AN: This story can also be read on Archiveofourown: /works/6531964/chapters/14943760
And Wattpad: 243945665-but-if-i-could-go-back-and-do-it-all-again-when
The first time that Dave met them, it was ten at night and he was really supposed to be home. Eridan would have his head when he got back home, sure, but Dave remembered not being able to care enough to hustle home and scrounge up an apology. It wouldn't have meant much, anyway, and wouldn't have changed much. She was there in the lights, looking slightly sullen and bored, and dressed in a dress so white he was sure it should have been covered in stains. And when he'd showed up, he had been dressed in a baggy sweater that gave off a clear 'I don't care! Fuck off!' vibe, that hadn't really made Dave want to fuck off. So he'd stayed, he'd pestered them.
The first time Terezi met them, it was ten at night and she was fairly sure that she was pretty high up on the 'sin-scale'. Skipping a nightly church group to sneak into a club when she was underage and should have been spending her time with the lord? Tyranny. To repent for her sins, she'd made sure to wear her best church dress. And while she really had been trying her best to soil it (parental spite would have been bonus points), everyone was being cautious of it, spilling their drinks on other people. How rude. Couldn't people tell when someone was out to spite their weirdly religious parents? Evidently not. When she'd first seen them, she'd been standing off by one of the tables. And when the first of the two had shown up, his red eyes had looked almost fake, with how vibrant and surreal they looked. And he'd looked tired, but he managed to look like he was the most awake he'd ever been at the same time. And when he spoke, his voice was smooth and soft in a way that didn't really fit him. In a way that completely contrasted the second of the two to show up. And when the second had shown up, looking just as sullen and grouchy as Terezi had felt prior to meeting the boy with the red eyes, his voice had been gruff and scratchy in a way that should have been loud but wasn't. And maybe, subconsciously, she knew to weasel her way into their lives. But how could she have known that they'd go from two strangers at the bar to her boys?
The first time Karkat had met them, they were too bright to miss. Maybe it was all the lights in the club meeting in one spot right over them and dousing them in colorful lights, maybe it was the pure white of her dress that was impossible to miss in the see of dirty, dark colors, maybe it was his hair and his eyes, but something about them made him walk over without thinking.
And they hadn't said anything, at first. They'd stood in silence for the longest stretch of time before she'd finally spun on her heel to face them. "Raise your hand if you're legally allowed in this club right now," her grin was shark-toothed and mischievous, in a way that probably should have been just a little intimidating but wasn't. When Karkat didn't raise his hand and the other boy just stared at her blankly, she just grinned even wider. "That's what I thought. Who wants to ditch this joint? Anyone feeling a little," she paused to wiggle her eyebrows. "Rebellious? Who's up for the teenage rebellion of doing something completely legal?"
"Like…what?" The other boy asked, quirking an eyebrow up. His voice was too soft—for him or for the noisy club, Karkat couldn't decide.
"Like coffee. Or one of those brooding trips to those playgrounds that angsty teens always go to in movies…" she trailed off, shooting them another grin, as if she'd already decided for them.
"I don't know you. I don't know your name. Or your birthday. Or your favorite color. Or that you're not a murderer. Or…a kidnapper. Or worse."
"Terezi. September 30. Red. No. No. And no."
"Thanks," Karkat muttered sarcastically, glancing at the other boy, who was still watching them with the same expression-less look. No help there, he supposed. "Why do you want to go get coffee with strangers?"
"Because strangers are more fun. Mystery! Risk! Adventure! Rebellion! Everything that would give a mom a heart attack. Besides," she insisted. "I personally don't want to get arrested tonight. But I don't wanna go someplace dull and legal with dull and legal people who I know. Like I said—mystery! Risk! Adventure!" She brushed her hair off her shoulders, and Karkat watched it wash down her back in waves. It was dyed bright red and curled in a way that looked natural, though Karkat didn't really know much about that kind of thing. And though every part of his mind nagged him to say no, that's insane, no way in hell, I'm not dying like that tonight, I don't even know you, some part of him must have been saying yes, do it, do something against the rules for once, you're already snuck into a club, she's right, you like mystery right? You like adventure, and he shrugged against his will, giving in.
She grinned her shark-toothed grin and spun to face the other boy. He shoved his hands in his pockets, shrugging. "My mom always told me to listen to peer pressure," he mumbled indifferently.
And if Karkat thought he'd done crazy things before that night, he was fairly sure this was the craziest thing yet.
They didn't go for coffee, but they did end up at one of the parks that he hadn't gone to since he was six. The swing set, if he remembered correctly, was old and rusty and practically screamed whenever anyone sat on it.
They sat right in the dirt. When the other boy glanced at the soiled white dress, for he must have been thinking the same thing as Karkat, she just gave them another one of her shark-toothed grins and spread it further through the dirt.
"Brown's a nice color, don't you think?" She paused, brushing the dirt off of her hands before looking at them again. Her eyes were a bright shade of teal that he hadn't thought could even go into eyes. Her eyebrows were dyed the same shade of red at her hair, so Karkat didn't even have a clue what her natural hair color was.
And when he flushed because he caught himself studying her like a book, he realized that she was probably doing the exact same thing to him.
He'd been out with groups of people this late before, of course. His friends found the weirdest enjoyment in walking in the dark. It had always held an air of mystery, walking in the dark. When they didn't know where they were going or what was waiting for them, when they couldn't see clearly, when it felt like a scene right out of a movie and when nobody else was outside. And that had been exciting, yes, and he'd felt a little buzz of excitement doing it.
But that didn't even compare to that new buzz of excitement right then. That time—with those had been with people he'd known his whole way through high school. Those times had been with his parent's consent and in a place he knew like the back of his hand.
There? There, with those two he didn't even know? There, with those two that left him scrounging up anything he could to try and figure them out? He didn't know a thing about them. He didn't know their last names—he didn't even know the boy's first name. He didn't know why they were out. He didn't know why they'd snuck into the same club at him. He didn't know why she seemed so keen on soiling a perfect dress or why he looked so tired and so alive at the same time.
It wasn't just excitement. It was a whole new kind of adrenaline that shot through him back then. Maybe that was why Terezi had wanted to go out with two complete strangers. Karkat didn't know a thing about them.
Did they get good grades? Did Terezi scrounge up strangers constantly? Were those contacts—or did that boy just have weird eyes? Did he get cold easily? He was wearing a puffy sweater. Did they have siblings? What were they thinking?
It was almost infuriating, how little he knew about them. Or, it should have been. But instead, it was infatuating. It was impossible to go back home now. He had two puzzles set down in front of him and a time limit of a single night to put them together, and he was determined to get as far as he could.
"I'm Karkat." He started, hesitantly. When they both glanced at him like they expected him to continue, he flushed again. "Uh…my favorite color is red, too, I guess? It's alright, anyway. Oh, right, my birthday is June 30th. I'm…not a murderer. Or a kidnapper. Or anything."
"You hesitated," the boy mumbled under his breath, and when Karkat glanced over at him he wasn't looking right at Karkat anymore, picking at the dry dirt, instead. His voice held an air of a cocky tone, mingling with traces of hesitance of his own.
"What?"
"Before you said that you weren't a murderer. You hesitated." The boy clarified. "I dunno if I can trust you now. Sorry man."
"Shame," Karkat rolled his eyes. "You're still the one who hasn't told us your name."
"Because I haven't had the chance! Excuse you, rude! I'll have you know, I'm not a murderer. Or a kidnapper. Or worse. I like red, my birthday's December 30th. The name's Dave—which, by the way, is the only normal name out of all of ours."
"Excuse you, rude." Terezi mocked, grinning again. "Okay, so, let's see…we all like red, and we were all born on the 30th. This is meant to be." She rolled over onto her back, still seeming to not care even a little about the prettiness of the dress and the purity of its whiteness, now soiled.
"What's meant to be?" Karkat asked intelligently. When she started to talk again, making grand gestures with her hands and grinning at her own commentary, he realized for the first time that he was carefully watching everything that they did. When Dave's eyes flicked back and forth to watch each of them carefully, cautiously, he did it in a way that Karkat never would have noticed before. When Terezi spoke, she grew excited about each topic, sending them grins and smirks.
In a solid three hours spent on the dirty floor of park, Karkat rummaged through their words for little pieces of their puzzles. He'd click them into place, when he could. He started constructing the borders for their puzzles, finding the edges and the basics. And when he found two pieces that snapped together, he'd pair them and set them carefully off to the side.
Terezi liked star signs and colors, she hated church and she was loud and vibrant. Dave was pastel, then, and he was quiet and hesitant for the better part of three hours before the cocky attitude from before reemerged and Karkat figured out that he liked dumb video games and music and irony and he hated mornings.
And he was sure they learned things about him, too. If anything, they learned his phone number. He learned theirs, too, of course, because it was a three-way-commitment when it came to swapping their numbers.
And when he left later that night, it was with their numbers in his phone and a rush of adrenaline that would never allow him to sleep that night. When they'd all stood up with the silent agreement of separating, Karkat had glanced at Terezi's brown dress, which use to be a pretty white church dress and was now a brown-muddled sign of rebellion, and at Dave's tousled hair, which had been carefully done at the beginning of the night but hadn't escaped Terezi's easy-going friendliness that meant certain death to styled hair.
They'd turned away without saying anything. Not a goodbye, not a "see you later" or "we'll get together soon, yeah?". And they'd all gone different directions.
He'd felt adrenaline before. He'd felt it on all-nighters and he'd felt it when he used to play sports and he'd felt it when he snuck into that club. But it always wore off quickly, as soon as the excitement was over. He'd crash, then, and he'd sleep for a good few hours and that would be that.
The adrenaline stayed with him all throughout the walk back home. And when he stuck the key in the lock and twisted it and opened the door and stepped into an empty house, it had stayed with him. The silence of the house was almost deafening—he hadn't been able to remember the last time he had been home by himself like this. Maybe a few years ago, for a couple of hours?
Either way, he'd stubbornly refused to go up to Ohio to see his grandparents with the rest of his family. And, because he was a trustworthy kid who got good grades and always behaved, they were fine with him staying home alone.
But maybe he was there at the club on an act of rebellion, too. Maybe he was there to be the stereotypical kid who was sick of being good, and wanted to be bad. The protagonist of his own novel, yearning to be somebody else.
And if Dave had been there on his own act of rebellion, it was something that only he'd known.
It had made Karkat wonder, though. It had made him wonder how many other seventeen-year-olds had snuck into a club that night to go off on some weird adventure with people they'd never met before.
It made Karkat almost want to see them again, as soon as he could. Because something about them called to him and made him want them to listen. Something about them made him want to drag them back until he could put the rest of their puzzles together. When he glanced back at their memory, it was filled with scattered puzzle pieces that he couldn't snap into place if he tried.
He didn't text them. That wasn't his kind of thing, anyway. They didn't text him. Maybe that wasn't their kind of thing, either. Whether or not they ever texted each other, Karkat wasn't ever too sure.
When his family got back on Monday, the adrenaline was still buzzing in him. It stuck with him all weekend, and made him want to pour out the story of the strangers from the club to each person at school.
He didn't speak about them, though. Not to a single person. Whether or not they thought about him, he wasn't ever too sure. Whether or not they ever spoke about him, or each other, he wasn't ever too sure.
He wouldn't blame them if they didn't. There was something secretly intimate about a memory like that, which only they had even the faintest idea of. Nobody else could ever know, much less even guess.
When the adrenaline eventually stopped buzzing and he eventually stopped trying to put together the puzzle pieces, he wasn't too sure of, either. It faded into the back of his mind, a memory that he would pull up sometimes.
But he never saw anyone under multi-colored lights again, and he never saw anyone wearing a soiled white dress or anyone with a baggy hoodie like his.
And if that was the last time they spoke, then so-be-it. It was a messy kind of memory that you forgot bits of, continued to question and think of long after it happened. The kind of memory that you would tell casually to someone if they asked if you'd ever done anything even a little bit crazy, so that nobody would ever know just how crazy the memory really had been, so that it could maintain its air of mystery.
"Mystery! Risk! Adventure! Rebellion!"
"Where were you on Saturday? We texted you, you know. Everybody else went out for a movie. You didn't answer, though." Lunch trays clacked on the table, noisy chatter filling up the silence that lingered between them while Karkat decided how to reply.
"My family went up to Ohio to see my grandparents…they live in this really old house, though. They're completely convinced that technology is used for satanic greed or something." Karkat shrugged, attempting to brush off the question.
"Right," Kanaya rolled her eyes slightly. "Except you hate going to your grandparents' house. I thought you weren't going to that."
"I wasn't," Karkat muttered, sliding into his seat and snapping open the can of Coke. "But have you met my mom?" It was a plausible lie. He'd never flat-out said that his mom had okayed his plans, of course. And he'd been surprised when his mom had said yes—everyone had been, when he'd told them he planned on just staying home.
But, he'd been a good kid who would never illegally sneak into a club and go out with two random strangers to sneak onto an old and rusty park.
Kanaya hummed in a way that made it clear she didn't believe him, but let the topic go as everyone else slid into their seats at the table. Of course she didn't believe him—and because he'd taken the effort to hide where he'd been that night, she'd probably keep prying into it whenever she thought he'd answer, or at least offer her a little bit of information towards the subject. Karkat was pretty certain she wouldn't get an answer, though.
He feigned his disappointment at having missed the movie and told everyone he'd been at Ohio all weekend with his family. He never once texted either of them, and you'd assume that they'd manage to slip his mind completely, eventually.
They stuck with him for a while, of course, giving it their all. He didn't forget their names or their faces or their voices, and he'd still remember that night, from time-to-time.
They managed to completely escape his mind, eventually, though. Nobody remembered to hassle him about where he'd been one Saturday in the past, and Karkat forgot to be annoyed about being hassled.
He packed the puzzles up, put them into the boxes they'd come in and slid them up onto an old shelf to collect dust over time.