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You're going to propose to your best friend.
You've thought about the concept of a best bro-posal a few times, or maybe a lot of times. It's something you've always wanted to do. You've always liked the idea of someone being both your best friend and your spouse, like a double soulmate. Proposing to your best friend would mean that there was someone in the world you felt so comfortable with, who you understood and felt understood by so intimately, that you would be absolutely sure that they were the one. Someone you shared history with who was so safe, and fun, and right that you'd just have to take it to the next level. And it would feel so natural since because you'd come so far already.
A lot of people have played the role of the best friend in your fantasies. First, there was Jade. Then there was John, for longer than you care to admit. Not entirely after John, but definitely during the John hangover, there was Terezi. And then — (someone else, someone more than anyone, you try not to think about it too much) — Jade, again.
Your life is coming back full circle, like a brilliant cinematic callback to justify the build-up, validate the audience's prolonged attention, and make everyone feel complete. Earth C is a slate of revisited themes, but love might be the most central one.
Circle feels like the right word for your relationship. A circle is a perfect shape, with infinite sides, made of infinite points, and you think infinity is supposed to be poetic? You don't remember why, but people wouldn't get so many stick and pokes about it if it wasn't.
Circles are like the theory that time has no beginning or end. Everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen already exists. So the moment when you propose already exists, you just need to get your ass over there.
Circles are the Platonic Form of an engagement ring. The thought comes to you in a voice you haven't heard in a very long time, as Rose tells you the cut and style of the one that Jade wants you to buy.
—
You're in the kitchen, fiddling with the ring that you've put off buying for a decade. You think about how much you always wanted to want someone, and wanted someone to want you, and how you felt so profoundly unwanted as a child that you were once willing to do anything to be wanted.
Jade wants you. You want her too, you think,
just
less.
Karkat wanted you once; you want him more than anything; he doesn't want you anymore.
—
You woke up this morning, nervous as fuck, and almost broke the coffee pot. Once you came back to your body, you took a shower. You styled your hair. You put on something nice and spritzed cologne in all the right places. You text John, "todays the day, im popping the big q," like you think a man excited to propose to his girlfriend should. You convince yourself the nerves are because you don't want her to say no, when the truth is that you don't want her to say yes.
Jade emerges sleepily from your bedroom, sporting bedhead, yawning in the drapery of your shirt, and adoring you with her atomic green doe eyes. She asks what all the commotion is. It makes your heart soften and your gut twist. You feel so many things for her and one of those things is some kind of love, deep fucking love.
Jade was your first ever friend. She read your comics, entertained your rambles, pinned up your drawings on her walls, and mixed music with you. You demanded updates on her bizarre life, her creative exploits, her passion for the yiff. You joked about the parallels between your brother and her dog as if they were nothing more sinister than the plot of a Saturday morning cartoon.
The universe did you a solid by connecting you — you would have spent those years catfishing pedophiles instead, and you would never have met any of your other friends, and you don't like to think about how you would've turned out. Or maybe you were predestined to meet? In any case, you can't imagine who you would be without her.
You remember overnight calls. YouTube compilations, virtual sleepovers, salves for being starved of human connection; the ASMR from another person breathing, your phone by your pillow like someone sleeping beside you. Sometimes John and Rose were there, but it was more often just the two of you since no one would force you to go to school in the morning. All of you wanted to visit Jade, but you meant it more than John and Rose. You and Jade were two trapped little freaks, but if you could escape somewhere together, you knew you could figure something out.
She texted you during a strife once and asked if you were real. You called her from under your bed once and made flippant promises you hoped to keep. You wanted to be there for the loneliest girl in the world, and in that respect, you guess nothing's changed.
—
You're down on one knee and everything about this is wrong.
You've never wanted to do a public proposal. They always struck you as massively unfair. Way too much pressure to put on a person. How can you say no to someone when everyone's watching? (Weirdly enough, you feel like you’re under more pressure to ask than she is to say yes.)
You're not allowed to panic when you are unequivocally the bad guy in this situation. You've dragged this out too long. You've wasted so much of her time, and your time, (and his time.) You've spent your entire fucked up life shrugging off the events of your fucked up life, rolling with it, and now it's time to pay the piper. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth, like she's practiced for this. You smile and reach into your jacket as if you're not in the process of possibly making the biggest and most fucked up mistake of your life.
—
Here's how you would've done it right.
You would have woken up in Karkat's arms. You'd roll over so you could kiss each other, sweet and lazy, until someone took responsibility for starting the day. You would make breakfast together — he'd pour coffee into his favorite mug, and once the stove didn't need a constant eye, you would slip your arms around his waist and rest your head on his shoulder. He would grumble, "very cute," as he dumped sugar into his coffee (your bad influence) and stirred, but he wouldn't push you away. Even when you kissed his jaw. Even as you kissed his neck.
This is where the eggs would've burned, but this is your perfect proposal dream, so they don't. You would rescue them and slide them onto mismatched plates, and you would flop down on the sofa together. You'd steal bites from each other, as a joke, even though both of you would have more than enough to eat. You would both be warm, and full, and safe.
—
You wouldn't be 39, either. You don't know what age you'd be, but you wouldn't wait that long.
You could have talked to Jade. Your friendship would take a hit, but you're Dave and Jade, you would have recovered. Or maybe you wouldn't, but it'd be for the best. You're not right for each other, you're making each other worse people, and you don't know how to fix it.
You keep talking past each other, willfully sidestepping and misinterpreting your way through every conversation. You can't perform the mercy killing: I don't love you. You try resuscitation: I love you more than anything, babe — more than yesterday, less than tomorrow. Jade smiles and you can't believe she means it.
You hold hands. It makes you feel like shit. You make breakfast together. It makes you feel like shit. You have sex. It makes you feel like shit.
—
You skip the bachelor party. John buys your excuse. Jake is crushed. Everyone else can fuck off.
You still want company, though. You're too scared to ask Rose, so you hang with Roxy. You're too old to want a mom, but you could still use a friend.
There's not much to talk about. Luckily, adults are always good at trundling through the obvious. When the subject of your marriage comes up, her voice stays bright, but her eyes look dull. Tired. You stumble over each other in a rush to change the subject.
You wonder if Roxy ever had thoughts like yours. About gender, sexuality, people you were supposed to be. Did she ever ask Dirk for advice on love? You fall asleep with your head in her lap and her hand on your shoulder. You remember Dane Cook movies and dream about Karkat.
—
You and Karkat propose simultaneously. There's no one around, it's totally unplanned, and everything about it is perfect.
You're strolling along your favorite path, in your favorite local park, at your favorite hour of the day — coral pink, orange sherbet, purple-clouded sunset. With Karkat beside you and a bright future ahead, your existence feels so fucking vibrant that every part of you screams to do it now.
You untangle your fingers from Karkat's. He stops in confusion.
You reach into your jacket and pull out the ring you bought the day you became boyfriends.
Karkat sees you sink into a kneeling position and races you to the ground, banging his knee against the sidewalk. You laugh while he flips you the bird with one hand and fumbles for the jewelry box in his pocket with the other. Your soulmate is crying, practically blubbering, and your smile is so wide that it threatens to split your face in half. You ask him the question, and he shouts yes. He asks you the question, and you yell, "fuck yes, dude, absolutely yes." You barely get the answer out before he tackles you into the grass.
Karkat's face is a world of snot and tears. You hand him the tissues you knew he would need, and let him know he's the most beautiful boy on the planet, and then you repeat it when he swats at you and says you're full of shit. Karkat takes a picture with his phone. You take a slightly better one.
You lay there, crying and laughing, for what feels like an eternity. You go home and fuck each other's brains out. You don't tell anyone about the engagement for a few weeks; that's not really how the two of you operate. You want to keep that special, off-screen moment all to yourselves.
—
You help prepare wedding invitations. They're cute, you guess. You're late in sending them because you couldn't find a venue for your insurgency-themed wedding.
Jade's taken calligraphy lessons. You don't recognize her handwriting. You wanted to include an SBAHJ comic. She got upset with you for not taking the process seriously. Thus, envelope licking duty.
She hands you Karkat's invitation. You've never had such an overwhelming urge to tamper with something. But for what. Closure? Cauterization? An affair? You think that if you slam the coffin lid on the part of your life that was you and Karkat,
you won't know who you are anymore.
Jade waves her hand in front of your face. You have enough of a backlog that she probably doesn't know you just thought about cheating on her on your wedding night.
It doesn't matter in the end. Karkat doesn't show.
—
Your name is Dave Strider and you love your wife.