An Extremely Lengthy Explanation as to Why Santa Clause Doesn't Put Rockets on His Reindeer

The thing about Dave Strider is that from a distance he seems cool and calm and totally emotionless, thus creating the illusion that he's a total pretentious asshole that any sane sentient being would want to draw a mustache on when he's asleep. However, if one were to step a little closer they would realize that he is actually a huge loser that is drinking apple juice from a red solo cup using a silly straw and that he has replaced his god tier outfit with alchemized dinosaur footie pajamas and a fuzzy blanket that he tied around his neck as a cape. This strange optical illusion creates quite the conundrum for one Karkat Vantas.

The aforementioned conundrum being that when he manages to get close enough to Dave, he wants to snuggle him so fucking hard, but when he's standing approximately five yards away, he wants to punch him so hard in the dick that his voice is permanently stuck at a B above high C. It's not even a kismesis type crush that he has on Dave, it's more like he can't make up his fucking mind and it's ruining his life. The worst part is that Dave has no idea that no one likes him whenever he's being 'cool' despite literally everyone constantly telling him that he's an annoying doucheberry poptart with extra frosting. Of course the list of things that makes Karkat want to punch Dave is wayyyyyyyy longer than just the fact that he's a rusty trash can full of half eaten peanut butter cupcakes covered in grub sauce. Like how he spends most of his time sitting in the corner of the room rapping to himself. Or how he talks in nothing but metaphors that only make sense to a select few humans that happen to be used to having to translate everything he says. And that stupid thing he does where he actually makes Karkat find all of his assholishness endearing. It's disgusting. Karkat wants to punch him so hard in the face. He would more than willingly take Dave outside where no one would hear his screams OR his moans of pleasure… wait what.

Then to make everything five billion times worse, Dave decides to go and actually be friends with him. Without his permission by the way. What an inconsiderate bag of salami. And now Karkat's stuck sitting next to Dave in a pillow fort watching stupid videos of tiny meow creatures and he's actually enjoying himself. What has his life come to? It was so much easier when he was just trying to create the universe. Now he has to deal with simultaneously wanting to hold Dave's hand and feeling the overwhelming urge to crush his flimsy human skull. Around the twenty-eighth video, Karkat manages to pull himself out of his pissed off and confused stupor to come to a decision. An extremely stupid decision. But a decision nonetheless. And he was totally going for it.

So at video forty-seven Karkat is still trying to psych himself up enough to actually do the thing and Dave is starting to notice that he is doing nothing but glaring at a stray pillow and mumbling about the color red and juicy juice filled motherfuckers. Obviously things aren't quite going as planned, but in Karkat's defense spontaneity is hard when you're a weird mutant troll that's spent his entire life trying to draw as little attention as possible for fear of being lynched.

"Dude are you okay? You're acting weirder than you usually do. And talking to inanimate objects a lot. It's kinda creepy."

Okay so he didn't say he was good at being subtle. He just said he had to do it to survive. Which also didn't go so well because he got stabbed a lot that one time. And that other time. So yeah he's pretty shitty at the whole subtlety thing and then Dave just has to go and point it out like an asshole which just makes everything worse because now he's flustered and trying to explain himself and it's just a huge clusterfuck of embarrassment. And then he realizes that he really has nothing to worry about because Dave's been ranting the entire time.

"—and like I understand that Santa Clause has a really tight schedule with all the tiny man whipping and cookie fucking he's got going on, but you'd think that he'd maybe put some goddamn rockets on those sickly, old ass reindeer right? But nooo he's just gotta stick with Rudolf and all those other elderly sleigh bitches. Like they gotta be hella old by now right? There's no way the magic of Christmas is keeping them young forever, animals are not immortal. Maybe reindeer with red noses are actually surprisingly popular, so the fat man can just replace them when he needs to. How do reindeer even end up in the North Pole though? Like does Santa have to get some of his slave elfs to go trap them and train them? I guess they'd only have to do it a few times because then they'd just start breeding and shit. We should breed reindeer. That'd be sick as hell. We could even get Rose to knit them some cool—"

Karkat has listened to this rant at least thirty-four times already. It always ends the same way. With Rose chasing him around for a good three hours because he was going through her underwear drawer. He's not letting this bullshit go on any longer or he'll have to bribe Rose with yet another one of his trashy trollmance novels. He's running low on supplies. So he does what he was planning on doing this entire time: he grabs Dave's big stupid face and punches him right on the mouth. With his mouth. And then he instantly regrets everything about his life including but not limited to this exact moment.

But then after that moment of panic Dave starts to kiss back and Karkat can't feel his toes and there's still a weird cat video playing in the background, but it's really hard for Karkat to focus on anything other than how he totally understands why Terezi thinks the color red tastes so good because Dave tastes like red. Unsurprisingly, red tastes like apples and some unidentifiable spice that made Karkat's lips tingle a little bit. And then Karkat starts having a little bit of trouble even thinking about his lips on Dave's because it's been a long time since he breathed last and wow it's hot in that pillow fort. He lasts another few seconds before finally pulling away and taking in a few huge breaths. "Stop fucking talking about Santa Clause. I have no idea who that is and Rose is still pissed at you for the last time."

"I mean if you do that again I'm willing to forget what I was saying."

So he does it again. And then one other time for good measure. And then the rest of the night goes by in a blur, but when he wakes up he's wearing Dave's blanket cape and snuggled up against the aforementioned Strider who happens to also be asleep. They're still in the blanket fort and the entire situation is stupidly absurd, but also ridiculously adorable and for some reason it really makes Karkat want to punch Dave in the face.