glares down at nothing. The nebulous discontent has grown into a full on chasm of empty, in his guts, and it feels – fucking awful, actually. It feels fucking awful. Five minutes ago he was giving thanks that at least he had a few friends with him here, and now he’s all alone in this big empty room, and …
And he hadn’t been fucking flirting.
He picks up the paper he’d been doodling on – a shitty stick figure Karkat, shouting like always at an even shittier stick figure in shades – and crumples it up tight into a ball. What a bunch of goddamn garbage, really. Absolute fucking trash, like him.