It is in the warm and wondrous dying light of early evening that one John Egbert shows up on the Vantas-Leijon's doorstep, on the corner of Prospit Court and Derse Drive. He's fifteen and still baby-faced, cargo shorts and white t-shirt on, and there's a red patch on his bottom lip where he's been worrying away at it. He's grinning when Nepeta opens the door for him, but there's a confliction that dances in his eyes behind the elation. Nepeta pays it little mind. His worry—and he is worried, she can see it, see straight into his heart—it'll come out or it won't.
Behind her, Karkat bustles around in the kitchen, chattering inanely to himself, voice rough, as it is eternal. John moves past Nepeta to get in his way, busying himself with dipping his finger in the frosting of the cupcakes Karkat is painstakingly decorating. Nepeta giggles when she hears a sharp slap and an indignant "Ow!" from the kitchen, meaning John had pushed his luck a little too far. He is early by fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes later, the twins arrive at seven-thirty on the dot. Between Dave's eerie aptitude for all things temporal, and Rose's perfect foresight, they are never late. Karkat opens the door for them, having traded places with Nepeta in the kitchen, resigning himself to the fate of the cupcakes (to have a swipe of frosting be stolen from approximately all of them). He will never admit the way his cheeks flush when his gaze alights on Dave, and he'll certainly not acknowledge the grin that curls his lips up. But Rose sees it, she always does, and she merely gives him a smirk and a quirk of the eyebrow when she meets his gaze over Dave's shoulder. Karkat scowls and invites them in by bodily dragging Dave inside, leaving Rose to follow, steps delicate on the tile entryway.
They join John and Nepeta in the kitchen, the first on a stool at the island and the second on the island, and gather round to decimate the cupcakes. Karkat tries desperately to wave them off (not everyone is here, you can't just eat them all! karkat says, and dave levels him with that impressive through-the-shades condescension he's mastered: dude. you snooze you lose), but they are not deterred. In the end, he confiscates the last survivors, to be saved for when Terezi, Vriska, and Jade get their asses in gear.
As it turns out, getting their asses in gear is in the next few minutes, approximately when Dave and Karkat start shit-talking Eridan Ampora (president of the drama club and prick extraordinaire, the guy who asked his best friend to homecoming in front of the entire school in november, complete with rose petals and a giant plush… cuttlefish? and got turned down cold) to Rose's utter delight. It is precisely when Dave begins regaling them with a tale of one of Ampora's famous meltdowns, AP Government edition, that Vriska and Terezi invite themselves in.
They join the others in the kitchen arm-in-arm, eyes sparking with some sort of closeness none of the rest of them could hope to touch. Vriska's hand is clenched tight in Terezi's, and there's a hint of red around her eyes, and everyone can tell she's been crying but with the loud, obnoxious way she greets them its easy to pretend she wasn't. It's easy to pretend she couldn't have, brash and confident as she is. Easy to pretend that the spider in her drank her tear ducts dry years ago.
Rose makes eye contact with Terezi, who bears a tightness in her lips. She shakes her head just slightly, and Rose gets it. Whatever happened before this is a Scourge Sisters thing, and it'll stay that way. She turns her head and pretends like she can't see it, pretends she couldn't if she tried, pretends she doesn't already have an idea, based on the way Tavros Nitram has been sadposting on his alt account for the past half-hour. She tunes back in to the discussion at hand, and she doesn't have to force the laugh that tumbles from her when Dave and Vriska say a few things that, were he present, would end Ampora's entire career.
They're loud, the seven of them, laughing and joking together, and it's loud enough that Karkat's older brother shouts down at them from the stairs to shut up you imbeciles, I can hear you insulting people down there and if I keep hearing it I'm going to have to educate you on why you're perpetuating a cycle of emotional abuse present in the majority of adolescent communities! and obviously none of them take Kankri seriously, but they know it's not an empty threat, so they move to shuffle down to the basement (and karkat of course shoves his cupcakes at vriska and terezi before they go—he staved off ravenous and hormonal beasts to save them a portion, after all—and vriska of course takes a bite and absolutely tears into him for how dry the cake is before devouring the rest of it).
In the basement Nepeta has carefully arranged a nest of blankets and pillows at the base of their ratty old couch that Karkat is positive his dad and her mom have fucked on (gross, karkles! she says and shoves him, eleven years old and a week into the marriage, a week into having him for a stepbrother and a week after they had the sex ed talk at school. i'm just sharing the awful, devastating truth, nep. it's vital that you know lest you sit in their juices, he presses, and nepeta fake gags at him until he snarls back and they start playfighting). John plops down fearlessly onto the couch cushions, stretching his legs out—his bare legs, oh god—and Karkat has to resist a violent shudder.
Vriska and Terezi claim one corner of the pillow nest, snuggling up against each other in a way that isn't totally platonic, and at this Rose and Nepeta share a smug, knowing look. They've gossiped before about whatever is going on there, though they've never quite come to a solid conclusion. They're not in love but they aren't just best friends, either, and it's not something Rose quite comprehends. Nepeta, though—she's got an idea. The fact that she knows something that Rose doesn't both frustrates and allures her. Nepeta is a frustrating and alluring kind of girl.
Jade arrives fashionably late, a quarter of the way through the movie Karkat puts on, and Dave thanks the universe for a reason to get up and go to the door, because he'd sat down in the nest next to Karkat when they'd settled in and as the movie's gone on they've moved from shoulders touching to legs on top of legs and hands just close enough to hold. Dave isn't quite sure yet if he wants to hold Karkat's hand. If he's brave enough to. If he's okay enough with what that means for him (dad's—derrick's, the guy isn't a father to him, he knows that—words ring in his ears every time Karkat makes his heart race. faggot, the mind-derrick says, voice harsh and rough and unkind).
He goes upstairs with Karkat shouting behind him to get Jade a cupcake from the fridge, and Dave allays him with a wave of the hand and a yeah, I'll give her your homemade dessert, lover-boy and he leaves, the sound of Karkat spluttering left behind him. He says it in jest. Karkat is decidedly not into Jade, especially after dealing with her puppy crush on him freshman year.
She's covered in Bec's fur when he opens the door to greet her, and he looks her up and down from behind his shades, unimpressed. "I hope you have a lint roller, 'cause Nepeta is allergic as fuckto dogs," he warns her, and she produces from what seems like nothing just that object. She grins cheekily and rolls herself down until Dave deems her free of enough contamination to enter. He shoves Karkat's dumb, dry chocolate cupcake at her, and she pretty much inhales it, and he slams the door behind them loud enough that Kankri barks at them from upstairs. Jade cackles as Dave shouts back, and he drags her downstairs, ears burning with embarrassment.
Nepeta and Rose swarm upon Jade as soon as she descends. In the minute or two it had taken Dave and Jade to get back down, the rest of them have paused the movie and set up Twister, which Terezi brought, since it's her specially modified version; each of the colors also has a unique texture. Vriska, Terezi, and John are already locked in a near-awkward tangle of limbs. Karkat holds the spinner.
"Left hand green," he calls, sounding particularly smug, and Vriska groans dramatically. Her struggle to move without falling is not, however, dramatized, and Dave moves to look over Karkat's shoulder and finds that he is absolutely, one-hundred-percent calling the spins wrong to sabotage her. The fallout of this, however, is that John is looking rather steady, and Dave is compelled as if by divine intervention to teach him some humility.
"Move over, Vantas, my fingers are callin' for that spinny-thing," he says, and ignores Karkat's squawk as he manhandles the spinner away. The next rolls (right foot blue, left hand yellow) are similarly fabricated, and Dave snickers as John twists himself into the most awful-looking position, rather intertwined with Terezi (get off me, nerd boy, she snipes at him, and he snaps back at her, and it's more genuinely aggressive than dave has ever seen john be, antagonistic in a way that belies something deeper. dave pretends not to notice the sexual tension there. that is a can of worms that remains firmly sealed).
Despite Karkat and Dave's back-and-forth puppeteering of the game, neither John nor Vriska are the first to admit to defeat. Terezi collapses when she slips on the mat trying to step around John's arm. Vriska crows in triumph (i told you not to wear socks, looooooooser! she shouts, cackling. at least you can't smell my feet from a mile away, terezi snaps back, and they quibble for a moment about whether or not terezi is biased because of how sensitive her nose is. they shut up only when karkat shouts that their feet both stink and that if they don't stop spewing bullshit, he'll have them go air out in the street).
Terezi retreats to the corner of the room as the game continues, where Nepeta, Jade, and Rose are clustered. She comes upon them shuffling money around—if the soft scrape of paper she hears is any indicator—and Jade stifling her giggles.
"Making illegal bets without me, ladies?" she asks loudly, plopping herself down between Nepeta and Rose. Rose smacks her shoulder, shushing her. "What about?" she says, this time quieter. Judging from Dave, Karkat, and Vriska's continued gibbering, none of them are paying much attention.
"How long it takes for Dave and Karkat to get together," Jade says, and Terezi can hear the mischief in her tone. "I bet it'll be tonight. Rose says they were already basically on top of each other before I got here."
Nepeta, when she chimes in, sounds more thoughtful. "No, I think it'll be longer. You guys don't get to be Karkat's personal confidante. He's been agonizing about this forever, no way he'll make a move yet."
"But what if Dave makes a move?" Jade cuts in. The rustle of her clothing gives Terezi the image of her bent over her crossed legs, leaning toward Nepeta.
"No, he wouldn't. Dave's too much of a pussy for that," Rose says, matter-of-fact, and Terezi splutters out a laugh. Privately, she agrees. When she and Dave had had that brief thing in freshman year, it had been her that pushed the relationship—he could keep up with her just fine, but never once did he make the first move.
Across the room, John admits defeat purely due to lack of flexibility. Vriska is not by any means flexible, but she's just a touch more so than John I've-never-once-spread-my-legs-for-any-reason-in-my-life Egbert, so she gets to plant her foot in the middle of his back as he lays, groaning, face down on the Twister mat. Karkat bemoans her victory as Dave crouches down beside John's head to lovingly flame him for his defeat.
"Let's do something more fun," Vriska stands up and says, John rubbing his back as he gets up beside her. She narrows her eyes at the cluster of girls in the corner, but relaxes when Terezi looks up, her face at ease. "I vote we play seven minutes in heaven." At this, she notices that Karkat—who at present is very close to Dave's face, having gotten into a short argument about whose sabotage was more fair—goes about as red as Kankri's favorite sweater (except it's not his favorite sweater, she and terezi and karkat know well, because when they were hanging out at kanaya's a while ago, her sister winked and told them she knitted it for kankri because she knew he'd hate it. vriska loves porrim for that). Interesting.
"Or we could finish my movie. I would really like that, actually," Karkat blurts out, bolting toward where the remote had been tossed aside. Jade grabs onto the collar of his shirt as he passes her, though, stopping him in his tracks, and she drags him back to the center of the room despite his continued and ear-splitting protests.
"Nah, I like Vriska's idea," she says above the din, and the rest of them generally assent, moving toward the center as Vriska shoves the Twister mat out of the way. Dave is conspicuously silent.
"There's a closet under the stairs that'll work," Nepeta offers, making knowing eye contact with Rose, who looks upon Dave and Karkat with amusement. "We just cleaned it, too, so there are no spiders, cross my heart." Vriska boos this statement while Dave clutches his chest and fake-weeps at Nepeta's feet in gratitude. Rose scoffs as she looks down at him.
Eventually they end up in a circle, some more reluctant than others. A few lines of tension cross the room, most thickly between Dave and Karkat—though, curiously, Terezi and John also seem to have something between them. John keeps sending her looks that border on glares, all of which she appears to be unaware of, though the smug curl of her lips does not go unnoticed. Rose narrows her eyes, looking between them, and notices Vriska lean in to whisper in Terezi's ear, gaze trained around her on John. Dave is sitting next to Rose, and he leans in to whisper in her ear about a certain can of worms that will likely be promptly opened. She fights the urge to grin, noticing more thoughtfully the glances John sends Terezi's way.
Jade produces an empty plastic soda bottle from somewhere and plunks it down in the middle. "Who wants to go first?" she asks, raising her eyebrows and grinning around at them. When no one volunteers, she rolls her eyes and reaches out to spin. It's a good spin, too, and there's a moment of tense anticipation as it spins, and slows, and slows, and finally lands on Vriska.
Vriska grins at Jade, who grins back, and for a moment their teeth both seem a touch sharper than is probably natural. They make their way over to the closet side-by-side, already talking lowly. The last the rest of them hear before the click of the door closing is Jade's high giggle.
It goes Vriska and Jade—who look suspiciously rumpled when they emerge from the closet, which Terezi teases them mercilessly for despite their utter lack of shame, and which Rose turns over and over in her mind, slotting this little piece into her new understanding of how Vriska and Terezi work, looking Vriska's lean, attractive body over and thinking that she could still get in there if she wanted—then Rose and Dave, who Nepeta covertly listens in on just to be sure no weird shit is happening. She comes back giggling to tell them that they're just talking, dragging their older siblings into the dust. Then is Karkat and John, and John comes out with a bruise that they could hear come into existence when Karkat punched him, and finally John and Terezi, after which they shelve the game because John's neck and Terezi's lip end up bleeding and he emerges with more bruises than before. Most are hickeys, but a concerning amount of them just aren't.
Karkat's dad calls them up for dinner eventually, and it's a race to get upstairs before Dave and Jade, known bottomless-stomachs. They grab at pizza like animals, paper plates stained with grease and soda poured into red plastic cups. They crowd around the kitchen table, stuffing the eight of them into six chairs (terezi on vriska's lap and nepeta on jade's), and somehow Karkat ends up pulling out his phone and facetiming Sollux, who, when he picks up, is half naked and stoned. Feferi and Aradia wave from beside him, one under each arm, and Karkat practically chokes when Vriska leans over and points out that under all that hair, the girls are both shirtless, too, and he slams the red button to hang up before his dad can get curious and come over.
Meulin signs something to Nepeta from her spot sitting at the island with Kankri, and she pauses shoveling pizza in her face to sign back, the slice hanging dangerously from her mouth. Jade screeches incoherently when it falls and lands squarely on her foot, getting sauce all over her socks and earning laughs from Vriska and Terezi, who are in the process of building a precarious stack of half-full soda cups.
Full stomachs find them content and energized, and when Karkat's dad, Kankri, and Meulin leave the kitchen, Vriska proposes they all go skinny dip in the lake in the woods. The Vantas-Leijon property is backed up against a thick forest, state-owned, with hiking trails that criss-cross it, one with a mouth at the edge of their backyard. That path leads to a wide, clear lake, fed by a creek you can hear gurgling almost from the back porch.
Her suggestion is met with a vehement no from Karkat and a few mild yes-es, and eventually they decide to just swim in the lake instead of skinny dip (to which vriska says look i'm going to get naked whether you like it or not and, while no one else says anything, rose and jade conspicuously don't put their suits on, only stuff them into their bags). After they've all secreted snacks from the cupboards into their bags and giggled and pushed their way out Karkat and Nepeta's back door, Vriska leads the charge into the woods. She knows the path by heart, for all the times she and Terezi would come to LARP with Nepeta and Karkat after Aradia and Tavros swore it off.
The lake in the woods is always a picturesque place, but tonight it is especially dazzling. It seems green and glittering in the glow of the moonlight, and by the time Dave and Karkat step into the clearing, having fallen behind the group to kick at pebbles and dance their way around each other, Vriska already has her shirt off. Seeing her smooth skin seem to shine with moonlight sets a strange, angry kind of arousal to burst in Dave's chest, and he looks away.
Rose doesn't, though, and when she takes off her own shirt and bra Vriska glances over to look at her, as shamelessly as Rose herself had looked. Her gaze starts at Rose's breasts and flicks up to her eyes from there, and she smirks, and she says, "You look like a ghost, Lalonde," and Terezi bursts out in laughter and Rose, a flush darkening her cheeks, steps forward to shove Vriska over in a most undignified way into the shallows. The crash of water that sounds when she goes down seems to break through a quiet somethingthat had captivated them all, and Terezi splashes her way out hip-deep, taunting Vriska and all the others, telling them to come out, too, unless they're cowards.
Vriska gets Rose back, and both of them end up with wet shorts and panties, and by the time they get all the way undressed they're mostly wet already, and Jade is already naked and in the water, playing Marco-Polo with Nepeta, Karkat, and Dave. Both Karkat and Nepeta manage to accidentally tag Jade's boob as Polo—Nepeta first, who makes no big deal of it, then Karkat, who throws so vehement a fit that Dave has to dunk him under to get him to shut up—while Jade looks on in amusement. She and Jake, orphaned cousins, have never been people with much shame, regarding nudity or otherwise, and meeting the grandparents who've raised them, it's clear why. Poppop Harley and Nanna English are possibly the most shameless people any of them have ever met.
John is the last to wade in, though he only gets ankle-deep. He crosses his arms over his chest and watches everyone else flail about, one canine worrying away at his lip, remaking that red patch Nepeta had caught a glimpse of when he showed up at the door. Rose, having peeled her wet clothes off first, trudges out into the water to join the game. Vriska, when she manages to trip her way out of her wet denim bermudas, comes up behind John in the wash.
She claps a hand on his shoulder, startling him enough that ripples fan out from where his ankles meet the water. He looks over at her, and determinedly does not look below her shoulders. She notices his adamant stare and grins at him, all teeth.
"Too afraid to catch a glimpse of some tiddies, Egbert?" she asks, her voice as abrasive as it is always. John relaxes some, as if he were afraid she'd somehow be different. "'Cause if I were concerned about you seeing them I wouldn't have taken my clothes off."
"Ah, no," he says, stuttering, and she just laughs.
"Come on, get your dick wet." She slides her hand down his arm to grip his wrist, moving forward and tugging him along with her, further into the water. He doesn't move. "Literally, I mean. Unless you want to go after Terezi, because believe me, she's not against fucking in the woo—" John rips his arm from her grasp, pulling it against his bare chest like he's been stung. Unwittingly, his gaze finds Terezi out on the lake. She's cackling, flinging water in a wide arc toward Jade, who ducks away from it. They've all gravitated together by now, all six of them, chatting like three of the girls aren'tnaked and Dave and Karkat aren't this close to kissing and John isn't standing in the shallows like a dumbass, staring at the infuriating curve of Terezi's shoulder, glistening with wetness.
Vriska stares at him, her gaze suddenly serious, and calm. "Hit the nail on the head, didn't I?" she says. John's mouth is dry.
"I don't know what you mean," he says, and curses himself for saying it immediately, because if he didn't, he'd just ask her what she meant. She smiles at him without humor, then steps back toward him, the ripples she makes breaking around his ankles, slow and consistent. Her nakedness doesn't really register anymore. Only the look on her face, knowing and impassable, fills his mind.
"Yeah, you do. You like her." She says, and he's just about to say he doesn't, he really doesn't, when she goes on. "You hateher so much you like her." John's mouth goes drier.
"I wouldn't say I hate her, exactly," he says—murmurs, really, for how uncertain it is. Vriska reaches out and grabs his wrist again.
"Of course you don't. But she gets you going, doesn't she?"
"Yeah."
"You want to be better than her."
"Yeah."
"You want to be better with her."
"Yeah," John says, and this time when Vriska tugs at his wrist, he lets her pull him out into the water. As he moves into it, as it pools around his calves, the back of his knees, his thighs, the short stretch of skin between his dick and his legs, his hips, his stomach, his chest, he feels like it understands what he wants. The water fills him up, feet first, and the coolness of it feels as though it makes steam sizzle off of his skin.
He wonders if anyone else besides Vriska could ever get it, this feeling, and then she lets go of his hand, Terezi suddenly treading water in front of him, and she swims over to Dave and snipes at him in that Serket way of hers, and he snipes back, and with his shades off to swim John can see the dark, spade-shaped something in those red irises that John himself feels lingering on his tongue when he looks at Terezi Pyrope.
John thinks that maybe this is more common of a feeling than he might know.
When John grips Terezi and bodily drags her under the surface, a dark smirk rather unlike him on his face, Rose turns her sly gaze away, leaving them to it. That off-center thing she'd caught in John earlier (after nepeta pointed it out, that lovely girl, she always notices feelings so much quicker) has found alignment, and far be it from her to knock it back out of place by running her mouth. Instead she tickles Jade's waist beneath the water and gets a splash to the face in retaliation, and the game is on—who can make the biggest wave, who can avoid it. Everyone gets caught up in it eventually, and Vriska comes out crowing that she's the winner, even though she most definitely is not.
By the time the eight of them meander out of the water, the only person still being weird about nudity is Karkat, who pointedly refuses to look anywhere below eye level. The rest of them ogle rather shamelessly, encouraged by Vriska and Jade, who strike poses in the dirt at the shore.
They pick their way through the forest, back toward the house, five of them dripping wet and three of them with damp clothes sticking awkwardly to their skin, and they shove each other around in the dark, plants rustling, wind catching at their hair and skin. The woods are anything but quiet, especially with them in it, but even if they shut up it wouldn't be silent—bugs and wind and water make a natural cacophony, and it's the kind of night that isn't at all eerie. These woods are Bridge-to-Terabithia enchanted, and no horror movie monster stalks them on the way back home.
It's Nepeta who's quiet on the walk back, looking around them at the benign shadows between trees, thinking about how utterly nonthreatening they are. She's lived more in this forest than in her house ever since she was four; Karkat's dad moved in with her mother when they got together. Not once have these woods ever been foreboding. Not once has she ever felt afraid here.
Terezi looks back at her as they break from the treeline, unfocused eyes just off-target behind her gaudy red frames, and stops, waiting for Nepeta to catch up. She'd been trailing a few paces behind the rest of them.
"Something on your mind?" Terezi asks, sharp as ever, and Nepeta nods, even though she can't see it. She takes Terezi's hand and tugs them back into walking, following the silhouettes of the rest of their friends as the porch light begins to lick at their shadows.
"Lots of good memories here, TZ," Nepeta chirps, happy. She throws another glance over her shoulder, and several lightning bugs flicker into view in the half-second she watches. "I love it." Terezi squeezes her hand.
"I know you do, catgirl," she says, and Nepeta smacks Terezi's shoulder with her free hand.
"Asshole."
"Furry."
Inside, Nepeta's mom is chopping vegetables at the counter, her movements quick and precise. She hums some nonsense tune as she does, watching them troop in from the corner of her eye. Each of them calls a happy greeting to her as they pass by, heading for the basement door, and she stops Rose to ask if they had fun, if they need anything, how her studies are going—you're interested in psychology, right? i have a friend who went to school for child psychiatry, i'm pretty sure she has a daughter your age… kanaya, i think? have you met?—and Rose nods along and shakes her head no, she hasn't met her, though she thinks maybe karkat or vriska have mentioned her, she'll look into it, thanks mrs. vantas-leijon, and Nepeta's mom reaches out to smooth back Rose's hair in a rather tender manner and says, oh, call me mortua, honey. you and nepeta have been friends long enough, you don't need to be so formal, and Rose is nothing if not flexible, because she smiles slyly and replies, of course, mortua, and Nepeta can't keep the grin off her face, partly because of the exchange and partly because she knows Kanaya, too, and she can't wait for Rose to meet her.
It's midnight when Vriska kisses Dave, and it's like coal, and her black Claire's lipstick smears all over his face as he kisses back, his brows furrowed, the muscles in his face tensed. It's not an uncomfortable kiss, but Karkat's making a scene in the corner watching them, and Vriska is about to pull back and roll her eyes when Karkat pulls Dave away himself, bodily turning him so he can kiss Dave, all teeth, all spades, and John at the other side of the room is reeling because Karkat and Dave have been making heart-eyes at each other forever, what the hell?, and then Karkat lets Dave go and Dave pulls back with a laugh and he grabs both his and Vriska's collars to kiss each of their cheeks, and Vriska slaps him, and Jade throws a pillow at all three of them, saying get a room even as she reaches a hand out and accepts the money Rose and Nepeta slap into her hand. Karkat flushes cherry, cherry red.
They're curled up in the Vantas-Leijon's cool, cozy basement, all of them grinning, all of their eyes drooping, just slightly, and a movie only John and Rose are really watching makes the walls flicker. Over the din the rest of them make, John and Rose shout to each other, sitting on opposite sites of the clump. They make observations to each other, Rose's rather astute. John's, not as much, but Rose replies to every dumb comment he makes with the same gravity she talks about the moral implications of partially skinning, then murdering, young women to make a flesh-suit as a way to deal with brainwash-induced gender dysphoria. Who picked The Silence of the Lambs, anyway? This movie is garbage and way too depressing for a sleepover.
Jade decides things are getting a tad too sleepy and breaks out two bottles of vodka, and when John asks, incredulously, where she got them, she levels him with a look and John realizes, of course it was jane. the fucking enabler. no one at the family reunions suspects. because John and his sister Jane are cousins with Jade and Jake and Jane is, for Jade, the coolest cousin ever. The amount of edibles Jane has made and shared with her is probably numbering in the thirties by now. John looks upon it all with a vague disappointment, but when Jade offers him a bottle, he takes a swig without too much prompting, grimacing as it goes down.
Everyone except Dave and Karkat get in on the action. No one shoves any bottles against their lips, for which the both of them are grateful. Karkat just isn't a substance guy, and for Dave, alcohol doesn't have any pleasant connotations. Roxanne, his mother, gets slammed sometimes and it's scary to have to deal with, Aunt Rosalie will get trashed with her, Roxy had to be forced into rehab by Dirk and Hal when those three were sixteen and she refused to let them tell their mother about her problem, and it's all just… too much, too loud, for Dave ever to bring that glass to his mouth.
Rose, he thinks, goes for it only partially for fun. Most of it is to cope.
He thinks a lot about how much worse his life might've been if Derrick (dad) had been an alcoholic on top of everything else, and he doesn't want to get drunk, but god if he doesn't want to get stoned about it.
"WHO wants to get cross-faded?" Vriska says after they're all thoroughly tipsy, grabbing for her bag and bringing out a bowl and a baggie full of weed. "Because I am soooooooogoing there." She promptly sits up, opens the baggie, and starts packing. Dave takes a moment to thank whatever god is smiling down on him before leaning forward.
"I'm not drunk but I'm so fucking down to blaze," he says, and Vriska throws a sloppy grin at him before going back to the task at hand.
"Get over here then, pussy," she crows, and Dave heaves himself up to pick his way over everyone's legs, collapsing next to her. Weed packed well enough, she fishes in her bag for a lighter, and takes a long inhale before passing the bowl to Dave.
Nepeta joins them, and the three of them smoke themselves into oblivion in the corner, going through all the weed Vriska had brought, against their better interests. At some point in the middle of it, Karkat's dad comes down the stairs—(it's one a.m. what the hell are you doing up? karkat shouts, cheeks red as hell)—to ask if any of them want Dark Dessert, because he just baked copious amounts of brownies and his other kids are all asleep and jeez, kids, stop shouting, and also stop trying to hide the vodka, i can smell it on you from here. as long as you don't take it out of the house you're fine, he tells them, and Rose rolls her head toward Nepeta, very drunk, and tells her, your dad is so cool. can i call him candor? your mom let me call her by her name so i think it's okay. candor is so cool. and it's the least eloquent thing anyone thinks she's ever said, especially considering she's drunk, and she tends to only get more verbose. (does my sister have a thing for your dad, dave asks karkat out of the corner of his mouth, except it's way louder than he intends it to be, because he's stoned out of his mind. karkat replies, no, dumbass, she's a lesbian, and dave goes, oh.)
They all groggily make their way back upstairs for the promised dessert, and there lie two delectable, still-hot pans of brownies, their sweet smell hanging heady and inviting in the kitchen. Nepeta and Dave and Vriska descend on the pan like vultures, leaving the rest of them to pick at the remains, and by the time they're all licking the last streaks of chocolate from their fingertips, crumbs littering the kitchen, their eyes are all drooping in earnest. Vriska and Dave and Nepeta's highs are wearing off, and the vodka's buzz is receding, and the nest of pillows and the ratty fuck-couch in the basement are beginning to sound hells of inviting.
A sleepy, mumbled "thank-you-mr-vantas-leijon" trips its way out of all of their mouths as they stumble by, one by one, first Jade then Terezi then Vriska then Rose then Nepeta then Dave then Karkat then John, and if Rose, a little drunker and sleepier than the rest of them, slurs a "thank-you-candor-can-i-call-you-that-your-wife-said-i-can-call-her-mortua," then that's nobody's business other than hers and Mr. Vantas-Leijon's, a fond smile curling at the edges of his lips.
The last person falls asleep at approximately two-forty-eight a.m., and the last person is Karkat, fully sober, lying in the curve of Dave's body, listening to him breathe. Hardly daring to believe he'd kissed Dave less than two hours earlier, hardly daring to believe Dave had kissed him back, wondering what happens now? Are they dating? Are they boyfriends? What about Vriska? Are she and Dave a thing? Are they both a thing? Dave isn't awake to ask, so it's those questions that dog Karkat as his eyes slip shut. The blue light of the TV as it waits for the disc player to be turned off burns against his eyelids.
The trees rustle outside, in the woods. Ferns brush against bark and bugs skitter between leaves. Fireflies blink, setting the forest aglow in something unnamable. Water laps at the dirt shore, the gentle to-and-fro that keeps the lake from going stagnant, wind sending ripples to race across the surface. The Vantas-Leijons' back porch light trains yellow on the grass, turning the yard to sun. Kankri Vantas and Meulin Leijon sleep in their shared room upstairs. Their parents sleep just as soundly in the room down the hall. In the basement, eight teenagers snore, curled up together, legs intertwined, hands interlocked, two vodka bottles discarded in the corner, one empty, one almost so. All of them lie, set aglow before the TV, like an eerie blue lantern.
It is an exceedingly peaceful night.
The next morning plays out like this: Kankri wakes up first. He makes breakfast for himself at 7 A.M. before going to work, and no one else is awake to see him leave, but the ugly motor of his beat-up red hatchback wakes up his parents, who wake up Meulin, and they relish the peaceful morning in the precious hours before the party in the basement gather themselves and tumble upstairs.
At around eleven-thirty, Karkat drags himself upward, Dave stumbling along behind him. The rest trickle up after them, starting with Vriska and ending with Jade, and Rose and Vriska and Nepeta are hungover but the rest of them get away with only some mild grogginess. Karkat's dad makes them breakfast, and half an hour later the first of them leave; John, who gets picked up by his dad and Jane to be dragged along on a shopping trip. After that is Terezi and Vriska and Jade, all together, picked up by Terezi's mom; they'd planned to hang out into the afternoon with each other at TZ's. The last to go are Rose and Dave, well after the scheduled pick-up time, because the triplets are due to get them and bring them to a concert in the city, and those three are never on time for anything.
It's Dirk who loses the three-way rock-paper-scissors in the car and has to walk to the door to fetch the twins, and Rose goes along without any fuss, saying her goodbyes to Karkat and Nepeta and thanking their parents. As she follows Dirk out the door, to where Roxy is waiting, grinning at the wheel of a surprisingly well-maintained silver sedan, Hal in the backseat, Dave lingers in the entryway. Karkat lingers next to him.
Before he can chicken out of it, Dave leans in to peck Karkat on the lips, lightning-quick and cherry red, no pitch to be seen.
"See you Monday," he says. His shades are back on, have been since they came back in from the lake, so it's hard to say just what he's thinking. Karkat gets him, though. He knows.
"See you Monday," Karkat says back, and kisses Dave more than just a peck. And then he's out the door, climbing into the back of Roxy's sedan with his older brother and his sister, and from the back he waves. And Karkat waves back.
And the trees rustle, and out in the woods, water laps at a dirt shore.