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The party had been a terrible idea for exactly forty-seven minutes.
Karkat knew because he’d started counting the moment Roxy opened the door, planted a silver hat on his head, and informed him that sad faces were not accepted tonight. Since then he’d had to endure an offensive amount of flashing lights, three different songs playing at once, and a fifteen-minute conversation with John about a cooking show where, apparently, the contestants baked cakes under conditions specifically designed to give them a nervous breakdown. John had described it as “surprisingly relaxing.” Karkat considered that a contradiction, but instead of arguing the point, he decided to conserve what little energy he had left.
Now he was sitting at one end of the couch, arms crossed over his chest, an untouched drink between his knees. Someone had decorated the apartment with little glow-in-the-dark star stickers. Roxy had added pink garlands. Calliope had made some hand-drawn signs. Dave, on the other hand, hadn’t contributed a single thing, but he’d spent the whole night insisting that his presence was the structural element of the celebration.
Karkat watched him from across the room.
Dave was leaning against the wall, talking to Dirk, both wearing their shades in an apartment lit so dimly that neither of them could probably see past their own noses. That didn’t seem to bother them. Dirk gestured with his glass, saying something Dave listened to with his head tilted and his weight on one foot, with that air of not caring about anything. Every so often he nodded. Every so often his lips curved slightly, a small gesture only someone used to looking for it would have noticed. And every so often, for no apparent reason, he’d turn his face and find Karkat watching him.
That last part had happened four times.
Five, when he did it again.
Karkat looked away so abruptly he nearly knocked the drink against his teeth. The ice clinked in the glass, a dead giveaway.
“Try to be less obvious” Kanaya said, from the couch beside him, without looking up.
“I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Of course not.”
She took a very slow sip, letting the silence do the rest of the work. She wore a dark green dress that seemed built specifically to remind the rest of the room they’d never reach her level of elegance. Karkat, meanwhile, had put on a clean black shirt, pants with no visible stains, an open hoodie he’d stolen from Dave, and Roxy’s humiliating hat. They were playing in different leagues.
“I was just making sure he wasn’t planning some stupid thing” Karkat added, though nobody had asked.
“Dave?”
“No, Dirk. Of course Dave.”
“I see. And have you managed to determine that?”
Karkat looked at him again, this time without pretending he wasn’t.
Dave wasn’t talking to Dirk anymore. Dirk was still there, his mouth moving, but Dave was watching Karkat over the top of his shades, with that unreadable expression he used when he thought he was too smart for the rest of the population. He lifted his fingers in a slow, somewhat lazy wave and nodded toward the hallway.
Karkat frowned. He stood up with more force than necessary.
“Yes” he told Kanaya. “He’s definitely planning something stupid.”
She smiled behind her glass and said nothing else, just wished him luck with a look. He crossed the room, dodging Jade and Rose, who were arguing about the feasibility of growing giant carnivorous plants in a home greenhouse, and set his drink down on the table with a sharp thud. Dave had already peeled off the wall by the time he got there, hands in his pockets, head tilted slightly. He looked like he’d been expecting exactly this.
“Hey to you too” he said, before Karkat could speak.
“You waved at me from four meters away like an idiot trying to buy drugs in a shitty cop movie. What do you want?”
“To escape.”
Karkat waited for an explanation that didn’t come; Dave was looking toward the fogged-up window, at the rain just starting to streak across the glass, and something told Karkat this wasn’t just about boredom.
“From what?”
“From the tyranny of collective joy. I support Roxy’s right to make bad decisions; it’s important to preserve individual freedom even when it’s used to force us into star hats. But I need fifteen minutes without anyone asking if I’m okay just because my face looks normal.”
Karkat took off the hat and held it in front of him, like evidence.
“I’m not required to wear anything.”
“Roxy said she’d tape it to your head if you took it off.”
He shoved it back on, glaring at Dave with reproach, even though the hat hadn’t been his idea. Dave smiled, that damned slow smile that never seemed to cost him any effort, and delivered the next sentence as casually as if he were commenting on the weather.
“Let’s go buy ice.”
“There’s ice in the kitchen.”
“Let’s go buy better ice.”
Karkat looked at him for a full second before answering, calculating how many of the last forty hours Dave had spent being reasonable. The number wasn’t encouraging at all.
“Did Roxy even ask you to go?”
“She said the ice was running low and then looked at me. Social cues are an interpretive art, Karkat. You can’t expect to lock them into a single definition.”
“Probably because you were standing next to the fridge.”
He looked toward the kitchen. Roxy was dancing on a chair while Jane held her waist to keep her from falling, both of them laughing too hard for a single joke; neither seemed remotely concerned about the ice supply. When he looked back at Dave, he narrowed his eyes, trying to read the plan directly off his face.
“You want to leave because you’re bored and need a designated driver.”
“I can drive.”
“You’ve been drinking. One cup, and Roxy filled it twice.”
“Administrative details.”
“Give me the keys.”
He handed them over without argument, letting them drop into Karkat’s open palm. That should have been suspicious. Karkat didn’t think about it until they were already in the elevator, watching the numbers go down, Dave leaning against the mirror, not taking his eyes off him.
The drizzle got heavier when they stepped outside, turning the streets into a stream of red, yellow, and white reflections. Earth C had cities too new to feel truly lived-in. Flawless buildings, roads without a single crack, young, slender trees held up by stakes so the wind wouldn’t bend them. Karkat found it unsettling. Everything looked like a model.
Dave walked beside him with his hands in his jacket pockets, making no effort to shield himself, drops gathering on his shades in crooked lines.
“You can’t see shit” Karkat said.
“I see general concepts. You’re a gray shape emitting criticism. The car is a black rectangle. Reality remains perfectly navigable.”
Karkat stopped in front of the vehicle, crossing his arms.
“Where exactly is it parked?”
Dave turned slowly, scanning the lot. He said nothing.
It took them several minutes to find it. Dave insisted he’d remembered the location perfectly; it was just that the urban architecture had subtly changed while they were inside. Karkat didn’t even bother arguing; he just walked two steps ahead, soaking his hair, until he finally spotted the car between two lampposts.
When they finally got in, he dropped the keys in the space by the gearshift and turned to him.
“I’m not driving this piece of shit anywhere until you take off those shades and dry them.”
“Karkat, this is discrimination against my personal brand.”
“This is an attempt to keep you from dying in the most ridiculous way possible: getting run over by a rectangular object.” Karkat raised his voice.
Dave took them off, almost reluctantly. Karkat didn’t know why it kept surprising him. Years had passed. He’d seen him without them countless times — waking up, falling asleep, after a shower, when he was sick, when he cried, when he got too absorbed in a screen and ended up leaving them on top of his head. There shouldn’t be anything especially intimate left in that gesture. But even so, every time, he felt the air shift.
Dave blinked, adjusting to the light in the car.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was waiting for a personality to show up.”
“Ugh. Devastating. Give me a second to recover.”
He used the hem of his shirt to dry the lenses, unhurried. The jacket rode up with the motion, revealing a strip of skin above the waistband of his pants, and Karkat decided the windshield was much more interesting at that moment, jerking his gaze away more sharply than necessary. Rain slid down the glass in crooked lines. It struck him, for one absurd moment, that he had more in common with those lines than he could admit without feeling utterly stupid.
“Done” Dave said, putting the shades back on.
Karkat took the keys without looking at him.
“Which store are we going to?”
“The farthest one.”
“There are at least six stores open.”
“You could’ve said that” Karkat said, though he already knew the answer before it came.
“I did say it. I used the word escape. I think I was pretty explicit.”
“I thought it was some dumb dramatization.”
“I never dramatize.”
Karkat let out a short, unpleasant laugh, shaking his head. He started the engine. Dave settled into his seat.
“See, the night already got better.”
“Shut up.”
Dave controlled the music when Karkat drove. It was a rule they’d never agreed on and yet had somehow established itself since the first time they’d gotten into a car together: Karkat was in charge of not dying, Dave was in charge of playing songs he refused to identify until Karkat guessed wrong a couple of times.
That night he picked, as he almost never did, something slow.
The bass filled the car as they drove down a nearly empty avenue. The city spread out around them; a few windows stayed lit, a couple ran under the same umbrella toward a corner, a group of kids huddled under the awning of a closed café. Karkat kept both hands on the wheel, his knuckles a bit whiter than necessary.
“Are you drunk?”
“No.”
“You’re playing romantic music.”
“It’s a song. I didn’t know we had thematic censorship now.”
“We don’t have that idiocy. I’m trying to figure out what kind of psychological manipulation bullshit you’re preparing.”
Dave rested his elbow against the door, looking out at the wet street. He stayed silent, subtly letting the song speak for him. The singer’s voice was pleasant. Karkat tried not to pay attention and failed almost immediately; without noticing, his fingers were tapping against the wheel in the same rhythm.
“Also” Dave said finally, clearly noticing the tapping but not commenting on it, “it’s not thaaaat romantic. It’s more like… a list of conceptual associations.”
“A list of associations about loving someone.”
“Love is a concept too.”
“You’re genuinely unbearable.”
“But consistent. You’re pretty consistent too. I can count on you to insult everything I do, even when you like it.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Sure.”
“DON’T SAY ‘SURE’ IN THAT TONE! THAT ONE. THE TONE THAT SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT ME THAT I HAVEN’T AUTHORIZED.”
Dave turned his face toward the window, hiding his smile against the fogged glass. He stayed quiet for a while.
“You know half the words” he said at last.
“BECAUSE YOU’VE PLAYED IT FIVE TIMES THIS WEEK.”
“That makes your argument worse.”
“It wasn’t an argument. I was just correcting your brain’s records.”
Karkat huffed, shaking his head, though something in his mouth relaxed a little. They turned onto a wider road that ran along the coast; at that hour, the ocean was a black mass beyond the railings, and the light rain drummed on the roof with a soft rhythm that made the silence feel cozy.
“Where’s this supposed store?”
“Keep going straight.”
“Dave.”
“Trust me.”
“That phrase should be illegal coming from you.”
“But you’re still going straight.”
Karkat didn’t answer. His hands loosened slightly on the wheel, and the silence that formed between them again wasn’t uncomfortable. He’d long since learned how to be with him without filling every space with noise. At first, Karkat had interpreted Dave’s silences as withdrawals, punishments, signs he’d grown tired of him; he’d tried fighting them by talking louder, picking fights, provoking responses. Later he learned that Dave could simply stay quiet, that sometimes there was nothing to solve, that sometimes they were just in the same place and that was enough. The idea still seemed suspicious to him, though.
Dave leaned his temple against the glass, watching the lights pass.
“When we have a house” he said, voice low, almost lost under the music, “I want big windows.”
Karkat nearly slammed the brakes. He didn’t, because unlike a certain someone, he valued survival, but his hands tensed noticeably.
“What?”
Dave didn’t move, didn’t pull away from the glass, didn’t add anything for several seconds. Apparently, as far as Dave was concerned, the sentence was already complete.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Windows. I was going to draw you a diagram.”
“What house?”
He finally turned his head and looked at him directly.
“Ours.”
He said it with the same expression he used to clarify obvious things, with no sign that he’d just dropped a grenade in the car. Karkat felt his shoulders tense.
“We don’t have a house. We have an apartment we live in.”
“An excellent summary, so far.”
“So why would we need a house?”
“More space.” He shrugged, looking at his hands. “Stuff. Your books. My equipment. The pile of blankets you pretend you’re not collecting.”
“I’M NOT COLLECTING BLANKETS.”
“We have nine.”
“WE BOUGHT THEM BECAUSE IT’S COLD! YOU USED THREE LAST NIGHT!”
“I simply believe in making the most of available resources.”
Karkat looked back at the road, though his eyes kept pulling toward Dave, as if magnetized, searching for confirmation that this was an extended joke and not what it was starting to look like.
“We don’t need a house.”
“Not yet.”
The answer hung between them. Not yet. It wasn’t a particularly threatening phrase; it shouldn’t be. But it implied a continuation, a line stretching beyond the night, beyond the apartment, beyond any timeframe Karkat would have dared imagine.
“And where would this house be?” he asked, hating himself a little for the curiosity that crept into his voice despite himself.
Dave turned the music down.
“I don’t know. Close to the city, but not downtown. Far enough that you don’t hear cars all night, close enough that you can’t say I exiled us to a rural wasteland. Like when Jane invited us to stay at her farm.”
“BECAUSE IT WAS A FARM. THERE WAS AN ANIMAL STARING AT ME THROUGH THE WINDOW.”
“It was a goat.”
“IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT IT WAS.”
“It looked like Aradia.”
Karkat crossed his arms over the wheel during the second it took the light to turn green.
“Since when have you been thinking about a house?”
Dave took a few seconds, fingers drumming against his knee, before answering.
“A while. A few months. Maybe longer…”
Karkat felt a strange pressure under his ribs, something between panic and… an emotion he didn’t fully understand.
“And you weren’t going to mention it to me?”
“I’m mentioning it now.”
“IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROAD, AT ONE IN THE MORNING, WHEN WE WERE SUPPOSEDLY GOING TO BUY ICE!”
“It seemed like a neutral setting.”
“IT’S NOT A NEUTRAL SETTING! I’M OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY!”
“It’s a compact car. It’s fine. Next time I want to talk about our future, I’ll give you three business days’ notice.”
Karkat swallowed his response, his throat closing for a moment. He didn’t want to ask. Asking meant accepting the sentence had a real meaning, opening the door to something Dave might have crossed without realizing it, and forcing him to look at where he was standing.
“What else does this imaginary house have?” Karkat cursed himself for asking.
“It’s not imaginary. It just doesn’t exist yet. A big kitchen.”
“You don’t cook.”
“You do. I can cut things.”
“You almost cut your finger off opening a can.”
“It was a can with aggression issues.”
Dave settled back in his seat, keeping his gaze fixed somewhere on the windshield, and when he spoke again he did it more slowly.
“An extra bedroom.”
Karkat felt his foot press the gas a bit too hard. He slowed down, forcing himself to breathe.
“For what?”
“Guests. Or a study. Or a room for a kid, eventually.”
The car drifted slightly, the wheels grazing the white line, before Dave reached out a hand and straightened the wheel without alarm.
“Road.”
“A WHAT?”
“A small creature.”
“I KNOW WHAT YOU SAID! WHAT KIND OF CONVERSATION ARE YOU HAVING RIGHT NOW?”
“One about space allocation.”
“YOU CAN’T SLIP THE POSSIBILITY OF A KID OR WHATEVER BETWEEN A STUDY AND A GUEST ROOM LIKE YOU’RE CHOOSING WHERE TO STORE A DAMN VACUUM CLEANER!”
Dave turned the music up, maybe to keep the shouting from breaking the windows, though his jaw had tensed slightly, a tiny crack in all that manufactured calm.
“I didn’t say it would happen tomorrow.”
“YOU DIDN’T SAY WHEN IT WOULD HAPPEN AT ALL!”
“Eventually is a temporal reference.”
“IT’S THE MOST USELESS TEMPORAL REFERENCE IN HISTORY!”
The silence that followed lasted much longer than expected. Dave looked down at his hands and went quiet. When he spoke again, the question came out so low it nearly got lost under the engine noise.
“You don’t want to?”
Karkat opened his mouth. Closed it. The question was simple, but the answer wasn’t. He’d thought about it, of course, in moments he’d never admit out loud without feeling strange. When he watched Dave hold Jane’s kid with a bit of stiffness, like he’d been handed an explosive device; when he watched Kanaya teach the first human-born grubs on Earth C how to read. He’d imagined that noisy house, toys on the floor, Dave pretending indifference while letting the tiny creature cover his arms in stickers. He’d always forbidden himself from continuing, cutting the thought off before it went too far.
“I didn’t say that” he murmured, his voice carrying almost none of the volume it had moments before.
Dave watched him.
“So, maybe.”
“Don’t turn my inability to answer into a green light.”
“I said maybe. It means we could talk about it someday.”
“When?”
“Eventually.”
Karkat hit him on the arm without taking his eyes off the road, though his lips fought against something close to a smile that he completely failed to hold back.
The store was closed.
Karkat stood in front of the automatic door for several seconds, staring at the sign clearly stating that the store closed at midnight. As if that changed anything. It didn’t. He looked at Dave.
“You said it was open.”
“I knew it was here. Not exactly that it was open. Valid distinction.”
Karkat dragged both hands down his face until his cheekbones showed. The rain had picked up; the parking lot was empty and the store’s interior lights were still on, illuminating shelves they couldn’t reach. Behind the glass was an entire freezer full of bags of ice, and Karkat pointed at it, his hand shaking with pure annoyance.
“There’s the best ice. Separated from us by the consequences of your stupidity.”
“We could go back empty-handed and say it melted.”
“ON THE WAY BACK. WE DON’T HAVE A REFRIGERATION SYSTEM FOR THE TRUNK!”
“That’s why I said it melted.”
Karkat made a sound that belonged to no known language and stormed back to the car, splashing water with every step. Dave followed without hurrying, hands back in his pockets, and placed one hand on the roof of the car right before Karkat could get in, stopping him with the gesture as much as with his words.
“Let’s go to the beach.”
Karkat stood frozen, the rain plastering his hair to his forehead.
“It’s raining.”
“The ocean’s already wet. We can stay in the car.”
“What for?”
He shrugged.
“So we don’t have to go back yet.”
His answer held no trace of irony. Karkat looked at him under the white parking lot light — his hair was soaked and stuck to his forehead, drops running along the edge of his shades, his dark jacket turned almost black. He looked tired. Not from the party, Karkat understood.
“Fine” he said, softer.
Dave got in the car without celebrating his victory, which told Karkat something was actually serious.
They parked facing the coast. There wasn’t really a beach, just a strip of dark rocks and a walking path leading down to the water; the waves crashed against the edges with an irregular violence, visible for a second under the path lights before disappearing again. Dave reclined his seat and sank into it. Karkat turned off the engine but left the heat on, and the windshield started fogging up from the edges.
For several minutes, neither said a single word.
Dave took off his shades and set them on the dash with a slow, deliberate motion. Karkat watched his hands, the small scar by his thumb, the other one crossing one of his knuckles, marks he knew as well as his own. Sometimes he forgot they were still there. Sometimes he saw all of them at once.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t try my patience. You dragged me out of a party with that lie about ice, made me drive for half an hour, started designing a house, casually mentioned the possibility of raising a creature, and now we’re staring at the ocean like two unbearable movie protagonists. Something’s wrong. Clearly.”
Dave looked at the windshield, his jaw tense, and when he spoke he did it without beating around the bush.
“Dirk’s leaving. Not forever, I think. He’s going traveling with Jake for a few months. And he said they were considering settling in another city when they get back.”
“And that bothers you?”
“No.”
Karkat waited, not looking away, letting the silence ask the question he didn’t need to repeat.
Dave exhaled, long and drawn out.
“A little. Because everyone’s leaving.”
“Nobody’s leaving, Dave. John lives three hours away. Rose and Kanaya are looking for a place near the caverns. Jade spends half the year on the island. Jane has the farm. Roxy wants to open a lab up north. And now Dirk might move. That’s what people do. They move. It doesn’t mean they disappear.”
“I know.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Dave rested his head against the seat, closing his eyes for a second. Without the shades, he had nowhere to hide his gaze.
“I guess I thought we’d have more time.”
Something inside Karkat softened, though he refused to let it reach his voice.
“It’s been years. Everyone’s still here. They’re at a party right now.”
“Also that.”
“Then you’re being stupid.”
“Probably.”
Karkat shifted, turning his body slightly toward him, his knee almost brushing Dave’s.
“You can’t expect all of us to live in the same building forever.”
“It’d be efficient. We could buy a bigger building. Split it up by floor.”
“Roxy would cause an explosion within the first month.”
“That would raise the property’s historical value.”
Dave smiled, but the expression faded fast, and when he spoke again his voice had lost almost all its earlier lightness.
“It’s just weird getting to the part after.”
Karkat didn’t need to ask after what. They both had several possible answers: after the game, after the ones who died, after the meteors, the timelines, the alternate bodies and versions of themselves that never made it this far. After growing up believing every relationship was temporary because, for a long time, everything had been temporary.
“Before, if someone disappeared, there was some big reason” Dave continued, crossing his arms, trying to hold himself together with them. “An apocalypse. Time travel. Murder. Something tangible. Now people just get a job, move, and start shopping for mortgage rates. It’s deeply anticlimactic.”
“I think that’s called living.”
“I’m not convinced.”
The heater hummed softly. The windshield was almost completely fogged over, sealing them off from the outside; the world had shrunk down to just the inside of the car, the seats, the music still playing faintly, Dave’s bare face. Karkat raised a hand and wiped a circle clear on the glass with his sleeve, letting in a strip of the dark ocean.
“Not everyone’s leaving. And even if they did, you could visit them. Call them. Act like a functional person instead of kidnapping your partner to drive around in the rain.”
“Kidnapping is a strong word considering you’re the one with the keys.”
Karkat turned his head, narrowing his eyes.
“Is that what you were doing? The house thing?”
Dave took too long to answer, still looking at his own hands.
“I don’t know. I was thinking about it.”
“Because Dirk’s leaving?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then explain.”
He sat up a little, searching for words with an uncharacteristic slowness, and when he finally spoke, each sentence came out slower than the last, building the argument as he went.
“I don’t want our apartment to become a place we live in just because it’s convenient. When we moved in together it was because you needed to leave John’s place and my lease was ending. We picked the apartment because it was cheap, close to everything, and pet-friendly even though we didn’t have any pets.”
“We could still get one.”
“You said you didn’t want to be responsible for something that could die if we forgot to feed it.”
“That’s still a valid concern.”
“We bought the furniture because it was on sale. We split the closets because you yelled that my clothes were colonizing the bedroom. We never talked about how long we were going to stay.”
“And?”
Dave looked at his shades, turning them over by one arm.
“And we’ve been there four years.”
Karkat knew that feeling. He’d thought about it many times while washing dishes or finding Dave’s cups on the desk. The apartment had formed around them without either of them deciding it — first the toothbrushes side by side, then a shelf full of movies Karkat claimed to hate, then photos, plants, books, blankets. An entire life built through small accidents.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked, his voice barely a thread.
“No” Dave said immediately, alarmed by the question and unwilling to make him wait. “I don’t want to live with you out of convenience.”
“Ah.”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean I don’t want that to be the reason.”
“And what the hell do you think the reason is? Because, in case you haven’t noticed, you could live alone. So could I. We have money, options, different people willing to take us in if we ever decided to split up. We’re not trapped in that apartment.”
“I know.”
“Then I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“That I want to choose it. All of it.”
Karkat looked at him, his breaths coming short. Dave set the shades down on the dash, leaving his hands free now.
“The house. The place. The windows. You.”
The last word was so simple Karkat almost didn’t hear it, though it went straight through his chest anyway.
“You can’t put me on a list with the windows.”
“You were the main item.”
“THAT DOESN’T FIX IT!”
“I’m trying to be serious here.”
“You’re terrible at it.”
“Yeah, I noticed when you started yelling.”
Karkat ran a hand through his hair, tugging slightly at the roots. He felt warm despite the cold, despite being close to the ocean and the winter on the other side of the fogged glass.
“Why now?”
“Because I want to know that when everything changes, this isn’t going to change by accident, Karkat.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Things always change, you idiot.”
“I know. You can’t build a house and think that means nobody’s going to leave.”
“I’m not talking about anybody.”
Karkat went still, his breath catching in his throat. Dave held his gaze this time, not looking away, and the silence before his next words felt longer.
“I’m talking about you.”
Karkat felt the ground seem to drop out from under him: the exact instant when something beautiful starts becoming possible, and therefore dangerous. He looked away, fixing his eyes on the distorted reflection on the dashboard.
“I’m not leaving.”
The words came out low again.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Dave said nothing, waiting him out, stretching the silence, and Karkat felt anger rise before fear. Anger always arrived first. It was far more useful. It let him move.
“You can’t know. Nobody can. Not even me. Maybe you wake up tomorrow and realize you’ve spent four years putting up with my shit because you confused a traumatic need for stability with love. Maybe in six months you get tired of hearing me yell about everything. Maybe you meet someone who doesn’t turn choosing a restaurant into a forty-minute argument just to agree with the first option you gave anyway.”
“Karkat.”
“I’M NOT DONE! Maybe the house doesn’t work out. Maybe that hypothetical kid hates you. Maybe we end up being exactly the kind of idiots who promise each other huge things because they can’t stand admitting they have no control over anything. So no, you can’t say you know. And you can’t talk about twenty years like it’s some obvious extension of tonight. It doesn’t work that way.”
The rain hit the roof. Dave stayed still, watching him without flinching, while Karkat breathed too fast, listening to himself, recognizing where the conversation had gone and still unable to find a way to stop.
“How does it work, then?” Dave asked calmly.
“I don’t know.”
“Then nobody knows. But you’re using not knowing as proof that something’s going to go wrong.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re saying it.”
“I’m saying you can’t be sure.”
“I’m sure now. That’s the only thing that exists.”
Karkat let out a laugh with no real humor in it.
“Wow. Great. Cheap philosophy to avoid thinking for more than five seconds.”
“I’ve been thinking about this for way longer than five seconds. What answer do you want?”
“A realistic one.”
“That’s what I’m giving you.”
“NO! You’re telling me you want a house with me because your friends are growing up and it scares you. You’re trying to nail something to the ground before it moves too.”
Dave took the hit without looking away, his expression cracking slightly. Karkat knew he’d landed it. He also knew it had been cruel, and yet he didn’t take it back or apologize.
The silence was heavy.
“Maybe...” Dave said finally. “Maybe I am scared.”
Karkat swallowed. Dave was never going to admit something like that so easily. That made his chest tighten.
“That doesn’t mean we have to—”
“I’m not finished.”
The sentence wasn’t loud, but it was enough to silence Karkat. Dave set his hands on his knees and stared at them, as if he needed something small to focus on before he could say the rest. None of this came easily. When he spoke again, he did it slowly; getting the words out visibly cost him real physical and mental effort.
“Maybe I’m scared things will change. Maybe watching Dirk talk about leaving made me realize how fast four years go by. Maybe I don’t want to wake up one day and find out we let our life just happen without deciding anything. But I don’t want a house to trap you.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You implied it.”
Karkat closed his mouth.
“And I don’t think it’s going to fix anything” Dave continued. “I know we could break up. I know it could go wrong. I know… there’s no version of the universe where saying something nice automatically makes it an absolute truth. But also—” he paused briefly, gathering courage. “But I also know that every time I imagine where I’m going to be, you’re there.”
Karkat felt the air catch in his throat. Dave spoke slowly, without that careless cadence he used to hide behind; every single word genuinely cost him something physical, an act of excavation.
“Not because we have a contract or something. Not because we currently live together. Not because we survived the same things either. You’re just there. If I think about next year, you’re there. If I think ten years ahead, you’re there too. If I think about some stupid house with big windows and a kitchen I don’t know how to use, it’s you yelling at me for leaving cups near the edge of the table.”
“I don’t let you put them there because you knock them over. You’ve broken six.”
“Five.”
“SIX.”
“Fine. Six.” He smiled slightly. “That’s the point.”
Karkat looked at him, not quite understanding.
“What, that you can’t take care of a cup?”
“That I know what you’re going to say. To me, that’s romantic.”
“You have pathetic standards. And terrible metaphors.”
“Probably. Definitely.”
“And you can’t assume I’m going to agree to live in a house just because it has windows.”
“We can discuss the size. The shape. The location.”
Karkat hit the wheel with his palm, though the gesture lacked most of its original fury.
“DAVE!”
Dave burst out laughing, and Karkat felt betrayed by his own lips as they tried to answer the smile.
“Don’t laugh.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“No.”
They kept looking at each other. The distance between them wasn’t great; it never was inside the car. Still, Karkat had the impression that Dave was waiting from somewhere far off, not moving closer, not forcing him to cross over. Dave didn’t usually demand a response from him; often he was willing to leave those words between them and let Karkat decide what to do with them.
“Are you trying to say you want to stay with me?” he asked.
“I’m not trying to say it. I thought I’d been saying it for like forty minutes.”
A laugh escaped Karkat’s mouth before he could stop it. He covered his face with both hands.
“You’re a complete idiot.”
“Also. I hate you.”
“That part was fucking terrible. Absolute garbage.”
Karkat lowered his hands. Dave was smiling at him with a tenderness so open it was almost offensive. Karkat leaned in and kissed him before the feeling could turn into words.
The movement was quick, closer to a collision than a decision. Dave made a surprised sound against his lips, but kissed him back immediately. One hand closed over Karkat’s side, the other landed on the back of his neck, fingers cold and damp in his hair. Karkat knew how to kiss Dave, knew the way he tilted his head, the exact pressure that made him sigh, the way his mouth parted slightly when Karkat grabbed his jacket and pulled him closer. They’d done this hundreds of times. But that night it felt different, maybe because he could still hear his words circling: ten years, a house, big windows, a kitchen, every version of tomorrow laid out before them, Dave insisting Karkat showed up in every single one.
He kissed him harder. Dave bumped his head against the roof as he shifted position.
“Shit” he mumbled against his mouth.
“Shut up.”
“I was just making a physical observation.”
“Express it in silence.”
He kissed him again. The hand at his neck slid down his back; Karkat shifted on the seat, awkward with the console between them, but refused to pull away. Dave tasted like the party’s drink and something sweet he’d probably stolen off the dessert table; his skin was cold from the rain, his mouth hot. Karkat bit his lower lip and felt the breath catch in Dave’s chest.
“That seems like a positive answer to the house thing” he murmured against his mouth.
Karkat pulled back slightly, not going far.
“Mention that damn house one more time while I’m kissing you and you’ll sleep in the car.”
“In our future garage?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Let’s discuss life insurance before that.”
Karkat kissed him again to shut him up. It worked for a good few seconds, until Dave, lips still pressed to his, muttered something about a kitchen island, and Karkat shoved him against the door without fully letting go, protesting between bursts of laughter, and for a while the car was filled with nothing but that sound until they both went still.
“I want a library” Karkat said.
Dave went still.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t make that smug idiot face. And it’ll have doors, so you can’t come in and mess everything up.”
“I could learn to pick locks.”
“Then I’ll have to install an alarm.”
“That sounds pretty unhealthy for a relationship built on trust.”
“Our relationship is built on the fact that I know your flaws” Karkat said, which made Dave smile.
He continued.
“And I don’t want to live too far. I’m not spending two hours commuting every time Roxy decides to set something on fire. The kitchen can be big, but you’re going to learn to use it.”
“I could negotiate alternative chores. I can clean.”
“You clean like you’re hiding evidence of a crime.”
“It’s effective, isn’t it?”
“You’re going to learn.”
“Fine.”
The ease of the answer made Karkat narrow his eyes.
“That’s it? You’re not going to argue?”
“I can argue if it makes you feel better. Or I’ll just learn.”
“And about the creature—”
He stopped, his voice breaking mid-sentence. Dave shifted slightly. Karkat looked at the dashboard, unable to hold his gaze while he said it.
“That’s not a promise. Or a decision already made. It’s not even officially a maybe. I’m just saying that… it’s not impossible.”
Dave stayed silent for so long that Karkat had to look at him. His eyes were bright, and for once there was nothing in them that looked like it wanted to hide.
“Don’t make that face” Karkat said.
“This is my face.”
“Well, control it.”
“I’m trying.”
Karkat felt pressure building behind his eyes.
“Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying.”
“You’re about to.”
“So are you.”
“I’M NOT—”
Dave kissed him before he could finish. It was a careful brush of lips, his hand rising to Karkat’s cheek, thumb passing under one of his eyes, lingering there a second too long. Karkat closed his eyes. There was no guarantee. That was the only real thing — the car stopped in the rain, the ocean beyond the glass, Dave’s mouth on his, and that small choice happening right now. He could choose him again tomorrow. And the day after. Maybe that was the closest thing to certainty anyone could get.
When they pulled apart, Dave didn’t move his hand away.
“You know what else a house needs? A space for your rom-coms. Something nicer. A screening room, soundproofed so the neighbors can’t hear you scream about how the leads should just learn to communicate.”
“I don’t scream that.”
“Valid criticism.”
Karkat sighed, letting Dave’s shoulder take some of his weight, the adrenaline of the last few minutes slowly settling into something calmer.
“And you’d pick the movies” Dave said.
“That already happens.”
“You picked a four-hour movie that was terrible.”
“It was a masterpiece.”
“It was a crime.”
“Then we can have themed nights” Dave proposed. “You pick one. I pick the next.”
“You never respect the turns.”
“We can write them down.”
“You’ll cheat.”
“You have a very low opinion of me.”
“Backed by years of evidence.”
Dave let his hand drop from Karkat’s face, though he left it resting on his shoulder.
“Fine. You manage the calendar. And we get a big couch.”
“We already have a couch.”
“A bigger one. For the nine blankets, obviously.”
“I’m not arguing this again.”
“And maybe a dog. Or a cat. Or a fish.”
Karkat pointed at him, narrowing his eyes.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. And a fish is worse, they live inside a box of water, waiting for you to forget to clean their shit.”
“A plant.”
“We’ve already killed two. Left them without water for a month.”
“The environment was very dry.”
Karkat leaned back in his seat, shaking his head, unable to quite erase that half-smile, while Dave picked up his shades and put them back on.
“We have to head back” he said, though he made no move to start the engine.
“Probably. Roxy’s going to ask about the ice.”
“I’m not rewarding your scam.”
“What if it’s gone?”
“Then they’ll drink things at room temperature and survive.”
Dave turned on his phone; the screen lit up his face, showing eleven notifications.
“Roxy’s asking if we died. She says if we’re having sex in her car, she wants us to know this isn’t her car.”
Karkat felt his face burning.
“WHY WOULD SHE ASSUME THAT?”
“Probably because we disappeared together for over an hour. Our mistake was building too sexy an alibi.”
“There’s nothing sexy about ice, Dave.”
“No” Dave said, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t even finish that sentence.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were about to.”
“You can’t prove that.”
Karkat started the engine. The heater blasted a gust of air and the fog slowly began to retreat from the windshield; the ocean reappeared in front of them as Dave typed a reply, thumb moving fast across the screen.
“What did you tell her?”
“That we got distracted talking about real estate.”
“That’s… sort of true, actually.”
“She replied with seven… no wait, ten question marks and a picture of a horse.”
“What does the horse mean?”
“No idea, and I think it’s better not to ask.”
Karkat put the car in gear. They drove back to the road.
The music picked up where they’d left it. Karkat pretended not to recognize the song. Dave just turned up the volume.
They drove toward the city as the rain began to ease, lights appearing bit by bit on the horizon, blurry at first, then sharper. Buildings, traffic lights, apartments with lit windows, entire lives happening behind each one.
“How big?” Karkat asked, glancing at him sideways.
“What?”
“The windows.”
Dave took the question seriously, adopting a thoughtful tone.
“Floor to ceiling would be excessive and you’d complain about the lack of privacy. But they could take up almost the whole wall. South-facing, with heavy curtains so the place doesn’t turn into an oven in summer. Kanaya could help with that.”
“I’m not asking Kanaya to make curtains for an entire house that doesn’t even exist.”
“Yet.”
Karkat shot him a look.
“There could be one by the sink” Dave continued. “So you can look outside while you cook.”
“And what will you be doing while I cook?”
“Helping. Or I’ll be sitting at the island. If I can’t help, I can get in the way.”
“DAVE.”
“It’s called emotional support. I can live with that.”
Karkat felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth and didn’t try to stop it.
“And I want a bathtub.”
Dave glanced at him sideways.
“A bathtub?”
“We’ve got a hole with pipes we can barely both fit in.” Karkat kept his eyes on the road, his jaw a little tense. “And it’s not just about that. Sometimes I can’t sleep. And hot water helps, more than the blankets, or whatever else we’ve tried. I don’t always tell you or wake you up when it happens. I get up, get in the shower, and stay there until it passes. It was never anything I wanted you to know either.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not your problem.”
“But it is.”
“I don’t want you to start treating me like I’m made of glass.”
Dave stayed quiet for a moment, and when he spoke it was with a particular gentleness.
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say that, if the bathtub exists, I’d probably end up sitting on the edge of it. Not to keep watch or anything, just… to keep you company and stuff.”
Karkat swallowed, something tightening in his chest.
“That’s a stupid idea.”
“It’s a big bathtub. I have low standards for ideas.” He let a few seconds pass. “Two sinks, then. So we don’t have to share when one of us is in a bad mood at six in the morning.”
Karkat let out the breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding.
“Two sinks.”
Dave nodded. Karkat slowed at a red light. The red glow washed over the inside of the car.
“You pick the bedroom” he said, without looking at him.
Dave stopped smiling for a second.
“Yeah?”
“You care more about morning light. I care about sleeping. Exactly because of that, if I pick it, it’ll be a cave.”
“A cozy cave. With eleven blankets by then.”
“I’m not collecting blankets.”
“Sure” he drew the word out.
“Don’t use that tone.”
The light changed and Karkat pulled forward, though a few meters later his posture tensed again.
“I’m not promising anything” he said, his voice tense again. “We’re just talking. We could change our minds. We could decide to stay in the apartment. Or move to a different one. Or figure out houses are a scam and live in a spaceship.”
“I’d rather avoid that. The insurance is terrible.”
Karkat pressed his lips together to keep from laughing.
“But we could.”
“We could” Dave repeated, accepting every out Karkat kept adding.
Karkat understood then that Dave wasn’t asking him for a guarantee or anything like that. He was, really, offering him a direction. It wasn’t a big cage.
“Fine” he said, almost a whisper.
“What thing?”
“The house.”
Dave turned to face him fully, momentarily forgetting how to keep his composure, visibly unsure what to do with himself.
“The house what?”
“We can look. NOT NOW, IDIOT! Eventually.”
Dave stayed silent until Karkat, uncomfortable under that gaze, couldn’t help but ask.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just that an hour ago you said eventually meant nothing.”
“I’ve revised my position.”
“A historic development.”
“Don’t get too excited.”
“I’m completely calm.”
“You have the stupidest smile I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“It’s my natural expression.”
“I’m going to crash the car.”
“That would delay the buying process.”
“Oh my god, shut up.”
Dave rested a hand over Karkat’s, still gripping the gearshift. Karkat adjusted his fingers so their hands could rest comfortably together, not looking away from the road, and drove the rest of the way like that, the rain now barely a mist on the windshield.
When they got back, the party was still going.
Roxy opened the door before they could even knock, barefoot, with a lipstick mark on her cheek.
“MY BRAVE EXPLORERS OF THE FROZEN WATERS! WHERE’S THE LOOT?”
Karkat raised his empty hands.
“Died in combat” Dave said solemnly.
“There’s a store open right across the street” Roxy said, narrowing her eyes. “I can literally see it from the window.”
Karkat turned slowly toward Dave, who suddenly found something fascinating about the hallway’s architecture.
“Across the street?”
“Urban visibility is fascinating.”
“I’m going to murder you” Karkat said, though he didn’t let go of his hand.
Roxy looked at one, then the other, and her gaze dropped to their laced fingers.
“Oh.”
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re doing it with your face.”
“I only have one face.”
“THAT’S THE SAME EXCUSE HE USED!”
Dave took off his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder with an almost proud gesture, and took Karkat’s hand again.
“We have big news.”
Karkat squeezed his hand hard, a warning Dave decided to ignore completely.
“We don’t have any news.”
“We’re considering a residential property” Dave said at the same time Karkat denied everything. Roxy’s mouth fell open before Karkat could say anything else.
“DAVE!”
“Eventually.”
Roxy’s shout made several heads turn. John appeared from the kitchen with a plate in hand; Rose lifted her head from the couch; Kanaya watched Karkat.
“Are you guys buying a house?” John asked, hope written all over his face, as easy to read as every other emotion.
“NO!” Karkat said.
“Yes” Dave said at the same time. “You said we could look.”
“LOOKING ISN’T BUYING!”
“It’s generally a preceding stage.”
Roxy launched herself at both of them, hugging them with all the force of someone who could no longer gauge her own strength, leaving Karkat trapped between her hair, Dave’s shoulder, and an intense scent of sweet alcohol.
“MY BABIES ARE BUILDING A NEST!”
“DON’T CALL IT THAT!”
“Will you have a guest room?” John asked, pushing through the crowd.
“Yes” Dave said.
“No” Karkat said.
John looked at both of them, genuinely confused, waiting for the contradiction to resolve itself.
“Where would I stay?”
“In your own house. You can go home at the end of the day.”
“That’s not very hospitable.”
“It’ll have a guest room” Dave decided.
“It’ll have a library.”
“It can be both.”
“I’M NOT LETTING JOHN SLEEP AMONG MY THINGS! YOU SNORE LIKE A DYING CREATURE.”
“I don’t snore that much ” John protested, wounded.
“That’s new and concerning information” Kanaya commented. “Consider it an argument in favor of the guest room.”
“THANK YOU, KANAYA.”
“I wasn’t on your side.”
“Will there be a garden?” Jade asked, pushing forward from the couch with her eyes already gleaming in a way Karkat recognized and feared.
“Yes” Dave said.
“How big?”
“I don’t know. Big?”
“Big enough for a greenhouse?”
“Dave” Karkat said, very slowly, like he was defusing a bomb, “don’t promise her a greenhouse.”
“It could be small” Jade insisted. “Just a couple of meters. Nothing that could eat a whole mailman.”
“WHOLE? THAT IMPLIES THERE’D BE ACCEPTABLE PARTIAL VERSIONS.”
“Exactly.”
“THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE A CARNIVOROUS PLANT GREENHOUSE IN OUR GARDEN.”
“We’ll decide that once the garden exists” Dave said.
“DAVE!”
“I’m being diplomatic.”
“YOU’RE BEING A COWARD WHO DOESN’T WANT TO TELL JADE NO!”
“Both things can be true.”
“STOP DESIGNING OUR HOUSE!” Karkat shouted.
The word that had just left his mouth. “Our.” Karkat felt it floating over every head, bright and humiliating. Dave looked at him with a stupid look on his face. Roxy pressed both hands to her mouth. John just smiled and Rose raised her glass toward Kanaya, having won a bet.
“I’m going to the bathroom” Karkat announced, “and none of you are going to talk to me for the rest of the night.”
He let go of Dave’s hand and strode across the room, not looking back. He reached the hallway before Dave caught up to him.
“Karkat.”
“Drop dead.”
“Our house.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Sounds nice.”
Karkat stopped, hand on the doorframe. Dave stood behind him, hair still damp, shirt wrinkled, and a small smile reserved only for Karkat.
“I’m going to regret this” he said, turning at last. “We’re going to argue about every single detail. I’m rejecting any property with an open-concept kitchen.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You’ll learn. And I don’t want rugs.”
“They’re hard to clean.”
“Exactly.”
“We agree on something.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Dave took a step toward him, closing the little distance left between them.
“Wasn’t planning to.”
Karkat grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in to kiss him. From the living room, Roxy shouted something about true love; Karkat raised his hand without pulling away from Dave and gave the room the finger in the direction of the noise. Dave smiled against his mouth.
The party went on. Their friends talked, laughed, moved through lives that no longer fit inside a single building. Someday they’d live in different cities. Some would forget to call. Others would show up unannounced. Rooms would change hands and furniture would wear out. There would be small goodbyes, reunions, jobs, kids, funerals, postponed dinners, and plans that wouldn’t survive until winter. Nothing stayed intact. Karkat knew that.
But Dave was there. He was there because he’d chosen to follow him into the hallway. Because he kissed him while everyone shouted. Because tomorrow he’d wake up and leave a cup too close to the edge of the table, Karkat would call him out, and Dave would promise to move it, even though he probably wouldn’t. A certainty didn’t have to be eternal to be real. Sometimes it just meant looking at someone and knowing you’d choose them now.
Karkat pulled back enough to breathe.
“The windows can’t take up the whole wall” he murmured, breathless.
“We can negotiate, like I said.”
“And I want one facing east. For you.”
Dave stopped smiling. For a moment he seemed not to know what to say.
Karkat felt a fierce satisfaction.
“Wow. I finally got you to shut up.”
Dave kissed him again, slow from the start, almost deliberate, one hand climbing up Karkat’s side to tangle in his hair while the other stayed firm against his back, pulling him all the way in, leaving him no room to think about anything else. Karkat felt Dave’s sigh against his mouth right before the kiss itself, a second of hot breath that slipped under his skin before Dave’s lips met his again, firm and insistent, moving against his with an intent that had nothing to do with the jokes from a moment ago.
He gripped Dave’s shirt with both hands, wrinkling the fabric between his fingers, and felt his pulse pound in his throat as Dave tilted his head to deepen the kiss, pulling a low sound out of his chest, something like a complaint. The whole hallway shrank down to just the two of them. The noise of the party, Roxy’s laughter, the music still playing on the other side of the door, all reduced to a distant hum, unimportant, as Karkat’s back hit the wall and Dave followed, never breaking contact; letting go wasn’t even an option under consideration.
Karkat held Dave’s jaw with one hand, feeling his uneven breathing against his palm, and kissed him harder, if that was even possible, letting that night become just this — Dave’s mouth opening against his, his fingers tangled in his hair, the full weight of another person choosing him without conditions or guarantees, just because that’s what he wanted.
When they finally pulled apart, neither moved fully away. Dave let his head fall onto Karkat’s shoulder, his nose tucked beneath Karkat’s ear, and stayed there a moment, breathing against his neck while Karkat wrapped his arms around him, saying nothing.
That, too, was an answer. A very clear one.