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Your name is John Egbert, and you are going to be giving two lucky people their first tastes of eggnog. Those two people are your girlfriend, Roxy Lalonde, and your moirail, Karkat Vantas.
(Sure, your new planet in your new universe is pretty much just a restored Earth, but it would be so culturally insensitive to deny your alien buddies their weird quadrant shit! And you guess you’re willing to learn this whole moirallegiance thing. It’s worth a try, right?)
“So like, this ain’t the kind with booze in it, right?” Roxy asks, sniffing her glass suspiciously. “You know I’m not touchin’ the stuff ever again.”
You gasp. “Roxy, we’re too young to buy alcohol! I mean, I guess Rose’s mom would have some, but she is basically an alternate you, and that is really weird to think about, and besides, she’s probably busy kissing my dad anyway.”
She stares. So does Karkat. You feel like kind of an idiot.
“But no, it’s not the alcoholic kind. You know I wouldn’t do that to you, sheesh! No, this is just pure kid-friendly tastiness. Go on, try a sip!” You grin, showing off your gappy bucktoothed smile and wondering why becoming a demigod didn’t fix your horrible teeth. Or your eyesight, for that matter.
“It looks like molten grub fat,” Karkat grumbles.
“...Is that some kind of troll delicacy I should know about?”
“It’s sort of like your human caviar. Expensive and disgusting as fuck. Feferi tried to share some with me once and I just about puked all over her goddamn skirt--”
“Karkaaaaat,” Roxy groans, “you’re bein’ gross!”
You roll your eyes. “Just drink it already!”
Roxy’s the adventurous one, taking a swig before you even finish your sentence. The pale yellow-white of the eggnog matches her platinum-blonde hair, making her eggnog mustache look almost natural, and you stifle a giggle.
Her eyes widen.
“Johnny.”
“Yeah?”
“This is too fuckin’ delish to be legal.” She downs the rest of the glass--and it’s a pretty big glass--in a single gulp, wiping her ‘stache away with the sleeve of the ironically shitty sweater Rose knitted for her. “Ey, Kitkat--”
“You know I hate when you call me that!”
“Whatevs, drink some!” She smiles broadly, raising her now-empty glass. “Drink! Drink! Drink!” she chants, and it’s not long before you join in, leading Karkat to groan and mutter something about how you’re such an awful moirail or whatever and how he hates eggnog for existing and looking so much like troll caviar or whatever--
And then he slowly, but inexorably, lifts the glass to his lips. He doesn’t even let it hit his lips, instead barely flicking out his tongue to taste it.
God, trolls are fucking weird.
There’s a long, pregnant pause, before he begins gulping the eggnog down as though it were a matter of life or death.
You glance at Roxy, who seems just as nonplussed as you by the whole scene, and then resume staring at Karkat, presumably with a bemused expression on your face. He finishes the glass, gasping for air, and turns to you with a look of pure fury.
“This shit, Egbert. This fucking shit.”
“What, you don’t like it? Because if you didn’t like it, you didn’t have to fi--”
“Didn’t like it? I fucking LOVED it, Egbert! This is the most fantastically delicious glop I’ve ever tasted, and you’re telling me you can’t even buy it for most of the year? That’s fucking bullshit!”
“Well, I mean, it is associated with Christmas! If you could drink it all the time, it wouldn’t be special, right?” It’s a flimsy excuse and you know it, and lord knows you’d love to be able to buy eggnog all year long, but an angry Karkat--a genuinely angry Karkat, rather--is a Karkat you’d rather not have to deal with. Best to defuse the situation, right?
“Plus,” Roxy chimes in, “this shit’s rich as balls. Somethin’ tells me you’d get fatter than the world’s biggest whale if you drank it every day.” She shakes her head. “I’ma just completely avoid finding out the calorie count for this, it’s probs better to not know.”
Granted, you’re pretty sure Roxy could eat a billion calories a day and not gain a pound--seriously, you’ve seen that girl devour an entire cake in a single sitting, and she’s still skinny as all get out--but she does raise a fair point. Eggnog is about as far from health food as you can get in general, really.
“I don’t care!” Karkat explodes. “This is too amazing to only be available for a single month, what the fuck, your society is so goddamn awful!” All you can think is shit, this is gonna be ugly, so you do what Karkat’s romcoms say to do: you pap him on the face, shooshing him all the while.
He relaxes instantly, and you smile. Maybe you’re not really such a bad moirail after all.