A/N Welcome lovely readers! I hope you enjoy my DaveKat! If you've read Misguided, you already know what's going to happen, but I kind of want you to read this one, too, because I feel like this side of it is going to go a little bit more in depth than Karkat's point of view did? I don't know why.

Characters belong to the Huss, whose first name (Andrew) I have actually forgotten on multiple occasions.

You watched him move in one day at your fencing class. Short, snowy hair, tinted glasses, pale skin…colorless eyes. He was slightly chubby in the face, wearing a large black sweater and gray skinny jeans. He had a sarcastic and angry look on his face whenever he interacted with the man that had been living in that house for years. And you knew: he was the new student registered at your high school.

You see him around campus all the time. He usually stares at the ground, his glasses not auto-tinting in the fluorescent lighting. Sometimes he has a bandage and bruises on his face, arm, a finger, or something. You guess he's probably just really clumsy and gets hurt a lot, but honestly you wouldn't put it past that guy he lives with to be an abusive foster dad.

He glares at you whenever he sees you. You've never spoken a word to that guy, but whenever he sees you he glares. Whenever you pass him or move near him he shrinks away. He seems generally irritated by your presence, and you can't understand why. He rolls a bruised eye, or mocks you with fractured hands, and you cringe. It has to be painful, yet he does it anyway. That's dedication. He must really hate you.

That doesn't stop you from wanting to talk to him. You know, in the coolest kind of way, it's not like you want him to like you or anything. You just think getting his perspective on some things would be cool, you know? Well, that's bullshit, actually, you want to be his friend pretty badly, somewhere deep inside of you, but that's under layer after layer of apathy and layer after layer of the Strider Cool. And your sunglasses. Those are necessary things to point out. Besides, you have plenty of friends already, and they never leave you alone.

Despite all that, you want to know Karkat Vantas.

Two of your buddies know more about him than you do, and you don't know how that's possible. You never see them together. You did notice, however, that they disappear sometimes during the day when you used to hang all the time. It kind of makes you a little bit upset, because these are guys you've managed to not chase away. You've somehow managed to create a whole reputation revolving around your relationship with these two huge dunderheads. They respect you, and after they began to, others began to, and now people actually think you're worth something. Everybody knows coolkid Dave Strider.

It makes you bitter to the bone when they just up and disappear on you like that, because you hate being left to deal with people on your own.

It isn't exactly a new thing for you, getting attention, but honestly, a lot of the time you just want to be left the fuck alone, so you come off as a man of few words. You try to be polite, without destroying your cool, but you don't speak much to people you don't want to know. And you don't want to know many people. Which is why it's one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of your life when you decide to approach Karkat Vantas.

"What the everloving fuck, Strider!" he gasps, clutching his chest.

You blink behind your shades; you hadn't realized a simple "hey" would make him jump so badly. "Sup, Vantas."

"What do you want!"

You can see his eyes shifting about, looking for something, while also trying to avoid direct eye contact with the lights above you. You keep your face as blank as you possibly can (which is pretty fucking blank since you're been practicing and perfecting this for years).

You shrug, still watching his eyes, trying not to be too intense about it. And then you realized, you totally have no idea what to say. Um…there's a crab on his sweater. Good, sea creatures, you can work with that.

His expression becomes a glare after one honestly terrible sentence filled with gross fish puns. "I'm a Cancer."

You cock an eyebrow. "I'm a Sagittarius," you reply. "Is that how you usually make friends? Talking about your astrological signs? Guess it's not the most unconventional way to make friends I've seen but I can say it's up there at the top, kind of like a tightrope walker at—"

"God damn, do you ever shut up?" He cuts you off with an exasperated hiss, slinging his bag over his thin shoulder. You see the tiniest movement in his body—years of strifing with Bro have made you acutely aware of these things—but he stays put, and looks exasperated by that, too.

"Not really," you reply to a question that was likely meant to be rhetorical. "Can't keep a music man from playing his part now can you."

He just sort of…stares at you. You think maybe he's calculating something, you're not sure. All you know is, you don't want him to run away. You think maybe he wouldn't, if anybody did, but he doesn't know what you're hiding, and he doesn't look like he likes you that much. In fact, you think you see a little bit of terror in his eyes, and that is not good at all.

After a bit he snorts and turns on his heel. You follow him, noting how heads turn as people watch the two of you walking together. Well, you aren't really walking together, he's sort of trying to avoid you. You wonder what you ever did to get this kind of negative attention from him. You suspect that as you follow him he's probably thinking profane things and stereotyping you extremely hardcore.
Your name is Dave Strider, and you will never have Karkat Vantas.