Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The blank canvas stares back at you, mocking you in its emptiness; the perfect representation of your art block. The end of your paintbrush had once more found itself under the attack of your mouth, crooked teeth chewing dents in the wood before you yank it free, pressing the bristles into blue paint with a little more vigour than what was necessary.

“I’m gonna make you my bitch.”

You figure you have at least another two hours until your cousin returns home from his debate club and you’ll have to abscond out of the apartment to avoid an earful of ramble about how someone was particularly offensive and ignorant towards him. God, when you had agreed to stay with him over summer, you’d never intended to be practically drowned every day in a tsunami of words.

And you don’t appreciate the way he hits you over the head with a wooden spoon every time he hears you curse either. Which happens to be quite a lot.

You sweep the blue paint across the canvas, laying out a base color in determined strokes before moving on to a lighter blue color, holding the brush steady over the canvas.

God, fuck, come on Karkat, don’t fuck up another canvas again.

The brush hits the canvas, your tongue poking between tense lips in concentration as you begin a careful swirling pattern of light blue. And, wow, okay, this is actually turning out pretty good, maybe you might actually get a masterpiece out of th-

“NOW BASS!”

A series of loud booming fills your apartment and the brush in your hand flies half way up the canvas, painting an ungraceful strike across your work in the process.

For a second, all you can do is stand there and stare at the ruined painting in front of you, eyes wild and twitching in time to the extremely loud dubstep music that had thrown you off guard. And then you snap, throwing the paintbrush across the room and grabbing at the canvas to chuck it onto the floor.

“WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCKING SHIT DICK FUCKWANK!”

You barely find it in yourself to care how many hits to head with a spoon that outburst would have rewarded you with if your cousin had been home. In fact, you barely care about anything other than finding whoever was responsible for that horrendous fucking ’music’ and making them eat your paintbrush whole whilst you explain to them exactly how it felt to have your break in an art block so spectacularly ruined.

The half open window is your target, the music growing louder as you grab at the bottom of the window to shove it roughly upwards, leaning out over the flowers growing on your window shelf to glare at the window directly opposite.

There was barely more than ten feet between your building and the one opposite, made even less by the metal fire escape balcony that was directly below the window you were currently glaring at.

Fire rumbles low in your stomach and your lips pull back in a snarl ready to hurl abusive insults towards the opposite open window, fingers curling over your window ledge. But you stop.

Because beyond the massive speakers set up by the window, and beyond what looked suspiciously like a DJ table, there was a boy.

Your words falter on your tongue, eyebrows flying high in surprise as you stare dumbfounded at the blonde teen currently stood by his bed, bobbing his head along to the beat of his music. He was slouched over a large cardboard box, pulling a jar from it, which you realize in horror contained something along the lines of a pickled rat, before he sets the jar aside and turns a blank expression back towards the box’s contents.

The apartment opposite your cousin’s had always been empty. Ever since you’d started staying here for summer when you were 12, you’d always had the empty apartment to look across to as you painted, the quiet to appreciate when you played your violin. But now there was this guy. The type of guy who wore shades indoors and probably spent at least an hour every morning trying to get that pretty blonde hair of his perfect.

He was all lanky legs in skinny jeans, wearing a band shirt you didn’t understand and an expression you couldn’t read.

Grade A douchebag.

You watch him curiously as he unpacks a tangle of wires, only to stop and stare blankly into the box. His expression flickers into one of annoyance for barely a second before he was reaching into the box and pulling free some kind of red puppet toy with a disturbingly long nose.

“BRO! BRO, GOD DAMMIT, I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH MY STUFF!”

He’s southern; the twang of his accent obvious even when shouting over the sound of his music, and it only leaves you surprised that he wasn’t more tan, his pale skin only interrupted by the smattering of freckles beneath his shades, which you could see even this far away. Not like you were focusing on his face though. Or the way his jeans clung to skinny legs as he turned to chuck the red puppet at someone out of sight by his door.

No, nope, you were totally not checking this guy out in any way other than as ‘that douchebag neighbor who’d just moved in’.

Although, now that you were stood leaning out your own window, with the source of your irritation stood just opposite you, still blaring his annoying music for all to hear… you couldn’t bring yourself to call him out. The words bubbled in your head, caught on your tongue in confused anger, but they didn’t make themselves known.

And next thing you know, he was turning your way, dark shades moving in your direction so that you jolt and bang your head off the bottom of your windowpane.

“Ow! Fuck.”

His lips twitch upwards into the smallest of smirks, full of a certain cockiness that just rubbed you in all the wrong ways. You grumble a curse his way, pulling back quickly with cheeks burning and a glare so strong you’re sure he could physically feel it. And you pull the window down closed with a satisfying slam, muffling his music, putting a sheet of glass between you and him.

Resisting the childish urge to pull your curtains closed, you turn back towards your room and give your ruined canvas a half hearted kick. You couldn’t paint now, not with that noise still going on and the knowledge that just one building across there was him.

And as much as you didn’t want to, as much as you fought against it as you collapsed back on your bed with an angry growl, your thoughts were full of bright blonde and sharp collarbones peaking over the top of a red shirt.

Even with a closed window and just a single minute spent observing him, something tells you that you won’t be able to escape the insufferable douchebag of neighbor that had just moved in.

==>Be the insufferable douchebag of a neighbor

You’ve been living in this new neighborhood for less than a week and you’re already missing the sweltering heat of Texas. Things just don’t seem the same without the constant buzz of a cooling fan in the corner of your room or the sound of car horns going off in the distance. This place was too quiet, a city full of polite, upper middle class people who spent a lot of time walking their poncy dogs and drinking overpriced cappuccinos in one of the fifty billion coffee shops.

It’ll be fun to relocate, a change of scenery, a new town to wreck shit up in.

Bullshit, bro, this wasn’t fun at all. Everyone had a stick up their ass and the only person you’d seen your own age so far was the angry looking guy in the building opposite.

And you had a whole god damn summer vacation to fill before school started again.

Groaning in boredom, you chuck your headphones away from you, music doing little to help your restlessness as you sit up on your bed. The tinny sound of your rap music buzzed quietly against the sheets where you had your mp3 turned up too loud, but it wasn’t the only sound attracting your attention.

With Snoop Dogg throwing out some sweet rhymes in your ear, you’d barely noticed the sound of an entirely different music spilling into your room through the crack of your open window. Sweet and slow and played on strings with a smoothness so contrasted to the harsh beat of your own music. The sound of someone playing a violin.

Tipping your feet onto the floor, you amble over to your window to investigate, fingers catching under the gap to slide the sheet of glass upwards. The music grows louder and you take the time to scramble up and through the open window, socks thudding quietly on the cool metal of the fire escape balcony that sat outside your window.

It’s fairly obvious where the music was coming from, because you could see clear as day the hunched figure stood in his room reading the propped up sheet music. He wasn’t facing you, but you could see the way his shoulders were tensed in concentration, the quick way his fingers pressed hard against the strings, curled around the bow.

You’d only seen your new neighbor once before. With skin a shade darker than your own, an untamed mop of chocolate brown hair and dark ringed eyes to match, he might have been considered cute if he hadn’t felt the need to send you the harshest glare imaginable when you’d caught his eye. The angry little prick had gotten himself flustered enough to bump his own head against his window before slamming you out, and you’d hoped that maybe it might have knocked a bit of friendliness into him. Clearly not.

You take the time to study him now, like a rare animal caught in its natural habitat, playing the song of its people.

It causes a smirk and you rest your arms against the railing of the balcony, letting him play his song to an end before breaking into a one man applause, accompanied by an impressed whistle which has your neighbor swinging around to face you.

For a second, his expression is fixed in an almost astonished, deer in the headlights, state before recognition flickers in brown irises and his brow pulls down. His cheeks are tinged red when he lowers his violin and strides purposefully towards his window, sliding it quickly shut and cutting off any attempt for contact you might have planned to make.

You only just have time to send him a small salute with two fingers before his glare is hidden behind a set of closed curtains and you allow yourself to burst into a laugh.

If anything, you could probably get some entertainment from annoying the shit out of the grumpy little bastard. Bonus points if you managed to produce that ridiculous blush you’d seen spreading on his cheeks again.

When you hook your hands through your windowpane to swing yourself back into your room, there’s still a trace of a smile on your otherwise placid expression, and a growing hope that maybe this summer wouldn’t be quite as shitty as you first thought.

Chapter Text

You’re pretty sure the only thing worse than an apartment with one insomniac is an apartment with two of them. Because you’ve been lying in bed for several hours now trying your very hardest to fall asleep, but it’s fucking difficult when you can hear Kankri in the next room typing away at a billion keys a minute. No doubt ranting on some stupid fucking forum again at 3am like his life depended on it.

It takes you a further half an hour of frustrated tossing and turning before you give up with a growl, sliding down your bed to give the wall a loud kick. You hear the typing stop for a second before it was resumed again and you have to flip over onto your stomach so that the bedsheets would muffle your infuriated scream. Maybe if you screamed for long enough, you’d tire out enough to just pass out into unconsciousness.

Well, maybe that would work if you weren’t so stupidly hot, and tangled in too many sheets, and this bed has never exactly been the comfiest, and god fucking dammit.

You were out of bed now, and you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that you’re probably not going to get any sleep tonight, pulling on a shirt and making more noise than what was necessary when slamming shut your wardrobe door. You hear the typing pause again and you just know that you would probably get an earful in the morning about ‘respecting the peace and quiet at 3am’, as fucking hypocritical as it would be.

The dim light from your bedside lamp only makes the darkening bags under your eyes more prominent when you catch your tired reflection in the mirror, and you rub at them with fingers still stained from pencil lead. Usually drawing in bed was enough to send you to sleep fast enough, but you weren’t that lucky tonight it would seem.

Bare feet hitting carpet in an almost zombie like style of walking, you find yourself flinging open your curtains without considering what might be on the other side. And honestly, you aren’t even all that surprised when he’s there, still awake at 3am just like you.

He’s sat on the fire balcony, half obstructed by the metal bars caging him in and still fully dressed as though he’d been sat out there a while, not even noticing how late it had become. It frustrates you that he’s still wearing his shades, the bright white glow of his laptop screen reflecting in the black glass from where he was sat typing away on his lap.

For a second, you consider closing the curtains again before he can notice you, fingers closing around the heavy material tightly before you grumble a quiet curse and move to unlatch your window instead.

The clicking sound has his head tipping up in your direction, blank expression turned ghostly pale from his laptop light. You think you catch one of his eyebrows quirking up above his shades in appraisal before the motion is lost in you struggling to shift your windows upwards.

The cool air cuts through you pleasantly, climbing up the loose shorts of your boxers, making your hair stand on end at the back of your neck. It’s cool, but definitely not cold enough to be the blame for the way your breath seems shaky as you exhale, eyes unable to look across at your neighbor as you clamber up onto your window ledge.

It’s him who’s the first to speak, and as you prop one foot against the wood of your flowerbox, you finally force your gaze upwards in his direction.

“Hey.”

He seems unsure of you, not standing from where he sat so that your view was restricted to flashes of blonde hair and pale skin through black metal bars. You figure he probably has every right to be unsure considering your last two appearances, or lack of appearance more likely.

“Hey.”

It comes out too quiet and you cough to clear your throat, scowling in embarrassment and crossing your arms across the front of your shirt. This was a stupid idea. You’re more than two hundred percent sure that taking a chance and talking to this guy was a fucking horrendous idea, and your mind is swirling with excuses to leave when he speaks again.

“Holy fuck, dude, do your boxers have kittens on them? Fucking precious.”

Panic grips at your heart, halting it for a beat as your attention flies down and oh fuck, oh fuck, oh FUCK. You really should have checked what on earth you were wearing before deciding to do this.

“I, uh, they were, fuck, they were a present from an old friend, okay? Did I ask for your god damn fashion input?”

Fuck this. Fuck this guy. Fuck Nepeta for her choice in birthday presents. Fuck everything.

You’re one short second away from swinging your legs back into your room and burying yourself in your duvet for the rest of your life when a low laugh has you halting, a flush spreading on your cheeks you couldn’t quite force away.

“Whoa, cool your jets, sparky, I think they’re rad. Kittens are cool.”

Even his laugh sounds strangely intimidating, his smile wide but only there for a second before he was setting his laptop aside, expression only obscured further by the darkness. You find yourself fiddling with the bottom of your shirt, revealing nerves you tried to hide behind a determined face, dark brows pulled down over darting eyes.

“Are you being sarcastic? Because I know I’m not some hipster fashion whore like you, but even I know that fucking cat underwear isn’t ‘rad’ as you so eloquently put it.”

He pushes himself to his feet, tipping forward on red sneakers to lean skinny arms against the top of the railings and face you properly. His blonde hair seemed bright even in the moonlight, the dark shadows beneath his jaw and across his neck attracting your attention for a moment longer than you might have liked.

“Wow, I’m almost offended that you think I’m being insincere about the raditude level of your underwear. If you want I can show you mine? They’re teenage mutant ninja turtles; an actual masterpiece of ass covering perfection.”

His hands move towards the button of his jeans and you almost tip straight off the window ledge in the way your hands fly up to motion for him to stop. Mouth pulled into a grimace, you’re pretty sure you’re effective in hiding the way your mind had gone directly to imagining him in his underwear. And you hope to god he couldn’t tell how much the image had actually seemed pretty appealing.

“No thanks. God, you’re even more of a douchebag than I originally thought.”

“I’m really good at making first impressions like that.”

“You’re really good at sounding like a cocky asshole.”

“Yeah, well, you’re really good at pulling off a pair of kitten boxers.”

“Fuck off.”

“What’s your name?”

The question catches you off guard, and amidst the snappy comebacks you’d been sending each other’s way, you finally take your time to respond.

He was looking at you expectantly, chin dropping into his hand to rest on the railing as his other hand moves to finally pull his shades away from his eyes. It was too dark and he was too far away for you to be able to see the details, but you can at least see enough to know that he had nice eyes. It makes you wonder why he hid them so much.

“Karkat. Karkat Vantas.”

It was easy to tell that he was looking right at you now, still painfully unreadable as he hooks his shades over the collar of his shirt.

“Well, Karkat Vantas, first impressions work both ways and I think you’re a grumpy little shit.”

Your mouth opens to retaliate with something sharp and snappy, but you quickly catch the words on your tongue, realizing that you’d only be confirming his impression. Frustration bubbles low in your stomach, shoulders jarring back against the side of the window frame as you make do with merely sending him a glare instead.

“And who might you be exactly?”

“I’m your new neighbor, Vantas. I’m Dave Strider.”

==>Be Dave Strider

You’re not sure what it was that made him change his mind and actually stick around for long enough for you to get a word in, but you’re glad that he did. You’d honestly considered giving up on attempting to talk to him when he’d sat himself opposite you, making you glad that you’d been outside picking up the apartment next door’s unprotected wifi.

You never thought you’d be glad about the lack of internet connection set up in your own apartment yet. But here you were.

His name was Karkat Vantas and he was 17 years old. He didn’t live here, but only stayed with his older cousin every summer for vacation whilst his dad worked. You learn that he throws out curses and insults as though they were punctuation, but none of them have any real bite to them. He hides behind harsh words like you hide behind your shades, except he’s still so wonderfully easy to read despite it.

He says he likes the quiet of this place, he enjoys the focus it gains him to work on his art. He doesn’t mention his friends, and you find yourself wondering throughout your conversation if the guy even has any in this city. Even you draw a line at asking that question though.

Karkat Vantas.

The name rolls off your tongue nicely, and you love the way annoyance flickers across his face when you purposefully drawl it out once or twice in an accent.

It’s easier to see him in the dark without your shades, and although you rarely let people see your eyes, it doesn’t seem so painfully personal when he was sat in another building entirely, curled sideways on his windowledge with one set of toes pressing against the box housing his flowers. His head was resting on the knee of his other leg, caramel colored skin bent up against his dark shirt, disappearing into a pair of ridiculous kitten boxers.

He was all fire on his tongue, with dark, bed-messy hair tinged in the orange glow from the lamp in his room. It softened his silhouette, revealed the light smudge of what looked like pencil lead on one of his cheeks and made his frown seem a little less harsh than he probably intended it to be.

“Why are you still awake so late?”

You glance down to your laptop, left still running and forgotten with your chat log flashing. Fuck, you’d been talking to Jade and had forgotten. And, holy fuck, how had you been stood here talking to him for over an hour?

“Shit, it’s 4am.”

You catch him roll his eyes at you, his head lolling back to rest against the metal of his window frame instead.

“Past your bed time?”

“Shut up, I just… didn’t realize we’d been talking for so long. I was out here jacking the free wifi from next door. Why are you still awake?”

You move to nudge your laptop screen closed with your foot, making a silent apology to Jade and vowing to message her again later. There was an unwillingness to get distracted now, to leave what little friendship you had built so far.

“Insomnia. Sleeping isn’t a thing I do all that much of.”

“Aw damn, and here I was thinking that it was my incredible company keeping you up.”

“Dream on, Strider. You’re so fucking full of yourself, has anyone ever told you that?”

A tired smile pulls at his lips and you catch the slight hiccup of a chest movement that you might have presumed was an exhausted attempt at a laugh. He doesn’t let you get a one-up on him and it’s wonderfully refreshing and challenging all at once. It wasn’t just exposed skin and intense, dark eyes keeping you hooked on his every movement.

“All the time. And hey, if you want I can read you a bed time story. Story time with Dave and Karkat, keeping up the nosy ass neighbors with our sweet tales,” You flash him a smirk, rapping your fingers repetitively against the cool metal of the barrier you rested on, “I know some rhymes too. Jack and Jill, went up the hill, and planned to do some kissing, Jack made a pass, and grabbed her ass, now his two front teeth are missing.”

You watch his expression contort in what seemed like surprise or disgust before he was fighting back a smile and you waggle your eyebrows above your shades so that he has to quickly look away to stop from laughing.

“I think I’ll pass on that, Strider.”

“Your loss.”

A comfortable silence falls between the two of you, and though you find it easy to keep your gaze steadily fixed on him, it’s fun to watch the way his eyes dart about between you and the starry sky and the flowers he kept nudging with his foot. Your back ached from standing for so long to talk to him and you would be lying if you said you didn’t feel the cold and weariness starting to settle in your bones. But you’re reluctant to move.

“I guess I should be… heading to bed now. I think I’m going to try and give this whole sleeping thing another damn attempt before the sun comes up to scream ‘fuck you’ in my face,” he mumbles, teeth dragging against his bottom lip which has your own lips pressing hard together.

“Yeah sure, go grab those forty winks and punch them square in the face.”

“Ha. Right… yeah. So, bye?”

He seems almost unsure over whether or not he was actually going, his legs uncurling to drop himself back into his room before he hesitates when reaching up for his window, brown eyes locked on you.

“See you later.”

It was more of a guarantee than a farewell, and there was a flash of something in his expression that you couldn’t quite read before he nods and slowly slides his window shut.

You wait until his curtains were closed again before you turn to pick up your laptop, aiming one last grin in the direction of Karkat’s window before you climb back through to your room, head still spinning with thoughts of white teeth dragging over flushed skin.