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Karkat woke up sprawled against the headboard of Dave's bed, his laptop heavy on his knees. He didn't even remember falling asleep, he'd been that tired. The new session was less than a week away, and the combination of nerves and late-night tactical meetings meant that everybody was running on a hefty sleep deficit.
Dave was slumped next to him, breathing deep and slow in his ear. Having Dave so close gave Karkat a powerful feeling that he was eternally trying not to examine. Even if he did resolve it one way or the other, it wouldn't mean anything to Dave anyway, so it didn't actually matter. What did matter was that it was the most intense he'd ever felt about anyone, a precipitous towering of fondness and ire and respect that had piled up over three years of growing up on a meteor together.
He let the laptop slide off his legs, which seemed to rouse Dave. Dave's eyes opened as Karkat turned to look at him in the half-gloom, and Karkat drank in the shock of red irises, the mess of his blonde hair.
"Sup," Dave rasped, swivelling to look at him. Their faces were awfully close together, heads resting next to each other on the headboard. Dave made no effort to put space between them, just gazed at him steadily, daring him to say something about it.
"Sup," Karkat replied, his heart hammering painfully in his chest. He didn't dare say another word, in case it broke the spell. He studied Dave's eyes instead, his dark brows, the purplish skin under his eyes that was normally hidden by his shades. How could he tell what Dave meant, what he wanted? His own feelings were not to be trusted. He'd been interested in Dave in at least three different ways for more than a sweep, overburdened with totally volatile emotions and unrealistic romance novel preconceptions. Dave was different: he was complex, guarded, insincere, weighed down by cultural norms that Karkat couldn't understand. He just watched Dave, and he didn't move a muscle.
Dave glanced unmistakeably at his mouth, his face taking on a serious expression. Karkat was seized by a wave of exhilaration so fierce it felt like pure anxiety. Oh, fuck, this was really happening. He utterly froze, some kind of autopilot taking over as Dave shifted towards him. His hands came to rest numbly on Dave's shoulders, and in a blur he was leaning forwards, touching his lips against Dave's.
His face burned, heart pounding in his ears. The intimacy of it was unbearable: the careful way Dave angled his head, the smush of his nose into Karkat's cheek, the pressure of his fingertips against his neck. The press of his lips, again and again, soft and overwhelmingly good.
He couldn't process that it was happening, that it was Dave. He raised his hands to cup his best friend's face, feeling the stubble he knew Dave shaved every day, noticing under his fingers the planes and contours he'd looked at a million times. Then Dave moved his tongue against Karkat's, and he lost his train of thought entirely.
A while later they parted, falling back against the headboard, flushed and breathless. "How long...?" Karkat asked.
"Is my penis? Damn, buy a guy dinner first." Karkat punched Dave fully in the shoulder. "To answer your question, I always liked you, really."
"No you fucking didn't," replied Karkat immediately. "At the beginning you hated me."
"I didn't hate you, Jesus. I was just being a dick because you were so easy to read. But I liked that about you, really. I tried to get under your skin because I liked your reaction." Dave was getting steadily pinker. "And I always... you know."
"No?"
"Found you attractive," Dave said to the ceiling.
"I don't believe you."
"I knew you wouldn't." He started fiddling with the cord of his pajama bottoms. "But obviously I had to think about things critically before I could acknowledge any of that. And then lately I've been thinking about how things were at the beginning, and how things are now, and how... important you are to me. And it all just clicked." Karkat knew that part of it was that they were approaching the end of their journey, too; it was kind of Dave to avoid the subject and spare them both the stab of dread.
"What about you?" Dave demanded, propping himself up on an elbow. "When did you know?"
Karkat thought about it. "Jesus, don't answer too quick," Dave prompted.
"Shut up. I've wanted you in a quadrant... quadrants... for two years." He fought back the embarrassment of saying quadrants, which to a troll would have been an admission of indiscriminate taste, indecision, weakness. But Dave was human. "Red for about a year."
"So this is red?" This was, unfortunately, the perfect question.
"It's... I haven't really been thinking about it." He amended, "I've been trying not to think about it."
"The thing is," he continued, even though Dave literally hadn't asked. "Even if it is red... I still have all those other feelings." Hearing himself say it, it was really bad, making his face burn with shame. It's what the joke character said in a romcom, the guy the audience laughed at hardest when he was culled. Karkat felt a chill down his spine.
"So... it's sort of everything?" Dave asked.
Karkat nodded, the most he could manage without the fear becoming overwhelming. "Can we..."
"Yeah, yeah." They'd gotten close to this topic on a couple of other occasions, when watching troll films - enough that Dave kind of had an idea. "So. Did you think I was hot when we first met?"
Karkat laughed, his adrenaline rush dissipating somewhat. "Well, remember, at the beginning all I knew was that you'd been talking to Terezi, although I didn't know the full story." Dave had told him, not all that long ago, about how Terezi had suddenly dropped contact with him.
"Oh, yeah. Wow, nostalgia."
"Yeah, right? So I was jealous of you because of that, and it didn't help that - I don't think this now - but at the time it seemed like you acted so cocky because you knew you were good-looking, or whatever."
Dave chuckled. "For the record, that never crossed my mind. Before now, that is. Man, I am gonna be insufferable from now on."
Karkat snorted. "But anyway, the more I got to know you the more I realised it wasn't really like that. And... you know the rest."
He looked at Dave, wondering if he wanted to kiss again. Dave shifted off his elbow, settling closer to him, and Karkat leaned into him, and it was a long while before they went back to sleep.