It's time for some sleep. So... slightly more mature things contained herein? Nothing explicit, but um...yeah. (If you're a Homestuck, I assume you're a RoseMary shipper, so here, you get presents.)

Many thanks to fangirl4you, thepeopleofthecrysis, obsessed01616, BCTheEntity, BlOo KiSsEs, LinkinPark X, Kerra-Chan, TheShipperOfShips, scone, and Pesky for your reviews to the last act!

And now, as promised, Intermission II.

INTERMISSION II

There were worse ways to wake up, Rose supposed, than with a pretty girl's head between your legs. She couldn't think of any off the top of her head (actually, she couldn't really think of anything right now), but that was because Kanaya's tongue seemed to be magic, and Rose wasn't about to complain.

Waking up in Kanaya's bed would have been a complete surprise to her the day before, too. When they left on their excursion to that ridiculous club Terezi wanted so much to go to, she hadn't anticipated actually wanting to dance with Kanaya, much less actively pulling her out to the dance floor. The other girl hadn't minded, though. It had allowed her to keep an eye on Aradia for all the good it ended up doing her. When that guy had forcibly shoved Kanaya away to get at Aradia, Rose nearly marched up to him and knocked his block off. Before she could, though, Sollux had appeared and did exactly what she'd planned on doing. The guy slunk off to a corner to lick his wounds, and suddenly Sollux was out of there like ninjas were after him, and Aradia was right behind him.

But Kanaya was ashen, so Rose led her to the side to make sure she was okay, away from the dance floor and toward the couch where Dave was sitting. He scooted over to make room for them.

"Are you okay?" Rose asked as softly as she could while still being heard over the pounding bass beat. She sat Kanaya down and brushed the other girl's short dark hair behind her ears.

After a moment of consideration, Kanaya nodded. "I am unharmed."

"There's a difference between 'okay' and 'unharmed.'"

Something akin to surprise flitted across Kanaya's face before she lowered her eyes to her knees. Restlessly, her hands smoothed out her skirt and she said, "I know."

Rose tilted her face back up, crouching down so their gazes were level. "Talk to me, Kan. What's wrong?"

"I thought he intended to hurt her," Kanaya said carefully. "I feared for her, and..."

"He did intend to hurt her. You did fine. I thought he was about to hurt both of you."

"Sollux should not have had to—"

"No, and neither should you. Sollux is lucky that guy didn't hit him back. A more belligerent drunk would have beat him down. I think the guy was just an idiot, but it doesn't excuse him."

"I suppose harm could have come to my person as well, but it was Aradia I was most concerned for. She—oh." Kanaya stood up quickly, and Rose turned to look and there was Aradia herself, standing there looking sheepish.

"Sollux wants to go home, so I'm taking him back. I just wanted to say goodbye to everyone."

"Is he okay?" Rose asked.

"He's..." She gave a nervous chuckle. "He lost his dinner outside, for what it's worth. Apparently, he's never hit anyone before. But he'll recover. I think his nerves are a little frayed right now." She turned to Kanaya and pulled her into a tight hug. "You okay?"

"Yes. I'll be fine. I have Rose with me, after all," she said with the ghost of a smile on her face, and for some reason, Kanaya's words filled her with an unwarranted sense of pleasure.

"Good." She let go of Kanaya and gave Rose a quick hug as well. "Keep the creepers away from her, will you?"

"I can oblige," she said, smiling.

Aradia spared an awkward hug for Dave as well before hurrying back to the front of the club, and Kanaya sat back down. Rose squished in between her and Dave, who grumbled at them but ruffled Rose's hair. They'd been friends for far too long to truly care about a bit of a personal space violation.

After that, the whole mood seemed to deflate, even after Terezi and the other remaining party-goers found out where the three of them were lurking. Terezi dragged Karkat back out to the dance floor but they were both terrible (Rose had no idea what Karkat's excuse was, but Terezi's blindness was a good one for her), and Nepeta danced exuberantly by herself for a good ten minutes before John went out to join her, and later Equius. Rose lost track of most of the others, occasionally seeing them swirling around the dance floor amid the throngs of strangers, but Dave didn't get up once and Kanaya's desire to dance had left her. Rose was unwilling to leave her, so she stayed there, wedged between her and Dave.

After nearly a half an hour, she realized that she'd somehow shifted and was half-sitting in Kanaya's lap (a ridiculous sight, considering she was at least four inches taller than Kanaya) and the other girl had her arm wrapped loosely around her waist. It was comforting, though, in a way that didn't make sense because Kanaya was the one who'd needed the soothing, not her. But she felt a light flush of happiness at it either way.

If Dave noticed when Rose slid full into Kanaya's lap, he didn't say anything. He kept his sunglasses on, which she expected and understood even if she didn't like it, and she couldn't see his eyes (which was the point, after all), but his thumb kept moving along the screen of his iPhone as he texted and surfed the internet. There was a mystery there; Dave Strider was an enigma that, even after seven years of friendship, she hadn't been able to solve yet.

He got up from the couch, pressing his phone to his ear and yelling, "WHAT?!" to be heard over the cacophony, right around the time both of Kanaya's arms ended up around her, and Rose found that she was minding the physical contact less and less, not that she had minded it much in the first place.

It moved faster after that, with light kisses being trailed down the back of her neck and fingertips caressing her arms until Rose turned around and kissed her properly. Even though she felt herself trembling slightly, she was smiling—they both were—and Rose wound her arms around Kanaya.

When asked, Rose had always said that based solely on her history, she was straight, but she'd never dismissed the possibility that she could be bisexual. She'd simply never found a girl she was attracted to, not until Kanaya. The really strange thing was that they hadn't even met a week ago and Kanaya got her heart racing like a lovestruck fourteen-year-old. It was a good feeling, though, and nice considering she'd never been that lovestruck fourteen-year-old.

Later, when Tavros told them he and Gamzee were leaving, Rose suggested they go along since neither of them appeared to be heading back out to dance, and Gamzee came by to offer Dave a ride home, too. Dave grumbled something about his brother needing the apartment to himself and Gamzee just went right along with, "No problem, man! Karkat won't mind if you crash at our place!"

Dave seemed okay with the offer, so the five of them piled into Gamzee's Focus while Kanaya ground her teeth. Rose wasn't sure why, but she didn't like Gamzee all that much. "I don't have a reason," she'd said earlier. "Just... fuck that guy." Gamzee seemed nice enough to her, if a little too cheerful for her liking and with a shitty taste in music, but Rose let it go because she didn't honestly care too much, especially not when she and Kanaya huddled into the back seat next to Dave (he, Tavros, and Gamzee seemed to be pointedly ignoring them) and kept their hands all over each other for the entirety of the ride to Kanaya's apartment building. Rose knew they were being obnoxious, but that was one more thing she really couldn't have cared less about.

By the time they ended up falling asleep, naked and wrapped in blankets and each other's arms, Rose was pretty sure she'd stopped caring about anything but the feel of Kanaya pressed against her, and for the first time in recent memory, she felt well and truly happy.

END INTERMISSION II.

ACT 21

Aradia left his apartment around two-thirty, leaving him with a sore right hand and a mug of tea drowned in honey. He held his computer mouse gingerly, cradling his mug in his left hand, and glanced every so often at his red, slightly-swollen knuckles. They probably weren't broken, but they'd be bruised in the morning, and he flexed his fingers to test them. The pain wasn't terrible—if he focused on something else, it went away completely—but he'd iced them for a few hours before Aradia went home.

He'd offered to let her stay the night (it wouldn't have been the first time she slept over), but she said goodbye and left all the same. He wondered if Equius was waiting for her but didn't ask. She'd done more for him than any of his other friends, so she deserved the time she earned away from him.

He scoured the internet for useful pranks to play on annoying hipster douche-wagons (that had actually been his search entry on Google: "pranks to play on annoying hipster douche-wagons") and, aside from remotely erasing music off iPhones (which Eridan didn't have—he apparently found a Blackberry to be more appropriate), had seen nothing useful. Sollux would apparently have to rely on his own wits, such as they were, to devise an original prank. It promised to be a pain, though, considering he'd never used his powers for evil, only good (his own good, anyway). Finally, he gave up for the night, closed the lid of his laptop, and got ready for bed.

Adrenaline (and what little caffeine was in his tea), however, had other plans for him. He lay awake in the dark, trying to ignore the dull pounding in his knuckles. The jitters he'd had after punching that guy had subsided by now, and in place of that shaky feeling was a small sense of pride. He didn't know if that counted as a "first fight," but it emboldened him. He might not stand up for himself very often, but he could sure as Hell stand up for his friends when he needed to.

He'd think of something. He had to.

He was nearly asleep when his phone buzzed loudly on the nightstand. Something told him to ignore it, but he ignored that idea and checked it anyway, and then immediately wished he hadn't. It was Mituna texting him.

H3Y 8R00 WH475 G01NG G0N?!

"Oh, Jesus," Sollux muttered. Karkat thought his typing quirk was bad, but he'd never seen Mituna's. He could barely decode the haphazardly cobbled-together internet substitutions and he'd been reading it for six years. It was even worse when he was half-asleep as it was.

ju2t about two fall a2leep actually, he answered. He hoped that would be the end of it, that Mituna would take the hint and leave him alone for another two months, but it was a futile hope.

0H M44N 50RR13 8R0 8U7 DUUD33 15 YUR H4ND 0KY 44R44D14 W45 54YNG H0W U0U PUNCH43D 50M3 GUY 1N 7H3 F4C3.

Sollux groaned and rubbed his eyes. He was pretty sure what he'd said was "Oh man sorry bro but dude is your hand okay Aradia was saying how you punched some guy in the face" which, aside from being more run-on sentence than he could handle (and apart from being grammatically incorrect, which never bothered him before but just pissed him off when it was Mituna), was just ridiculous. If he really cared, he could have disentangled himself from his girlfriend (Latula, he reminded himself, Terezi's older sister) long enough to ask him to his face. Although that might have ended with Sollux actually breaking his knuckles against his brother's nose, so maybe it was all for the best.

iim fiine iill talk two you later

Y34H 5UR3 H7H1NG 8R00 H4H4H4 G00DD N1GH7 M4N.

Thank God that was over with. He never nearly threw his phone against the wall in frustration, but he knew he'd only regret it in the morning. Instead, he turned it on silent, flipped it over, and turned away from it. Maybe now he could finally get some sleep.

The ride back from the club was a good deal less crowded than the ride to the club. Nepeta sat up front next to Equius, but for all the actually sitting she did there (almost none), she might as well have been in the back seat. The whole time, she perched on her knees facing backwards with her arms wrapped around the head rest and her chin on top. John sat behind her and Karkat was behind Equius, but almost all of Nepeta's attention had been focused on John.

"I had a purrfectly wonderful time tonight! What about you?" she asked cheerily. If she had a tail, it would have been swishing back and forth. Of course, if she had a tail, Equius probably would have yanked her back into her seat properly, so maybe it was better if she didn't.

"Uh, yeah, it was great!" John said with a grin.

Karkat rolled his eyes and slouched in his seat. He'd shared a class with Nepeta once, their first semester of what counted as their freshman year at this stupid community college (a year ago now) and he'd liked her well enough until she started calling him "Karkitty" and being generally weird. Apparently, though, John thought the cat pun thing was adorable and it didn't bother him at all. Then again, maybe he should have expected as much from John Egbert. The guy was a bit of a spaz, especially if Vriska had stomped on his heart the way Strider said she did. But Nepeta seemed genuinely nice, cat puns aside, and maybe John was at a point where he could appreciate that.

He just wasn't sure she knew just what she was getting into.

"Nepeta, please return to your seat," Equius said firmly, tugging on the olive-green jacket she wore.

"Shoosh!" She batted his hand away and kept facing backwards. "What classes are you taking, Mr. Egpurrt?"

Karkat looked at his window and wondered if he could roll it down and jump out before Equius realized what he was doing. Probably not, he decided. The guy seemed pretty observant. Plus there was no guarantee he'd survive a tumble from a Suburban at fifty miles an hour. Not that he'd be completely opposed to that prospect at this point. He watched the landscape whizzing by and sat back, deciding the mess wouldn't be worth it.

"Well, I'm taking a Government class with Mr. Vantas here and our mutual friend Dave Strider—he was at the shindig tonight, the blond guy? And I'm also in Organic Chemistry and Economics... oh! And this one class Dave showed me, it's ridiculous, he made me take it but it's awesome. It's called 'The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur.'"

The whole SUV went completely silent. Even Karkat was a bit stunned with that response. Somehow, neither John nor Dave had ever mentioned taking this class, much less that it even existed.

A choked laugh sounded loud in the car and Karkat realized it was Equius fighting not to lose control of the steering wheel. After a few seconds of strangled laughter, he seemed to regain control of himself. "I had no idea the school offered such a course," he said once he'd regained the ability to speak.

"Yep!" John said. "Dave wanted to take it just to see what it was about. He thought it would basically be a joke, and he told me to take it with him since I needed another three credits this semester anyway. It's actually pretty deep, though! It's one of those weird Friday classes but yeah, they take it really seriously, and the teacher is a diehard Tupac fan! It's really cool!"

Nepeta had practically buried her face in the leather of the head rest, leaving only her eyes peeking out along with the blue cat-face hat still jammed over her hair. She pushed up her sleeves to keep them from covering her hands but they just fell back to her fingertips. Karkat remembered that she'd been wearing the same jacket a year ago. Why was she still wearing such an ill-fitting garment? It was long all over, not just at her sleeves; the back of it hung almost to her knees. It seemed a little excessive, but then again, Karkat didn't really have room to talk. His wardrobe consisted almost entirely of jeans and gray and black long-sleeved T-shirts. He didn't really do color.

"So is it hard?" Nepeta asked, moving her mouth so she could be heard.

"A little, but it's more fun than hard. Like it doesn't even seem like class work! There's a lot of group discussion, too, but Dave just sits to the side and doesn't say anything."

"I bet if he found the right purrson, he would open up!"

"Nepeta," Equius said again with more of a warning in his voice than before.

"Shoosh!" she said again, swatting at his head now.

Karkat very nearly asked, but decided he was probably better off not knowing. Knowing her, it could all very well mean something crazy, and he didn't have the fortitude to handle that right now.

When at last Equius finally dropped him and John off in front of his apartment building, Nepeta darted out of the car so fast Karkat wasn't what sure what happened until the door was open. She was nice as she said good night to him, but she gave John a big hug before dashing right back into Equius's monster of a vehicle and waving at them. Equius waited until they were in the building before he pulled away from the curb.

"She seemed nice," John said with a grin.

"Yeah, if you like batshit insane," Karkat grumbled.

"Don't be such a sourpuss!"

Karkat blinked at him for a second. "Oh, my God, Egbert, do you even listen to yourself half the fucking time or do you just say whatever the fuck pops into that shrunken little ketchup cup you call a brain?!"

One thing he could say for John, the one thing he and Gamzee had in common, was that they could take verbal abuse with a smile. Gamzee was always like that, but John had to be in a good mood (which he usually was, especially right now). He just laughed and gave Karkat an affectionate noogie, which displeased him to no end. He was shorter than everyone else he knew except Nepeta and Tavros—he didn't need that fact rubbed in his face.

When they got up to Karkat's apartment, John yawning and rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses (he'd invited himself over for the weekend and was apparently ready to crash for the night), he was surprised to see Dave there as well, sprawled out on the sofa with his headphones firmly over his ears. The reason for that came a moment later as he registered the rhythmic thumping and faint moans coming from Gamzee's room. Karkat visibly flinched.

Dave waved idly, his phone screen still reflected in his glasses, and lifted one headphone away from his ear. "Are they still—? Never mind. I can hear them."

Karkat closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Jesus fucking Christ on a fish. Come on." He unlocked his own bedroom door, mercifully across the living room from Gamzee's, and pointed Egbert and Strider inside before slamming the door behind him. It didn't do much to block out the noises, but when John put on Face/Off, the sounds of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta's combined shitty dialogue was enough to drown out the sounds still coming from Gamzee's room.

END ACT 21.

I promise not to inflict any more Mituna text on you if I can help it. That shit was a massive pain in the ass to write.

Also, yes, "The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur" is apparently a legit class that one of my Tumblr followers took in college, and I decided it had Dave written all over it.

Also I think Vriska will finally appear in either Act 22 or 23.