Title: Scarlet Secrets and Sequestering Shades
Summary: Because cool shades are the solution to everything. Dave Strider & Karkat Vantas.
Note: Totally AU. This idea has been tickling my mind for a while, and I'm sure that someone will write it eventually if they haven't already.
Warnings: Language.
Pairings: No pairings. :D
Characters: Dave, Karkat. John and a couple others mentioned.
Reviews are received with much love!
I own nothing of Homestuck. I am not making money from this, nor am I intending any copyright infringement.
Dave stomped his boots against John's porch in an ineffectual attempt to fight off the winter cold that was seeping through his badass, but admittedly inadequately warm jacket. Cloudy puffs of his breath froze against the inside of his scarf and momentarily fogged his shades with each exhalation. He irritably pressed one numb forefinger into John's front doorbell.
Ding!
"Yeah? Who's there?"
"Dave, asswit. Now let me in before I dry freeze your entire block with my coolness. Shit, I'm practically freezing my own ass halfway to hell out here, that's how cool I am."
The door swung open and Dave scrambled (no, swaggered; he was too cool to scramble anywhere, unless it was in a purposefully ironic sort of way) across the threshold and into the electric-heated warmth of John's house. He tugged at his scarf until it peeled away from his head, and deposited it on the nearest bystander. So in this case, John.
"About time I got that girly-ass thing off me."
"But Rose made it for you!"
"I don't care if the U.S. President knitted it from the hairs of the finest f***ing unicorn nostrils. I am not going to strut around like a moron, wearing a neon pink noose around my neck in public. Shit's f***ing indecent."
"Whatever you say, cool guy!"
John draped the scarf gently on the hat-rack, next to several identical grey hats. After removing his jacket, Dave kicked off his slushy boots and left them to melt in front of the door. As they climbed the stairway to John's room, John jabbered away about the predicted "epicness" of their imminent movie night and Dave listened to the monologue with half an ear. Finally they stopped in front of John's bedroom and his lighthearted jabber ceased, his voice suddenly dropping in volume and tone.
"Okay, Dave. So you see, only you and Karkat have shown up for the movie night so far. I think Jade will be coming, and a few more of the trolls too, but Rose and Vriska are busy today and can't make it."
John broke off and glanced at his door uncomfortably, before shifting his feet a little and looking back at Dave.
"Karkat's been acting kind of weird."
"I'm assuming that by 'weird' you don't mean 'off his mentally and linguistically acceptable rocker' the way he usually is," said Dave in a monotone.
"Yeah. He hasn't even been yelling or anything. Just shuffling around and not looking at me. He's acting like he doesn't want to be here at all. But who wouldn't want to show up for an all-nighter of Nicholas Cage?"
"I could think of a couple people. Or a few. Or any infinitely vast number of people, really."
"Dave, stop being all sarcastic for a second. I know it's hard for you and stuff, but just bear with me, please. Karkat seemed up for it when I pestered him the invite about a week ago, but he tried to back out this morning and now he's acting really, really, strange. It's just kind of awkward and I'm not sure what I did wrong."
"You probably didn't do anything wrong, shithead. This is the crazy-ass troll with a screaming fetish we're talking about."
"Dave!"
Ding!
"Hold on, I'll get the door," John sighed. He darted past Dave and pedaled down the stairs, landing with a heavy thump at the bottom.
By the sound of the voices coming from below, a group of trolls had shown up. Dave listened in on the complaints of the cold for a few seconds, then regarded John's door with what would have been apprehension in any lesser human. Squaring his shoulders a little, he reached out, turned the knob, and stepped into John's room.
It was pitch-dark. Dave fumbled around on the wall for a switch for a few seconds before he found it and flicked on the light.
A lump under John's blankets grumbled a little. Dave could've sworn that he'd discerned at least five distinct f-bombs and two mortal threats on his reproductive organs.
"Hey there, Tardkat."
"Hey. F*** off."
"John told me that you were acting extra pissy today. I guess he was right about something for once."
"I said f*** the hell off, you vomit-grubbing bulge-poker." The lump rolled over and the blankets pulled taught.
Dave closed the door behind him and moved across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. He stared calmly and contemplatively at the large lump that was Karkat for a while.
"Okay, man. You're really making John worried, and that kid doesn't deserve a fraction of the shit he already puts up with from you. So just tell me what your stupid little self-absorbed problem is, so that we can catapult it into the nearest landfill post haste and leave it to rot under fresh layers of diapers and shit."
"Just f*** off. That's all I ask. Is that really too much to ask?"
"What is this shit? Troll PMS? I don't have time for this, Karkat. You're at a f***ing movie night party at John's house, not the hole under whatever dense rock it is that you normally live under. You have to actually interact with people and have fun and shit; you can't just go around pretending like the world doesn't exist."
Someone knocked five times on the door. A life-sized poster of Nicolas Cage that was hanging there bounced a little.
"Dave? Karkat? Will you guys come out and meet up with everyone?" John sounded a little anxious.
"In a sec, man. I've almost got this asshead sorted out so hard everything about him will be alphabetically catalogued and numerically arranged for eons."
"Oh, okay then. Sounds good! Okay!"
A faint peal of mingled derisive and mirthful laughter from downstairs made its way under John's bedroom door and into Dave's eardrums. John's footsteps thumped away down the hall and back to the rest of their friends.
"Karkat. Tell me what your f***ing issue is already. I'm seriously getting tired of this. Don't make me karate flip you out the window and into the snow. It would be good riddance."
There was a pause. The lump of blankets shuffled and wriggled a little, while Dave tapped his foot impatiently against the floor.
"You wouldn't f***ing understand it anyway," mumbled the lump that was Karkat.
"Just lay it on me and pretend like I would. Spread it all over like a pan of shit onto a slice of toast so..."
"Okay! OKAY! I GET IT! FINE!"
The blankets would have flown clear across the room if Dave hadn't sitting on them. As it was, they simply hit him in the face and covered his head. Dave clawed them off in an embarrassingly undignified manner. Karkat was sitting on John's pillow, his arms crossed. He was wearing an enormous black hooded sweatshirt that drooped off the ends of his fingers and down over most of his face.
"Hey troll-shit, will you explain to me why the hell you're wearing..."
"Shut up. Just shut up," muttered Karkat, shaking his baggy sleeves down his arms so that he could rub at his temples with his fingertips, "Just, shut up for a second."
"..."
"..."
"I'm pretty sure that was more than a second, Karkat."
"Okay, look. Maybe by some freak twist of space-time you'll sympathize, if only because you always wear those ridiculous reflective plates over you ocular spheres."
"Hey, don't diss the shades."
"Whatever. Why do you wear them anyway?"
"Because they're cool," said Dave, his tone slightly defensive.
"Alright, it doesn't matter a buzz-insect's flying f***, anyway. Alright. So."
"Get to the point."
"When a troll gets to a certain age, their eyes change color."
"Oh, is that it? Are your eyes some stupid color that you're embarrassed to show? Don't worry. Most human eyes are the color of brown turds, I'm not even shitting you."
Karkat snorted a little despite himself, then determinedly renewed his frown and pulled his sweater closer around him. Some more laughter drifted in from under the door.
"Look, Strider," he finally said, "I don't know how much you know about the hemospectrum..."
"Is that the weird-ass blood-caste system thing John mentioned?"
"Yeah. That."
"Oh. So are your eyes showing some really hierarchically crappy color right now?"
"Sort of."
"Goddamn it, Vantas! Give me a straight answer for once. It doesn't even have to be that straight. Just maybe something that resembles, I don't know, a f***ing line that some preschooler scrawled onto their desk."
"Cut it out with your overdecorated and indecipherable quips already. They do absolutely nothing to make you sound intelligent."
In response to the comment, Dave arranged his mouth into a cool-guy frown of scorn.
Ignoring this formidable change in expression (or perhaps simply not seeing it from under his hood), Karkat continued, "My blood isn't on the hemospectrum. It's a f***ing mutant freakish color. They know about it, but I've been dreading this day since I stopped being too moronic not to be dreading it."
"Look, man, it's no big deal. None of us care. How freakish can a color be, anyway?"
Karkat was silent for so long that Dave was ready to drag his sword out of his strifedeck, dust it off a bit with John's pillow, and bisect the idiot troll for being so infuriatingly hard to crack. Quite suddenly, though, Karkat grabbed his hood with both hands, threw it back over his head, and stared directly into Dave's shades with a sour and defiant scowl on his face.
Dave stared.
And stared.
And stared.
His eyes were red.
Blood red.
Karkat snorted, "See? I f***ing told you it's freakish. Freakish among humans too, I'm willing to bet every f***ing last drop of my embarrassing blood on it."
Dave swallowed, hard, in a very uncollected and uncool sort of way. His hand twitched and trembled as he brought it up to his shades, and hesitated as he was about to pull them off. Then, his hand jerked as though it had a mind of its own, and ripped his shades away from his face.
If Karkat's blood red eyes had widened any further, they would have rolled clean out of his head. His jaw gaped open, clearly displaying a row of jagged teeth, and for a few seconds they stared at each other, eye to matching eye.
"Here," Dave said cooly, his poker-face composure back in place, as he offered Karkat the shades, "I have a spare."
For the first time in Dave's living memory, Karkat grinned. He then took the shades and pushed them onto his own nose bridge and continued to smirk as Dave pulled an extra pair from his pocket and settled them on own face.
"Strider, you are one shady little f***er."
"No, we're both just a couple of cool guys. Like a pair of f***in' ice bergs chilling in the middle of Antarctica. Pound it, bro," Dave said, holding up a fist.
Karkat agreeably punched his own knuckles into Dave's.
When they went downstairs and found themselves on the receiving end of snickers and cat-calls for their matching glasses, Dave and Karkat tactfully flipped them all off and assaulted their auditory organs with the choicest of derogatory vocabulary to shut them up.
So, did you guys like it? :3 No?
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