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“Weddings suck.” Karkat complains for the umpteenth time that hour. He’s splayed out on the bed, looking spiffy as ever in a wrinkled dress shirt and black dress pants that aren’t zipped or buttoned yet. He seems to be procrastinating on fixing that.
“That’s true,” Jade humors him, leaning into the mirror as she carefully wings her eyeliner. She’s managing to hold her best poker face, doing her damndest to not mess it up -- she’s already had to start over once before.
“Formal wear also sucks.”
“I’d hardly call that formal, all wrinkled and stuff,” Jade makes a passive-aggressive stab at his choice of clothing -- also for the umpteenth time that hour. In response, his face wrinkles into a frustrated grimace and he sits up, watching her for a few moments before actually speaking.
“Of-fucking-course you wouldn’t, Miss Fancy-Pants-Ball-Gown-Gotta-Look-Better-Than-The-Bride-Wearing-Motherfucker.”
Jade doesn’t bother with a response until she’s finished with the eyeliner, capping it and setting it on the vanity before turning to him and leaning back. It’s an almost composed reaction if it weren’t for the flustered red building up in her cheeks. The only issue is that Karkat isn’t entirely wrong; she had, as a matter of fact, gone a bit crazy trying to find a dress, and she’s perfectly aware of this, but there’s no way she’s going to admit that completely.
“There might have been, in some way or form, a slight, tiny, eensy-weensy possible chance that I went a bit overboard with the dress thing --”
“Do I need to remind you how much that fucking Cinderella bullshit cost?” Karkat gestures wildly at the dress to drive his point home.
“-- No! Absolutely not! I didn’t forget.” Shuffling her feet sheepishly, Jade crosses her arms over her chest and looks away, obviously flustered and embarrassed. Things are quiet for a few moments between them as Jade continues to stare to the side aimlessly whilst Karkat fiddles with the zipper of his pants. “You don’t actually think I look better than Rose do you? I mean, I don’t want to upstage her at her own wedding, that’s not what I was trying to do.” Jade finally breaks the silence, now looking downwards and fiddling with the fabric of her dress anxiously.
“It’s not exactly like she took fucking selfies or some shit and specifically sent them to me, I don’t know what she looks like.” Karkat replies bluntly, arching an eyebrow. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the response his girlfriend was looking for.
“That’s not what I meant, you prick,” she shoots him a glare and turns away to look back into the vanity’s mirror.
“Well it was a stupid question! You’re the maid of honor, you’ve actually seen her in the dress! You should know!” Exasperated and not understanding Jade’s frustration, he throws his hands up into the air and falls back onto the bed once more, resuming the state he’d been in just ten minutes earlier.
Deciding that not responding and adding more fuel to the argument is the best route to take here, Jade remains silent, fidgeting with her hair for a few seconds more before trudging over to the bed and flopping backwards beside him. “Weddings suck.” She echoes Karkat from earlier as he eyes her out of his peripheral.
“That’s true.” He mimics her in turn. She looks at him with an expression somewhere in between annoyed and playful for a brief moment before returning her gaze to the ceiling. Now chewing on his bottom lip, Karkat thinks of words to say that would help the situation -- it’s a bit difficult with Jade. Her versions of ‘apologies’ and ‘fixing things’ tend to be different from his, so he never quite knows what the right or wrong thing to say is. Lucky for him, she usually appreciates that he tries at all. “You do look good though, it’s not like, way over the top or anything. I could take you out in public and we’d probably only get a few ‘on your way to the ball, sire and madam?’ looks from strangers who, let’s face it, don’t really need to be all up in our fucking business anyways.” Karkat finally says, doing his best to assure her and to stop the small argument in its tracks.
“But I thought I was Miss Fancy-Pants-Ball-Gown-Gotta-Look-Better-Than-The-Bride-Wearing-Motherfucker?” Jade inquires. Ready to respond defensively and accept the failure of his attempt at pacifying the fight, he takes a deep breath in preparation for an angry monologue that would wipe the floor with her. Fortunately, the look accompanied with her words quickly tells him that she’s merely joking. Releasing his breath in a quick sigh, he calms down and folds his hands over his stomach.
“You still are! But you make it work so, congratulations, or whatever.”
Jade laughs lightly, feeling the anxiety that had been tightening in the pit of her stomach loosen up a bit. Grateful for this, she sits up and pats him on the thigh appreciatively. “Sit up, you dork.” She commands, and Karkat obliges. Jade folds her legs into a criss-cross position and turns to face him; he mimics her. “Your tie looks all funky, you did it wrong,” she suddenly starts fiddling with his tie.
“Uh, excuse me? I think I know how to put on a fucking tie --” She flat out takes it off of him and throws it to the side. “-- that’s not exactly how it goes either,” Karkat raises a brow before rolling his eyes as she starts unbuttoning his shirt as well. “Oh, I suppose I put this on wrong too?”
Giggling, Jade nods her head. “Yep.” Leaning forward, her mouth makes contact with his neck and a shiver runs up his spine.
“Jade we have like, forty minutes maybe, is this really the time to be doing this, I mean -- your makeup! You don’t wanna fuck up your makeup, you spent like an hour freaking out about it!” Flustered, he very half-heartedly tries to convince her that there’s a better time and place while he bunches up the bed sheets in his hands.
“Do you want me to stop?” Jade mumbles into his skin.
He thinks for a moment or two and then exhales sheepishly. “...Not really, no,” but before he can give in to her suggestive neck kissing, his cellphone buzzes on the bedside table. Falling backwards to grab the buzzing cellular device off the table, Jade following him so she can remain firmly planted to his neck, he checks the caller I.D. -- John -- before answering. “You have awful timing as per usual,” Karkat grumbles while distancing the phone from his ear; John is practically shouting in a panic on the other end. In between John’s yelling and Jade’s kissing, Karkat shifts underneath his girlfriend awkwardly, waiting for John to finish yelling his piece. “Text me? You didn’t text me, I think I would know if you fucking --” after looking at his phone screen, Karkat realizes that there are in fact several missed texts. “Shit, sorry. I was, uh. Distracted.” Jade has stopped now and is instead just lying on top of him comfortably, looking at him with raised brows.
Rolling her eyes, Jade snatches the phone out of Karkat’s hands and rolls onto her side of the bed to stare at the ceiling once more. “I’ll have him heading your way right now John, don’t worry!” She exclaims quickly and sharply before hanging up the phone to silence John’s panicking. “You were supposed to be at his house ten minutes ago, Mister Best Man.”
“Agh, fuck!” Shooting upwards, he very sloppily buttons his shirt up again and snatches his tie from the floor before stumbling towards the bedroom door. He nearly trips over himself during a disgraceful attempt at panic-jogging and doing up his pants simultaneously. “Fucking dumbass should’ve just called me -- I’ll see you in a couple hours!” He grunts before disappearing out the door.
Pausing, he backtracks and peeks back into the room. “And, uh, for the record: we’ll finish this later.”
Jade snorts and gives him a thumbs up with raised brows as he disappears again. “Oh, um, you forgot your phone!” She suddenly shouts after him, realizing the device is still in her other hand.
“FUCK IT!” He shouts back strongly, followed by the front door slamming. Jade simply shrugs and scoots forward on the bed to look into the mirror and address the damage she’d caused her hair -- on the brightside, her makeup is still very much intact!