Chapter Text
Karkat kisses all teeth--Dave had thought Terezi kissed all teeth, but after putting himself through the demented meat grinder experience that is Karkat's mouth, he has to conclude that no, she has actually been very careful. She only draws blood a little, after all; she's never gored him.
His lip's been split clean open, and it stings, which--contrary to everything the world taught him about barely contained rage and sex--isn't actually hot. It's definitely ironic, though, so Dave forces his face into a mocking smirk. "Wow, tell me how you really feel, Karkles," he says, wiping the blood away.
Karkat has this expression of dawning horror on his face, like he's just figured out that he really doesn't want to be here. Dave--kind of sympathizes, honestly. "Can we just get this over with?" Karkat says.
"Hey, now." Dave points his thumb over his shoulder, towards where Terezi is sitting. "That'd just be some kind of rude. We came here to give the lady a show, didn't we?" She can't possibly find this hot, however much she gets off on their discomfort and humiliation, but she hasn't said a word yet, and there's no way Dave is going to be the one to back down.
Sometimes he thinks his relationship with Terezi Pyrope is one long game of chicken.
Dave steps forward and runs his hands up Karkat's sides, under his shirt. Karkat closes his eyes. His face continues to show a mix of sickly regret and constipation. Terezi's still silent, and if Dave hadn't seen Karkat staring fixedly at a point over his shoulder just a minute ago he would wonder whether she was still in the room.
He's starting to sweat a little.
Fuck. Okay. Plan "Getting This Over With" is officially a go. He unbuttons Karkat's fly and yanks down his pants and boxers all at once. "Maybe this will suit your freaky troll domination fantasies better," he says, dropping to his knees.
Things get better once he puts his mouth on Karkat's dick--if only because Karkat goes through some very amusing contortions trying not to moan--but between this and the way his stomach clenches uncomfortably every time Terezi so much as touches Karkat, Dave counts his very first threesome experience as a pathetic failure.
Not a spectacular failure, mind you. Not even a resounding failure. There are no explosions or gruesome deaths decorating their landscape of hilarious incompetency, just one particularly ugly three-legged dog, inspiring a strange combination of pity and disgust in the observer as he watches it limp awkwardly into the sunset.
It's great comic fodder, though. Gotta look on the bright side of these things.
"Okay," he tells Terezi, after Karkat has stomped out of the house, probably to rage and thresh the air or whatever other Karkat things he usually does, "we are definitely never doing that again."
Terezi shrugs. "Sure, whatever."
That? That was way too easy. And maybe it's because she's just as mortified as he is, but he doubts it. He's been dating her for months, and in that time he has yet to see any evidence that mortification is an emotion that applies to Terezi Pyrope.
Then she lets her smile turn sickly-sweet and says, "It's okay, Dave. Do you want to talk about it? We can cuddle." And okay, yeah, that's his crazy alien girlfriend, right there--
--but he still doesn't buy it, not for a second. Terezi Pyrope is also master of the long game.
In the days immediately following his Very Educational Experience, Dave is forced to conclude that there is only one thing more boneheaded than having a threesome with your girlfriend and her violent rageful ex-whatever who is already boiling over with jealousy at the sight of you: having a threesome with your girlfriend and her violent rageful ex-whatever, who is also sharing a house of four with you in a universe of sixteen. Why did he agree to this, again?
Oh, yeah. Because Terezi smirked at him like that when she brought up the subject, all confrontation and dare, and he was saying yes almost before he knew what to. That, and he thought it would be ironic.
It's probably not ironic to care about the consequences of your boneheaded decisions, but he can't exactly ignore this shit. Everywhere he looks these days he gets a faceful of angry, snarling troll--and Dave may be the coolest of all coolkids, but no one wants to wake up to that ugly maw. "Out of my way, fuckass," Karkat snaps, elbowing Dave away as he makes his way toward the fridge. Dave wonders idly whether punching him in the face would make things better or much, much worse.
"Hey, hey, guys," John cuts in, eyes so big they could almost be black holes, "none of that! We're all friends here, right?"
"You will never catch me stooping so low as to call that heap of steaming musclebeast dung my friend," Karkat says.
Dave looks from him to John, who at the first sight of conflict is beginning to look like Dave and Karkat have just canceled his favorite television show. "Sure, John. Just some friendly ribbing between buddies, you know how that is."
"Everything about you sickens me," Karkat says. "Everything."
"Yeah, I know, Karkles, I have all the manly and platonic affection for you, too." Dave drains the last of his juice and decides to get the hell out of there before John sheds a single perfect tear and its terrible powers force him and Karkat to hug it out and do trust-building exercises or something.
The weird thing is, they actually were getting along before. Or they tolerated each other, at least, which is about as much as you could ask for considering that Karkat is Karkat, Dave could never resist taking advantage of that, and oh, yeah, that part where they both wanted--want--the same girl. Karkat eventually stopped making cracks about puppets (poking fun at Dave's childhood trauma is never cool, okay), and Dave stopped making out with Terezi in the hallway, and life went on without any punches being thrown over the dinner table. He should have known it wouldn't last.
He doesn't even know why Karkat is so pissed about this. They're one in this, after all; they birthed that hideous monstrosity of anti-sex-appeal together, all three of them. No point in assigning blame, except that Karkat has never faced a problem that he didn't attempt to solve by assigning blame to everyone except him.
Eventually Dave decides that mortification is just one of the many emotions Karkat is incapable of distinguishing from rage. Terezi cackles for a minute straight when he tells her this, which probably means he's right.
He sees the shadows they cast before he can make out their voices: Karkat and Terezi standing in the middle of the kitchen, talking.
"--sure you two had a great big fucking laugh about that," Karkat says, an angry snarl. "Karkat Vantas, the perfect punchline to every joke. So glad I could be of use to you and your hideous interspecies shenanigans."
Terezi sighs, bracing herself back against the counter. "That's not what the point of this was."
"Like fuck. I know exactly what you're trying to do, Terezi, and it's not going to work. I'm not actually that pathetic."
"Is that what you think, Karkat?" she asks, so quiet Dave has to strain to hear her. "Do you think I'm trying to hurt you?"
He can't see anyone's expression from here, but he doesn't need to: Karkat's whole body sags, then, all the anger passing out of him. "I--fuck. I don't know, okay--"
Dave feels, suddenly, like he is intruding on something very private. It's like he's stepped into an alternate universe where Karkat and Terezi are the ones having (really hot, thank you very much) obnoxious sex on every possible surface of two houses while Dave looks on like the world's saddest and most dejected voyeur. (Hopefully in this universe he is still beautiful and is not constantly making the "someone just shoved a nailbat up my ass" face like Karkat.)
As he sweeps into the room, trying his best to block out the image of shoulder-John shaking his head sadly, he presses his mouth to the junction of Terezi's neck and shoulder. "Hey, Rez," he says--it's almost hey, baby, but in the end he discards that as a little too ironic.
Karkat's knuckles clench against the edge of the kitchen island, and oh yeah, there's that nailbat expression. "What the fuck do you want, Strider?"
"Dude," Dave says, "this is my house. Just getting some food. Chill out, would you?"
He wonders if he should tell Karkat that trying to tear the counter apart with his fingers is a bad idea--he might break a nail that way.
"There's a meeting tomorrow," Karkat snarls. "Bright and early, like you humans always say. Are you actually going to be there, or will you be too busy trying out new sexual perversions?"
Dave shrugs. "No worries. We'll get our perversions out of the way first."
"Karkat," Terezi says flatly, matter-of-factly, "you're being an asshole."
Karkat's face contorts into something sharp and pained--not that that's relevant to Dave, of course. Dave is far too cool to care about assholes (ones who are singly responsible for the battery of elbow-bruises decorating Dave's sides) getting what they deserve.
He listens to Karkat storming up the stairs, rampaging bull and sleep-hungry toddler all rolled into one, and goes to get a drink.
"You're being really stupid, you know," Terezi says, after he's gone.
Dave tips back his glass--slowly--and lets the last drops fall against his tongue before he answers. "Was wondering when you were going to get around to chastising me. You've been pretty quiet this whole time."
"I didn't think it was my place to interfere."
Right. Because Terezi and not my place to interfere are two things that belong on the same continent. "Uh-huh. Pull the other one, Rez."
She doesn't say anything for--exactly thirteen and a half seconds, and then she sort of slumps against the counter, her shoulders falling forward. "I'm not ending up as your auspistice. And if I get between you two any more than I am now, that's exactly what's going to happen."
She looks tired. And yeah, okay, he feels bad about that. Hard not to get a little guilty when you're making your girlfriend miserable because you just can't stop poking her ex-whatever with a sharp stick. He puts an arm around her shoulders, awkward. "Master plan not working out how you thought it would, I guess?" he says lightly.
Three seconds while she decides how much she wants to tell him. "No," she says, and gives him a smile that looks like it's about to pass into the next plane. "It's going exactly like I thought it would. That's the problem. It's always the problem."
And then she leans back against him, settling her head in the crook of his neck. "You two are alike in exactly the same stupid ways."
"Don't know about that," he says. "For one thing, I hope I'm not that ugly."
She huffs, elbowing him. "See, that's exactly what I mean. You know?"
He's already safe behind his shades, but he closes his eyes anyway. "No idea, Rez. Might want to turn off the moonspeak there."