Chapter Text
> Dave: Be the city planner.
You are the best goddamn city planner, it is you. The Can Town skyline looks pretty damn respectable from here, with high-density residential areas, a business district, and a happening downtown where a guy could pick up a sweet little jar of spiced peaches at any one of a number of bars constructed out of cans of only the highest quality beer. Terezi has the government offices covered, and while her architectural style is pretty fucking bizarre, you have to admit that her creations all have a definite sense of gravitas. (Is that a word? It better be a goddamned word, because everything about the way Terezi does things makes you think of snappy pencilnecks with their fancy higher educations strifing with each other and getting their fucking Latin on, and damn if shit doesn't sound more real when you know how to say it in a foreign language.) Anyway, there's a definite stylistic divide between the things you designed and the things she did, like an invisible line that separates the part of the city where the cops actually arrest people for jaywalking from the parts where you could wake up in a bathtub full of ice if you're not careful. Or in this case, maybe bags of frozen peas.
The Mayor's been a pretty good sport, letting Terezi design his mayoral seat, but he made her tone it down a bit because apparently a mayor has to be down to earth and one with the people, so he can listen to their peasantly woes and shit. You are one hundred percent behind that sentiment, cool dudes like the Mayor don't have anything to do with the grandiose legislative buildings Terezi turns out, and he's definitely not arresting anyone for jaywalking. What you're less down with is that every time you put in another high-rise he requisitions more unclaimed land for his vast green checkerboard of farmland and fields, because (he says) there's no way you're going to feed all those people otherwise. You tried pointing out all the grocery stores you built, and that food does in fact in grow on trees, especially when you're living in an apartment building made out of soup cans, come on man, but he just shakes his head and goes off to use up all of your green chalk for the third time in as many days, man, he must be eating it or something. He's a cool dude, but he's a fucking weirdo, too. You guess that makes six of them; six weirdos and one awesome king of cool Dave Strider, on a meteor headed for who the fuck knows where. Could be a sitcom.
But you can't plan the city right now, because you're not currently building Can Town, just taking a moment to admire its brilliance. The cranes and cement-mixers and jackhammers and guys in bright orange jackets and whatever other shit you need to build a city are all gone back into their hidey-holes, and the citizens would be praising their awesome and sensitive mayor for finally turning off the goddamn constant roaring racket of urban expansion, except that he's not here either. You were building it earlier, but then the green chalk evaporated again and now it's just you and Terezi, propped up against the wall, surveying the domain of your joint awesomeness. Well, she's up against the wall, and maybe you're actually lying down with your head in her lap, but if any of the other jokers on this rock have a problem with that they can just suck it, and they're not here anyway. A year ago you'd have said it was just for the irony, and you'd probably still say that if someone else came in here right now, but fuck it, this thing with Terezi is the most unironically awesome thing ever, and anyone who can't tell irony from a hole in the wall doesn't even need to know that.
She always knows, though. She gets irony like Egbert never did, and she can always tell when something is actually ironic, and when you're just saying it is to fuck with people. You cannot fuck with Terezi, she is un-fuckable-with, she is just that good at rocking the Blind Seer shit. And speaking of, in spite of all her deadly seriousness, her gravitas, her unfuckableness, her sharp and pointy dangerousness, she is actually pretty chill. Any other blind kid, you put them down in a sadistic as fuck video game that gives them the title Seer, like "ha ha, you schmuck, let's see you try to be a goddamn Seer when you can't even fucking see, lololol", and they'd probably flip their shit faster than Vantas, which has got to put them in line for the motherfucking shit-flipping Olympics. But Terezi has got this the fuck down; maybe she can't see your face, but she can smell enough stuff that it doesn't even matter, and she can see right into the depths of your fucking soul. And even though she knows everything there is to know about you, she still thinks you are the fucking shit, and if that isn't deserving of some unironic love, you don't know what is.
"What are you thinking about, coolkid?" she asks, because she's got to hide her secret identity as an all-knowing fucking superhero at least some of the time.
"Just how uncomfortable your bony-ass legs are," you tell her. "I don't know why you even had to use your cane to stab things in your session when you could have just stuck your damn knees into them for the same effect." It's a lie, but she knows it; she is pretty bony, but you got over that ages ago. Rose would just get exasperated with you for not being serious, but Terezi can appreciate your words for their own sake, and fuck the meaning or lack thereof; the banter is the backbeat of your existence, and using language solely for the pedestrian task of communication is for lesser beings who don't already know each other inside and out.
She cackles. "I know you love every one of my sharp corners, Dave! I'll have you know that I have been seducing coolkids with jabs of my exquisitely pointed elbows since before your universe existed. Nine out of ten incredibly cool dudes only wish they could experience my accute angles in person!"
"Nine out of ten incredibly cool dudes are not even on this meteor," you point out, "and the only dude I see approaching your spiny embrace is pretty much the polar opposite of cool." For the past weeks she's been talking pretty much non-stop about him. Apparently, after just one awesome bout of collaborative shitty penis art followed by a smackdown involving entirely too much cape molestation, he actually figured out that if he wanted to have some kind of real, in-person relationship with Terezi he was going to have to fucking, get this, talk to Terezi, like in person and everything. Not that you mind; she's clearly not abandoning you for him, because of this wacky polyamory shit trolls have going on, so whatever, and hearing second-hand about his continuous social fuckups, his inability to communicate with words while simultaneously lacking any kind of poker face, and his constant need to be a high-strung douchenozzle is the best way to enjoy the utter hilarity that is Karkat Vantas without having to experience the sympathetic rising blood pressure and uncomfortably personal feelings of rage that come from actually being in his presence.
"He is not that bad," she objects. "I think he's finally starting to get it now! Perhaps Gamzee has degrumpified him a bit, but while he'll certainly never achieve Strider-levels of cool, he has definitely made progress. I have not heard him whine about something he cannot do anything about in several days now, and yesterday he even did something that might even be construed as romantic." She grins down at you, flashing razor-sharp teeth from ear to ear. "Are you ready to hear about it and pass your extremely estimable judgement?"
"Nah." For some reason, talking shit about Vantas isn't actually a thing you want to do anymore. You probably owe it to her, since she always listens to you bitch about how John isn't here and no one on this hunk of space debris really comes close to approximating your best fucking friend (no offense meant to present company, and apparently none taken), but you really can't get behind it right now. Somehow the idea of that shouty asshole doing anything sweet and romantic is harshing your cool like it's never been harshed before, just turning your stomach in ways that aren't hilarious at all, and you don't even know why. You sit up and reach for a pile of discarded cans. "Let's add some more wings to your crazy-ass courthouse instead."
She doesn't move to help you. "We were doing that before! Right now I'd rather just talk. What's gotten into you all of a sudden?" You can feel the worry in her voice like a sour note, a beat hit just a moment too late. "You can always talk to me too, you know."
Shit. When she starts telling you things you already know, it means she's about to pull out her big guns and try to pry your issues out from under your protective layers. It's almost always worth it, but suddenly it's not something you're ok with anymore. You feel weirdly claustrophobic, even though you're in a big open room and it's only the two of you here.
"I know. I think I just need to clear my head a bit, is all. You mind if I go take a walk for a while? We can talk later, I promise." You reach down for her hand and give her your best everything-is-cool smile. She doesn't look convinced, but of course she wouldn't be.
"I'll hold you to that." She points her glasses up at yours, and that still has the same effect even when you know she doesn't use her eyes to see. "You take care of yourself, coolkid."
You nod and head off, leaving Can Town, and Terezi, and thoughts of nubby-horned assholes behind you.