#track b

You consider it deeply unsurprising that the vast majority of your life’s challenges still seem to come delivered in Strider-shaped packages. You blink into the impassive features and mirror-red shades of the robot version of your alt-universe ecto-bro. He observes you in unrelieved silence, the faint glow of his eyes visible through the lenses. It’s really obvious at this distance, since out of all the standing room in this entry hall he has elected to place himself mere inches from your own.

Blowing out a breath, you smooth a hand through your hair (feathers, it’s been years and you still halfway expect ruffled feathers) and restore your best ironic deadpan to your face. You have practice. “Oh, hey there, buddy, nice to see you; I always look forward to our excellent chats about personal space and making noise when you move, and not giving your dear doting dancestor heart failure; seriously, it’s very rewarding to listen to myself talk, I could do it all day.”

The robotic face in front of you never changes. There’s a sense that he could wait hours for you to finish speaking, still never shifting a nanometer in space.

“Uh… you need something, bro?”

The red light behind the shades flicks—an eye blink, maybe—and that is about as much outward acknowledgement as you ever get. You’re assured he can talk, but nobody could prove it by you. He tends to get his goals across all the same.

Something boxy and heavy is pressed into your hands. You accept it without thinking. He flash-steps and vanishes from the room. You blink, adrift in the familiar aftermath of an encounter with Brobot.

…You’re a little afraid to look at what you’re holding.

In some misguided quest for less bewildering company, you follow the noises of life and conversation into the kitchen. You’re not surprised you house has been taken over in your absence; the whole lot of you post-gamers tend to treat each other’s spaces as varying categories of communal property. You like company, so your place is one of the flop-houses. When you want privacy you hit up Jade’s place, although honestly the both of you wind up staying over at Karkat’s more often than not, and that’s back to the rotating wheel of which person in mini-crisis is crashing on his couch or borrowing the ‘coon in the spare bedroom. Unsurprisingly, there is plenty of drama to be had among a bunch of post-teenage trolls and humans with suddenly collapsed timelines and paradox space personalities and a solid side scattering of PTSD. You’re all kind of broken but it… works. You make it work.

Everybody gets what they need.

Several faces look round at your arrival to the kitchen: spiked blonde hair, pointy shades, variations on a theme. It’s kind of a fun-house mirror effect. Most of you got collapsed personalities, one of you got the opposite. Nobody warned you today was a Strider reunion day.

“Dave.”

“Hey.”

“’Sup.”

At least they’re not doing the creepy chorus thing. You love all your splinter-sibs, really you do. You just wish they didn’t all share the same twisted sense of ‘things that are funny to do to Dave.’ You’re off the hook for the moment, though—all attention appears to be involved in whatever complex and messy project they’ve got spread out all over the counter. Dirk’s got a spoon in one hand and his head bent over a clipboard full of notes in the other. Cyborg-Dirk, who has a confusing and touchy assortment of names but you mostly call AR inside your head (and endearing ironic nicknames outside it), perches on a stool to Dirk’s right. He’s holding what appears to be a single chopstick. On the other side of the kitchen, Bro leans his hip against the counter, observing events with that quarter-degree upturn to his lips that you recognize as his this-shit-is-hilarious face.

You turn your attention to the object in your hands. “Why am I holding flour?”

“Oh, sweet, he did get it.” AR flashes a smug grin. Someday you will get over seeing any version of your Bro’s face be that expressive. He pokes Dirk with the chopstick. “Told you so.”

“You run into Brobot on the way in?” Bro asks you.

“I was accosted and entrusted with staple food products, yes. Am I supposed to be delivering this to you? It didn’t come with instructions.”

“I am so proud one of us managed to wind up terser and more cryptic than Sawtooth,” AR says, nudging Dirk with his chopstick. “Really. Warm fuzzies. In my heart.”

“Kid’s got a talent,” Bro says.

Dirk doesn’t look up. “Could you bring that over here, Dave? I’m just about ready for it.”

Leaning back on the counter, AR tips his stool to one leg so he can peer over Dirk’s shoulder at the clipboard. “You were supposed to add it two ingredients ago.”

Dirk ignores him, accepting to flour from you and sifting through a stack of gradated cups.

“According to protocol,” AR adds. He pokes Dirk with the chopstick again.

Dirk’s shoulders twitch. He turns his head. You suspect the look he delivers might be described as slitty-eyed, if his eyes were visible and if Dirk weren’t even more anal about not showing his emotions than your Bro. “Can you not?”

AR raises his eyebrows. “I think a superior question is ‘can I?’ A simple query addressing my properties as a semi-organic being capable of moving an object between two points in order to achieve a goal. And the answer is yes, yes I can.” He smirks cheerfully. Poke, goes the chopstick.

Dirk stares at the chopstick like he might be contemplating alternative uses for it.

“Play nice,” Bro tells them.

The look moves to Bro. “If he pokes me again I am going to snap his chopstick in half and put it down the garbage disposal.”

“It’s Rose’s,” AR says. “She’d break you.”

You decide this is an appropriate time interrupt. “So!” Leaning less-than-subtly between them, you snag a coil of apple peel from the mess and pop the end in your mouth. “You guys… making something?” The question falters as you cast increasingly dubious eyes over clutter on the counter. The array of equipment looks more like something from a science lab than a kitchen. Oh, god, you hope they’re not making a bomb in your kitchen. Again.

“Yes,” Dirk says, at the same time as AR says, “Arguable.”

“Okay, welp.” Wonky gold star, you tried your best, you’re not actually very good at being the responsible adult. You rescue another strip of apple peel and retreat to the cover of the kitchen table. Bro’s here; they probably won’t murder each other.

“They’re learning to bake,” Bro says. The words are neutral but you can hear the suppressed laughter. “It’s supposed to be a cake.”

“It’s going to be a cake,” Dirk says stiffly. “And I know how to cook. It’s a simple construction exercise following step-by-step instructions in a manual.”

“Dare you to say that where Jane can hear you,” AR says.

“I never said it didn’t require skill,” Dirk returns stiffly. “That’s why I got the directions from her in the first place. Where’s the scale? I think I’m going to have to measure this in grams.”

“You’re supposed be measuring it in handfuls.” AR politely confines his chopstick-poking to the clipboard this time.

“Her hands are smaller than mine.”

“So standardize for volume.”

“Why would I know the volume of her hands?” –AR opens his mouth and Dirk just keeps right on over him— “I’m converting from the height/weight ratio in order to make a general estimation and that’s faster in grams.” Dirk comes up with the scale, centers it on the counter. Placing a bowl of already mixed ingredients onto it, he zeroes the balance and begins weighing in flour with a small metal scoop.

You’re no expert, but you’re pretty sure this is way more precision than is required for cooking. Bro would know, but you notice he’s not offering any advice. You frown at him. “And what exactly is your role in all this?”

Bro quirks the hint of a smirk at you. His fingers trace the brim of his hat as he looks up toward the ceiling. “It’s their project. Just making sure the house doesn’t go down in flames.”

You glance to where Dirk and AR are bickering over the appropriate amount of flour. AR keeps poking at the bag with his chopstick. “That sounds scarily plausible. I plause that outcome. What do you think are the odds of us surviving the cake experience unscathed?”

To the side, there is a sudden ffffwhumpf! A powdery cloud spreads out into the room, dispersing from heaping pile of flour that now obscures the mixing bowl. Dirk looks at the empty bag of flour in his hand. AR looks at his chopstick.

“Define ‘unscathed,’” Bro says.

“That was too much flour,” AR tells Dirk, in helpful tones.

He’s not quite fast enough to avoid a fistful of white powder to the face.

There is quite a lot of flour flying through the air after that.

Fortunately, Bro wades into the fray before the entire room can be floured and battered, although you suppose you could pioneer a new trend in lickable decor. AR is white from shoulder to hair, coughing and dusting off his shades and the cybernetic interface over his ear. Dirk, slightly less dusted, looks smugly vindicated. Bro confiscates the chopstick, the clipboard, and the mess on the counter, shooing them to either side of the room as he surveys the mess. He frowns down into the bowl.

“Welp, kiddos, I think it’s time to go to plan B.”

“What’s plan B?”

“Not this cake.”

Dirk sighs, and glances at you, but he still looks amused as he turns on the faucet and runs water over his hands. “I’ll call Jane.”

“If you think the Crocker/Crockbert family duo are not already all over this and in cakes up to their elbows I am going to be very disappointed in our intelligence.”

Dirk flicks water at AR.

Bro chucks an empty egg carton at their heads. “No fighting until you get the first mess cleaned up.”

“It seems you are trying to characterize my charitable and constructive actions as in some way antagonistic,” AR says, gathering up bowls. “This is entirely inaccurate. I am only fulfilling my task optimization functions in order to be helpful. Quit trying to make the clover happen, old man; it’s hella unseemly.”

Bro just looks amused and makes deadpan kissy faces in his direction.

“You’re going to optimize drain clogging if you put gunk that down it,” Dirk tells AR, from his shoulder.

AR pulls a face but diverts across the kitchen with the bowl of cake mixture. “Fine. It’s going in the trash. Are your endless nitpicking demands satisfied?”

The air shifts as a shadowy flicker of motion crosses the kitchen. The smallest (and fastest) of your post-game bros breezes into the room, stopping a pace short of AR. Whereas AR could probably pass for human, assuming he ever deigned to, Li’l Seb’s mix of human and robotics is always front and center. Seb cocks his head and flicks one of the cybernetic bunny ears on the top of his head. “Don’t waste food.”

AR looks from the kid’s typically blank face to the bowl in his hands. “It seems you are characterizing this as food.”

“If you make it you have to eat it,” Seb says. His tone is very final. Only the twitching of his ears betrays his glee. “It’s a rule.”

AR points a finger at him. “Okay, this thing? The thing where you pretend not to understand the intricacies of organic cultural mores? Is not nearly as cute as you think it is.”

Seb just stares at him, metal ears flicking. “Forfeit?”

“I am going to reprogram you some night while you sleep.”

“Also Squarewave says stop being a dick,” Seb adds. “And he PM’ed the Crockers for you.”

Bro straightens abruptly and starts rummaging through the kitchen, opening drawers and running his fingers under the countertops.

“Squarewave is a nosy bolt-bucket,” AR says.

Seb shrugs agreeably and drifts over to you to collect a fist bump of greeting.

You supply it, and then go for a side hug, too, because they’re all kind of your little brothers, right? Nobody says you have to be emotionally constipated. “He bugged the kitchen again, huh?”

Seb shrugs. “Duh.”

In the background, Bro dumps out a box of cereal onto the counter and checks in the bag.

“Sorry about this,” Dirk says to you, and he could be apologizing for anything, really.

You pass a hand through the air, dismissing floury cake fights, electronic spying, speed-of-light ambushes, and the slow dismantling of your kitchen by your eldest brother. “Eh. It’s a common room.”

AR gets this transfixed expression and trades looks with Seb in a way that should really have you more concerned, but, well. You’re pretty good at just not worrying about things you don’t want to know. If Squarewave has to bug the whole house to feel comfortable you guess a little robot voyeurism ranks pretty near the bottom of the list of weird neuroses you tolerate from your post-game group. It’s still way less invasively obnoxious than the paparazzi you used to deal with.

Bro makes a triumphant noise, emerging from behind the table with a wire and micro-cam assembly pried from the edge of the baseboard. “Found you.”

Seb flicks metal ears toward the doorway, listening. “He says: only because you knew to look,” Seb reports.

“I would have looked eventually.” Bro smoothes the camera into a more obvious spot in the center of a wall. “But sure, keep telling yourself that, kiddo.” He steps back and flips the assembly off.

You think it’s hilarious that this dude is the one that gets pissy about dealing with what is, essentially, a taste of his own medicine. Bro’s got zero sense of privacy or personal space but god forbid he not know where all the cameras are at all times. So about exactly as many control issues as all your future-bros.

Seb catches AR trying to slip the cake goo into the trash again. There is a brief stare-down which ends with Seb departing in serene triumph and AR stomping over to the table, bowl of batter fallout still in tow. He drops into a chair next to you. “Never make children,” he directs you.

You blink uncertainly at him and then raise an eyebrow over your shades. “Well, I dunno. You lot turned out okay.” Okay, no, that was lame. You feel awkward and dumb the moment you say it—you are the worst at this pseudo-future-timeloop-guardian thing. You never have any idea what you’re supposed to be doing, and you suspect you sound even stupider when you can’t even be cool-mysterious-director-guy-from-their-past and instead you’re just guy-about-their-own-age-in-the-same-room.

But AR ducks his head and does that little surprised half-smile, the one that’s always immediately followed by something ridiculous and clearly designed as a distraction, and you think maybe you got this one right after all. He hides his face in the mixing bowl, scrunching up his nose as he pokes at the contents. “Can’t put it down the drains, but he thinks I should eat it. Sure, that’s promising.” He lifts a sticky white finger. “This stuff looks like—“

“Nope,“ you cut him short.

“—glue,” AR amends, after a pause. He smirks at you. Bouncing back to his feet, he beelines across the kitchen, toward where Dirk has paused in his attempts to put the cabinets back in some kind of order. (You catch Dirk considering you. He turns abruptly back to his pots and pans, his head ducking in direct echo of AR’s gesture.)

“Hey, Dirk, Seb says you have to eat this.”

“A: No, and B: I was in the room,” Dirk says, rearranging mugs into a precise, geometric structure. “I actually know what he said.”

“He said whoever made it has to eat it,” AR says. “Fortunately, I have 100% verbal recall so I can accurately inform you that that would be you.”

“Oh, what, now you want to let it just be my project? Also: No. Also: you’re a douche.”

“I know,” AR says, brushing flour from his hair. His smirk at Dirk almost fond. “So are you.”

Dirk gives him a very flat look. “How are you having fun right now?”

“Aw, c’mon. This is nostalgic. It’s just like old times.”

The flat look turns blatantly disbelieving. “The old times,” Dirk points out, “were terrible.”

AR grins. “Aren’t you glad they’re over?”

That actually wins a laugh out of Dirk, dry and ironic and honest.

You compress a smile. In Dirk-splinter world, this probably counts as bonding. You suppose you think it’s cute, but then your own standards for normal interpersonal relationships are kind of horribly skewed. You decide to just hope this means they’re done destroying your kitchen. Probably not. Oh, well.

Bro catches your eye and wiggles his eyebrows and then starts pantomiming some sort of elaborate commentary that is probably incisive and satirical as hell but mostly just looks ridiculous conveyed in hand gestures. You compress your smile further.

AR spots the byplay and switches to trying to corner Bro into responsibility for the flour-goo. Dirk throws in behind him, in a surprising show of solidarity and disregard for fairplay which you figure Bro utterly deserves.

“Papier-mâché,” Bro says, with finality, probably only because he is losing the argument. “Nobody has to eat it at all. It’s more glue than food anyway.”

AR pauses to consider the mixing bowl. “It does seem to be cementing.”

“So make a piñata or some shit. Problem solved, and it’s festive.”

“It’s going to be a very sugary piñata,” AR says, still staring into the bowl. “I guess—we could do a pony? Ponies are traditional, right?”

“Dave doesn’t want a pony,” Dirk says, in apparently automatic contradiction.

You smother another grin. “Dave doesn’t really care.” Wait, no. “Unless it’s something horrible and phallic. Nobody should be beating that with a stick; that’s like some bizarre fetish game. Exactly what are you all celebrating, anyway?”

There’s a pause. They all turn to stare at you. AR switches almost immediately to staring at Bro, like he has failed in some notable way.

“Your birthday?” Dirk says, like he’s not sure if you’re joking or very slow.

You blink, waiting for the punchline.

“Tomorrow? …December third?”

“No,” you say, still baffled. “My birthday’s April twenty…fourth…” you trail off in dawning, disorienting revelation. Because that was other-you’s birthday. Future you, director you, dead, alpha-universe you; the one that normally lives at the back of your brain and just provides bits of trivia and cynical one-liners and the odd disturbing dream. Perspective shifts around you and you’re briefly dizzy and anchorless and… lost. You’re a guardian and a sprite and a knight and an echoing multitude of deaths and deaths and lives—

“Li’l bro?”

Bro’s voice, like a grounding point, and you blink and you’re back in the present again, and you’re Dave, just Dave, here in the kitchen with cake mix and flour all over the walls, and three very similar faces looking at you in variations of concern.

“All here,” you say, and you even manage a smile when that just makes them look at you more sharply. “It’s cool. Fine. Just a momentary bump in your favorite 24/7 broadcast of the Dave Strider Show. Message from our sponsors and all that. We now return you live.” You wave a hand and lean back in your chair, crossing your feet at the ankles, letting your head tip back. “Wow, haven’t done that in a while, though.” You narrow your eyes. “Do you realize there is flour on the ceiling?”

“Dave,” AR says, his mouth a flat line, his tone bordering on reproachful.

“Would you prefer to not do the party?” Dirk asks, more carefully.

You lift your head and raise your eyebrow, because really, there’s concern and then there’s treating you like you’re fragile and breakable and unable to handle tiny little hiccups in your sense of personal cohesion and that latter is just insulting. You are hella adjusted.

Dirk and AR stand shoulder-to-shoulder, arms folded, uncowed by your scathing eyebrow rebuttal.

“I’m fine,” you say aloud, when their faces remain searchingly skeptical. You roll your eyes and glance to Bro like you might find back up there. You find him tugging on the brim of his cap, his eyebrows up and his knuckles pressed against his lips like he’s trying not to insult the lot of you by laughing at you. This is the Bro version of self-sacrificial big-brotherly support.

You stick your tongue out at him.

“I want to do the party,” you tell Dirk and AR more certainly. “In fact, I demand a party. I am owed a party and if you try to renege I will sic the party collection squad on you and they will go through your pockets for loose streamers and confetti. There will be a party reckoning.”

They both stare at you a moment longer, exchange a look, and then turn back to cleaning the kitchen.

“Cool,” Dirk says.

“We kind of already invited everyone,” AR adds.

You narrow your eyes at their backs, where they’re back to bickering over kitchen arrangements and acting like they didn’t just put you through some kind of party-fitness inquisition. Bro ambles over to pretend to help, ruffling your hair as he passes. You aim a kick at his ankle. He snickers and flips his hat onto your head.

You’re trying to be angry and offended, but you suspect you’re failing terribly. It’s the part where you’re smiling.

And it occurs to you that this whole ridiculous afternoon has been for you, awkward expressions of concern and explosive cake-making and all, all your not-quite splinter-sibs here, trying to do something nice for your birthday because—well, because brothers are supposed to. Because that’s how they think of themselves. As your brothers.

And so maybe it’s not so surprising to find yourself slipping between the borders of two universes, to feel your one-time future self so present, here in this moment. You tug the brim of your Bro’s hat on your head and lean back in your chair.

You’re Dave and you’re Dave and you’re Dave and you have the best brothers in the multiverse.

…Cool.

——

(A half hour later Sawtooth drops off Jane and Mr. Crocker-Egbert, literally on the roof. You’ve got a perfectly serviceable lawn, but you don’t question heavily armed rap-bots if they want to repurpose the shingle covers of your house. Seb turns up with a ladder you’re pretty sure you didn’t own yesterday, but you don’t question him either.

The Crockers have about a dozen cakes stashed in their sylladexes, which makes your kitchen a bit crowded, but Jane marshals Dirk and AR back to the stove anyway, directing them through a second round of the cake-making process with the precision of a drill sergeant. Crockbert puffs a pipe in the corner smiling at Jane and her platoon and radiating Stern Fatherly Disapproval at Bro until he folds and finishes scrubbing down the kitchen.

You elaborate. "I've assimilated an alternate self before, you know, when Davesprite merged the timelines. This alpha universe version of myself may have been more divergent, but she still died fairly young and quite long ago. Meta-temporally speaking. She’s… a very vivid dream. I hardly notice it at all anymore.” You’re exceptionally lucky your girlfriend has such excellent reflexes or you’d have taken her eye out with your knitting needle the last time she startled you.

You try to look reassuring and composed. Self-possessed. “We’re adjusting."

"Really," Karkat says flatly. "And that's why you haven't visited Roxy at all."

"As a matter of fact, I have," you say and derive a smug curl of satisfaction from the evident surprise on his face. "Several times." You don't tell him that Roxy cornered you that first time, or that you said things you regret and also things you always wanted to and even things that the part of you you know as yourself wasn't responsible for at all. You don't tell him that you cried, later, alone. That’s not something you’ll share.

…But it’s still nice to be asked.

"Oh," he says, the wind gone out of his sails. And then, "Oh. That's good." He's so sincere. Not on the surface--he's still arms crossed and glowering--but down under the gruff tone of his voice, and in the focused intent of his eyes as he tries to read past your mask.

He cares too much, and too obviously, so you let him see as much as you can when you reply. "It is good." You even mean it. Most days. You set your sewing aside and stand up, smoothing out your skirt. You make your tone brisk. "May I offer you some tea?"

Karkat follows you into the kitchen, scowling around at the appliances like they've personally offended him, and stands in the middle of the room, simmering.

You put the kettle on the stove and make a bet with yourself as to which will reach a boil first.

Of course it's Karkat. "Rose." He barks it like a command, but you can hear the underlying question in it.

You turn away from the cabinets, give him your best encouraging therapist's face.

"...Dave's going to be okay, right?"

Ah ha. "Do you mean ‘is Dave going to be all right’ or ‘is Dave going to continue to be Dave’?"

Karkat drums his claws on his arms, shifts his weight restlessly. "...That other orange sprite guy that got stuck in his head--"

"--is also Dave." You cut him short with a severe glance. "I can't say it won't be distressing for them--or him, to be precise. Moreso than for the rest of us, even. But drawing distinctions and picking sides as to which part of him gets your support won't be helpful to either of him as he is now."

“I know.” Karkat has directed his glare down to the floor tiles. Today is not a favorable day for your kitchen. “I just… I don’t know how to talk to him.”

“May I suggest speaking loudly in his direction until you elicit a suitably interesting reaction?”

“Ha. Ha,” he snaps. “Do you see my carefully verbally expressed amusement? My hilarity sponge is about to fucking burst all over these walls, that is how impressed I am by your extremely sensitive and helpful answer. Sure, let’s ignore the fact that my best fucking friend looks at me half the time like I’m a totally stranger; clearly the solution is to just run my jolly fucking trap at him like a mentally deficient larva and hope something useful falls out. That will solve everything!”

You keep your expression unimpressed. Honestly, if anyone’s earned the opportunity to succumb to a full on verbal panic attack slash cathartic meltdown it’s certainly Karkat, but you aren’t confident in your own ability to maintain your equanimity for the duration. Besides. This is a hurdle that needs to be addressed and moved past. You select your verbal nudge carefully. “Karkat. Is there a reason you are addressing these concerns to me and not to Dave?”

“Obviously because he’s your fucking morail.”

Caught off guard, you move to retrieve cups and saucers from the cabinet and cross the kitchen for the sugar bowl. “Humans don’t have moirails,” you correct him calmly.

Karkat gives you a flat look. Troll eyes, black set in yellow. His irises are just starting to pick up his blood color you notice. They are also slightly too discerning. “Human-siblings, morails, genetically-designated-freakish-non-piling-palemates, call it whatever you want. Fine. You are diamonds-free-serendipitous-platonic-multiverse-crossing-space-chums-forever. You still have the best idea what’s going on behind his stupidly punchable sunglasses-wearing face.”

You shake your head but don’t press the point. “Very well. Then as Dave’s ‘diamonds-free-serendipitous-platonic-multiverse-crossing-space-chum-forever,’ believe me when I say there is no version of Dave that isn’t, in essence, very much Dave. A fact which I find by turns unsurprising and philosophically extremely unsettling.” This is a lie. Dave’s constancy is your touchstone. Kanaya is precious to you because you found her on one path of many, a rare fortune. Dave is precious because he’s walked with you on all of them.

When you wake from nightmares about another life, surrounded by friends you don’t know, it’s a dark comfort to remember that there’s one other person who has dreamed in parallel.

Your forgotten sugar spoon is pressed into your hand. You pull yourself from your thoughts and look up into Karkat’s concerned face. Brows furrowed and arms crossed, he leans a hip against the counter next to you, watching with ferocious intensity like some sort of very solicitous tea-preparation overseer. Karkat does have his own methods of anchoring people in the present.

You shake the mood from your shoulders and push the alien sense of another life to the back of your mind. "Dave will adapt. As will we all. And of course he has his brother." You hate that tiny note of jealousy in your voice. You push past it, twist it into dry humor. “Several times over, in fact.”

Karkat growls, a derogatory noise, pushing off the counter to pace the confined space of the kitchen. "Fucking Striders. If they're not collapsing two existent personalities they're subdividing into half a dozen new ones. Old-Strider, robo-Strider, fucking wiggler-hopbeast-Strider. What next? Banana-flavored-Strider? Why the fuck would we ever need that many Striders?"

“Yes, I’m sure this must be very distressing for you.”

Karkat turns, spinning slowly on one foot. He levels a silent stare.

You wiggle your eyebrows.

“Oh, fuck you, Lalonde. Fuck you and your presumptuous, pan-rotted, completely unfounded insinuations in every orifice.”

“Now, Karkat, I think of you as a platonic-diamonds-free-space-friend-forever.” He’s still snarling, face gone quite red, as you pour the tea. Because you are a kind person, you provide him another outlet for his embarrassment. “Perhaps you should take these impulses to… what was it you suggested you might be looking for? Someone ‘banana-flavored’?”

There’s something of an explosion. A very therapeutically interesting explosion.

You set two cups of tea on the table, take your seat, and prop your chin delicately on both hands. Karkat’s rant stumbles and falls into a fuming, flustered silence under the weight of your encouraging smile and raised eyebrows.

He glares.

You grin more sharply. "Do go on."