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So yeah, of course when Karkat leaned over to kiss him Dave let him. They’d been dancing around this stupid fucking thing for years, like so many years, like how many years had it been a decade? A century? Only five? Five unending years of Karkat giving him those god damn sappy looks? And Dave couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand that they hadn’t moved forward yet, couldn’t figure out how to move forward, couldn’t understand why Karkat still looked at him that way after all this time except that he did and he was and this was happening oh god it was happening.
The best part was that it was finally happening but the worst part was that Dave didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do. A normal person would have figured this out by now, would have taken this fucking show on the road ages ago, lifetimes ago. But Dave had never had any fucking chance to be fucking normal and he couldn’t believe Karkat had been sitting around on his ass waiting for Dave to get his shit together, couldn’t believe this was happening. ‘This has to be some dreambubble shit again’, he thought, as if that made any more sense than what was actually happening. Which was Karkat kissing him.
Because, fuck, even as it was happening Dave couldn't fathom that Karkat meant it, that anyone would ever have meant it. That had been his manic thought throughout this whole process, the process of sappy looks and held hands and unspoken cuddles and sitting too close, and after an eternity, Karkat leaning closer. Karkat had eyes, big beautiful ones that Dave tried not to get lost in – shit, the point was that he could see, he knew what he would be getting into. Dave was an awesome friend… but he’d never be good for anything… flushed, to put it in troll terms.
And fuck, he couldn’t even think about it without deflecting, without defusing it into alien terminology and mixed metaphors and anything to mask the fact that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, and clearly Karkat did, and it wasn’t fucking fair to him. He’d always been so blunt, obnoxiously so, frustratingly and endearingly so. When he’d wanted Dave to die he just fucking said it, when he wanted Dave to shut up or watch a movie or play with the Mayor (god Dave loved the Mayor) Karkat had always just fucking said it, and he’d said nothing on the topic of kissing or making out or, like. Y’know. Other stuff.
So maybe those sappy looks meant nothing. Maybe Dave had been imagining it all, the looks and the touches and the smiles and the – god, Dave hated it. The second guessing. Karkat was literally kissing him on the lips and somewhere in the frenzied mush of his brain Dave kept comparing the way Karkat acted with him to the way he’d acted around John all those years ago, how close he sat to Jade sometimes, the look in his eye he used to get around Terezi.
It wasn’t the same. God, fuck, something about this was real in a way Dave had been trying to ignore for so long he wanted to vomit.
So yeah, OK, yes, whatever, basically the situation was that they were sort of best friends who had shared living quarters for half a decade and who’d obviously wanted to bone down for at least part of that time and now, finally, they were doing the kissing part. Or at least Karkat was kissing him, Dave didn’t know what the hell he was doing, besides drowning in mortification and burning alive from the inside out, all at the same time.
They’d been sitting on the floor by the couch going through old photo albums, looking for photos for some project or something, who knows, who can remember, and the photographs kept falling out because those god damn photo albums were so fucking shitty, and they kept laughing. At old selfies and old hijinks and the batshit crazy arc of their history together. They’d started out with a pile of photographs on the floor between them and somehow ended up side by side, pressed up against each other with their backs to the couch cushions, Karkat’s knee digging into Dave’s knee and his shoulder digging into Dave’s shoulder, and he was too fucking close, like a branding iron, like sitting next to a bonfire on a freezing night and being too desperate for that heat to even think about moving away.
Karkat had said something but Dave wasn’t processing it, couldn’t stop thinking of his goofy, toothy grin. He remembered Rose nudging him in the ribs once, her saying ‘make sure you watch out for those sharp troll teeth’, him turning red and pretending not to know what she meant. He remembered Jade complaining that she could ‘cut the tension between you two with a knife’. He remembered Karkat shuffling closer to point out a particular photo. The album was half in each of their laps but Karkat was propping it up, the back of his hand on Dave’s knee, and Dave was responding to whatever Karkat had said but he wasn’t fucking processing any of it, all processing power in his brain gone to shit, kaput, dead in the water. Words were tumbling out of his mouth all on their own accord and Dave had nothing to do with it.
He wanted to look over to see if Karkat could tell he was rambling – of course he could, Karkat wasn’t a fucking idiot – and he wanted to say ‘oh hey look at the time it’s almost lunch time maybe we should get up and go get food, somewhere else, anywhere else ’ and fuck Karkat’s face was so close.
When Dave finally did look over Karkat was just staring at him, and he realized he’d probably said a lot more of that out loud than he’d meant to but neither of them were moving. His instincts screamed at him to backtrack, backpedal, run away, something like ‘haha just kidding I haven’t thought about kissing you obsessively for years I’m not gay’ but he was trying not to do that anymore, it was still so fucking hard to stop doing that.
And then he thought about that thing Rose had said about troll teeth, and he thought ‘well wait a minute Karkat’s teeth are actually pretty blunt for a troll’ but, fuck, then he was looking at Karkat’s lips. And Karkat was looking at his.
And yeah, that’s when the leaning in part happened. When Dave thought well fuck it, just let it happen, you want this to happen, why the fuck are you freaking out about this so much. The fact that Karkat was even leaning in to begin with was a god damn fucking miracle.
The actual kissing part was both boring and earthshattering. They weren’t actually doing anything, it just felt like Karkat was pressing his face up against Dave’s face, and the bridge of his glasses were digging into the space between his eyebrows, and a part of Dave felt like, ‘shouldn’t there be more happening with me right now’, and the rest of Dave felt like if he did nothing but press his face up against Karkat’s face for the rest of his miserable fucking existence it would be all he would ever need to live. Forget food or air, if Dave stopped kissing Karkat he felt like he might actually die.
Except he wasn’t kissing Karkat, Karkat was kissing him, and Dave should probably have done something about it besides panicking and second guessing, obsessing over all the ways he was inadequate and inexperienced, stressing about what to do with his hands. Karkat had hardly moved his hands – the one on his knee curled tight around the photo album, the other at Dave’s shoulder curling tight into the fabric of his t-shirt. What were you supposed to do with your hands, when the boy you’ve been wanting to kiss for years is finally kissing you but you feel like if he keeps going you will die, and if he stops you will die, and you don’t want to die?
So he did nothing with his hands, didn’t even close his eyes because he was an unromantic dunce, and he tried to kiss Karkat back but it just felt like he was pushing Karkat away with his lips. And while that didn’t necessarily feel bad, he also didn’t want to be pushing Karkat away so he stopped, and then he tried pulling away, like a fucking idiot, and ended up breaking the kiss, his first real kiss, the first real one he'd had while he was both alive and awake and in this timeline.
Karkat was a pro and had closed his eyes though so Dave got to watch as they blinked open again, got to see them all unfocused and blissed out on, like, bliss he guessed. He could practically see the little cartoony red hearts dancing around his pupils, fuck his eyes were so big this close, and they made Dave feel a way but he couldn’t figure out what he was feeling. All he knew was that his chest hurt and his lungs burned and his skin was on fire and his brain felt all dizzy and his throat felt all tied up into knots, and those imaginary little red cartoon hearts terrified him in a way he found impossible to describe. Terrified him more than anything else in his whole god damn life ever had, and when he opened his mouth all he could say was “Fuck.”
Not a ‘wow that was hot’ fuck or even a ‘I would like to do this again sometime maybe’ fuck but a ‘so it looks like I’ve identified this feeling and it’s sheer unadulterated terror’ fuck. And Karkat just kept staring at him with those sappy dopey loving eyes and Dave tried to get his brain back online but all he could think was ‘shit. fuck.’ He couldn’t stand that look and he didn’t know why, it was too visceral, too much, way too fucking much and he flinched back from it like the bonfire had finally burned him. He had just enough time to see Karkat's expression change to confusion and concern as he scrambled away, turned his back, tried to hold back a wave of nausea, hugged his arms over his torso like a fucking baby just muttering “Fuck. Shit” over and over.
He heard the photo album fall to the floor probably minutes after it happened and more of those god damn photographs scattering everywhere and he could just picture it, Karkat confused and hurt and probably angry, maybe hating him, only a few feet away and reaching over but stopping before he actually touched Dave’s shoulder. He imagined he could feel the ghost of that hand on his shoulder and he thought, if Karkat actually touched him, he didn’t know what he would do.
He didn't know why he'd done that. Nothing in his god damn head made any god damn sense besides the painful uncertainty, and the sick certainty. The years of knowing he was wrong about something but being unable to put his finger on it, skipping the practice swords and jumping straight to the real thing, thinking he knew how not to get cut. You couldn't avoid getting burned by a bonfire unless you avoided building one in the first place, and now he was cut, and burned, and fuck, it was all his own god damn fault.
He wanted to kiss Karkat, wanted it so badly, and he wanted to vomit again, and his heart wouldn’t stop pounding and he was being stupid, so stupid, he didn’t know what to do, and he was barely able to breathe and Dave thought ‘yikes this is kind of like having a panic attack’ and then he tried to remember when the last time he’d had a panic attack was and then he thought ‘oh shit I’m having a panic attack.’
“DAVE,” Karkat said, and Dave couldn’t be imagining that new tender note in his fucking voice because only Karkat could do that shit. “UH. I’M SORRY-”
“No, fuck, shit, no, it’s not -” Dave could barely gasp the words out but he needed to try, staring down at the ugly neutral carpet, and then he was rambling again. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you for years,” he said, “fuck.”
“And I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing right now or why I’m being such a fucking baby about this, but I also don’t know what the fuck I’m doing in general or why I never – I’ve never done this kind of stuff before, I mean I’ve done the panic attack stuff before but it’s been a hot second–”
“DAVE.”
“I mean the with you stuff and now I’m fucking it all up and I can’t figure out why, I just thought when it finally happened I’d know what the fuck I was supposed to do but, shit, you know, I can’t even look at your fucking eyes without my brain turning into–”
“DAVE SHUT UP.”
Dave shut up, clamped his mouth closed tight to quell the rising tide of word vomit. He could feel it still threatening to spill out of him still.
“BREATHE.”
He tried. The air came in shaky and incomplete but he felt a little, tiny, minuscule bit of that knot in his chest start to ease up, and part of the fog in his brain cleared up a little, and he thought ‘I wonder if that wasn’t all terror, I wonder if that was oxygen deprivation’ and then he thought ‘I wonder if I thought to breathe at all while he was kissing me’ and then he thought about Karkat kissing him again.
“KEEP BREATHING. YOU HAVE TO KEEP DOING THAT PART, DAVE.”
The second breath was a little bit easier. He let it shudder out of him and tried to picture the brainfog going with it, the mental block, tried to picture himself being fine and totally normal and kissable. Tried to remember to take a third breath, and a fourth. Tried to focus on the awful, quiet sound a few feet behind him of Karkat counting the breaths out for him.
When he got to ten Karkat stopped. Dave felt like he could breathe again but his chest still hurt, and his brain was fully in headache mode, and when he loosened his own grip on himself he found that his hands had gone rather shaky.
He thought that the best way to move forward from this fucking disaster of a morning would be to just go back to bed, go to sleep, pretend the whole day had never and would never happen. He thought that he would rather die than turn around and have to face Karkat right at that moment. The inevitable hurt, the disappointment. It wasn't just his first kiss, it was supposed to be their first kiss, and he'd just fucking blown it so bad, he had to apologize. He said, "I'm, so," and his voice was so small he tried to clear it to start again but Karkat cut him off.
“DO YOU WANT TO WATCH A MOVIE?” Karkat asked.
Dave didn’t respond right away because in the context of what was going on the question made no fucking sense. He wondered if he’d misheard it or maybe misunderstood it and also he wondered how much time had passed since Karkat had first leaned forward to kiss him because it seemed like it was hours ago and also it seemed like it was still happening.
“Uh,” Dave finally managed to say, “what.”
He half-turned to see Karkat crawling over to the TV cabinet and digging through the clutter piled in front of it, pulling out a disc. “JADE WATCHED THIS YESTERDAY WITHOUT US BUT SHE SAID IT WAS GOOD. YOU WANNA WATCH IT?”
If he was being real fucking honest with himself at the moment then no, Dave did not want to watch a movie, he wanted to know what fucking game Karkat was playing at. But he also wanted to ignore the complete meltdown he’d just had and it looked like Karkat did too, so if sitting through one of Jade’s shitty cartoons was the price to pay for that then bring it on.
“OK,” he said, and he tried to stand up but found his gelatin legs couldn't do that so instead he pulled himself onto the couch, practically sitting on the arm of it. He watched Karkat, who had his back turned now, fumbling with the DVD player, and he wasn’t even glancing over his shoulder or anything to check that Dave was OK and frankly that kind of stung a little. Like, of course he was mad, but was he giving Dave the cold shoulder now too? Dave did feel a bit cold, and jittery.
He sniffed because there was some snot trying to escape his fucking nose and Dave felt like such a goddamn baby, he was so embarrassed.
Karkat didn’t look at him as he sat down on the opposite end of the couch. Dave tried not to exaggerate the distance between them – it was a three-seater couch and clearly Dave had just had some sort of emotional breakdown so probably Karkat was just giving him some breathing room, trying to be considerate, like a decent person, and at least he was still in the same fucking room so, y’know, that had to mean something, there was no reason to complain.
But he still didn’t look at Dave as he messed with the remote and by then Dave was openly watching him, over-analyzing the angle of his frown and the tension in his shoulders. He couldn’t tell if this was an ‘I’m concentrating on a dumb task’ grimace or an ‘I regret sitting here with Dave’ grimace and he tried to quell the voice in his head that said it had to be the second.
Because when Karkat was done he casually tossed the remote aside and, sort of, pat his lap. Like in the universally recognized ‘come rest your stupid head over on these bad boys’ gesture, and he said “COME ON” while pointedly staring ahead at the TV instead of subjecting Dave to whatever dopey look was probably in his eyes. And it took Dave a few moments for his brain to catch up but then it clicked – Karkat wanted to cuddle. He wanted Dave to lie down with with his head in his lap and probably fall asleep watching some stupid movie like they used to do forever ago but stopped doing because it was fucking embarrassing, they were too old for that shit.
So yeah, Dave lay down. He put his head on Karkat’s thigh and found the couch was just long enough to lie down comfortably but his shoulder dug into the couch cushions and the side of his glasses dug into his ear and now the screen was sideways, but it wasn’t like he intended to pay attention to that anyways.
It wasn’t the most comfortable but Dave felt like he could do this, be like this, for as long as Karkat wanted, even if Jade came home and caught them and it was super embarrassing.
And then Dave felt Karkat’s hand touch his head, fingers threading through his hair, and his brain short circuited all over again. He missed a good ten minutes of the movie at least, reeling from the sensation of fingers on his scalp, naturally sharp claws that had been filed down to blunt tips needling into his nervous system and setting his brain on fire. It wasn’t the shock of panic he had felt earlier but the low burn of desire, rearing its ugly head. He wanted Karkat to kiss him again but even moreso he wanted Karkat to keep touching him. Keep playing with his hair. He’d wanted to touch Karkat’s hair so badly, had only worked up the courage to do it once when Karkat had fallen asleep. He wondered if Karkat had really been asleep.
By the time Karkat spoke again, a completely unknowable amount of time later, Dave hadn’t even noticed that the tightness in his chest was gone, and the cold tremors in his hands had passed. “SO,” Karkat said. Dave missed that voice. He almost missed those eyes, too. “QUESTION. WHEN THIS MOVIE’S OVER. CAN I KISS YOU AGAIN?”
Dave didn’t know what the fuck to say to that. At all. He’d finally gotten calmed down and now the tempo in his chest was ramping up again. He thought about the swell of panic that had already washed over him and the overwhelming relief that Karkat still wanted to kiss him, and he opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out, and he could still feel the brush of fingers against his scalp as the movie droned on, and finally he said “yeah, OK.”
As the movie got closer to its end Dave felt his nerves ramping up. It felt like he was watching a timer count down all over again, and at the end of it something big was going to happen, and he didn’t know if he’d survive again this time. He thought, ‘hey idiot, the, uh, person you want to kiss wants to kiss you back. You’re allowed to want that. You’re allowed to want him’ and it didn’t make his nerves go away but he wasn’t panicking, he kept breathing.
When the credits started to play Dave didn’t move, and Karkat didn’t move, and Dave just kept lying there wondering if he was supposed to make the next move or if Karkat meant all the way at the end, or if possibly he was working up the courage too?
And then the front door slammed open and Dave sat BOLT upright and from the entryway Jade called out “I’m back! I hope you haven’t eaten lunch yet, I got food! Oh! Is that–?”
Karkat had spun in his seat, gripping the back of the couch hard enough to leave little scratches into the fabric, face contorted in a customary glare, and Dave thought ‘I’m so glad he files his nails or else we'd have to replace this couch each week,’ and he thought ‘damn he’s cute when he’s pretending to be angry.’
“HEY JADE WELCOME BACK,” Karkat shouted, “NOW CAN YOU GO AWAY FOR TWO MINUTES?”
“Uh. What?” Dave wasn’t going to turn around to see the look on her face because he didn’t want her to see the look on his face but by the tone of voice he could tell she was more than a little miffed.
“CAN YOU LEAVE THE ROOM AND GO TO A DIFFERENT ROOM FOR TWO MINUTES? AND THEN COME BACK? NO WE HAVE NOT EATEN YET WE’LL EAT WHEN YOU GET BACK.”
Jade was silent for a moment but Dave imagined that she looked pissed, and then he imagined that she gestured vaguely in his own direction and mouthed something silently and then he saw Karkat nod his head emphatically and Dave's face flushed and he didn’t move.
Finally Jade sighed, put out, and said “Fine,” and she trudged down the hallway. In his periphery Dave saw Karkat watching her, making sure she closed the door behind her when she left, and then he turned to Dave and grabbed his shoulders and Dave’s heart rate spiked back up to lethal levels but Karkat just held him there.
“CAN I KISS YOU?” he asked again. Even though he’d already gotten Dave’s permission at least twice for this and they only had two minutes to make fools of themselves, and he was staring at Dave with this serious look in his eyes, no more cartoon hearts, just mission eyes, like he was on a mission, like he was focused on the task at hand and the task was getting triplicate permission for his lips to touch Dave’s lips and also could Dave maybe not be a fucking baby about it this time.
“Holy jegus fuck,” Dave said.
That was clearly not the response Karkat was expecting.
“Yeah,” Dave clarified, “I said yeah, yes, you don’t have to keep asking. I mean it’s fucking cute I’m not complaining but if you keep asking I'm gonna start overthinking and–” and then Karkat was kissing him again.
It felt kind of the same but also entirely different, partly because he was emotionally prepared for it this time and partly because he was remembering to breathe. Karkat’s eyes were closed so Dave closed his eyes and when he tried to press closer it didn’t feel like pushing Karkat away with his lips this time. It felt like pressing closer.
He still couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands so he tried grabbing at Karkat with them, but then they landed on his chest and that felt weird, too close, too intimate, so he brought them up to Karkat’s arms and clung tight. Dave wanted to grab the sides of Karkat’s face like they did in those silly romcoms he made Dave sit through but he didn’t know how to do that, not quite yet, so he just hung off his arms while Karkat clung to Dave’s shoulders, blunted little claws balling up into the fabric of his shirt and scratching through to his skin.
And Dave thought about the fact that they could have been doing this for years if he hadn’t been so afraid of it. Karkat was the one with the fucking romcoms, he knew exactly what they were missing out on, but Dave hadn’t realized. He wanted to pull Karkat closer but there was nowhere closer to go besides in and he didn’t know how to do that yet. But maybe soon he could try.
When Karkat moved to pull away Dave tried to follow him with his lips but then he thought about how embarrassing that would look and so he didn’t. He blinked, and Karkat blinked, and then Karkat squeezed his eyes shut tight and when they opened up again they were back to Mission Eyes, terrifying imaginary hearts nowhere to be found, and he'd done that on purpose somehow, and Dave wanted to kiss him again. Had it already been two minutes? It felt like five seconds, and ten years.
“SO WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW,” Karkat asked, “CAN I KISS YOU AGAIN TOMORROW?”
“Holy fucking shit, dude," Dave said, "I wasn’t joking about all the questions. I'm not a piece of glass.” But he couldn’t help smiling, tried not to laugh, and Karkat grinned, all those blunt troll teeth on full display. And Dave said “no, you know what? Fuck you, it’s my turn to, uh – I’m gonna instigate shit tomorrow, and you’re gonna have to wait around all day for me to, uh.” 'Work up the nerve,' he tried not to finish.
“SO TOMORROW NIGHT THEN,” Karkat said, and Dave felt his face heat up. “OK, I DON'T MIND WAITING.”
They heard a door open elsewhere in the house and Karkat quickly let go of him, and Jade called out “I ate all your fries while I was waiting! Are you guys done yet? With whatever’s going on?”
‘I sure as fuck hope not,’ Dave thought.
“NO,” Karkat shouted back. He stood up and shook out his hands and looked around manically before stooping to pick up some of the scattered photographs. He was trying not to smile. “COME HELP US PICK THESE UP.”
Jade appeared a few moments later, holding two greasy takeout bags, and she said “Why is our floor covered in old pictures?”
“Rose wanted some copies for some project she’s doing,” Dave said.
Jade looked to where Dave still sat unmoving on the couch, and Dave looked back up at her, and she raised her eyebrows significantly, and his face felt hot, and he said “so how the fuck did you manage to wolf down three orders of french fries in two minutes.”
“I didn’t, I just ate both of yours.”
“That’s still a lot of fucking fries.”
“Whatever. You two can split mine.” She had a knowing twinkle in her eye that Dave didn’t like, and she added “So, am I allowed to ask for details?”
“Fuck no,” Dave said.
“FUCK NO,” Karkat said, a stack of photographs practically spilling out of his hands, “AND FUCK BOTH OF YOU FOR JUST STANDING THERE WHILE I PICKED ALL THESE UP.” Karkat didn’t blush but he got more angry-looking when he got embarrassed, and it had been a while since Dave had gotten to see it.
“YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH THESE,” Karkat added, and he dumped the stack of photos into Dave’s lap before grabbing a takeout bag and storming off to the kitchen.
Jade handed Dave the other bag. “So, how long do I have to wait before you tell me anyways?”
“Honestly,” he said, “probably like a day.”