#i've never written them before (obviously bc i literally finished the comic two days ago)

[waitineedaname]

sofa smooches

me @ myself: pleas work on your other wips I’m begging you

my hell brain: hhhhhh soft davekat kisses

also on ao3

Like most days on the meteor, Dave and Karkat were spending the evening on the couch in the TV room. The shitty rom-com Karkat had picked out had long since ended; they’d watched all the way through the credits, like they always did, no matter how many times Dave told him there wasn’t going to be anything new at the end, like watching it for the seventeenth time would somehow unlock a secret ending where those background characters do end up together and go on their own cliched adventure. But. Karkat was stubborn and insistent, as always.

It was kinda cute.

It was not the first time that thought had occurred to Dave, but it had yet to be less startling.

Dave put his phone down, having beat Peggle for the twentieth time, and looked up at Karkat from where he was draped across his lap. He’d laid himself there about a third of the way through the movie, and Karkat hadn’t complained. In fact, neither of them seemed to want to be the one to disturb the little cuddle sesh, and they’d silently agreed to occupy themselves with whatever wouldn’t disturb the other. Hence, Dave’s Peggle endeavors and Karkat’s shitty romance novel. He was holding it with one hand, propping it up on Dave’s legs, because his other hand was resting on top of Dave’s free hand, only lifting away to turn a page every now and then, always returning to gently curl around Dave’s hand. Sometimes he’d absentmindedly rub his thumb along Dave’s knuckles, drawing circles and tracing the scars and freckles that littered his skin, and it. It was nice.

Dave wasn’t sure if he was in the right headspace to think about how touchstarved they both were, or how just those little comforting brushes of affection seemed to comfort an ache in his soul he’d never really paid attention to, or how Karkat’s touches when they cuddled like this were so much more gentle than he ever expected from someone who yelled himself hoarse and threatened bodily harm on the daily.

Dave didn’t think about any of that. He just thought about how nice it was to have his hand held, and how the perpetual pinch in Karkat’s brow was softer from this angle, and how he really wanted to kiss him.

Huh. That was a thought.

“Hey.”

Karkat ignored him.

“Hey.” Dave snapped his fingers in front of his face to get his attention.

Karkat smacked his hand away and turned the page.

“Hey.” Dave reached back up and flicked Karkat’s nose. Karkat, predictably, overreacted and reeled back, his whole face scrunching up.

“Ow! Fucker!” He yelled, covering his nose.

“Oh, come on. That did not hurt.”

“Fuck you! Maybe it did! You don’t know, maybe trolls have especially weak noses! For all you know, that could’ve been a built in insta-kill button! You could’ve killed me, Dave, and then how the fuck would you feel?”

“Pretty shitty, but then I’d let your ghost punch me in the face in the next dream bubble we fly through, so we’d be even.”

“What the fuck ever, you wish I’d punch your stupid face.” Karkat rolled his eyes, but he closed his book so Dave counted that as a win for Strider. “What was so important that you had to almost kill me anyway?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“What?”

“Can I kiss you?” Karkat blinked down at him blankly and well shit, that’s all Dave needed to take off on the rambling train, next stop: off the rails and straight into embarrassment territory. “Forget it, I could totally be misreading this whole cuddle thing, for all I know this might be a normal thing in troll culture, just snuggling between bros, like I could maybe expect it with your whole moirail thing except I’m pretty sure we’re not moirails? I’d probably know if that was what was happening-”

“Yeah, you can kiss me.”

“-especially since I don’t think either of us are like keeping the other from succumbing to homicidal tendencies or whatever because you can do whatever the fuck you want and I’m just chilling-” Dave paused mid-tangent, suddenly processing what Karkat had just said. “Wait. What’d you say?”

“I said you could kiss me, dumbass.”

“Oh. Cool. Great.” Dave found himself frozen for a second, realizing all that meant, and he slowly sat up, sliding off Karkat’s lap and turning to face him. This close, he could see Karkat swallow thickly, and he realized this was just as big of a deal for Karkat as it was for him.

Okay. He could do this.

Dave put his hand on Karkat’s cheek because that seemed like the right thing to do, and before he could second guess himself again, he leaned in and pressed his lips to Karkat’s.

It was really nice. It was clear they both didn’t really know what they were doing - they’d spent most of puberty on a meteor with the same tiny group of people, of course they were inexperienced - but it was still nice. The feeling of Karkat’s weirdly warm lips against his, the feeling of sharp teeth pressed up just behind them when they parted the slightest bit.

It didn’t last very long. Probably just a few seconds, but it felt like forever. Dammit, he was a god of time or whatever, he should probably have a better grasp of its passage, but Karkat seemed to knock out what little sense he had in the first place.

To be perfectly fair, Karkat seemed just as dazed as he did. When Dave finally pulled away, he curled his fingers into Dave’s sleeve to keep him from going too far and hey, when’d his hand end up on his upper arm? Not like Dave was complaining.

They both stared at each other for a second, two annoyingly talkative people on most days suddenly stunned silent.

“Thanks.” Dave finally said, and Karkat snorted, the moment broken.

“Thanks? Do you thank everyone you kiss, just to make up for having to deal with your stink breath?” There wasn’t any bite to the insult since they were definitely still close enough for Karkat to be smelling his supposedly stinky breath, and he didn’t seem to plan on moving away any time soon.

“Yep. Just a courtesy. You know how goddamn polite I am, got etiquette seeping out my damn pores. Gonna get pimples that’re sayin’ please and thank you with how clogged my pores are with all these manners.” He leaned in and bonked their foreheads together gently. Karkat looked like he was having a very hard time not snickering.

“Right. Maybe it’s your human etiquette that’s stinking the place up since you’re apparently drenched in it.”

“Oh, yeah. Good manners are notoriously noxious. They have to wear gas masks in Canada because of the permanent politeness stink.”

“You should know by now I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.” Karkat let go of his arm to tuck a piece of blond hair behind Dave’s ear and the gesture was so soft that Dave’s heart almost stopped. He definitely didn’t lean into the touch a little bit. Nope. Not at all. Shut up and mind your business.

“So. My lips as impudent as you thought?” Dave said to distract himself from how fluttery he was feeling. Karkat gave him a blank look, then grimaced as he suddenly remembered.

“Oh my fucking god. You cannot still remember that.”

“Of course I fucking remember that. You were hitting on me and John at the same damn time. You hadn’t even met us yet. Horny idiot.” Dave said, accenting his point by poking one of Karkat’s nubby horns.

“Shut up! I still think it’s offensive that humans use that phrase like that.”

“What, horny? Dude, we started using that word way before y’all ever even appeared on our radar.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“You think I’d invent an expression just to poke fun at you? Wait, don’t answer that, I definitely would.”

“Exactly. Dick.” Karkat huffed, then took Dave by surprise by leaning in to kiss him again. They shared a few more gentle kisses, a couple of them ruined by smiles from either of them and what was definitely not a giggle or two, and then Karkat lifted his head a bit to press a tiny kiss to the tip of Dave’s nose. Dave was pretty sure he was gonna explode from the tenderness. Pirouette off the fucking handle or whatever but in the best possible way. Here lies Dave Strider, he died because his alien boyfriend was too damn soft.

Wait.

“Hey, are we boyfriends?”

“You mean matesprits?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“I dunno.” Karkat worried his lip with one of his fangs. “Do you wanna be?”

“I dunno.” Dave said, unintentionally parroting him. “Maybe? I-. I wouldn’t be opposed. To being matesprit-boyfriends. Maybe we can try it out for a while, see if we’re both down to clown- wait, bad choice of words, hopefully no clowns will be involved.”

“Yeah, that might get fucking weird.”

“Definitely. If you somehow become a clown, that ‘maybe’ will immediately turn into a no.”

“If I turn into a clown, you have my explicit permission to kill me instantly.”

“Punch the kill-button on the nose, right?” Dave said, brushing their noses together.

“Exactly. I’m trusting you with the secret to killing trolls, use it wisely.”

“I promise to only use my knowledge to put an end to my clown boyfriend’s horrible hypothetical existence.”

“You’re so dumb.” Karkat mumbled, tone full of affection, and he tucked his face into Dave’s neck.

They stayed there for a while, hours maybe, rambling and teasing each other. It really wasn’t very different from how they normally spent their time except they were a tangled mess of limbs and half on each other’s laps, cutting off particularly pointless rambles with kisses and effectively changing the subject completely.

Dave knew there were definitely things to worry about, things he’d have to deal with eventually, but with an armful of happy troll kissing him, he couldn’t be any happier.