Chapter Text
Cream walls and dark oak flooring greet you as you haul several large boxes into what will eventually become your new place of residence. It's blaringly empty, the wide space and open floor plan devoid of life or personality. But you know it won't stay like that for long if your live-in partner has anything to say about it. You're sure it will take no time at all before empty chip bags are littered across the kitchen island, and discarded socks are found wedged between furniture.
For a moment, you allow yourself to survey the block, imagining its seemingly limitless potential. It's a new chapter of your life, marking the beginning of a journey into the great unknown. There's a lightness in your chest, a surreal sensation as you take in your surroundings. You can't quite believe you're really here. Months of planning, hive hunting, packing your stuff, signing the paperwork, scheduling the move… All of that has led up to this. Yet this feels more like a fever dream than anything else that came before.
Some part of you is terrified that it is. Some pessimistic side that can't ever fully accept that you deserve the happiness and contentment that comes your way, always finding faults and nonexistent clauses within it. You feel like you're about to wake up any second and realize that this is a construct of your making, a fantasy.
He chose you. He chose you. You're still grappling with that concept, even though he's been constantly reminding you of it for the past few perigees.
"You wanna take out your phone and snap a picture of that blank wall so you can stare at it longer?" A voice from behind calls, a teasing lilt to the way he says the sentence. "You do remember we're going to be painting over it, right? You're the one that insisted you didn't want to live in a home with 'bland as fuck wafer-coloured walls,' if I remember correctly. Or have you changed your mind again on how you wanna decorate the house?"
The devil speaks. Or however that human phrase goes that his hatchmate is so fond of.
You turn around and there stands the insufferable idiot you've come to be so fond of over the sweeps. Also known as your boyfriend… And soon to be domestic partner for the foreseeable future.
Dave sets his stack of boxes down on top of the larger box you just managed to fit in through the front door, the sleeves of his long-sleeved sweater rolled up to his elbows. Coincidentally, it's the same colour as the walls of your new hive. While it complements his fair skin and platinum blonde hair, you still think it's a way too boring colour for your walls.
"And I thought you said interior decorating is a hobby exclusive to 'stay-at-home moms with a fully stocked wine cabinet and singles in their late twenties who swear by DIY lifehacks like it was a religion?' So you pawned all the responsibility of decorating our hive onto me? If you don't like it, then boo-fucking-hoo, Strider. You missed your chance for your opinion to matter. Cry about it to someone who cares."
He places a hand on either side of your shoulders, the anxious twist of your mouth and your crossed arms reflecting off the surface of his aviators. "Chillax, Kitkat. You didn't need to hit back with verbal boxing gloves on. I trust your interior decorating skills. I'm just saying… We've got a hell of a lot of shit to get done before we can slot 'stare in wistful existential wonder at a wall in our new house' into our packed schedule. We can even have a feelings jam about it on a pile later, but can we save it for after we've moved in all of our stuff?"
"You say that as if you slept just fine the night before the move," you quip, but most of the bite behind your words has been dulled. Maybe you were a little too intense with your reply. This move is stirring all sorts of things inside you that you aren't fully prepared to deal with. "I distinctly remember listening to your own long-winded existential soliloquy until two in the morning, Dave. I let you take drowsy cold meds just to get you to go the fuck to sleep."
"And I'm super fuckin' thankful for that, man. Which is why I'm promising you now to return the favour later ." His smile is soft around the edges, the one you know is reserved solely for you. The one that makes you want to melt into his touch when he places a hand on your cheek.
You meet his gaze, a single second that seems to stretch on forever between the two of you. Then, quick as a blink of an eye, he leans down and places a feather-light peck on your cheek. When he pulls away, he's flushed and grinning, the happiest you've ever seen him. Ever.
Affection has always been a thing the two of you skirted around for a very long time. Even after the two of you officially got together, neither of you has been very affectionate with one another, both in public and in private. Primarily because the sweeps of repression and yearning that's been hardwired into the both of you have been harder to break down than you expected.
Always standing at the precipice of giving in takes its toll, in more ways than one. He's learned to pull away from you if anyone so much as even glances in your vague direction at a public space, and you've learned to suffocate your own feelings whenever it rises above what you deem is "normal for an unlabelled platonic friendship." They're habits both of you have formed for the sake of the life you once lived. For the friendships you've both built, friendships too precious to lose, both with each other… And with those around you. Undoing those habits doesn't just happen in one day.
It's been happening every day, for the past six perigees.
It's retraining your think pan to realize that "yes, this is allowed, and yes, this is in fact very much wanted by the both of you" every time you glance at him and feel an urge to reach out and hold his hand for absolutely no reason other than to hold his gogdamn hand. It's learning a whole new language you're both making up as you go, discovering your individual limits for this sort of thing, and slowly broadening your previously very small area of comfort alongside one another. It's work, constantly making the same choice to be with one another, over and over and over and over again. Because you care. Because you can't imagine doing it with anyone else.
Even now, despite mutually deciding to move in together into a space just for the two of you, a peck on the cheek is a bolder declaration of affection than the former, coming from Dave. You've lived together for most of your lives at this point, starting all the way back in the meteor. But you only recently started holding hands, cuddling on the couch, kissing, in a romantic context.
Sometimes, it feels as though you skipped ahead a few steps. The normal milestones of your relationship have been flipped. You know exactly how he likes his coffee in the morning, but mustering up the courage to rest your head on his shoulder is like you point blank asking him to sleep with you in the middle of a busy street. Yet… It feels right. Neither you nor Dave are conventional, by your respective race's standards. It feels appropriate your relationship isn't conventional either. All that matters is that it works for the two of you.
"C'mon. We've still got a truck full of shit to unload. Help me carry them inside." With that, he leaves your side, disappearing behind the door to do what he just said. Some of it is new, and some of it is as old as your friendship with him. That'll be interesting to unpack in the coming days.
You look back towards the empty block one last time. An indescribable feeling swells inside your chest every time you look at it. It fills every corner and crevice within your thoracic cavity, so much so that it's almost painful. But it's a welcome pain. Because for the first time in may what be the entire length of your eleven and a half sweeps of existence… You feel alive.
You're ready. He's ready.
It's time to start living for yourselves for once. After everything you have been through… You can believe him when he says the two of you deserve this.
The two of you deserve a soft epilogue.
* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚
You push in the last box from the car, brushing away the sweat on your brow with the back of your wrist. The burgundy hoodie you've been wearing is tied around your waist, having taken it off now that the sun is shining high and hot in the sky. Spring mornings are chilly, but temperatures can rise pretty high when the sun is out on a cloudless day like this.
"Is that everything?" You ask, looking around the once empty block now filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes stacked on top of one another. Some are clearly marked in sharpie, some are a mystery waiting to be uncovered. You know the unlabelled ones are Dave's doing, based on how he packed up his shit weeks prior. That's why you took it upon yourself to be in charge of packing up the more delicate valuables you both owned.
"For today, yeah. The bigger furniture will be coming in tomorrow with the U-haul," Dave replies, already cutting into one of the bigger boxes with a pair of scissors. He's wrapped a dark blue bandana around his head to keep his blond bangs from getting in the way of his vision.
"Tomorrow? What about the bed?? Or the recuperacoon???" You question as you approach him, hands on your hips. "Where the fuck are we supposed to sleep tonight, Dave?!"
"The bed we ordered from Ikea is in a box somewhere around here. Same with the pillows and mattress. We'll need to build it ourselves." He gestures vaguely around the cluttered space. "And the recuperacoon is coming in with the U-Haul tomorrow. You can't exactly fold that into a box." He then pauses his task just long enough to glance at you. "You're being intense about all of this."
It's not a question. It's an observation he's stating as an irrevocable fact. As if you don't get a say on whether or not it's true.
He's right, of course. But that doesn't stop you from disagreeing anyway.
"I'm fine," you say in what you hope is a firm tone of voice. "What are you unpacking?" You deflect afterwards, kneeling down on the dark oak floors beside him. Your nerves are already beginning to fry, which isn't a good sign since this whole moving business has only just begun.
He stares at you, assessing. Then, when he finds whatever answer he's looking for, he turns back to unboxing and casually responds, "The dining set."
You narrow your lookstubs at him. "Shouldn't we be prioritizing the bed? So we don't have to resort to sleeping on the floor tonight?"
"We could," Dave says absently, digging further into the piles of bubble wrap contained within the box. He pops a few of them, getting sidetracked. Your sustained scowling makes him set it aside and start pulling the furniture pieces out. "But I already opened this box. And I don't know which box has the bed inside it. Rose and Kanaya should be coming around to bring us lunch pretty soon too. It'd be nice to have a place to properly sit down and eat at."
"Do you even know where the equipment to build this shit is at?" You query, crossing your arms over your chest.
He shrugs. "There should be an emergency tool kit in the car. Then we can just look for whatever else we need when we need it. That way, when we do decide to build the bed frame, we'll already have everything we need. Plus some practice with furniture assembly. It'll go faster that way."
You purse your lips to show your disapproval. But you know building the dining set would go a lot quicker if you helped out, which means you could move on to making the bed next before sleeping on the floor becomes a necessity. And since you've already expressed your opinion on this being a poor choice of how you spend your first day of moving in together, you also know he'll commit to doing it just to be an absolute pain in the ass to you.
In this situation, you don't really have a choice, do you?
With an exaggerated roll of your lookstubs, you cave in, digging into the same box in search of a manual. "Fine. Fine! We'll do the damned dining set first, but the next thing we do is build the bed. Go grab the tool kit from the car and I'll unpack everything inside this infernal box set."
"You got it, Shouty Mcbossman. My whole body is yours to command." Dave gives you a mock salute and you take a swing at his shins as he's standing up. Expecting your assault, he quickly dodges out of the way, only to end up stubbing his toe on one of the other boxes lying nearby, hopping on one foot out the door in agony. You don't try to hide your triumphant smirk.
For the next hour and a half, the two of you attempt to build a singular dining chair. You read the manual while Dave does the actual construction part under your guidance. Although, in reality, it's more like you try to read the manual, while Dave tries to do the construction part, ignoring half of the advice you try to give him.
The two of you take so fucking long on what the manual states should only take thirty minutes of assembly that the ring of the doorbell has you startling so much you almost undo a full hour and a half of work, which is just two chair legs screwed into the chair seat in what you think is the right angle.
"I'll get it," you tell him, mostly because trying to decipher the lines on the page you were reading was starting to give you a migraine.
Opening the door reveals two of your closest friends these past few sweeps: Rose and Kanaya. Rose swears a floral printed shirt tucked neatly into a pair of white washed jeans- the pant legs rolled around the ankles- paired with suspiciously clean white runners. Her short blonde hair has been tied back in a low ponytail behind her head. Kanaya wears a loose white button-down with a bold scarlet red pleated skirt that reaches down to her mid-calf, the outfit completed by black short-heeled sandals and minimalist gold jewelry. In Kanaya's hand is a crinkly paper bag, the aromatic scent of spices wafting off of it.
She holds it up for you with a shining smile, incisors glinting in the sunlight. "We brought lunch for the hardworking couple."
"We're- uh. We're still trying to get the dining table and chairs set up," you half-stammer, stepping aside to let them in. It's still somewhat jarring to hear others refer to you and Dave as a "couple" so nonchalantly. You spent a sizable chunk of your life as each other's best bro that even now, almost six perigees since you made it official and announced it to your friends, you're still adjusting to the label.
Most of your friends took it well. Jane and Jake were cool about it, treating it as if it wasn't that big of a revelation. Rose and Dirk were smug for weeks as if they had been expecting the outcome from the very beginning. Kanaya gifted you a bottle of wine to celebrate the occasion, and Terezi gifted you with… An overnight reservation at a fancy hotel, encouraging you to get laid. Dave refused to cancel and get a refund to return to Terezi. The Mayor gave you a heartfelt congratulatory card, the art reminiscent of all the can town doodles you drew back in the meteor. John, Roxy, and Calliope wanted to throw a big party for the two of you, but both you and Dave gave a hard pass on the offer. Jade…
Well, as you said. Most of your friends took it well. Keyword: most.
"Wait, they're here already? What time is it?" Dave scrambles to stand up from his place, abandoning his futile attempts at blindly slotting the pieces of wood together like pieces of a puzzle.
Rose raises a skeptical brow. "Shouldn't you know that already?"
"Just because I'm a Knight of Time, doesn't mean I inherently know the time of day all of the goddamn time, Rose. I'm not a walking clock in a Sunday morning kids' cartoon," Dave counters, and the two share a brief standoff. Even with his shades on, you've known Dave long enough to know that he's glaring at his hatchmate behind them.
"It's a quarter past one in the afternoon," Kanaya provides, setting the paper bag down on a box nearby where you and Dave had been trying to assemble the dining chair. "We ran a little late because the drive-through line at the restaurant was unjustifiably long, and the traffic to get here was abysmal. Rose didn't exactly help matters either…"
Her wife's attention is pulled away from your blond-haired idiot of a partner, turning instead towards the Jade blood. "I'm dreadfully sorry, dear, but I'm not as fast at applying my eyeliner as you are," Rose coos sweetly, but Kanaya doesn't seem to be appeased by the flattery.
You share a look with Dave.
The two of you converge around the paper bag, with Rose following close behind. Rose sits on the floor with her legs tucked primly under her, hands on her lap. Dave sits with one leg up, the other tucked beneath it, both palms resting on the floor to support his weight. You sit cross-legged and hunched, a hand on your cheek as you watch Kanaya hand each of you a sandwich wrapped in paper foil.
"How long have the two of you been working on getting the dining set built?" Rose asks conversationally, unwrapping her food.
"We've been working on it for close to two hours now, and that's just the first fucking chair," you answer, earning a pointed glance from Dave.
Rose smiles, serene and deceptively cheerful. "Do you two want some help around here?"
"Thanks, but no thanks. We're doing just fine on our own," Dave says curtly before taking a bite out of his lunch.
It's always been like this between them. A game of mental chess that's about as subtle as a brick being thrown through an annoying neighbour's window. The banter, the snide remarks, the snappy comebacks. The near constant need to one-up the other in every brief interaction… It's a bit much, now that you've all aged up somewhat and are supposed to be functional mature adults. Their showdowns tend to lean more towards petty than playful these days.
"We'd love to help out if you need it. We've assembled quite a number of furniture in our own home and I'd like to think we've become quite proficient at it," Kanaya offers.
It's a well-meaning offer, but…
Kanaya has always had a maternal-like instinct towards those she cares about. That aspect of her only intensified tenfold when she successfully hatched the matriorb sometime in the distant past and committed herself and Rose to raising up grubs and giving them away to good homes upon flashing forward to the future.
Kanaya has always been a dear friend to you, a great source of support and advice from the very beginning. You'd take a bullet for her with no hesitation if it came down to it. But her tendency to meddle and intervene in things you confide in her about, much like a custodian might, can sometimes be… Overbearing. You're not a hapless six and a half sweeps old idiot anymore, but when she tries to solve your problems for you, it can sometimes feel as if you still are. As if you didn't already feel like a dumb grub unprepared for a life of relative peace and quiet on a near daily basis.
You swallow down your bite of sustenance before answering. "Like Dave said. We're fine. We're perfectly capable of handling this moving thing on our own."
The veteran married couple across from you pointedly looks around at what little progress has been made inside the house since you arrived at ten in the morning today. Then, they turn to one another, a knowing glint in their eyes.
"If you say so. We'll simply bring your meals at the appointed time in the coming days while you get everything set up in here," Rose concedes, yet it feels as if it's anything but that.
"But don't hesitate to call us if you run out of time today! I can tell you from experience that setting up a decent sleeping space before the first day is done is paramount if you don't want to go through the trouble of driving out to a hotel just for a place to rest," Kanaya adds, patting your shoulder. You fight the urge to grimace even further. "Sleeping on the floor is not pleasant."
Well. Fuck. Now getting this shit set up in a timely manner is a matter of pride. To prove to your friends that you can get through something as simple as this together. To prove to yourselves that you can. Your new beginning will be off to a great start if you manage to pull it off.
Once you've had lunch and thrown the sandwich wrappers and paper bag in the right trash bin, you and Dave bid your friends goodbye. Then, after you've ushered your guests past the threshold and closed the door to their retreating forms, it was back to the pain and agony of building the godforsaken dining chair.
You spend another hour, giving it your best fucking shot.
It does not end well.
"We should just call Roxy. She's weirdly good at this shit," you suggest, eyeing your handiwork critically.
At a distance, the chair looks passable. But you've tested it. It rocks and wobbles, and you fear it'll fall apart if you so much as twitch the wrong way while you're seated on top of it.
While you continue to stare at it as if you're staring at the gaping maw of an abyss, Dave is flipping through the manual nearby. You traded roles after the two of you had a little spat over how you were overdramatizing the difficulty of reading the wretched pages upon pages of useless instructions.
"C'mon, Kitkat. Do you have that little faith in us and our ability to overcome one some assembly required Ikea furniture?" Dave picks up a screwdriver and begins to make adjustments to the structure. "We can do this- here, can you hold onto this while I adjust one of the legs?"
Another hour passes. It's three in the fucking afternoon.
After making countless adjustments, tightening this screw and that bolt, and straightening a wooden piece on the back, the end result is much sturdier than the one before. Dave sits before you on top of it, arms crossed and utterly smug about the work he's put in. You refused to test it after he almost tipped you on your back as a prank in the previous tests you've done.
"See? It's fine. I told you it's fine. When have I ever lied to you?"
"Do you really want a carefully crafted itemized list of every instance I can remember of you lying to my face?" You deadpan, crossing your own arms across your chest. "It's three P.M., dipshit. We're astronomically behind schedule because of this one fucking piece of furniture. Was it worth it? Are you proud enough of your creation to justify the disproportionate amount of time we wasted on it, Strider? Do you want to get a gold star for every fucking minute we burned on a massively unproductive project?"
He stares at you stoically for longer than you're comfortable with. Then, in one fluid motion practiced to perfection, he flips his shades up onto his head. "Alright, later has arrived. We're going to hash this shit out now because that's the second time you've called me by my last name, and that doesn't happen unless you're incredibly angry with me for good reason or incredibly stressed and have chosen me as your target to take your frustrations out. Spill. Tell me what's bothering you."
An immediate insult comes to mind, but you swallow it down alongside your growing restless energy. You avert your ganderbulbs instead.
Why are you suddenly like this?
"We don't have time for this, Dave. Like you said at the start, we've got so much other crap to deal with. We can talk about this when it actually gets done because gog knows no one else is going to do it," you say, reiterating what he told you when you were moving boxes in. "I'm going to the respiteblock to get started on the bed. Like we should have been doing this entire time."
With that, you turn on your heel to start making your way there when a hand snaps out to grab you by your wrist.
"What are you-" you protest, but it's immediately cut off when he tugs you into him, sending you tumbling down onto his lap before you can even put up a fight. "Dave! I swear I'm going to fucking cull you-"
"Nope. I'm not picking up that horse shit sized dog shit excuse you just drop deuced in the middle of my immaculate feelings jam proposal. We're not leaving this chair until you talk to me properly about it dude," he tells you, arms wrestling to keep you seated on his lap while you struggle to get out of it.
"Fuck off, Dave! I'm not fucking joking, I will smother you to death in your sleep tonight if you don't let me go this fucking instant, you inveterate ass-munching bottom barkbeast bit-"
All your careless flailing about causes the chair to tip dangerously backwards, but it's already too late to stop when you realize gravity is pulling you towards it until-
The impact you only had precious few seconds to brace yourself for never comes.
When you open your lookstubs, you find yourself horizontal, but not on the floor as you had anticipated. Instead, you're hovering inches from the hardwood floor, Dave's body a steady platform floating in mid-air, stopping your previously unstoppable momentum downwards.
His shades have been pushed off his head, likely to be found somewhere on the floor. But that's not what matters.
What matters is that your face is a hair's breadth away from his, so close you could almost see your reflection in his pupils, much like how you would when he's got his shades on.
You stop breathing.
"Are you okay?" He asks, concern the only thing to be found on his face.
He always puts you first.
Guilt guts you stomach to throat like a fish at a wet market. Yet, you don't reply, scrambling to stand up instead. You're acutely aware of the flame lighting your entire visage on fire.
"Karkat-" Dave's voice runs after you, but you don't let it reach you.
"I'm fine." When it comes out harsher than you expected, when you see the way his brows knit ever so slightly closer to each other, you add, in what you hope is a gentler tone, "Let's… Let's just get this over with. We've got one chair made, we need five more. Plus the table."
To your surprise, he lets you go. You're not sure if you're relieved… Or something else.
For the rest of the afternoon, all the way until early evening, you work on building the dining set in silence. Once you're more aware of how to assemble the chair, the five others go by slightly faster than the first one. The table takes a bit longer, mostly because of its size, but after so much practice, it goes by quicker than if you had tackled it first with zero experience as you did with the chair.
You don't talk about it. He doesn't talk about it. You finish the project before long.
By six, you unpack the box of cutlery and plates to reheat and eat the remnants of your lunch for dinner. And since the box is already open… After you've eaten dinner in a similar disquiet silence, you decide to put away the rest of the plates and cutlery into the cabinets in your meal block.
You're not going to finish setting up the bed at this hour, so what's the fucking point anymore?
You elect to isolate yourself on one side of the meal block, moving stacks of plates into a cabinet above the dishwasher, while Dave is on the other side, moving your pots and pans into a bottom cabinet beside the stove.
The action is monotonous. It requires little mental engagement from you. So, you find your thoughts drifting away from you as you take the plates out of the box, slot them into the stack you're assembling inside the cabinet, and bend down again to grab another one.
You're well aware you've kind of been an asshole all day. Or maybe not just kind of. But you had a good reason! You want to do this right. You had a plan for what shit needed to be done first, how much time it would realistically take, and what tasks should and shouldn't be a priority. You had a mental checklist for this shit. You wanted to do this right. You wanted to start this new chapter off right. For the both of you. It's important to you that this move goes well.
So then, if this was all meant for the two of you, and it's that important to you, why the fuck are you going out of your way to be a dick about it to him?
The voice that's endlessly critical of everything you do interrogates. You mentally cringe, because it's kind of a valid question. Kind of. It's the question you've been avoiding thinking about all day, with some modicum of success. But now, the stray thought has landed on the stinging truth you've been running away from. The anxiety that's been clawing at the edges of your consciousness, the shadow following your sunny spring day.
Why are you suddenly like this? Why are you going out of your way to ruin it for yourself?
Your hand slips.
See, the thing about handling delicate packages such as glassware is… It still requires some awareness from the handler so it doesn't fall and shatter into a million pieces on the floor.
Which is where you find yourself now, turning away with raised hands as the plate that was once in your steady grip clatters to the floor in a hail of sharp glass. The loud screech it makes upon impact has Dave snapping his head your way. You dimly hear your name being called.
But you're stuck on that one thought... Because that's the answer to all of this, isn't it?
You're too happy. Everything about your life has been a dream come true. Dave chose you, he keeps choosing you, and you know he'll keep choosing you in the future. He said so. He says so. You've been silently pining for a decade, and now, you're finally, finally together. You're happy. You're happy. This should be your happily ever after, right? Your romcom ending where the two leads get together and everything else falls into place as they were supposed to?
Why are you going out of your way to ruin it for yourself?
Because you are.
Because he might not keep choosing you in the future. Because this move could be the biggest mistake of your life yet- you haven't lived together where it's just been the two of you. Because you're afraid of becoming boring to him. Because you're afraid he'll find you too bothersome without the buffer of someone else here. Because you're afraid of losing him after everything you've both been through. Because he makes you so damn happy and that terrifies the absolute fuck out of you.
You're going to mess up. You're going to fuck it up. You know it. So why delay the inevitable? Why not mess up now? Why not fuck it up now? Save yourself from future heartbreak and wasted time. It's going to happen, it's going to happen, it's-
You stare down at your hands. Red. A short shallow cut on the palm of your hand. A bubble of red blooms along the straight line, bright and condemning.
Your breaths begin to come in quicker. Your fingers shake, your bloodpusher drums, your think pan numbs. You need to… You need to… You need to hide. To run away. Before it's too late, before- before- before-
But before you can scramble to wipe away the blood, to find something to stem the bleeding before someone sees, your hand is yanked forwards. Your ganderbulbs travel up the arm holding your wrist to Dave, pale lashes downcast as he dabs your palm with a white cloth, a bandaid between his blunt teeth. He didn't bother putting his shades back on after it fell off some time ago, tucked into the hem of his sweater instead.
Reflexively, your hammering bloodpusher slows, the imminent panic attack subdued by his mere presence. His touch is soft against your skin, careful and caring as he unwraps the bandaid and presses it into your cut, smoothing it out with his thumb. Then, seamlessly, he cups your face, searching you for any other injuries while his fingers tap a slow beat just below your ears to further soothe your shot senses.
You can't imagine life without him as a moirail. You can't imagine anyone else replacing him.
"I don't want to lose you."
Dave's surprised expression would lead you to believe you said that out loud when you hadn't intended to. You swallow down the lump forming in your throat.
"I'm… Scared of losing you. I didn't want to admit it. But I am. With this move… And with everything happening so fast, it only really just sunk in how big of a deal this is now that we're here, and we're moving all of our old and new shit into a new place, into our place, and I just… I wanted to do this right. I wanted to do this right because you're so fucking important to me, Dave. But I'm scared. We haven't lived alone with just the two of us before- first, it was living in the meteor. But Rose was there, and so was Kanaya, and Terezi, and Vriska, and everyone else, and then- and then when we got here, we moved in with Jade and she was our roommate for even longer than the people we had in the meteor, but now-"
You stop, feeling your throat constrict and hearing your voice crack pathetically. "I'm scared you'll get sick of me. Of my shitty habits and my defensive coping mechanisms, and my self-sabotaging tendencies, like blowing petty shit out of proportion instead of talking about it because- because… I'm scared you'll get sick of that too. Of hearing me go on and on about my insecurities, my stupid fears and insignificant worries, for another five fucking sweeps."
Dave stares at you, red eyes unflinching, unreadable, silent. Then… He walks away.
It's like getting sucker punched in the gut. You stare at the floor, ganderbulbs stinging with tears you vehemently refuse to shed. His receding footfalls echo on the floor, and you swear you could identify him blind purely by the way his steps sound.
You fucked it up. Good fucking job, you insufferably abhorrent dumbass. This is what you wanted, right? It's just like you to make even your worst nightmares come true.
Sniffling, you swipe at your cheeks even though there's nothing there to swipe. Glass still litters the floor, the delicate hand-painted design on its surface now broken into a million tiny pieces. You grab the trash can hidden in the cabinet beneath the sink and start picking up the bigger pieces, careful to avoid stepping into the mess with your hive slippers.
You try not to think of anything. But it's hard when it feels like you're picking up the physical manifestation of your shattered feelings.
Once most of the bigger pieces have been disposed of, you look for a broom and dustpan to pick up the rest of the mess you made. But just before you return to the meal block, Dave comes around the corner of your shared respiteblock, carrying a giant box in his hands. Blankets and pillows spill out from the sides.
"What are you doing?" He asks, crossing the short hallway to where you stand in front of the storage closet, broom and dustpan in hand.
You frown. "What are you doing?" You parry.
Dave raises a brow. "I was looking for the box of pillows and blankets I dropped off in our bedroom. It wasn't labelled so I opened a bunch of boxes before I found it. Then it took another couple minutes to let the pillows decompress, so…"
"If you labelled it like I told you to, finding it wouldn't have been a problem, Dave," you reprimand, but any stinging ire you felt quickly die off when he gives you an easy smile.
"What am I going to do without you?" You're astonished daily by how he makes your bloodpusher skip a beat as often as the outdated vinyl records he likes to collect.
He maneuvers the box so he can free one hand to take the broom and dustpan away from you. He then returns it to the storage closet before taking your hand and dragging you back to the dining block. There sits the dining set you spent all day working on.
You watch as Dave sets aside your plates from dinner onto the island counter in the kitchen before throwing a quadrant-themed bedspread over top of it. Just as countless times before, he starts haphazardly throwing pillows and blankets on top of one another, creating a cozy nest pile under the table.
It's a fort, you realize- A feelings jam pile fort under the table.
All at once, it's like you're transported to the past, to your time in the meteor, when you and he spent countless hours constructing pillow forts together, learning from previous iterations until you perfected the art of pillow fort construction.
When he's satisfied with the placement and look of things, he… Holds out a hand to you.
And…
With your bandaged hand, you take it.
The two of you fall into a heap on the pile, shoulder to shoulder, his hand never leaving yours. It's a tight fit under there, but it's warm, and you're with Dave, so you don't really mind.
"I'm sorry," he starts, and you turn to him, surprised by the fact that he's the one apologizing to you right now.
"I think that's my line," you snort. "I'm the one who's been touchy-feely all day, snapping at you when you didn't deserve it and never explaining why I did what I did."
"You're right," he agrees outright, a serene expression on his face. It's probably one of your favourite expressions of his because it took a long time for him to achieve any modicum of peace within himself. He still has the occasional nightmare, the ones that send him into intense thrashing fits that wake him up in the middle of the night. But… They don't happen as frequently as they used to. "It is your line."
You turn back to stare at the underside of the table, the dark wood polished and new. "I'm sorry," you murmur.
"I accept your apology," he replies. But the weight on your chest refuses to be lifted. It's too easy. You feel like you have to earn his forgiveness for this.
You were an asshole. Plain and simple. You're terrible at communicating your feelings, your needs, and instead of being honest about it, you were avoidant. Distant. It's unfair to him. You don't deserve his apology.
"But…" Your lookstubs' lids flutter close for a second, bracing yourself. It's the "but" you've been waiting for. "You do know I don't give a shit about what order we do it in, right?"
Wait.
What?
You stare at him, dumbfounded, and Dave hurries to clarify himself. "I mean… The furniture. This is our first big move together, the last time being when we first moved in with Jade. But even then, we just alchemized most of the stuff we needed. We've never bought anything from the furniture store before, so neither of us has any experience with building even the most basic ready-to-assemble furniture. Unless you're some kind of secret carpenter whiz who's just pretending to be an inexperienced normie to make me feel better about my inability to tell the difference between most of the power tools in my own fucking toolbox. My point is… Building any of the other furniture would have taken just as long. Maybe even longer. It doesn't matter which one we started with, we'd still probably have worked on it all day long, and we'd still probably be massively behind our moving schedule. And yeah, I know beds are comfortable, and adults aren't supposed to sleep in pillow forts anymore, but… Honestly? I prefer being like this with you. I don't mind whatever order we do this in. Screw Rose and Kanaya's unsolicited advice. Screw anyone else's opinions on how we're supposed to do things. This is our place. We make the rules. We decide what we do, and how we do it."
You think he's talking about more than the furniture.
You're not doing this relationship in order either. Never mind the interspecies, cross-cultural, and quadrant skirting aspects of your relationship. Nothing about the two of you is conventional.
And… That's okay. That's okay because so long as he's okay with it, and so are you.
It's your relationship. You make the rules.
It's… A lot more reassuring than you expected it to be.
"You won't lose me." His voice has dropped to a whisper. "I won't get sick of you, either. I've been by your side for a decade, Karkat. Five sweeps. Trust me, if I was sick of you, I would have left by now." He glances at you from the corner of his eyes, the quirk of his mouth turning mischievous. "I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. Vantas, but you're stuck with me. There are no refunds, reselling, or donating me to someone else. Are you alright with that?"
You can't help but match his grin, moving your hands to intertwine with his. "Are you sure I can't just drop you off at a landfill somewhere?"
His laugh is light, airy.
The pair of you talk some more under the table, surrounded by the protective cover of the blanket. The topics you cover during sessions like these are typical- a chance to talk candidly about everything and anything that comes to mind. The past few months have been so hectic that you haven't really had the chance to just… Talk like this. Maybe that's why those intrusive thoughts have taken root within you as much as they have.
Soon enough, though, the time for sleep comes, and the two of you agree to turn in for the night under this nest fort you've created under the table.
You adjust the pile a little more nicely to accommodate the two of you sleeping on it. Dave even brings in a lamp that projects stars into your surroundings to act as your nightlight for when the lights are turned off. From there, the two of you just lie side by side together, like the days of sweeps gone by. But unlike in the past, where it was dominated by the things you missed from a home world that no longer existed… You talk about your future together.
You talk for what feels like hours. You don't even know what time it actually is when you fall asleep.
Before you lose consciousness, the last thing you hear is one of Dave's long tangents. "We should invite our friends over this Christmas. It'd be fun to plan something just by ourselves. How do you feel about bringing a real ass tree into the middle of our living room? I've always been curious about how people did that. Since I lived in apartments for most of my life, it was never really an option. All I had every Christmas were presents buried under a lot of smuppet ass. Can you imagine lugging a giant-ass evergreen over all those stairs? But now that we've got the space for it… Oh, maybe we could even decorate it with just, like, the ugliest combination of decorations on the market. Remember those phallic ornaments we saw once at a joke shop? Do you think they still sell it? We can actually do that now, this is our place and no one can say no if we wanted to do it. Well, I guess you can. But it'll make me mad depressed if you do, dude…"
Christmas is seven perigees away.
* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚
The architecture of the one-story house is within the ballpark of a mid-century style. Sleek and blocky, with smooth wood panels and rocky stone textures complementing and contrasting one another. Perfectly symmetrical stone slabs lead the way up to the cement porch, large leafy bushes adding a touch of nature to the otherwise very industrial look of the property. A lot of houses these days mimic this style, mixing traditional troll hives with modern human homes.
You hurry up to the front door, thin slit windows framing its top and sides.
"Did you close all the lights before we left? They were all turned on when we returned yesterday. And are you sure we closed the garage door? I didn't think to double-check as we drove away. Oh, and what about Mary and-" Kanaya's queries come one right after the other, following just a step behind you. She's buttoning up her white cardigan, a long lavender slip dress peaking in between the lace.
"Yes, dear, I made sure to double-check everything before we left. The children are fine back at the centre as well. I already said sorry about doing the dishes until the very last minute before we left yesterday, didn't I?" You answer, trying your best to keep the sarcasm out of your voice. It has landed you into more than a couple of marital spats before.
"I'd appreciate it if you actually did it instead of apologizing after the fact," Kanaya says under her breath, and you're not sure if she meant for you to hear it while acting like you weren't supposed to, or if she genuinely didn't think you would over the loud din of the buzzer you hit thrice.
While you wait for a response from within, you fiddle with a loose thread on your shorts. Sunflowers are stitched into the pockets, matching your yellow camisole over top a frilly white blouse.
You tap your wedged shoes on the ground impatiently, transferring the plastic bag you're carrying from one hand onto the other. Even Kanaya gives you a concerned side-eye, swinging her white leather tote bag from side to side.
You ring the buzzer one more time.
Still no answer.
You check the time on your watch. It's twelve o'clock in the morning.
Kanaya begins rummaging around her bag, and you sigh exasperatedly as you begin padding along your own shorts' pockets.
"I swear… Are those two still aren't up? I can't believe they've decided to sleep in today, of all days, when they're well aware their U-haul truck is arriving this afternoon. They've got so much unpacking they need to get done and they're choosing to waste precious daylight in bed?" You complain, leaning in to get a glimpse inside through the narrow window slits beside the door.
"Maybe we should stay and help them out? I understand they expressed their desire to do this on their own, and I also understand that we've got other important appointments to get to today, but…," Kanaya adds, using that same tone she uses when she's worried about the newly hatched grubs at the centre. "Perhaps those can be rearranged for another time?"
At the same time, both of you produce matching keys, one from your shorts' pocket, and the other from Kanaya's tote bag.
You stare at each other in utter bewilderment.
"Why do you have a copy of their house key already?" You question, raising an eyebrow.
She holds the key close to her chest. "I could ask the same of you, Rose Lalonde."
You share eye contact for a long time. Neither of you blinks. So, for the sake of time, you decide to yield just this once.
"I borrowed Dave's key under false pretenses to get it copied because I know he'll lose his at some point. Then he'll come texting me for ways to break into his own house while he plans to get it replaced. It's happened once before, so there's a precedent for it," you explain, dangling the key for emphasis. "What's your excuse for having a copy of their house key?"
Kanaya shrugs. "I know Karkat. He'll need my help. For that reason, I thought it'd be convenient for me to have a key to come and go around their new place of residence, should a situation in which my assistance is required arises." She pauses, tearing her gaze away to stare at the ground, grey skin flushing a deep forest green. "I, er… I had it copied after I swiped it during a lunch meeting with him. I returned it much the same way, without his notice that it ever went missing."
The two of you stare at one another a bit longer, analyzing. Calculating. Even if the two of you have discovered a growing list of things to disagree about over the course of your long years of marriage, you can at least agree on this one thing at this very moment:
The two immature idiots living here share one collective brain cell and you both have valid reasons to be worried.
You step aside, gesturing to the front door. "By all means, please, go ahead and open the door for us."
Kanaya chuckles, stepping forward to unlock the door with her key.
Inside, the foyer and the hallway to your left are dim. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in light from the sparse backyard outside, bathing the living room full of boxes in a golden glow. It's in the open concept kitchen and adjoining dining room that you find what you're looking for, however.
The dining set you last saw them working on has been completed in its entirety, a quadrant-themed bedsheet thrown over the top of it. Upon closer inspection, you find a pile of pillows and mismatched blankets spilling from underneath, two prone bodies tangled within it, fast asleep. It's a miracle the buzzer didn't wake them up at all.
A sudden wave of deja vu overcomes you, and you share a significant look with Kanaya. This scene is very familiar to both of you, having found these two same idiots in a similar situation before.
Nothing has changed since then. Dave still nuzzles himself into Karkat's side, almost all of his face buried into the crook of his neck, one arm slung around his waist. Meanwhile, Karkat splays out like a starfish, arms and legs poking out of their nest of blankets, and yet, one hand still manages to find its way into Dave's mess of hair.
People, beings of all kinds, have always been more honest when their cognitive functions are turned off. No inhibitions, no overthinking or second guessing. Just the body looking for what it's wired to look for: warmth.
Looking at them like this, in the dining set they built all on their own…
"I think they'll be alright."
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We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til January
This is our place, we make the rules
And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you, dear
Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?
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