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When Dave’s body is suddenly lurched to the side by the force of a strong arm around his neck, his first thought is, Goddamnit, not again. He’s been mugged three times before, which has moved the whole thing from a pants-shitting, life-flashing-before-his-eyes deal to something more like getting stuck in particularly bad traffic. All he wanted to do after work today was get home, drop onto his couch, and watch Seinfeld reruns until the people that live below him quiet down enough for him to sleep, and now he’s going to be stuck waiting for the DMV website to load so he can order another driver’s license. Great. Absolutely fucking great.
“Alright, Jesus, you don’t have to break my neck,” he complains. He can’t see whoever it is that’s grabbed him, but he can tell that they’re a bit shorter than him, judging by the breath brushing against the back of his neck, and fucking built. Well, that’s a bonus. If they’re feeling violent, he’s fucked. “Can we just –”
The person’s other arm locks into place around Dave’s waist, pinning his arms to his sides and rendering him basically immobile. “I need a place to stay,” a low, scratchy voice says. “And you’re going to give me one.”
“You – what?” Dave says. He tries to turn his head to see who this guy is, but he can only turn his head far enough to see what looks like a dark hood. Is he some sort of Gotham-villain wannabe or something?
“I need a place to stay,” the guy repeats. His words are clear, but there’s an edge to them that Dave can’t quite put his finger on, an accent that he’s never heard before. “I’m going to let you go, and then you’re going to take me to where you live. Okay?”
Dave looks up at the sky for a moment. It offers absolutely no explanation or apology for the fact that, of all of the people in Houston, this guy picked Dave to accost.
“Okay?” the guy repeats, a little more urgent this time, and his arm tightens around Dave’s neck just enough for Dave to decide that he should probably acquiesce for a minute.
“Okay, okay,” he says.
There’s a moment of quiet. Dave becomes abruptly aware of how hard his heart is pounding. He’s starting to think that he might have actually preferred the DMV, but, luckily, he’s not too far down that particular mental rabbit hole to notice the guy’s arms slackening just enough for some old, shoved-down instinct to surface.
Dave’s not exactly sure how he does it. All he knows is that, in what feels like a blink of an eye, the guy is on the ground and Dave’s standing over him, feeling like he’s back on a sun-baked roof. Something like triumph, accomplishment, threatens to wash over Dave, but it sours when the guy scrambles backwards on his hands and feet, his wide, red eyes staring up at Dave like a cornered animal.
Wait. His wide, red eyes, which, while strange enough on their own, are peering out from a dark hood that surrounds the skin of someone who looks to either be deathly ill or, like, a zombie. Before he can stop himself, Dave crouches down, reaches out, and pushes the hood back.
A lot of things happen at once. The guy makes this weird sort of hissing sound, revealing teeth that are just a bit pointier than any that Dave’s seen on a human before and making Dave jump backwards, and tosses his hood back over himself. He doesn’t do it fast enough, though, to keep Dave from seeing exactly what he must be using it to hide – namely, gray skin and two small, bright horns poking up from a bed of dark, messy hair.
Whatever’s going on … doesn’t make sense. Dave just stares at the guy for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell he is. People don’t look like that. Sure, there are all types in the city, but this guy doesn’t even like human. Which must mean –
“Are you, like, a cosplayer?” Dave blurts. The moment it leaves his mouth, he realizes how stupid it sounds, and from the looks of it, the guy is having about the same reaction.
“No, fuckwad!” he snaps, which might have been more of an effective insult if he wasn’t still on the ground. “I’m not a ‘cosplayer,’ I’m a troll. Didn’t think it would be so hard to figure out, what with you feeling so comfortable grabbing my clothes and –”
“Alright, alright, hey, you’re one to talk considering the whole – nevermind, actually, just – you’re a troll? As in, you hang out under bridges and shit? Oh, fuck, wait, is that why you need a place to –”
The guy bares his teeth. They really are weirdly pointly. It’s unnerving, sure, but they kind of work with his face, and yeah, nope, that’s enough thinking from Dave. He tunes back into the angry tirade being directed at him in time to hear “– hang out under a bridge?! What the fuck are you even talking about? I’m a troll as in my goddamn species, as in I’m not from this backwater shit dump of a planet!”
“Planet?” Dave repeats. Okay, what the hell. What the actual hell. Would one goddamn normal day really be too much to ask for? “So … you’re an alien, is what you’re saying.”
“Well, if you’d get your fucking pan out of your own fucking ass, you might realize that from my perspective, you’re the alien,” the guy points out.
“That’s – wait, if you’re an alien, how are you speaking English?”
“That doesn’t matter!” the guy exclaims, throwing his hands in the air and knocking his own hood off again. He yanks it back up over his head with a huff, then folds his arms and narrows his eyes at Dave. “What matters, okay, is that I need a place to stay, and I’m not doing this whole song and dance with another one of you idiots, so – let’s get a goddamn move on.”
Dave takes a moment to wonder both how no one walking by on the street of his favorite shortcut-alley has heard the voice of this guy, given his volume, and how it is, exactly, that he’s gotten into this situation, then shakes his head. He hates to think it, but seeing that the guy – troll? – is only just now scrambling to his feet has made him much, much less wary and perhaps, perhaps, a bit more sympathetic. “Okay, no, no, first you’ve gotta tell me why you need a place to stay. did you crash your spaceship or something?”
“No, I didn’t crash my – actually, it’s none of your fucking business, shithead! I don’t have to explain myself to you!”
His voice cracks on “business.” It’s a tiny thing, but it’s what lets Dave get his feet fully under himself again. Unless the alien dial suddenly ramps up and he starts having to contend with lasers or poison goo or some shit, he’s good to lean back against the brick wall behind himself and fold his arms. “You do, actually, if you want a place to stay.”
The troll looks like he’s about to explode like a tea kettle that’s been left to boil over. “Why does that even matter?”
“Dude,” Dave says. “If I’m even going to think about letting you crash at my place, I need to know that I’m not harboring, like, alien Mussolini or some shit. Also, like, a name might be good,”
“Karkat,” the troll offers hesitantly, his eyes narrowing even further. They kind of remind Dave of cat eyes.
“Karkat,” Dave repeats. It’s somehow less alien than he expected, and something about the click-clack sound of the syllables suits him. “Alright, so, Karkat, assuming this isn’t just some fever dream and/or Punk’d reboot, why are you on Earth?”
Karkat scowls at him. “It’s a long story.”
Dave shrugs. “I’ve got time. And like I said, you’re not getting anywhere until I know you’re not trying to end humanity or whatever.”
“Fine,” Karkat spits. He leans back against the opposite side of the alley, folding his arms in a mirror of Dave’s posture. All that does, though, is call Dave’s attention to the fact that yes, Karkat is at least two inches shorter than him. “I … was in danger on my home planet.”
Dave raises an eyebrow. Karkat’s scowl deepens.
“The drones found out that I have a mutation. They’re not fans of that sort of thing, so - yknow, they blew up my hive, all that sort of shit. I met up with some other trolls that were trying to get away from the Empress, shit hit the fan before we were ready, and this shitcan of a planet is far enough off the radar that I figured they wouldn’t look here, at least not for a while. That good enough?”
Karkat’s posture is still as defensive as ever, but there’s something in his tone that makes Dave look at him in a new light. He doesn’t sound like he’s lying, and yeah, maybe that’s just alien mind control or something, but Dave doesn’t think so. He has even more questions than before – drones, a mutation, an Empress, the fact that Karkat is kind of starting to seem like a short, angry Luke Skywalker – but … he knows what it’s like to be running from something. He knows that it’s not the kind of thing anyone likes to talk about.
“Yeah, okay,” Dave says, unfolding his arms and pushing himself up from the wall. “That sounds like it sucks, dude. You can stay, I guess, but fair warning that it’s not exactly, like, a swanky crib, and also, this isn’t going to be a permanent arrangement.”
Karkat wrinkles his nose. “Of course not,” he snaps. “I’m not planning on living here, just staying until someone can pick me up. But – thanks. I guess.”
Dave doesn’t know where the hell to even begin responding to that, so, trying his best to not think about the fact that he just got sort of mugged and is now being followed by a stranded alien rebel, heads out of the alley and starts towards home.
*
The fridge and pantry are both emptier than Dave would prefer when they get back, so he pops a frozen pizza in the oven and watches Karkat stand awkwardly in the doorway.
“You have, like, houses on your planet, right?” Dave asks.
“Yes,” Karkat huffs, but he doesn’t make any move to step out of the doorway or take his dark cloak off.
“So come on in, make yourself at home,” Dave says. “Unless that means, like, getting alien goo on my shit. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that. But otherwise, uh –” He nods towards the rest of the apartment, which is pretty much just the kitchen he’s currently standing in, the semi-closed off living room to the left, and the door to his bedroom at the end of the hall.
Karkat looks around. Dave doesn’t know if the expression on his face is because he’s unimpressed with his surroundings or because he’s scanning the apartment for any kind of threat, and he can’t figure it out before Karkat’s face settles into what Dave is realizing is his natural state of scowling. He moves over to the kitchen table and sits down at the very edge of one of the admittedly uncomfortable chairs that Dave thrifted a couple of years ago.
“I’m not going to get goo on anything,” Karkat retorts, like he just realized that he never replied to Dave earlier.
Dave shrugs. “Dude, don’t act like I should know anything about aliens. Trolls. Whatever. I literally only found out that y’all exist at all, like, an hour ago.”
“Whatever,” Karkat mutters. He turns away from Dave for a moment, giving the apartment another once over, then turns to face him once more. “Do you live alone?”
“Yep,” Dave says. “I, uh, used to live with my brother, but not anymore.”
He’s not entirely sure why he said that – it’s not like Karkat needs to know, and honestly, the less that Dave shares about Bro, the better. That’s been the rule he’s almost always lived by, anyway.
Karkat just nods, though. “What are you cooking?”
“Just some pizza,” Dave says. “Wait, you guys have pizza, right?”
Karkat’s face drops into such exasperation that Dave almost winces. “No, we don’t have ‘pizza,’” he says, holding his fingers up to make air quotes.
“Okay, no, I’m calling bullshit,” Dave says, shaking his head. He leans back against the kitchen counter, and he’s glad to see Karkat sitting back a bit more in his chair as well. “How do you have the concept of air quotes but not pizza? Like, what the hell?”
“Don’t ask me,” Karkat says. “I don’t make the goddamn rules of what’s universal and what’s not. And just for the record, I’m doing a fantastic fucking job with culture shock, so I don’t really want to hear jack shit from you.,”
Dave snorts a little at that. He believes Karkat, sure, but the more he’s beginning to realize that the anger is more of a default state than a genuine emotion, the more he’s beginning to enjoy just bantering with the guy. “Alright, alright, you’re killing it. And you’re about to be the luckiest troll in the whole fuckin’ universe or whatever, because pizza is literally the best food humans have invented.”
“Like that’s a high bar,” Karkat mutters.
“Hey, you picked this planet, not me,” Dave points out, lifting his hands in the air in something like concession. “What do you want to drink? Do you drink water?”
Karkat’s eye twitches. “Yes, I drink water.”
“Cool,” Dave says. “See, like, that makes sense. I feel like everything’s gotta drink water. But the air quotes thing? That’s just crazy.”
“It’s not that crazy,” Karkat contradicts. He shifts in his chair again, looking ike he might actually be getting comfortable for the first time, and lifts the hood back from his head. “One of the reasons I picked this planet was the decent number of similarities to Alternia.”
“Alternia,” Dave repeats. God, his life has really turned into a sci-fi novel in the span of a single evening. That fact is only made all the more clear by Karkat, who Dave can now get a proper look at. He does look eerily similar to a human – horns, gray skin, and sharp teeth aside – and, as he sheds his cloak the rest of the way to reveal a tight-fitting black outfit underneath, Dave can see that he is, in fact, as built as Dave thought he was earlier.
Dave distracts himself from that train of thought by tapping the top of his head and nodding towards the small, bright horns poking up from Karkat’s hair. “So, do you guys, like, horn joust?”
Karkat rolls his eyes. “Not usually,” he says, like it should be obvious. “I mean, some trolls do, I guess, if they get into a fight, but – that’s not really my style. And I didn’t exactly win the fucking horn lottery.”
“What do you mean?”
Karkat looks like he regrets opening his mouth and, possibly, coming to this planet at all. “I have small horns. Relatively, I mean.”
“Oh,” Dave says, because it’s the only thing he can think to say that’s not a dick joke, and he’s pretty sure that alien genitalia would not be a good conversation topic for many, many reasons. Luckily, the silence is broken by the oven timer, and he’s able to distract them both by getting the pizza out of the oven.
Karkat watches him silently as he slices it and divides it onto plates, then pours two glasses of water and sets everything on the table.
“Bon appetit,” Dave says, gesturing to the plate he set in front of Karkat as he sits down across the table.
Karkat gives the pizza a skeptical look. “How do you eat it?”
“With your mouth,” Dave deadpans. Before Karkat can snap at him, he picks up a slice of his own pizza and takes a bite. “Like that.”
Karkat only looks more skeptical, but he picks up his own slice and takes the most hesitant bite that Dave’s ever seen. He chews for a moment, brow furrowed, and Dave watches the way his throat bobs as he swallows.
“That’s … not shit, actually,” he says.
Dave grins at him, because he’s pretty sure that, in Karkat-speak, that means he’s just created a brand new pizza fan. “Hey, what did I tell you?”
Karkat doesn’t reply to that, too busy taking another, bigger bite. For a moment, they eat in silence, but the situation is too weird for Dave to want to just sit in it like that for long. “So, uh, why Earth?” he asks.
“Like I said earlier,” Karkat says. His mouth is still full, and it’s equally gross and kind of endearing. “There are enough similarities to get by. And more importantly, it’s far enough out of the way that it’ll buy me enough time. I mean, you’re probably still going to get conquered eventually, but hopefully not for a while. And by then I’ll be out of here.”
“Conquered?” Dave repeats. “Like, by the Empress or whoever?”
The name alone makes Karkat’s face darken. “Hopefully not for a while,” he says again. “And if I have anything to do with it, she’ll be stopped sooner rather than later.”
“Comforting,” Dave says dryly. That’s a more than slightly terrifying thought, but it’s so absurd, even with the alien sitting at his kitchen table, that it doesn’t scare him as much as he thinks it should.
Karkat rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything else, his attention returning to his food. Dave takes advantage of his distraction to just study him for a moment. Before, Dave was feeling something like pity for the troll, and he can’t deny that he still does. But there was a gleam in Karkat’s eyes when he talked about stopping the Empress that Dave remembers from a long time ago, when he thought that he would get some form of revenge on Bro instead of just slipping away into the quiet life he’s made. In a strange, almost electric way, it’s just as familiar as the fear he saw in Karkat earlier.
“So,” he says carefully. It’s not that he wants to pry, exactly, but he’s curious. And, hey, he feels a little entitled to information, since he’s the one letting an alien into his house.”If this Empress is out here, like, conquering whole planets, why does she give a shit about you?”
There’s a long pause. It feels like an eternity before Karkat says, voice clipped, “Like I said earlier, I have a mutation. I hid it for a while, but then I got found out.”
His flat tone is a glaring sign that Dave should probably stop pushing – again, there’s something familiar in it, something that sounds like, No, everything’s fine. Yes, I used to live with my brother. Now I don’t. – but his mouth gets ahead of his brain. “What kind of mutation?” he asks.
“What kind of – are all humans this fucking rude, or did I just get lucky?” Karkat snaps, suddenly tense all through his body. He takes one more bite of pizza, his sharp teeth flashing in the light, then stands from the table and stalks off into the living room.
Dave winces a bit. Yeah, that wasn’t his most tactful moment, but … again, he figures he’s entitled to at least some answers. And he can’t shake the sense that whatever it is that Karkat’s been through might just be a bit more familiar to Dave than either of them would have first guessed.
Dave takes another bite of pizza, but his appetite has mostly faded. He cleans the table up, then heads into the living room with light, careful steps. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to find, but Karkat sitting on the couch watching baseball isn’t it.
“This looks like the most inane sport to ever exist,” Karkat says by way of greeting, sounding like he’s personally offended by its stupidity, and Dave bites back a laugh. Well, at least it seems like he’s calmed down.
“Yeah, no, baseball sucks,” he says. “Dude, how did you know how to work the remote?”
“We have TV too, dipshit,” Karkat retorts. “Although ours at least makes sense.”
“Here, give it to me,” Dave says, holding his hand out for the remote and dropping onto the couch next to Karkat. “I’ll put on something actually good.”
Karkat gives him a skeptic look but passes the remote over anyway. Dave takes it and opens the TV guide, only to be confronted with the fact that, well, something actually good might be harder to find than he anticipated.
“What do you usually watch?” he asks.
Karkat folds his arms and settles back into the couch. “Dramas, mostly,” he says.
That gets a laugh out of Dave. It’s easier than it probably should be to imagine Karkat losing his mind over, like, The Young and the Restless or something like that. “Really?”
“What?” Karkat snaps, back to a deep of a scowl as Dave’s ever seen on him. “Is there something wrong with that?”
Dave holds up his hands. “No, no, it’s just – funny. Dramas are more of a girl thing here, I guess.”
Karkat huffs. “That’s fucking stupid, but okay.”
Dave laughs again at that, then turns his attention back to the problem at hand. Okay, yeah, it might be kinda funny to see how Karkat feels about human dramas, but for that to happen, Dave would have to sit through a human drama. Yeah, no, that’s not happening.
He scrolls through the channels for a few minutes before finally settling on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, because, hey, what’s more human than that? Or American, at least.
Karkat wrinkles his nose as Guy Fieri steps out of his car and up to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant somewhere in Oregon. “What even is this?” he complains.
“It’s good, shut up,” Dave says. “It’s, like, this guy going around and trying really good restaurants that most people don’t know about.”
“I don’t like him,” Karkat says definitively.
Dave puts his hand over his heart in fake shock, and it makes him more than a little proud to see Karkat’s scowl soften at the sight. “Dude, how can you not like Guy Fieri?”
“Just – a vibe,” Karkat says. “But fine, I guess this is better than that other shit.”
Dave will take that as a win. He kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, then realizes that he still has his shades on and has to do a whole awkward performance of taking his feet down, leaning forward to put his shades on the table, then leaning back and putting his feet up again.
Part of him wants to feel weird about taking his shades in front of someone, since not doing that is a pretty big part of his M.O., but fuck it, Karkat has red eyes too. It’s not like he can say jack shit about it.
“Wait, you have red eyes?” Karkat asks.
Dave resists the urge to face palm. Instead, he half-turns his head to look at Karkat and nods. “Yeah?” he says. “So do you.”
“Yeah,” Karkat mutters. His gaze drops to the floor, then flicks to the TV, but it resolutely avoids Dave’s own.
“Is that, like … a normal troll thing?” Dave asks. “Because it’s not a normal human thing at all. Hence the shades, kinda.”
He looks back at the TV as Guy Fieri takes a massive bite of an overflowing sandwich, and he feels more than sees Karkat’s eyes settle on him. “It’s not a normal troll thing either,” Karkat says, shortly, then - “Why are your eyes red?”
Dave shrugs. “Just some weird genetic thing, I guess,” he says, and abruptly, he mentally kicks himself for not putting the pieces together earlier. The mutation thing that Karkat talked about … the two must be related.
“Same,” Karkat says quietly. Dave side-eyes him, waiting to see if he’s going to continue, and he’s more than a little surprised when Karkat does. “The, uh, the mutation I mentioned earlier. The eyes are part of it.”
“Part of it?” Dave asks. He knocks the volume down a bit as subtly as he can, but he doesn’t turn to face Karkat at risk of scaring him off. He’s trying not to project too much, but he can’t help but think that whatever it is that sent Karkat to Earth, the Empress and the drones and the mutation, is something that Dave will understand more than Karkat expects.
Karkat sighs. His fingers are tapping restlessly where they’re resting on his elbows. “I have red blood,” he says. “Which only happens to trolls when something goes wrong. And the Empress isn’t really a fan of things going wrong, which means that if the drones ever find out, –”
Karkat makes a weird hand gesture and a noise kind of like a gunshot that, while not entirely clear, gets his point across perfectly well.
“That’s so fucked up,” Dave says. He turns to fully face Karkat now, and Karkat actually meets his eyes for just a moment before his gaze darts away again. “So, like, you had to spend your whole life hiding that?”
“Basically,” Karkat says. “It wasn’t too bad when I was younger. The drones didn’t really care, and my eyes hadn’t changed color yet.”
“But now … “ Dave realizes, and Karkat’s nod confirms.
“Yeah. It got to the point where I couldn’t do anything to hide it, the drones came knocking, and … “ Karkat trails off. “But, uh, that’s why I flipped my shit earlier. I’m not exactly used to talking about it.”
The unspoken apology hidden in there does something to Dave’s chest almost to the same extent as the first part of Karkat’s statement. He’s pretty sure that the drones Karkat’s talking about aren’t remote-controlled toys, and he knows all too well what it’s like to have your space invaded by someone with more power than you could ever stand up to.
“It’s okay, dude,” Dave says. “I’m the one that was getting all nosy and shit. I just, like – I mean, I’m not saying it’s the same thing at all, but I kinda get it.”
“What do you mean?” Karkat asks.
For some reason, Dave hadn’t been expecting him to ask anything. He hasn’t shown all that much interest in getting to know Dave so far. It’s … nice, in a weird sort of way that Dave doesn’t want to look at too closely. “Uh, my brother,” he says. “The one I used to live with. Well, I mean, he’s my only brother, but – he was shitty. Like, really shitty. I got out of there pretty much as soon as I could.”
Karkat draws his knees up to his chest and turns to face Dave, resting his arms on his knees and his chin on his arms. “That sucks,” he says simply, and – well, yeah, Dave knows that. He’s known that for a long time. But he doesn’t know if he’s ever heard someone else admit it, and he swallows hard around what feels suspiciously like a sudden lump in his throat.
“Yeah,” he says. “It does. Or did, I guess. I’ve been living here for a few years, and it’s been better. A lot better.”
Karkat hums in response to that, and Dave swears he sees something like jealousy fighting to stay hidden in his expression. “I keep expecting the drones to be here any minute,” he confesses, after such a long pause that Dave was just starting to think about turning back to the TV. He looks so small, suddenly, all curled up into a ball, and while Dave has never been the hugging type, he wonders if trolls even have the concept of hugs. Whether they do or not, Karkat looks like he needs one.
“Would they really come all the way out here?” Dave asks.
Karkat shrugs. “Just for a mutant? Probably not,” he admits. “For a mutant rebel? If they can find me, they’ll come. But that would take a long time, it’s – it’s stupid to think about it, really.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to automatically stop thinking about it,” Dave points out. “Like, if you’ve had that shit ingrained in you your entire life …. Seriously, dude, I get it. When I first moved, it took me, like, six months to stop thinking that everyone in the hallway was Bro showing up to drag me back or beat me to shit or whatever the hell.”
Again, Karkat just hums in response. Dave gives him a moment, but when it seems clear that he’s not going to do anything but stare at the floor, he reaches out, carefully, so that Karkat can see him coming, and gently nudges his arm. “Hey, I feel like you’ll chill out faster than I did,” he says. “I mean, hell, you joined a rebellion against a literal alien Empress. That’s fucking crazy, dude. I couldn’t make myself stand up to a single human.”
Karkat frowns. “That’s not –”
“No, no, I know,” Dave says. He realizes a moment too late that his hand is still on Karkat’s arm. His skin is warmer and softer to the touch than Dave would have guessed. “But, like, just saying.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Karkat grumbles. For a moment, his eyes flick down to Dave’s hand on his arm. Dave expects him to pull away, but he doesn’t.
For a moment, the only sound in the room is the obnoxious jingle of an insurance commercial. Karkat’s eyes move from Dave’s hand to his face, and he meets Dave’s eyes for the first time. His expression is the softest that Dave’s seen it yet. When his features aren’t all scrunched up, they’re … nice, for lack of a better word. He’s not a bad-looking guy. Troll. Whatever.
“Thanks for letting me be here,” Karkat says, softly, and Dave is hit with the feeling that if he doesn’t break the contact between them, one of them is going to start crying or some other shit that he’s equally unprepared to deal with.
He lifts his hand and sits back a bit. “Yeah, no problem,” he says. “But, hey, dude, a tip for you? Next time you want a favor from a human, maybe don’t jump them in an alley as your opener.”
Karkat looks confused for a moment, like he’s trying to get his bearings again, but then his face falls right back into his usual scowl. “Like you would’ve listened if I’d just walked up and asked to stay in your house,” he points out.
Okay, yeah, he might be right on that front, but Dave’s not going to admit it. Instead, he leans back into the couch, a little closer to Karkat’s side than he was before, and waves his hand airily. “Let’s just call bygones bygones,” he says, then raises an eyebrow at Karkat. “Anyway, I feel like I haven’t taken enough advantage of the fact that, like, I’m the first human to ever meet an alien.”
“Do you know how self-centered that –”
“So, like, where is your planet anyway?” Dave asks.
Karkat gives him an exasperated look. “Even if I explained the actual location to you, you wouldn’t get it. It’s in space, far away.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Dave mutters. “But yeah, fair enough, I guess. Bad question. Uh, how many suns do you have?”
Karkat wrinkles his nose. “None. There are two moons, though.”
“Huh,” Dave says. “Must be a fuckin’ – moon party, I guess.”
“If you’re only going to ask stupid fucking questions, I’m going to sleep,” Karkat warns, and Dave snorts.
“Alright, alright, let me see what else I’ve got,” he says. “Uh …. do you have a girlfriend?”
“A girl friend?” Karkat repeats. “Yes? Several?”
Dave raises his eyebrows and tries not to feel surprised and/or disappointed. Why would he feel disappointed? He met Karkat today, and like, maybe they’ve totally bonded over their trauma and Guy Fieri and became best buds or whatever, but that doesn’t mean … “Wait. You have several girlfriends or you have several friends that are girls?”
Karkat blinks at him, slowly. His eyes really are like a cat’s. “What’s the difference?”
As Dave laughs, it’s all he can do to hope that he doesn’t sound relieved. “Like, a girlfriend as in someone that you’re dating. Going out to fancy dinners, holding hands, getting her roses, a few sloppy makeouts here and there, y’know.”
“So … a matesprit?” Karkat says. “Or the shitty human equivalent thereof, I guess.”
“Uh, sure?” Dave says. “Someone that you really like and also bone.”
Karkat’s cheeks flush a faint red when Dave says “bone,” which is as endearing as it is funny. Of course the guy would be, like, a prude. “So, yeah, a matesprit,” he says.
“Okay, okay, a matesprit,” Dave agrees. “Do you have one?”
“No,” Karkat says.
Dave gives him a moment to elaborate, but he doesn’t say anything else. When the quiet starts to stretch on just a bit too long, he shrugs and says, “Well, if it makes you feel better, me neither.”
Karkat snorts. It takes a moment for Dave to realize what the sound is, but the smirk tugging at the corner of Karkat’s mouth clues him in. “Yeah, thanks, that’s a real comfort.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Dave asks, but he’s laughing too, a little, and it doesn’t come across the way he wants it too. “Alright, shut up. We’re both single losers, that’s why we’re sitting here watching Triple D on a Thursday night.”
“Hey, I’m the one on the run from an intergalactic empire that wants me dead,” Karkat snarks. “This one’s all you.”
“For all you know, I’d be out getting laid right now if I wasn’t babysitting you right now,” Dave retorts. He holds his poker face until Karkat raises one eyebrow, giving him the most skeptical look he’s ever seen, and he breaks into quiet laughter. “Alright, alright, stop looking at me like that.”
Karkat holds the expression for just one more beat, then breaks it off. A smile slips onto his face for a split second, his pointy teeth flashing, but then he gets himself back under control. Something about it makes Dave’s chest feel bright, and he knows that he’s going to be spending the rest of the night trying to see it again.
“Is that the end of your interrogation?” Karkat asks.
“Hell no,” Dave says instantly, because he’s feeling something, something tugging at him, and fuck what he said earlier, actually. When the universe tosses a hot troll into your lap – or onto your couch, rather – you don’t just let that opportunity slip by. “Come on. You know I’ve gotta ask.”
Karkat’s brow furrows. “Ask what?”
“Dude,” Dave says, and he’s not sure which one of them moved, but he’s suddenly aware that his thigh is brushing against Karkat’s and neither of them are pulling away. “Y’know. How do y’all fuck?”
“Are all humans like this, or are you just stuck in the fucking throes of puberty?”
“Karkat,” Dave says. “Karkat. C’mon. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for both of us.”
Karkat’s cheeks flush a little brighter, and Dave immediately realizes how his words sounded. Fuck. Uh. “A once in a lifetime learning opportunity,” he adds. “Like, cultural sharing, or whatever. Scientific shit.”
“Fine,” Karkat says, and then, before Dave can entirely process the floodgate that he’s opened, he’s caught up in an explanation of alien sex. This, of course, leads to Karkat hesitantly returning the question, Dave answering with more explanatory hand gestures than are probably necessary, and then they’re both left to sit with Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives playing in the background as they contemplate the fact that their respective methods of sex are not dissimilar, so to speak. The air in the room has suddenly become so thick that Dave’s not entirely sure how he’s managing to get any into his lungs.
“Uh,” he finally says. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to do – break the tension? He feels like he can’t let it keep sitting the way it is, but there’s also a part of him that doesn’t want to lose the way that Karkat’s thigh is solidly pressed against his, now, and the way that his heart is pounding like a machine gun in his chest. “So, like, how often do you slice someone’s lip open when you’re kissing them? Like, with your teeth, I mean. They look hella sharp.”
Karkat kinda scoffs. Dave wants to think that he’s not just imagining the tremor in the sound, the one that seems to say that whatever the troll equivalent of a heart is in Karkat’s chest is beating just as hard as Dave’s. “What, do you want me to show you?” he asks.
Just like that, all at once, Dave knows that they’ve arrived at the point of no return. For a second, he considers backing down. He met Karkat today. He’s an alien from another planet, and sex, for him, means words like bulge and nook that make Dave as nervous as they do curious. This would be a textbook bad idea if anyone wrote textbooks about casual alien encounters. But then, just as Dave starts to figure out what to say in response, Karkat’s eyes glance, unmistakably, down to his lips, and he knows that whatever this is, he hasn’t stumbled into it alone.
“I mean…” Dave says, “if you’re offering.”
As stealthily as he can, Dave reaches behind himself and hits the mute button on the TV remote. There’s a beat, like Karkat is trying to figure out how serious Dave is being, or maybe just trying to calculate exactly how bad of an idea this is. Dave turns to face him just as he says, “Fine. Come here.”
Dave doesn’t know whether to laugh or groan in exasperation at how long their cautious stand-off is lasting. All of their cards are as on-the-table as they’re going to get, and still, neither of them will make the first real move. After a long moment, he settles for echoing Karkat’s, “Fine,” in as natural a of tone as he can manage, and placing his hand on Karkat’s cheek for balance as he leans in.
Karkat’s lips are tougher than a human’s, firmer, but probably softer than Dave’s considering how much he bites them. He kisses much more gently than Dave expects him to, and it’s only when he needs to take a breath that Dave pulls away. He doesn’t go far, leaving his hand cupping Karkat’s cheek and pressing his forehead lightly against Karkat’s. “Holy shit,” he says. “I just kissed an alien.”
“So did I, dumbass,” Karkat says. His eyes meet Dave’s, red to red, and a tiny smile breaks onto his face. “And look at that, you didn’t get clawed to pieces by my razor alien teeth.”
“Shut up, that’s not what I –” Dave is cut off when one of them – he honestly isn’t sure who – leans in and closes the distance between their lips again. Karkat slips one hand into Dave’s hair, curling into the soft, short hairs right at the nape of his neck, and Dave feels goosebumps race down his spine.
Karkat might actually be one of the best kissers that Dave’s ever met. The pressure of his lips against Dave’s is gentle but not overly so, and when he opens his mouth just enough to tease at Dave’s lower lip with his sharp teeth, Dave can’t stop himself from taking Karkat by the shoulder with his free hand and pulling him closer.
Karkat smiles against Dave’s mouth, and Dave kisses him harder, leaning back against the arm of the couch and pulling Karkat down with him.
They break apart again after another few breathless moments. Dave tries not to gasp for air as he processes the fact that he did in fact drag Karkat on top of himself and that they are now lying horizontal on the couch, their bodies pressed together. Karkat is solid, like the best weighted blanket Dave’s ever felt, and he’s using the hand still in Dave’s hair to rub soft, small circles into the skin on the back of Dave’s neck.
“You’re so … “ Karkat trails off for a moment, thinking. “Flimsy. How do humans live?”
“What do you mean?” Dave asks, laughing a little. There’s a split second in the back of his mind where he wonders if this has all been an elaborate ploy and he’s about to get alien-murdered, but – no. He doesn’t know if it’s the conversation they had earlier or something deeper, less easy to pinpoint, but he trusts Karkat.
“I’ll explain later,” Karkat says, and the idea of a later, as obvious as it is, makes Dave’s heart pound in his chest almost as hard as the way Karkat leans in for another kiss does.
Dave braves under-the-clothes territory first, because, hey, if he has an alien’s tongue in his mouth, he’s pretty sure he can handle that much. He slides the hand that was on Karkat’s cheek down to the hem of his tight black shirt and worms it under, sliding up the smooth skin of Karkat’s side until he hits something warm and soft and unfamiliar.
Karkat’s breath fully stops for a moment. Dave feels it when it comes back, warm across his face as Karkat pulls back just enough to speak. “Fuck,” he says, eloquently.
“Shit, you okay?” Dave asks. His hand is frozen in place. He’d assumed that Karkat’s anatomy was basically the same as his below the horns and above the waist, but he has no idea what he just touched.
“Uh, yeah, yeah,” Karkat says quickly. “That’s a grubscar. They’re from – actually, it doesn’t matter. You can touch them, if you want. They’re just sensitive.”
Dave moves his hand up a little more, until he reaches another patch of smooth skin. Karkat’s wide eyes are fixed on his the entire time, and Dave can feel how tense his whole body has gone.
“Could I look at them?” Dave asks. “Which, yes, is mostly just a ploy to get your shirt off. In case you were wondering.”
Karkat huffs out a laugh at that. “Dumbass,” he says. “But yeah, okay.”
He sits back on his heels, and Dave takes a moment to wonder when, exactly, Karkat started straddling him. He doesn’t think about it for too long, though, because Karkat’s shirt is on the floor a moment later and that takes all of his attention.
He’s just as muscular as Dave had guessed earlier, but he carries the strength in a solid, compact way that suits him perfectly. He doesn’t have any body hair that Dave can see, which is pretty weird, but weirder than that are the grubscars. Three of them line each side of Karkat’s torso, bright red, shallow indents.
Dave runs his hand over the same one as before and watches Karkat shiver. “Are they, like, good sensitive?” he asks.
Karkat gives him a flat look that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “No shit.”
Dave grins. “Good,” he says. He lifts his other hand to rub at one of the grubscars on the other side, but Karkat catches his wrist before he can reach.
“Take your shirt off too,” he says – or demands, rather – and who is Dave not to oblige?
He sits up as far as he can with Karkat straddling him and wrestles his shirt off, tossing it somewhere behind the couch. He can feel his own face flushing involuntarily as Karkat’s eyes rove over his skin, stopping right at his nipples.
“What the fuck are those?” Karkat asks.
“Those are nipples, which, like, are supposed to be there for feeding babies,” Dave explains, “but I don’t have any of the other equipment for that so I don’t really get why –”
“No, no, I know what nipples are,” Karkat interrupts. “I meant these scars. I didn’t think humans fought this much.”
His hand comes down on Dave’s skin then, tracing old, almost-forgotten scars that still run all over Dave’s chest and back. Dave tries not to frown too obviously. “Most humans don’t,” he says. “Those are, uh, from my brother. He used to try and train me for – I don’t even fuckin’ know, some big quest or whatever. Dude is seriously a nutcase.”
Karkat’s face twists for a moment. “I didn’t mean to–”
“Hey, you didn’t know,” Dave says, and he can’t quite believe how much easier it is to say and mean it than he thought it would be. “All good. But I’m all in favor of saving the trauma dumps for when I don’t have a shirtless, hot alien on top of me, if that works for you?”
He brushes his thumb over a grubscar to emphasize his point, lightly as he can, and judging by the way Karkat’s breath catches, he’s in agreement. They make out, skin against skin and Dave unable to get over the novelty of it all, until they’re both out of breath and Dave knows that Karkat can feel how hard he is.
They break apart for a moment, once again pressing their foreheads together, and Dave moves his hands down to hold Karkat by the waist, just above the waistband of his tight black pants.
“So…” Dave says. He knows that Karkat knows as well as he does that the only logical next step is taking things below the belt. He also knows that while Karkat gave him a brief overview, he’s still not entirely sure what to expect down there. “It sounds like you’re kinda, uh, dual wielding.”
“What?”
“Y’know, dual wielding,” Dave repeats. “Like, working with both sets of equipment.”
Karkat’s cheeks flush, somehow, even brighter than they already were. “Well, yeah,” he says. “I thought we established that already.”
“So…” Dave says again, drawing it out even longer this time. “A little guidance would be appreciated. What you like where, et cetera et cetera.”
“Uh,” Karkat says. It’s painfully endearing how shy he is about this sort of thing, especially considering that he had the confidence to semi-mug Dave and demand a place to stay just hours before. If Dave thinks about it too hard, how easily he’s been able to get to what he’s pretty sure is the real Karkat, it makes his chest start to feel warm and gooey. “I mean. I like having my bulge played with, and I like stuff in my nook. It’s not rocket science.”
“Alright, alright, I can work with that,” Dave says.
Karkat narrows his eyes a bit. “What about you?”
“I mean, yeah, I like having my dick played with,” Dave says. “Fuckin’ – whatever, really, as long as you’re not trying to hurt me. And I gotta say, it’s not that I don’t trust your tooth control or whatever, but I’m not exactly raring to get head from you.”
“I can work with that,” Karkat parrots. There’s just a hint of a nervous edge to his voice even as his hands move down to the button of Dave’s jeans, and the small reminder that Karkat is just as out of his depth as Dave is makes the corner of his mouth turn up, soft and warm.
Karkat has to stop straddling Dave for him to wriggle out of his pants. He considers moving them into the bedroom for a moment, but he doesn’t really want to risk breaking whatever spell they’re both operating under. The couch is comfortable enough anyway, and the fact that it’s small means that Karkat is still practically on top of him as Dave kicks his boxers off and lets his dick spring out, fully hard.
“Okay, what the fuck,” Karkat says. Dave laughs even as his cheeks go hot. Karkat’s gaze is intense, and the hint of movement he’s pretty sure he sees in Karkat’s tights pants makes him all the more curious to get them both on the same page, so to speak.
“Listen, I didn’t design it,” he says. “Aren’t they weird as shit, though?”
“Fucking humans,” Karkat mutters, and then promptly saves himself from a horrible joke from Dave by saying, “So you said just – play with it?”
“I guess just do what you would do to your bulge,” Dave suggests. “Unless, like, that means scratching it or some shit.”
Karkat rolls his eyes at Dave and takes his dick into his hand at the same time, and before Dave can fully process what’s happening, he’s getting one of the best handjobs of his life from an alien.
“Fuck,” he gasps out, fighting not to push his hips up towards Karkat as the troll rubs a thumb over the head of his dick, squeezing the length of it in his hand with just the right pressure. “Goddamn. You really - fuck, haven’t done this before? Cause, dude, you’ve got it down pat, like, fuckin’, handjob master over here, someone call Guiness World –”
Karkat raises an eyebrow and speeds up his hand just enough to make Dave bite down on his lip, hard. “Are you going to talk this much the whole time?”
“Shut up,” Dave says, but there’s no hope of it having any heat with the way Karkat’s steadily turning his bones into putty. “It might help if I have something to do too, y’know.”
In case his meaning wasn’t already clear, Dave reaches up and takes hold of the waistband of Karkat’s pants, and Karkat starts to undo them without another word. Dave watches, entranced and something like nervous, as Karkat pulls his pants off and reveals a smooth, slick tentacle that’s just as red as the fluid already dripping from its tip. It writhes around a bit, smearing fluid on Karkat’s thighs as it knocks against them, and Dave tries his best to school his expression into something a little less awestruck.
“Holy shit, dude,” he says. “Is it, like – moving on its own?”
Karkat nods. “I don’t have that much control over it,” he explains. There’s something hidden in his voice, some small nerves that Dave would bet have more to do with the damning color of his whole … situation than anything else.
Slowly, Dave reaches a hand out and wraps it loosely around Karkat’s bulge. It’s thicker than he thought at first glance, and it slides through his hand easily, wiggling around as it explores the new sensation. When Dave looks back up at Karkat’s face, his eyes are closed and his mouth is open, his breaths heavy and quick.
“Fuck,” he says, his face going almost as red as his bulge when he opens his eyes to see Dave watching him. Dave starts to mimic the same motions that Karkat used on his dick, squeezing the bulge as he drags his hand up and down, and Karkat’s eyes flutter shut again. Dave keeps up that pace until his entire hand is stained red and sticky with the fluid leaking out, and then he gently pushes Karkat onto his back with his clean hand. “Is your nook, like -?”
“It’s under, kind of,” Karkat explains. He’s more than a little breathless, his chest heaving and a bit of sweat beading on his forehead. Dave can’t believe that that’s his doing. “Fuck, Dave, I –”
His voice breaks off into a sound that Dave can only call a whine as Dave finds his nook and pushes one finger in. Oh, fuck. It’s impossibly soft inside, the warm, tight walls squeezing around his finger perfectly, and somehow, it’s even wetter than Karkat’s bulge. “Back and forth work?” he asks, and he’s barely gotten the words out before Karkat nods frantically. Dave has only been fingering him for a few minutes before Karkat’s hands scrabble at his sides, pulling him fully on top, and they somehow end up in a complicated but surprisingly effective configuration that allows Karkat to work Dave’s dick while both of Dave’s hands busy themselves with Karkat’s nook and bulge.
It’s Karkat that, after what feels like both forever and no time at all, asks to get fucked. Dave can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“You – really?” he asks, even though he knows that the way his dick just throbbed in Karkat’s hand already said everything.
“Please,” Karkat says, his voice ragged from the way he’s been gasping and groaning. “I want you to fuck me, Dave.”
Holy shit. Dave takes a breath to just look down at Karkat. He’s a mess of red from the waist down, his chest heaving, he’s an alien that could’ve stumbled into any other human on Earth, and he’s here with Dave, under him, asking Dave to fuck him. The rush of it dizzies Dave’s head almost as much as the heat that’s been growing and tightening low in his gut.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he manages. “Uh. Yeah. Fuck, okay.”
Dave moves back on the couch just far enough to get between Karkat’s legs instead of on top of them, then grabs onto the back of Karkat’s legs and pushes them back up towards Karkat’s shoulders, as slowly and gently as he can make himself move. Karkat watches him with wide eyes and blown pupils, red to red to red to red, and he doesn’t break eye contact as Dave uses one hand to line up his dick and slowly, achingly slowly, pushes in.
Karkat’s nook feels better than Dave ever could have imagined. It’s warm and tight around him, so wet that his dick makes an obscene sound as he rocks out and back in, and, “fuck, fuck, Karkat,” he realizes he’s saying, chanting it like a mantra. “Oh, fuck.”
For his part, Karkat is digging his nails into Dave’s back – hard enough for Dave to feel but still holding back - and tossing his head back against the couch cushions, letting his body rock in time with Dave’s thrusts as Dave sets a steady pace.
Again, it feels like forever and no time at all. All Dave knows is the sound of Karkat gasping out his name, the tight warmth of Karkat’s nook around him, and the way the burning heat in his gut winds tighter and tighter and tighter until he has no choice but to let it snap, pushing Karkat’s knees almost all the way to his shoulders as he comes. Karkat’s own hand is down on his bulge a moment later, pulling at it just a few times before his back arches and red splatters everywhere, soaking both of their thighs.
It takes Dave a long, long time to catch his breath. Finally, he leans back and pulls out, something like an aftershock trembling through him when he sees his own cum starting to drip from Karkat’s nook. Karkat’s bulge has gone limp, flopped haphazardly over his thigh, and his eyes are closed.
“So, uh,” Dave says. “Trolls or humans?”
Karkat cracks one eye open and gives Dave a confused look. His pupils are still wide and dark, and his chest is still heaving. “What?”
“Trolls or humans?” Dave repeats. “Who’s better at sex?”
Karkat groans and tosses his arm over his eyes, even though that just spreads the red mess even further. Yeah, Dave should probably go get some paper towels.
“I’m taking that as a vote for humans, by the way,” he says, rubbing his hand over Karkat’s knee one more time before standing from the couch. “Alright, don’t go anywhere, I’m gonna get some – actually, some wipes would probably be better. Yeah. Wipes. Be right back.”
Karkat makes an indistinct noise that sounds enough like assent for Dave to head into the kitchen and grab some wipes. When he gets back, Karkat is actually sitting up again, stretching his arms up over his head as he yawns. “What’s your answer?” he asks.
“What?”
“Trolls or humans,” Karkat explains, folding his arms and looking at Dave expectantly.
Dave pulls a wipe from the package and starts trying to de-troll-jizz his hands. “Jury’s still out,” he says, before he can think better of it. “I think I might need to do some further research.”
That gets a snort out of Karkat, and he throws his hand back over his face as he lies back down. “Fuck, I’m tired,” he says.
Since Karkat’s not looking, Dave lets himself give the troll a soft smile as he sits down on the couch and starts wiping at his thighs. “Do you want to go to bed?” he asks.
“If you think I’m moving, you’re stupider than you look,” Karkat mutters.
Dave rolls his eyes, but - he gets it. The five or six steps to the bedroom kinda feel impossible now that the adrenaline buzz of the entire day is starting to subside. So he tosses all of the dirty wipes into a pile on the coffee table and lies down next to Karkat, pulling a blanket off of the back of the couch and tossing it over both of them. They’re both still pretty pink, but that’s a problem for the morning.
Once Dave’s settled in, he dares to throw an arm over Karkat, being careful not to touch his grubscars in case they’ll be too sensitive. Karkat instantly snuggles closer to him, pressing his back flush to Dave’s chest, and Dave lets himself take just one moment to reflect on the complete and utter absurdity of his life.
“So, you said you’re going to get, like, picked up, right?” he says after a moment. His eyelids are so, so heavy, but he needs to get thi sout, just so that he doesn’t wake up to an empty couch or something equally melodramatic.
There’s a beat. “That was the plan,” Karkat finally says. “But I don’t know when.”
“Well,” Dave says, and he knows it’s insane to do it, but hey. This has already been the most insane day of his life, and that fact pales in the face of how little he wants to give this, whatever it is, up. “If it helps, you’ve got a place for as long as you need. I mean - if you wanted, we could find you a hotel or something, but -“
“I think I can tolerate this for now,” Karkat interrupts. The grumpiness he’s reaching for doesn’t quite work with his voice, which is heavy with sleep and still a little raw with sex, and Dave feels something click into place in his chest, something that’s been out of shape for a long, long time, as he closes his eyes.