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Your name is Dave Strider, and you are really struggling with the fourth scoop on this kid's sundae.
Seriously though; six scoops? Her parents didn't think that was a little unnecessary? Look at the kid, she's tiny - there is no way that she would ever be able to eat the whole thing. Shit's ridiculous. (You suppose that's what you get for taking the afternoon shift on Five Dollar Friday, though. Nobody wants to get any less than their money's worth, so everybody asks for a fucking six scoop sundae.)
But that's not why you're struggling.
You're struggling because Vantas is leaning over to reach the chocolate chip and giving you the most amazing view of his ass. He's wearing those tight jeans with the paint splatter on the knee - you're not sure quite how it got there, something to do with Terezi and art class - that you like today and it's the most spectacularly unfair thing you have ever witnessed. (Okay, not quite the most unfair; once when you were seven, Bro came home with two cats and made you pick and name one. And then he gave both of them to the Lalondes anyway. It was a sad day.)
You whistle a little as you wait for Vantas to finish up so you can grab a scoop of the mango-pineapple, (why though that is the most disgusting flavour who would ever even want to do that to themselves) and from the way he tenses you can tell it annoys him. Score.
Okay, he's getting up, he's leaving, oh shit he just stepped on your foot, and now he's gone. You go about your work and try not to get distracted listening to Vantas rant at Makara, who comes in at least once a day and always orders the exact same thing - softserve, who the fuck even eats that shit anymore - only to be told again and a-fucking-gain that the softserve machine is fucking broken, you incompetent fuckpustule, you should know this because you're the one who broke the goddamn thing back when you fucking worked here!
Of course, Vantas always tells it a million times more creatively, and with a dozen more expletives, it's like he plans the spiel beforehand. He doesn't, of course, and that's what makes it hilarious.
It's the middle of summer, and Jane's Ice Cream Parlour is packed full of people, even more so than usual. What people fail to realise about Jane's is that it's kind of tiny. Kind of really tiny. So tiny that having a line out the door is a regular occurrence (though Jane's is actually pretty popular, to be honest). So tiny that there's only two registers.
So tiny that you can literally only have up to three people working there at a time, no matter the number of customers, because as small as the main section of the parlour is, behind the counter is less than half the size, and there's machines and sinks and shit all along the back wall, ice cream up front, and therefore barely enough room to squeeze past each other to get to a different flavour. So ridiculously, soul-wrenchingly tiny that the smallest of tiny pygmy creatures would cry out in envious dismay over the sheer smallness of the place.
Jane's is smaller than you are pale and let it be said that you are really, really, really fucking pale.
Basically Jane's is really fucking tiny and you get a lot of fucking customers and working here is hard, okay, it's hard and nobody understands except maybe Vantas, but it's not like you and Vantas are even really friends, despite how much you'd like to get into his pants.
Well, okay, that's not quite true - when John introduced you to him a few years ago, he came across as a whiny asshole. You didn't like him. You didn't like that he was a massive screaming douche and yet still somehow friends with everyone, you didn't like how Terezi seemed to like him, you didn't like that you found him funny, and you definitely did not like that he was one of the most objectively gorgeous people you'd ever met.
You did everything in your power to piss him off while simultaneously pretending that you didn't care if you pissed him off, and yes, admittedly, you would occasionally throw things and watch his ass as he picked them up. (Even when you were about thirteen, maybe fourteen, he had the nicest ass.) You liked to pretend to yourself that nobody noticed any of this happening, but the truth is that probably everyone did, except him, and two months after meeting him you learned that Nepeta had added the two of you to her shipping wall.
Either way, you never really spoke to Vantas when you weren't all hanging out in a group, so you never really considered the two of you friends. Just people that tolerated (and sometimes not even that) each other for the sake of not causing drama, because God knew you already had too much of that, what with Feferi and Eridan dating on and off for the past three years, and the way Sollux and Eridan did that weird frenemies with benefits thing whenever the aforementioned pair happened to be 'off', even though Sollux was in a committed relationship with Aradia but she didn't seem to mind which you thought was weird and ugh you know way too much about your friends this has to stop.
So you and Vantas never really spoke until the beginning of this summer, when John and Jade went on some sort of family trip to some place, and basically all of your other friends were busy with each other which kind of sucked and you were bored out of your mind until Bro kicked you out of the apartment and told you to go do something.
You decided to head down to the youth centre - for the ironies, of course. (Mostly for the reason that nobody goes to the youth centre and you didn't want to bump into anyone you know, so it fit perfectly.) You'd actually only been to the youth centre once before, with John and Jade and Rose, before you'd met Vantas or any of the other people that you sometimes call your friends when the mood strikes you, and it had been kind of a dump and there was no one else there, so you weren't really sure what to expect this time.
It was even more of a dump than before, and there was only one other person there. When you met him outside, he was glaring at the building as though it had personally wronged him, and your arrival was swiftly met by an entire horde of expletives, and a rant that you didn't really listen to, but you think there was something about the goddamn fucking shitty universe taking a proverbial dump on his head once again, and much more in that vein. All you really got out of the whole thing was that it ended with a heavy sigh and a "what are you even doing here, Strider?"
That was the beginning of your first ever civil conversation with Karkat Vantas.
(Actually no, there was that time about two years ago when the two of you combined the power of your awesome - though to be honest kind of gross - metaphors to tease John about his horrible taste in movies. Now that you think about it, that was a good day. The pair of you will have to doubleteam him again sometime. Oh wait no nevermind forget you ever said that it has been erased from your memory Rose can never find out that this happened oh god.)
By the time your first ever official civil conversation with Karkat Vantas ended, you had learned that Kankri - his older brother - had driven him into town and left him there, made a tentative agreement to brave the youth centre with him (you act as though he was begging for your company, but he was kind of subtly trying to get rid of you. You just didn't want to be alone, so you pestered him until he acquiesced), and hit on him about three times intentionally (and maybe a few more unintentionally). Thankfully, he seemed to either not notice your random flirtations, or just not take you seriously, which was good because if he was taking you seriously then you probably would have gotten punched in the face.
So the two of you embarked on an amazing adventure into the youth centre together, only to stop the second you got in the door.
Well, not quite stop.
Maybe 'freeze' is a better word.
Then again, 'staring in utter horror with your mouths wide fucking open' would be another apt description, because, well, the place was a dump.
The furniture was old, and in a pretty shitty state of repair, there was a hole in the wall (some say hole, others say gateway into the abyss; you're more inclined to agree with the latter), the carpet was... non-existent, apparently, and a brisk wander around the room taught you pretty quick that a certain corner smelled funky and was therefore best avoided.
A small coffee table sat near a worn-down sofa in the middle of the room, and a few wooden chairs had been placed seemingly randomly - one of them was laying on it's side and it just sort of bothered you that no one had bothered to pick it up. A wooden table that looked somewhat sturdy stood (thankfully) upright in the corner furthest from the funky one, and a bookshelf (which contained maybe three books, some board games, and a Rubiks cube, all of which look to be in less than good condition) that looked to have been put together by an illiterate left-hander trying to read the Korean instructions is in the corner opposite that.
The sofa itself looked to be a piece of crap, and a very uncomfortable one at that. The fabric was torn, the cushions looked flat, and there were some suspicious stains that looked to be either dorito dust, or blood.
Not to mention the fucking guy sleeping on it. As it was, you and Karkat probably would have simply exchanged weirded out looks and then opted to ignore him, but the dozing dude just happened to choose that exact moment to make some ungodly noise that sounded unwittingly like a freight train, promptly choke on his own spit, and then jerk awake.
He stared at you. You stared at him. This continued for a few minutes, until, "I thought this was a youth centre," Karkat began slowly, pointedly, and with enough vitriol to kill a large mammal, "not a shelter for the homeless and sleep deprived." You always found it funny, the way Karkat seemed a lot more tame around adults; there was a lot less meaningless (if hilarious) spitting of nonsense swear words and a lot more quiet (deadly), cutting remarks.
Karkat's normal demeanor involved a lot of blustering and arguing with someone until they start to argue back. But when an adult was involved, he had the ability to silence and disarm a room full of people with a single sentence. The difference was amazing, really.
The slumbering bozo winced a little, coughing awkwardly. "Well, uhm, it is - my name's Jim, technically I'm in charge here. Normally being in charge wouldn't actually require me being here, but sometimes I just like to get out of the house when my wife is mad at me and I really have no where else to go. She probably thinks I'm having an affair, and I would be if I could, but I really don't have the sex appeal to pull it off. I get the feeling she's going to file for a divorce soon."
Okay, so maybe what he actually said was something more along the lines of him awkwardly giving you his name, being friendly, and telling you to make yourselves at home, but his struggles with his wife were as obvious as if he told you them himself.
(Which he did, a few weeks later, and that's probably why it all seems so obvious to you looking back on it, but you're choosing to ignore this for the sake of a good story and a reason for you to divulge all of this guy's secrets and pretend that you worked it all out just by looking at the pack of doritos on the floor, the dorito dust on his fingers and the dorito dust on the Rubiks cube. You are the next Sherlock Holmes. It's you.)
(Though it is a shame that you never actually made the connection between the dorito dust on the Rubiks cube and on his fingers because that was a gross experience that you never want to recreate. Ever.)
As it is, this story is getting too long, so the basics of it are that you and Karkat ended up spending quite a bit of time at the youth centre with Jim.
Jim spent a lot of time napping, and you and Karkat mostly played card games, but for some reason, it wasn't boring. It was... nice. Grossly domestic, yes, but nice.
This continued for about two weeks. Then... well.
You aren't sure what prompted it (you think it may have been the slowly growing pile of doritos packets in the corner, but you aren't sure and you never will be, not really) but Karkat didn't even wait until the two of you had finished the game of snap before he stood up sharply, planted his hands on the shitty table barked, "Strider, I've had enough of this shithole. If I'm going to continue to entertain you, albeit halfheartedly, in this festering waste-dump of a recreation centre, then we are going to clean it the fuck up or so help me god I will slit my own throat with the ace of spades and you know it's possible, you've had three papercuts from that shit just today, don't even lie to me you useless sack of wasted particles."
You got a little lost in all his words, to be honest, so all you could do in response was nod shakily and say "yeah, okay" like a fucking dumbass.
...And that was how you accidentally agreed to renovate a youth centre, apparently, with Karkat Vantas and also this guy called Jim who didn't do anything but give you money and pick out a sofa.
It was a slow going process, especially since Karkat still had to do his shifts at Jane's and you spent a lot of time just chilling there with him. But you did it eventually; fixed up the walls, got rid of any weird smells, put in some carpet, bought some real furniture and some better board games.
When it was over, you and Karkat simply laid down on the carpet and stayed there for a while, basking in the silence (Jim was at home for once, so you were able to enjoy the rare absence of his snoring).
Karkat was the one to break it.
"...So. Now that this is done, how do you feel about wasting your summer away feeding ice cream to small children?"
Your reply was about as articulate as one would expect. "Um. What?"
Turned out Gamzee had gotten fired after he broke the softserve machine (for the sixth time, except this time nobody knew how to fix it, hence his expulsion from the frozen dairy business), which meant there was an opening at Jane's.
Which leads you to where you are now, making sundaes for ten year olds and nursing a stupid crushlike thing for the grumpy little fucker named Karkat Vantas.
You regret nothing and everything all at once.
...But damn if he doesn't have a nice ass.