Big Crowds Suck and Jade and Dave Are Jerks to Each Other
Dave's POV:
A steady base thumped throughout the basement, shivering the walls and floors. It was playing so loudly that Dave could feel it echoing in his rib cage. It was a remix, no doubt, of some stupid song on the radio that Dave never paid attention to. But there was something else in it. The sort of thing he recognized in his own remixes; a dash of him. Well, for this song, it wasn't a dash of him, but it was a dash of someone. Someone who'd made the remix in the first place.
The party goers cheered and swayed and bounced and clapped on cue to the beat. The party was already in full swing and Dave had no idea if he'd be able to completely throw himself into the reckless fun with the knowledge that his beloved sister was upstairs, giddily drunk and to the mercy of Jane.
He was starting regret leaving them alone.
With a deep sigh, Dave decided to force all worrying thoughts from his head and launch himself into the ecstatic crowd with a mission to find his perky little friend, Jade.
Body parts overlapped, some clichéd red plastic cups had already been dug out of some back room and were now in the hands of a startling amount of guests, and there were sharp horns in every direction; Dave had to dodge a quickly turning head every now and then by either ducking or lurching to the side. Needless to say, it was all rather overwhelming and despite the fact that Dave was actually a big fan of peace and quiet and wasn't particularly comfortable with large crowds like this, he found himself getting into the flow of things. The music was actually pretty good, even if the original was completely awful and he couldn't help but let himself get side-tracked in a few over the top conversations about stupid things.
And worse yet, they were with complete strangers most of the time.
"Hey, do you have a dog? Sweet, what breed? What's its name? That's awesome dude, take care of them and tell 'em that a stranger from a New Year's Eve party said hi to 'em."
"Yo, do you know the name of this song? Oh, that makes sense. I mean, the main singer's just been singing it on and on and on for a while, so yeah, I guess that's a fitting title."
"Are you in school still? No? Lucky bastard."
"What's your favorite animal? Really? A cat? Huh. See, mine's a hippopotamus, but to each to their own, or however that saying goes."
"Have you heard of this new game called "Frogglitine?" Okay, dude, I know how you can get it for free, you've gotta play it, shit's magical."
"Do you know our Lord and Savior, Satan Jackson? Yes, that's his last name; Jackson. What, a totally evil ruler of the underworld can't have a totally generic last name?"
"Man, I would cull for some tasty human blood right now."
That last one was meant as a prank to see how many strange looks that would attract, each person undoubtedly thinking to themselves "is he honestly a vampire or just pretending?"
As predicted, a good twenty heads turned towards the pale blonde; whether or not it was because he'd said it incredibly loudly or because he'd said it right when Nepeta was changing songs, he couldn't tell. All he knew was that it was hilarious.
Eventually though, he ran out of steam and wasn't able to keep up with the slurred answers from some of the already drunker party guests.
Dave sighed, a little discouraged that he still hadn't spotted the buck toothed grin of a deranged Egbert. Surprisingly, though, he found himself right up near the front of the stage thingy that had been set up for Nepeta to perform on. He looked up to see the little black girl playing her heart out on that keyboard. Her bangs had been pulled back into a semi-ponytail, leaving the bright green highlights pulled taunt against her scalp.
Dave vaguely remembered seeing Nepeta a few times while hanging out with Roxy, but she was always accompanied by a tall, sweaty guy. His name was something like Herculus or Eloquence; something with an "e" at the beginning and an "-quius" at the end. The point was, Nepeta was sweating harder than him right now and it made sense. Whenever she wasn't jamming out like crazy to the music she was playing, she was jumping around the stage like a madwoman when her pre-recorded stuff was blasting through the speakers.
The neon green bomber jacket she'd arrived in was tossed to the side, currently being used as a seat cushion for some random girl who'd decided to sit on top of the speaker.
Dave squinted through the crowd, swearing he'd seen the girl's face before, somewhere.
He nearly slapped himself across the face when he noticed the bright pink dreadlocks bouncing side to side in time with the beat of the music.
Dave sprinted over to Feferi Pieces as fast as he could while still dodging horns and the occasional over-zealous drunkard. He panted heavily once at the speaker, leaning his elbow on it and sighing heavily. "Hi Dave!" Feferi shouted over the music, still swaying side to side.
He lifted a hand in greeting. She grinned down at him. Feferi was unusually tall for a girl like her. Tall and wide, might I add. But certainly not in a bad way. She towered a good three inches above Dave's head (including the horns – trolls always seemed to count them as their entire height, which was odd, but still acceptable), but when she slumped over, as she normally did, she could often be mistaken to be shorter than him. Her hips and thighs seemed to stretch from Timbuktu to Los Angeles, but that didn't stop her from walking around normally. She just behaved like she took up just as much room as anybody else and others seemed to just ignore it.
"Hellooo, Dave." A tauntingly flirtatious voice croaked out, like, right next to his ear. I'm not joking, it was right in his ear, making Dave startle in one of the worst ways possible. He jumped about six feet in the air and screeched, "Jesus fucking Christ!" drawing the attention of several bystanders. He placed a hand over his chest and leaned heavily on the speaker, glaring to the best of his ability at both Jade and Feferi.
"Oh, my god, that was fantastic!" Jade howled with laughter. Feferi held both of her hands over her mouth to keep from fully bursting out like Jade.
"Yeah, yeah, scaring the shit out of Dave, ha ha ha, so funny." Dave growled sarcastically. "Oh, and by the way Jade, fuck you." He flipped her off, no poison behind his words. Jade let out a few more hearty giggles before wiping her eyes of her tears and sauntering over to him, wrapping a strong arm around his shoulders.
"I don't think you should be saying that to me." She gave him a smug look, like a "ha, ha, I know what's going on here and you don't and I won't be explaining it easily any time soon."
Dave sighed and crossed his arms, still trying to calm his heart beat from that scare. Truth be told, it had surprised him more than it probably should have. It just eerily reminded him of when he and Dirk were younger. Bro was the only one to take care of them, and by now he was doing a great job, but it hadn't always been that way. . .
Dave forced the thoughts out of his head once more, unwilling to relive those traumatic years all over again while in the midst of a New Year's Party.
"And who should I be saying it too then? Who on Earth could possibly be more suited for a big ol' "Fuck You" than none other than Jade Harley, the queen of jump scares, herself?" Feferi had started giggling again by this point. Dave pulled himself from Jade's tight grip and gestured with both hands dramatically to the laughing girl on the speakers. "Perhaps Feferi, her majesty of all fish related puns? Oh, no, she couldn't possibly accept a "fuck you" from me. Maybe you'd like to do the honors, Jade?" Dave let his hands fall and crossed them behind his back, leaning forward to properly smirk in Jade's face.
She had been reduced to a little blushing ball of "oh shit, he just went there." Feferi, of course, hadn't noticed the almost blatantly obvious innuendo and was just barking with laughter, her entire body lurching up with every "ha" she made. Both hands were over her mouth and she was pulling her feet up to cross them on top of the speaker with her. Jade nervously joined in, shooting daggers stealthily in Dave's direction. He held up his hands in surrender, the gesture completely losing all meaning due to the incredibly smug smile he had plastered on.
"Nah, I was just suggesting you shoot a "fuck you" towards Karkat." Jade said, her smug behavior returning once more. Dave silently cursed himself for being so good at teaching her the 101 rules of how to be a douchebag. "Although, you may want to revise it. How about a "fuck me?"" She grinned at him, placing her hands on her hips and waggling her eyebrows. Okay, yep, it's final, he taught her way too much on how to be a complete dick to your friends. (She didn't even have a dick, what the fuck, she was out-dicking him and she didn't even have a fucking dick, this is wrong, this is so wrong.)
Feferi suddenly gasped and clamped another hand over her mouth.
"You have a crush on Krabcatch?!" she practically squealed.
Jade answered for him with a single affirmative nod.
"No, I do not have a crush on him, I barely even know the dude, I met him, like, twice." Dave countered, suddenly feeling cornered in the conversation. Holy shit, what did she just call him? Krabcatch? Fuck yeah, I'm totally using that one. Dave thought to himself.
Feferi pouts, obviously disappointed at least a little bit.
"Aw, but you would make such a cute couple. . ." she trials off before covering her mouth again and giggling slightly. This girl can be way too bubbly sometimes, goddamn, how much has she drunken? Dave asked himself. "Oh, cod, I'm sounding more like Nepeta, aren't I? Hee hee!"
"Yeeeahh, well, while you go about fantasizing about make believe gay couples, why don't you make one right now?" Dave asked, looking between Jade and Feferi, eyebrows wiggling heartily above his shades.
Jade started blushing again and smacked his arm, hard. "Shut the fuck up, Dave." She hissed at him.
Feferi didn't seem to take notice of Jade's embarrassment though; in fact, she seemed to have gotten distracted by something out in the crowd (though it was probably a somebody because wow it suddenly just got really claustrophobic in here and it's way too tight for anything other than a person to be squeezed into this tight ass area.)
Dave followed her line of sight, ignoring Jade's little rant about being more subtle in his ear.
"Look, there's your little Krabcatch now!" Feferi squeaked, waving spontaneously to get the attention of (Dave could only take her word here; the ball of messy bed head was enough proof anyways) Karkat Vantas.
Oh, shit.
Karkat's POV:
Having a lot of people at an Egbert party; that was normal.
Inviting Karkat Vantas to the Egbert party; that was normal.
Karkat Vantas actually attending the Egbert party; that was some jacked up "what the hell is wrong did you hit your head?" type shit.
Karkat was uncomfortably shuffling through the crowd, well aware that both his height and strength were doing nothing to assist him in getting through it safer.
Karkat was just about ready to say "fuck it!" and walk the 24+ miles it took to get from his apartment building to the Egbert house. Why not celebrate the New Year with a bunch of dirty hobos and the snowy sludge all over the ground?
The short troll sighed and shoved his way through the crowd, anxious to find just a pocket of empty space to breath in. The odors of natural troll must and sweaty humans was starting to piss him off. (Well, everything pissed him off, but this especially.)
"Krabcatch! Krabcatch!" A squeaky voice called out to him from up ahead. Karkat sighed in relief, recognizing the familiar nick name given to him by none other than Feferi Pieces herself. Sure, it was sort of annoying to have so many people have nicknames for you, but at the moment he didn't care.
After clumsily shoving his way out into the more open area Feferi was seated in, he was surprised to see two other people standing nearby.
One was obviously Jade. She stared at him with such enthusiasm he would've thought he was a new element for which she was going to become extremely famous for finding. The other one . . .
Oh, shit.
Dave's mouth remained in a straight line and much to Karkat's utter disdain, he was still dawning his sunglasses, indoors, at a party, in the basement, in extreme lowlight. Karkat began to wonder if it was some sort of condition he had. "Douchebag-itis." Yeah, I guess that could be a real thing.
Dave appeared to just be staring blankly at nothing at all while Karkat, Feferi and Jade all conversed slightly. The brunette couldn't figure out for the life of him where the other male's gaze was and it was sort of unnerving, to say the least.
"Yo, Karkat, you paying attention?" Jade asked, poking his cheek. He swatted her hand away, pulling himself out of his thoughts.
"Of course I was." He lied.
"Then what did she just say?" Feferi asked, raising an eyebrow. She'd caught him.
"Uhh. . . Something about playing a . . . game?" Karkat answered in more of a question.
"Ah, so even when you're daydreaming about nothing you've got one ear open. Good to know." Jade responded. "But yeah, I was thinking of grabbing a few people, aka, the only people who I can stand to be around when they're shit-faced drunk, and heading upstairs to get away from the crowd." She crossed her arms. "Whaddya say?" She suddenly broke the tiny façade with a huge grin.
Karkat blinked owlishly at them and then shrugged. "Why not?"
This could be fun, I guess.
Dave's POV:
Hell yes!