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You wake to your angrily buzzing alarm and Dave pressing sloppy wet kisses down your neck. God dammit.
“Dave, stop it.” He grumbles a little, and burrows into the crook of your neck. You reach for the alarm, and slam a fist on the snooze button to stop its infernal noise.
“Don’t wanna,” he mumbles, and wraps his toothpick arms tighter around you. Okay, so they’ve got some muscle to them, but they’re still like toothpicks compared to yours. Wielding a sickle and being a bad ass in general has its perks.
Dave’s never been a morning person, and he wouldn’t be awake so early at all if it wasn’t for the fact that you, unlike him, actually have a job and responsibilities, and your first day of work is today. You know you’re going to hate the job, because you’ve hated every other job before it, and the interview was like some sort of creative new torture, but it’ll pay the bills at least.
Dave just sleeps and sits on his ass all day and takes classes at night. He’s getting a major in photography and a minor in music. He’s also taking an art class for fun, which focuses on anatomy, and he’s been drawing all sorts of creepy shit like his dead fetus to “practice”. Apparently, his classmates are disgusted, but at least he impresses the professor. You thought she was going to fail him forever after she discovered a comic concerning her in SBAHJ style rather than the notes Dave was supposed to be taking. Instead, she fucking congratulated him for it and now she follows his comic online. She’s trying to convince him to double minor. You hate his sheer dumb luck.
He starts class at around six and gets out of class late enough that you’re usually asleep when he gets home. After class, he’ll crawl into bed with you at some ungodly hour of the morning and pass out. With your new job keeping you occupied during the day, this will mean you’ll see a lot less of him than usual. He tried to insist that you just rely on his brother’s seriously massive amounts of cash, but there is no way you are taking money his brother got from those disgusting smuppets unless you absolutely have to. And now that you have a job again, you don’t have to.
“Being an adult sucks.” You say, and Dave snorts softly.
“When’d you become an adult?” He replies, and you can feel his grin against your neck. You elbow him in the chest, and roll out of bed. Dave whines. “Karkat, come back. You were so warm.”
“You better get up if you want your goodbye kiss.” You say, fumbling into your clothes. Dave just grunts and rolls over. You feel so utterly loved and cherished.
You eat breakfast quickly, because you’re already behind schedule, and if you take your time you’ll be late for work. So cereal it is. No time to cook something half decent. You do savor your coffee though. Black. Just the way you like it. Dave comes stumbling in, still clad in only his boxers as you’re placing the dirty dishes into the sink. You pour him a cup of coffee, add disgusting amounts of sugar and milk, and he accepts it with a sleepy look of adoration.
“I still don’t get why you have to leave me. Or why you woke me up so early.” Dave mumbles, taking a large sip of his mug.
You roll your eyes, finishing the rest of your coffee and washing out the inside of your cup. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll be a couple streets over.”
“Yeah, but I can’t snuggle with you over there.”
“You’re just going to have to learn to sleep without using me as a sleeping bear.”
Dave stares at you in confusion, and you aren’t sure if it’s a cultural difference thing or a Dave’s half asleep thing. “You mean a teddie bear dude.”
“Oh.” Well, great. You’re really trying your hardest to get acclimated to human culture, but there is so much shit you have to know, and half the time you think you understand something, and you really don’t. God, why does human culture have to be so infuriatingly complex?
“Hey, don’t frown like that. It makes you look demented.”
“Thanks.” You grumble, and grab your keys, your packed lunch, and your phone. You won’t bother taking the car since it’s a short walk to where you’re going to be working, but you need the house key in case you miss Dave and get locked out.
Dave shuffles after you and kisses your cheek. “Try not to lose the job on the first day this time.”
“Shut up. Don’t you have homework to do?”
He laughs. “I’ll see you tonight.”
You’re late, predictably enough. You’re now working at a small bookstore, and you chose to apply for the job after your horrifying experience working at a pet store. Every day you prayed someone would come in and buy all those fucking birds so you’d have some peace and quiet.
There was one bird in particular, a parrot, that you swear took steps to aggravate you. Dave got a kick out of your rants about the damn thing, and jokingly told you the bulgereek must be your fated kismesis. You punched him in the shoulder and it bruised. Eventually, you just couldn’t take it and threw in the towel. Dave bought you the bird. You are pretty sure Dave and the bird are plotting to murder you behind your back. Dave dubbed the thing your “feathery lovechild” and swore to treasure her forever.
Bookstores are meant to be quiet places, completely bird free places of work, and you plan to have a completely uneventful first day. You do. You sit behind the counter all day, help one or two decent customers, and your whiny and irritating manager stays out of your way. You can’t fucking believe it. You love this job.
You’re in a pretty good mood when you set out after work, especially because you realized you got off work fairly early, which means you’ll have time to see Dave before he heads off for class.
You find Dave at his laptop, wrapped up in a blanket, and seated on the bed. He has the brightness on his computer set to nonexistent and he still has his shades on, which means his eyes are really hurting today.
He looks up when you enter the room, and waves like a dork in your direction. “Hey. How’d work go?”
You take a seat beside him on the bed. “It was surprisingly tolerable, actually. There was only one occasion where I wanted to rip off my ears and roast them on a spit, and it was only for a few seconds. A kid got upset about books or something.”
“Sweet.” Dave sets his laptop on the bedside table and mumbles something you don’t catch. You lean in to try and hear him better, and quick as flash, he kisses you, whatever he was working on apparently on hold. He pulls you towards him, hands around your waist. He still tastes like his coffee from this morning, sweet with only a slightly bitter taste.
“What have I told you about not eating, you shitsponge?”
“Yes, dear.” Dave says, and shrugs his shoulders. “Slept through lunch. I wanted to wait until you got back to have anything.”
“What kind of moronic idea is that? I was gone for hours. You need to get your lazy glutes out of bed earlier; otherwise you’ll never get a job.”
“Yep. I’ll never get a job. Unlike you, my suave and sexy working man.” You roll your eyes. Dave’s sexy talk hasn’t improved at all since you started dating, which was sweeps ago, so you’ve given up on expecting him to improve. “Damn, you should have gotten an office job. You would look so awesome in a nice suit, doll.”
“I’m wearing a collared shirt,” you offer, and he eyes you appreciatively.
“So you are.” He says, and grins.
You know this grin. This is the grin that has caused you to be late to work and cost you multiple jobs. This is the grin that has made him late for his first class at six on many occasions. This is the grin that means you are not fucking leaving this bed.
“No.” You say, and pap him in the middle of his face.
“Why?” He whines, all petulant wriggler, and pouts at you. “First you leave me alone all day and now you won’t have sex with me. I see how it is. Baby, why didn’t you just tell me you were leaving me? You can’t leave me now. What about our child?”
“What child?” You can’t help but play along when he’s like this. You can’t decide whether you want to laugh or hit him.
Dave snickers. “Our feathery lovechild of course. I see, so you’ve forgotten him too?”
“Dave, the parrot is a shithead, and she’s also a female.”
He wipes an imaginary tear from his eye, and takes both of your hands in his. He looks dramatically into your eyes. “You still can’t leave. I’m pregnant again.”
You laugh. “What is it this time, a walrus?”
He snorts, and struggles to keep a straight face. “No, it’s a puppy.”
“All that shit is from your side of the family,” you tell him, and he bursts into laughter.
“Yeah, I bet it is. ’Cause I was totally the one raised by a crab.”
“Hey, my dad was a badass and you know it.” You rest your head against his shoulder and laugh.
There’s a few seconds of silence between you. Dave lifts his shades and rubs at his eyes. “I’m gonna skip class today.” He mumbles, drops his shades back in place, and starts running his hands through your hair.
“What? Dave, you idiot, you can’t just skip whenever you feel like it. It’ll take you ten years to graduate if you pull that shit. I am not having sex with you, whether you stay home or not.”
His hands still in your hair. “Naw, I just want to hang out. I was mostly teasing about the sex.”
“Shit, really? That puppy must be destroying your insides.”
He snorts. “I’m serious.”
“Do your eyes hurt?” You ask, and look up at him. He nods. “Okay, as long as you have a legitimate excuse. Do you want me to email your professors?”
“I did already.” Damn, it must be really bad then. Dave is a colossal dumbass and usually, even if he’s puking everywhere he will insist on waiting to let his professors know he won’t be in class until the last possible second, just in case.
“Are you sick?” You press your hand to his forehead. “God damn it Dave, you have a fucking temperature and you haven’t eaten all day.”
He sighs. “Sorry. Didn’t wanna get up.”
“You fucking kissed me!” You groan. “You kissed me on the lips even though you knew you were sick. Just great. I’ll get it for sure now.”
He snickers. “I couldn’t resist. Your lips were so tempting.” You roll your eyes and get up from the bed.
“I’m making you something to eat. What do you want?”
“Food,” he mumbles, and flops dramatically back on the bed.
“Okay, we’re having mac and cheese. Don’t do anything stupid while I make it.”
You really wanted to cook something decent, seeing as you only had cereal for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch, but Dave needs to eat, and you’re afraid he’s going to make himself worse like he always does if he doesn’t eat something soon.
As you heat up your food you listen for any movement, but he’s quiet, and there’s no music playing either. You hope he hasn’t fallen asleep again. All the work you put into heating up his god damn mac and cheese will go to waste. You carry both bowls of food into the bedroom, and sure enough, he’s asleep, mouth hanging open slightly.
This wasn’t exactly how you were hoping to spend the rest of your night. You sigh and nudge him with the warm bowl and he jumps a little, groaning. He tries to turn over, but you catch his arm, and help him sit up against the backboard of the bed. He takes his bowl and you carefully crawl over him so you can sit beside him on the bed.
He stares at the mac and cheese blearily. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me until you’ve eaten it, shit sponge. It won’t be warm forever, and I’m not getting up to reheat it for you.”
He grunts. He spears some, raises it to his mouth, and chews, all in slow motion. It’s always hard to tell how much of this is Dave being overdramatic and unhappy about being sick. It’s obvious he’s not feeling well, but it’s hard to gauge how sick he actually is.
“Please tell me you’re not going to get sick all over me,” you tell him, shoveling your own food into your mouth. You’re starving, and you can’t understand how he can go all day without eating like that, especially when he’s not feeling well.
“I won’t. I don’t got the flu or anything nasty like that.”
“No explosive diarrhea?”
“Dude, d’ you want me to eat my food or not?” He raises an eyebrow, but you can see the smile curling on the corners of his mouth.
“Just checking, asshole.” You kiss him on the cheek, and he takes another bite of his food before you can tell him to.
He opens his mouth and closes it again. You wait. “Everything just hurts, like I’ve been strifing for fucking hours. And while I was at it, I had my shades off, and I was staring directly at the sun the whole time.”
“Did you take painkillers?”
He rubs at his forehead. “No. Just slept, remember?”
“I’ll get you some. Hold on.” You finish devouring your food, and clamor out of bed to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. You grab him Advil and a glass of water, both of which are stolen as soon as he’s in grabbing range. He’s already set aside his barely touched food, that little shithead.
“What would I do without you baby?” He says, and takes his Advil.
“You would have died by now, obviously.” You huff, and climb back up onto the bed with him. He’s already kissed you, so you’re already more than exposed, so you might as well.
“Can I use you as my sleeping bear?”
“Stop making fun of me. I know what the term is now, thanks.”
“It was cute.” He says, and places his water on the bedside table so he can roll on top of you obnoxiously. Before you can complain, he kisses your nose. “Sorry ‘bout this. I know you probably wanted to relax and have some fun instead of force-feeding me mac and cheese.”
“Shut up, fucktard, it’s not your fault you’re sick.”
“Yeah,” he mumbles, and closes his eyes. Oh hell no.
“You are not falling asleep on me. Dave, you utter nookwiff I swear to god I am going to shit in this bed and make you roll in it if you don’t let me up.”
Dave giggles to himself, but rolls on his side. “Easy pumpkin. You do realize we share this bed, yeah? Unless you want to have a cuddle fest on the couch, shitting here ain’t the best idea.”
“Not tonight we’re not. I don’t want you breathing all over me when you’re sick. I’m sleeping on the couch, and you get the shit pile.”
“How sweet. Seriously, that is all kinds of nasty and you better shut up about shitting in this bed or I will get you sick so hard.”
“How exactly are you planning on doing that?”
He grins. Aw shit. “Well, I can think of a few ways to spread the love aka horrible illness and nasty ass germs.” He rolls on you again, and kisses you. Of course.
“Dave! Fucking stop, I told you not to kiss me!” Ugh, what’s the use? You’ve probably already got it. You almost always get each other sick. You just hope you have a few days before it sets in, because you hate missing work when you just got a new job.
He’s perfectly obedient now that he’s swapped spit with you successfully, and rolls to the side, grinning at you like a smug bastard. You hit him over the head and he whines and pulls the covers of his head. Oops. “Sorry,” he says, “seeing you makes me feel better.”
Oh god dammit, now he’s gone and made you feel guilty. You sigh and unbury his face from the covers so you can give him a quick kiss. “I’ll sleep in here tonight. It’s fine.”
“You sure?” He says, lifting his head to follow your lips, “You don’t have to. I don’t mind, honest.”
“I’m sure. Now that you’ve gone to all the effort to get me sick it’s pointless to resist.”
He laughs, and flops back against the bed. “Shit, okay, d’ you mind if I sleep some more? I am seriously dead.”
“Yeah, did you feed the parrot?”
“Dude, that parrot is my life, of course I fed her.”
“Just checking,” you reply and kiss his cheek.
“So, are you going to be my snuggle bear or not?” Dave says, and raises an eyebrow.
You snuggle. You also manage to lose most of your clothes and fall asleep. When you wake up, there is a puddle of drool on your shoulder. You don’t mind.
You do mind when you are sick a couple days later, and Dave somehow manages to set the fire alarm off trying to make you chicken noodle soup. You mind even more when the shrieking of the alarm gets that damn bird going, and Dave tries to teach it to say “sickie” in your ear. But somehow, you’ve never been happier.