Work Text:
"Karkat, dude. Let's go for a swim."
Dave leaves the aforementioned's side, not even waiting for a reply, in order to jog towards the water. Karkat watches him, facing the sunset the both of them had been enjoying on their evening stroll along the shore. Dave doesn't even waste any time divesting himself of his clothing, shirt, shoes, shorts, all unceremoniously tossed to the sand with no regards to a future of sandy crack disease. He turns around briefly, facing his boyfriend, not even remotely surprised to see him still standing where Dave had left him, incredulous.
'"Get over here, man. Where's your sense of adventure?"
"Just because we're on English's island doesn't mean you should talk like him."
"Gadzooks Karkat, my good man, I wouldn't have expected an outstanding gent such as you to ah, 'leave a brother hanging', as they say," Dave says in his most monotone voice.
"Get into the ocean and drown," Karkat replies, still not moving from his spot.
"Baaaaaaaabe," Dave whines. "Forreal, what would be a better way to end a hella bromantic walk on the beach than a quick dip in the ocean?"
"Anything that doesn't involve revealing my horrid, eye-chafing torso to the world, for starters!" Karkat yells back, puffing up like a displeased cat. Even though the both of them have similar predicaments regarding their bodies, Karkat has a lot more trouble letting himself exist despite it. Dave never seemed as bothered, in moments like this where he's standing almost entirely bare save for his boxers, seemingly giving no thought to how strange this would seem to someone who didn't know him as well. Karkat supposes nobody but him was really around to see it, but still.
He vividly remembers the other morning where he had sat at the breakfast table with Jake, Dave showing up in nothing but sweatpants, completely throwing English off his endless, onesided conversation about a movie involving a funny corpse. Like they didn't have seventy thousand of those back on Alternia. Dave had either taken no notice of the sudden silence, or feigned nonchalance as he retrieved his apple juice from the cupboard and chugged it straight from the bottle. As grouchy of a guy as Karkat is, Jake's shocked stare, still stuck on the spot where Dave had first appeared through the doorway damn near made him lose it.
Maybe pretending, or no, maybe knowing that nothing about his body made Dave less Dave, was enough for him. And as much sense as that made to Karkat in the context of his multi-quadrantmate, it wasn't a type of logic he had managed to afford himself.
"Karkles, babe, don't do yourself like that. Come with me. It's just us, and the water looks so fucking nice dude. We're gods, we should enjoy the fruits of our labour, we've gotta seize the day, carpe diem my dude, seize it right by the horns and steer it towards where we want. We can do literally whatever we want Karkat, did you know? Sure you have your vice-mayoral duties to attend to when we get back, and I'll be forced by my spiritual muses to crank out the absolute shittiest movie anyone has ever seen, I was thinking actually I could make some sort of homage to the millions of deep fried .jpeg Statues of Liberty, bring some new totally real speculation to the table about how they got here, maybe I can make them shoot lasers out of their eyes at the most arbitrary times, oh my god I was trying to get you to swim with me."
During Dave's whole tangent, Karkat had actually come a bit closer and seated himself down in the sand, close to where Dave's clothes were strewn about. He huffs through his nose in silent laughter as Dave finishes, looking up at him in both exhasperation and adoration.
Dave chuckles along with him, then walks backwards into the sea, letting himself fall backwards with his arms outstretched as soon as it the water was deep enough to do so safely. He propells himself further in with a few lazy backstrokes, before wading upright in the water, waving Karkat over once again. Karkat raises his own arm in response, but only to raise his middle finger towards his boyfriend. Dave laughs again, louder this time, but swims back to shore. He rises from the water, it cascading off his back and dripping from his hair, and it fills Karkat to the brim with a sense of.. belonging. Somehow. As much of a fuss as he's putting up, he realises there's nothing he'd rather be doing than watch his boyfriend enjoy things he never would have in his old life. Dave pushes his hair back with both hands, and most of the water out of it, and he's actually beaming, and Karkat has no idea what his own face is doing but the feeling washes over him like a wave, ironically. Dave is in front of him now, and Karkat pushes himself up off the sand to stand in front of him. Dave reaches for both his hands, and Karkat gives them willingly, lets himself be pulled in almost chest to chest, but avoids touching completely due to the wetness factor. He lets his arms be placed around Dave's neck, and he finds himself having to hang his head and close his eyes before too long, because his boyfriend's eyes are telling him he's feeling the same thing somehow. He doesn't think it will ever stop being too much.
Dave takes a step backward, and Karkat follows blindly. Another, and another. Suddenly, Karkat's shoes are wet. He finally reopens his eyes.
"You absolute fucker."
Too quick for Karkat to react, Dave has bent sideways and forward, grabbed Karkat by the back of his belt, and
"Hup."
Karkat goes flying over Dave's back, landing in the water with a loud splash.
"BOOYEAH!"
"HOLY TAINTCHAFING SHIT, HOW HAVE I *EVER* LEARNED TO TRUST YOU? I WILL OBLITERATE YOUR *GLOBES*, STRIDER, I WILL TEAR THEM OUT THROUGH YOUR ASS AND FEED THEM TO A WILD LUSUS!"
All Karkat hears as a response is uproarious laughter, Dave bent over at the middle, watching Karkat flail and curse while he finds his footing. He heads for the shore much less gracefully as Dave had a few minutes before, water sloshing from his soaked hoodie and shorts. The other still hasn't recovered by the time Karkat makes it to shore, and he silently wrings as much water out of his clothing as he can, which isn't much. But it's the best he can do considering he doesn't have a fucking change of clothes.
"Thanks asshole. Let's head back so i can stop looking like a drowned sewerbeast."
"You got it babes!" Dave manages to cram out through the tears of laughter, picking up his shirt and shaking off as much sand as he can. Most of it ends up sticking to his wet body, but he puts on the dry clothing regardless. He decides against ruining his shoes with sandy feet, and holds them both in his left hand instead, holding his right hand out for Karkat to take. The latter gives Dave a hard stare, but eventually rolls his eyes and accepts the offered hand.
"I'm so sorry Karks, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. You were looking so cute and you were being a dick to yourself again and I saw a way to distract. It worked right?"
"You know what? Yeah, it worked perfectly, Dave. I do feel a lot better to be honest."
"See baby? I always know what's best f-UUAAAH," Dave shrieks, taken off guard as Karkat hugs him hard from the side, water quickly soaking his "carefully" preserved dry shirt. All he can do was laugh some more, and this time, it's not very hard at all for Karkat to join in.