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Dave is pressed underneath your hips, your hands wrapped around his wrists and your face inches from his mouth, and he is still somehow managing to stare at you blankly through lopsided shades.
You are taking matters into your own hands. You have spent the better part of the last half perigree putting up with Dave's constant nagging for fights, his trailing you, his picking and mocking and staring, his constant attention, and you've had enough. You are going to force him to face you even if he likes it or not.
Which you think he probably doesn't, considering the hard look in the corners of his eyes and lips. You shift your weight so you are a bit more comfortable and you wait for him to say something. To confirm what you are pretty fucking sure is true already.
He doesn't talk. Instead he simply blinks up at you, slow and steady, and you stare right back.
"Can I help you, Karkles?" He arches a fine white eyebrow at you and you push his wrists down into the bed harder, huffing at him. He's a smug asshole even when you have him pinned under you like this. You had caught him off guard - not an easy feat, by a long shot - and you are currently trapping him to the top of his own bed. He is pretending to not notice that you are sitting on his stomach. It pisses you off, in a exasperated kind of way, that he is keeping up this front of innocence when you have figured him out so well.
He's far more transparent than he thinks he is and that irritates you. It's obvious that you had seen through him a long time ago yet he has been adamantly refusing to make any sort of move at all.
You are tired of waiting. Trolls are not known for their patience and you are probably the least patient out of the remaining bunch of you. So you are making a move for him. Because fuck if you don't want this, too.
"You know exactly what I'm doing here, Strider. Don't give me that ignorant coolkid bullshit." His eyes get almost imperceptibly wide and you notice the way his nostrils flare. You can tell you are starting to get to him and it sends a thrill through your spine.
"No idea what you're talking about, since last time I checked I didn't invite you to just bust in my room and sit on my chest. What the fuck do you want?" Despite his words, he's not trying to get free. You're taller and probably physically stronger than him, having hit your growth spurt as a maturing troll, but you know he would be able to put up a decent fight. The angle you're perched at on the bed would help with that, if he wanted to take advantage of it.
You don't think he does.
You know you're right, then, and instead of waiting for him to bullshit his way through another little coolkid tirade about god only knows what, you let go of his wrists, grab either side of his face, and crush your lips against his.
There is a brief moment where you think Lalonde was not the person to go to for advice ("Trust me, Karkat. You are going to have to make the first move. Might I suggest just 'going for it,' so to speak?") and you begin to mentally kick yourself for misjudging this, for misinterpreting his actions lately, and you think, well fuck.
Then he starts to kiss back. It's warm and soft and entirely different than you expected, a little awkward and inexperienced, but it's the greatest thing you've ever felt in your life. It's not your first kiss - you've kissed Gamzee and Terezi both, awkward, experimental, comforting things - but nothing has ever compared to this, the warmth that spreads through your stomach and chest, the feeling of his fingers ghosting on your forearms. You push your tongue against his lips carefully and he opens his mouth almost immediately, and you lose yourself in him, in the warmth and taste of his mouth and the feeling of him, solid and comforting, beneath you.
When you pull away you are both panting and he is looking at you with such open surprise and lust that you almost laugh at him and yell "see, I told you so, goddammit!" Instead, you release the sides of his face, pushing up his sunglasses so you can see his eyes better in the process. He aimlessly reaches back up to his face for them but you pull them out of his reach.
"You're a bulge-munching, nooksniffing idiot, Strider. I hope you know that. I hope you know that I am significantly stupider for putting up with your pathetic attempts at flushed flirting over the past half perigree." He raises an eyebrow at you and starts trying to push you off, clearly annoyed. You dig your knees into the mattress and anchor yourself with one hand.
"What the fuck are you talking about, jegus christ I swear you just spew nonsense for no reason sometimes," you cut him off with a hand on his mouth, rolling your eyes and snarling.
"Oh for god's sake shut up for once in your miserable life and stop avoiding the topic." You release his hand and he snaps at your fingers with his teeth. You dig your knee into his side a bit harder in response.
"What topic."
"Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? Jegus, Rose was being serious when she said you were the master of never fucking getting the point." You lean in closer to his face again and he tries to push his head back into the blankets, like he's going to disappear into them and ignore you.
He just stares at you.
"Oh my god why am I even trying," you lean back on his lap again, rubbing at the bridge of your nose and staring at him like he's grown a second head and might turn into a horrorterror at any moment.
You sigh. First course of action once this is over: introduce Dave to as many romcoms as possible in as little time as possible. If you are going to seriously entertain the idea of putting him in one of your quadrants, you are going to have to really work on the whole "I can't even tell when I'm flushed for someone" thing.
"I'm not blind. You're. Flushed. For. Me. And up to right now I thought I felt the same way but I'm starting to seriously wonder if I'm not just out of my thinkpan." You take a deep breath, wanting to simultaneously scratch out your own eyes and choke him to death. "Do I need to spell it out? Should I fucking rip out my own bloodpusher and draw little hideous, candy red hearts all over your stupid, moronic face until you understand what the fuck that means? Because at this point I'm wondering if I've completely lost my mind, what am I thinking, I can't honestly want to put you - mmfffph."
You are rudely interrupted by his mouth on yours once more and he is slowly dragging you back down to his level with his arms around your neck. When you break free you can feel the warmth in your face that lets you know you are visibly flushed. You try to shake it off, but you are suddenly aware of his position underneath you once more, and you find that you are unable to.
There is a moment of awkward, tense silence where you swear you can hear your bloodpusher threatening to explode out of you chest.
"Was it really that obvious?" You scoff, a clicking, snarling noise in the back of your throat.
"To anyone who isn't a wiggler and has an ounce of common sense, yes." You roll off of him and sit on the end of the bed, narrowing your eyes in his direction. "Are all humans this fucking terrible about flush flirting? You could have just said something at any moment instead of leaving me to tortuously wonder if the coolkid Dave Strider was just fucking with me to be a ginormous, insufferable asshole."
He just shrugs and you know it's not because he doesn't care but because he genuinely doesn't really know what to say. When you had talked with him on Trollian he had seemed like he had always had some kind of smart-ass comeback, something to infuriate you further.
You realized, in person, he is considerably less sure of himself sometimes. It makes you pity him even more, because you get that. He hides behind his indifference like you hide behind your anger.
"Don't think I'm gonna be all super-mushy boyfriends with you though," he says, sitting up next to you and smoothing his hair back down where it had fallen out of place. "I know how you're into that soppy romantic shit--" You cut him off, snarling.
"Oh please. You're the one who followed me around like a love-sick woofbeast for half a perigree." He punches you in the arm and glares at you, bright red eyes visible and gorgeous and fuck he is hot for a human.
"You could use some lessons from that 'soppy romantic shit,' however. New order: you are going to watch every fucking romcom we can get our hands on until you stop being such a wiggler about your quadrants."
"Oh fuck you."
"Not until after you watch them, I can't trust you to even do that right." He groans, snatching his sunglasses from where they were discarded on the bed and shoving them back on his face. He gets up and plops down at his computer, content to ignore you for now.
Past you is a moron for wanting to start a flushed (?) relationship for this idiot, but for once you actually can't say you care.