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“And here we see an overly grumpy crab troll, out of its natural habitat of being surrounded by lousy rom coms exploring this fucking fantastic forest.” You zoom in on karkat with your video camera as he continues up the forest trail.
“Will you put that thing away you shitsponage! I don’t want to be apart of your ludicrous waste of time and energy attempt to record this goddamn trip!” Karkat says as he stares back at you with his default “You’re pissing me off” look.
“Uh oh, it seems we have pissed off this majestic beast, but thankfully, a troll’s horn size is a reference to their level of threat they possess to you, and the grumpy crab trolls horns are almost nonexistent, so we’re good.” You laugh as Karkat starts towards you to try and take the camera from your hands. You simply hold the camera out of his reach and hold him back by putting your hand on his head. It’s too bad you can’t focus the camera on Karkat’s comical attempts to get to said camera. “Dude, dude, if you were going to get so mad at me, why invite me on this trip in the first place? And why just me? Weren’t thinking of trying to get rid of me while we were out here on our own were you? It would be the perfect way to get rid of me if you came up with the right story. Don’t go with a bear, or whatever you trolls call them. Bro knows I wouldn’t die in such a cliche way. Big foot would be too cliche to, how about-”
“Listen you irritating ironic wannabe asshat!” Karkat yells at you, “You weren’t the only person I invited, and I wouldn’t have even invited you if I knew you were going to be this much of an insufferable prick this early on!”
“Oh,” You say, a bit surprised, “Is everyone else going to meet us at the campsite then?”
“No. They’re not coming…” Karkat growls, and the way he flicks his head away so he can try to hide the way his face got a sort of sad expression on it kind of makes you feel bad for him. “Gamzee is on a hate date with Terezi, Kanaya doesn't like roughing it in the outdoors and would much rather work on dresses, Jade’s sick, John is having a prank off with his dad, Sollux-” You cover his mouth before he says anymore, and then quickly jerk it away before he can bite it.
“Listen, its fine.” You tell him, "we'll just have to have the sickest time out here by ourselves and show them all what they missed when we get back.” You add, holding up your video camera with one of your patent Strider smirks on your face.
He looks at you again, his face contorted into one of his irritated sneers, but finally starts to relax into what resembles a smile. “Yeah...I guess we will.”
On the last night of your and Karkat’s camping trip, you’re lying next to the camp fire looking through all the footage you got. There’s Karkat catching the biggest fucking fish you’ve ever seen come out of a river for dinner that night, you and Karkat investigating a suspicious noise as you make jokes that it was Jason coming to get you and it turned out to just be some racoons (you’ll never tell Karkat how scared you actually were), Karkat filming you as you stand under this waterfall you guys stumbled upon, and so many more memories that you kind of didn’t want to share with anyone else. You’re contemplating on whether to delete the footage or not, and what your excuse for doing so would be, when Karkat interrupts your thoughts.
“Hey Strider.” You look up to see that Karkat is holding a bag of marshmallows, a couple bars of chocolate, a box of graham crackers, and two pointy sticks.
“Oh hell yeah!” You say with a smile as you sit up, putting your video camera down, “This camping trip wouldn’t be complete without making some s’mores!”
He just chuckles as he tosses you the bag of marshmallows and sits down next to you. Pretty soon you’re both holding your sticks over the fire, focusing on not alighting your marshmallows like miniature fireballs like you did with your first three. Now you’re able to get them to a tolerable dark brown, while Karkat is able to get his to that desired light brown nicely toasted state. “Hot damn Karkat, you’re like a fucking marshmallow roasting master.” You tell him in awe. “Tell me your secrets.”
“Here’s a tip, don’t stick them so close to the searing hot flames so they don’t burn.” Karkat tells you as he moves your stick to a better location, further away from the fire.
“Fucking amazing.” You laugh.
“It really is, now bask in my ability not to light my own food on fire.” Karkat joins you in laughing, something he’s been doing more frequently ever since coming out here with you.
After you and Karkat had downed some of the best s’mores you’ve possibly ever tasted, you both lean back and look at the stars, not really saying anything, just looking up.
“Hey...Strider…” Karkat says after maybe ten minutes or so, breaking the silence.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for coming out here with me, it means a lot to me.” You look over to see him dead set on staring at the sky, trying to keep his best poker face on but his blush is giving away his embarrassment of telling you that.
“Hey, you’re one of my best bro’s, maybe even the best, which is why I wanted to come out here with you. Don’t have to thank me for that.” You tell him with a casual tone in your voice as you just as casually pick up your video camera.
“What are you doing Dave?” Karkat asked confused when he sees you messing around with the camera.
“Deleting all of this sick footage.” You tell him, smile on your face as you keep your eyes on the camera.
“What happened to showing it to everyone and making them regret not coming out here with us?”
“I think the experiences of two awesome Bro’s should stay between them. You know, “First rule of fight club” and all that jazz. No reason anybody else should get the privilege of sharing it. But hey, if you want to show them,” You hold out the video camera to him and on the screen it says “Are you sure you want to delete?” with the yes and no button to the right of the screen, “Feel free to stop me.”
Karkat looks at the camera then up at you before bringing his attention back to the camera. He thinks about what button to push for a minute before tentatively reaching out and pushing one of them.You bring the camera back and look on the screen to see what he picked, and smile at him when you see “Deleted successfully”.
