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Homestuck - By The Letter (of the law) -- 2 sequels -- dave/karkat
Two sequels to By The Letter (of the law)
Anonymous said: Dorky Knights, a couple (two??) months later, trying to make out during some free time but their mounts won't leave them alone. Bad Crow.
The good thing about being a knight lawfully wedded to another knight is that he’s always got a partner. Especially because of the political angle to being a Dersite and a Prospitian, or a troll and a human — they get lots of peacekeeping assignments, not to the level of leading war parties but sort of pre-diplomacy. Diplomacy with teeth. Flattening the ground for the real diplomacy parties — and sometimes it turns out the problem can be resolved with a good talking-to, no need to bring in his hell-sister and turn everyone inside out.
Metaphorically speaking. Most of the time. But anyway.
The good thing, yes, is that Dave always travels with a partner. He’s not sure if they knew when they settled on Karkat as his match that karkat could and would actually follow him and not hinder him any — complete him in some ways, even — but it’s a pretty good partnership.
Only they have a ton of work, and they’re always on the move from one keep to the next, and oftentimes they’re even escorting travelers, or a bunch of guards, or thieves that need delivered to the proper authorities, which means finding ten minutes to maintain the wedding vows part of their partnership gets pretty difficult.
Especially the vows concerning their bedroom activities. Dave is pretty salty about those.
So here they are, just delivered a bunch of nuns to their dark and tentacley convent and who could blame them if they sneak each other a look and welp, it’s surely going to rain, let’s stop for the night early.
Of course Karkat insists to start the fire and see to their mounts first — the pack horses to one side with their grain, Crow and Slick to the other side lest they forget the horses aren’t their feed.
Not that Dave thinks Crow would forget. She’s been raised with horses; she thinks she’s one. Well, she’s two fourth of one, so she’s not really wrong. Slick is another matter, but Crow can handle him for the five minutes it — mnh — five minutes it’ll take for Dave to take off Karkat’s chain mail, slide his hands under his tunic, hello there, what do we have…
He’s sure it’s only five minutes. They’re just very fulfilling minutes, is all.
They come to an abrupt end with the piercing, offended caw of his dear, beloved hippogriff.
"Fluthlu’s many dicks, your son of a bitch tried to bite a chunk out of Crow!"
He disentangles himself in a hurry. It helps (sort of) that Karkat shoves him off with a great annoyed snort.
"Your stupid birdbrain keeps trying to peck him!" Karkat grumps as he goes to the drake and tries to lead him off. He needs to slap him over the snout for Slick to take a single step back.
Dave caresses Crow’s beak gently and looks superior when she preens his fringe. Drakes are stupid and mean and that’s the pure truth. Give him a hippogriff any day of the week.
"Maybe if you stopped trying to make up for his rotten self by rubbing him until his scales get all shiny, it’s not my baby’s fault, okay?"
"She’s not actually a crow!” Karkat yells back over his shoulder as he heaves at Slick’s chest. “The shiny is not an excuse!” The drake opens his jaws the way true dragons do when they want to spit fire, but fire is an ability that most drakes don’t have any longer and thank fuck for that or Dave might well be a widower by now. Disgruntled by his inability to incinerate his master, Slick snorts and lets himself be tied to another, farther tree.
Satisfied, Dave smoothes down some feathers, and hopes strongly that they’ll be able to go back to cuddling before the fire and possibly blowjobs very soon.
"—What the f— she has a fucking bald spot! Your hellbeast gave her a bald spot!"
"Hey! My drake is not a hellbeast, go fuck yourself on your sword"
"Excuse you, I’m the one whose state religion worships the horrorterrors, I know from hellbeasts, okay? Look at that asshole, he still has feathers right at the corner of his maw!"
They pause to stare at each other. Dave is frowning, more bewildered than truly angry.
He still has a chubby, but it’s fading fast. Augh. “Weren’t we trying to consummate our vows. Like, again.”
"I don’t know about you," Karkat replies drolly, "But personally I was trying to blow you."
Dave pinches his lips really tight. He’s still leaning against Crow’s fluffy orange chest.
"Cool. You up for angry sex?"
Karkat starts laughing. Dave follows him in the next second.
They meet by the fire and sink back down onto their abandoned cloaks, but all the urgency is gone and they keep breaking into random bouts of chuckling.
"Reconciliation buggering?"
"I’m game."
Karkat’s legs are in the air and Dave is attempting to aim when Crow, having untied herself from her tree, wanders up to them and preens Dave’s hair until his boner is only a faraway, hilarious memory.
--
Anonymous said: By the Letter (of the law), five years later
--
They don't really bother with court much. Karkat didn't enjoy Prospit's court already; Derse's makes him twice as happy that he's got disputes to slap down, speeches of friendship and country-wide news to deliver, and town-to-town enmities to mediate and scratch his ashen itch on. Even if he hated his current life he would hate it less than Derse's court.
The Empresses requested their presence, though, and he's good at hating things he's got to deal with anyways.
Case in point. "Dave I swear to all that is holy if you molest my gloves again I will slap you in the face with them."
"Huh."
"In a really not sexy way."
"Aw."
Karkat clears his throat and looks away from Dave's pouting lips. "You made us late enough with the boots, let's go already." He can still feel Dave's warm hands 'helping you tuck your pants in those stupid boots properly' all over his thighs.
He tucks Dave's arm in his and hauls him out of the door.
"Do you even like that kind of pain?" he grumbles -- quietly so the servants won't catch that they're discussing their sex life in public corridors once again.
"Face-slapping? Eh." Dave purses his lips. Karkat tears his eyes away. "I'd totally tolerate it if it made your clothes fall back off. They're so pretty, they'd probably make you look twice as good naked."
Karkat rolls his eyes, and vows to work twice as hard not to let on that the stupidly fancy court clothes Dave's brother sent them to wear are stiff and scratchy and ridiculously attention-grabbing, and make him miss his traveling leathers already. The lengths one will go to in order to please their matesprit, seriously.
--
Fifteen minutes later he's thinking his clothes are actually fairly subdued, and maybe he should thank Dirk. "I don't think we even wore that much lace and ribbons at our wedding," he whispers to Dave as he watches an older human swan by. He can't even tell if that's supposed to be a male or female human, and usually the dress styles are fairly distinct.
Not that the trolls in attendance are much better. Fancy attire is one human sin that trolls have been eager to roast for ever since the first Great War cooled down enough to allow for trade.
A half-hour later he's parked in a corner with a pitcher of wine and he doesn't intend to move again until his feet feel less bruised, and he watches Dave navigate the ebb and flow of the crowd. It's ridiculous how well he fakes it, reminds Karkat that if his recent human ancestors hadn't been destroyed by her Imperious Condescension that today he would be a prince.
A half-hour and five minutes in, Dave strolls back to him casually and goes, "Welp, we're gonna have to plunge in the eye of the storm to get Dirk or Rose."
He steals Karkat's drink. Karkat allows it, on probation. At worst it'll be something to yell at him over if his reason doesn't satisfy Karkat.
"Talked to like twenty people and five of them sounded me out on divorcing you and reestablishing a true and pureblooded human royal line. One of them even had a daughter with childbearing hips all ready to go."
... Yeah okay Karkat is satisfied.
Okay, not satisfied-satisfied, because that is one steaming pile of drake shit if he's ever seen one, but he supposes Dave can have the glass. Karkat gets a swallow from the pitcher.
The way he understands it -- he doesn't understand very much, it's mostly by rote -- Dirk is first in line, then Roxy, then Rose and Dave. Rose is a High Priestess of the Church of Horrorterrors, and her calling as a seer supersedes everything, so unless they all croak she's out of the way entirely. Roxy, if Karkat remembers right, the one thing trolls do better than humans about ruling is they don't care if you're a man or a woman. Fair bet that if they reestablish purely human laws she'll get saddled with a husband to do the ruling for her, and the only way they'd think that works is if they think she's really as silly as she acts like.
So basically someone is planning on fucking up their hard-earned peace and invalidating the months and months of peace talks Karkat had to sit his ass through -- and on bypassing Dirk entirely.
He almost doesn't take Dave's arm again because he wants to be free to swing. But you don't fight much at court, and when you do it's well-organized duels with referees and whatever the fuck else, so he lets Dave tuck his hand in his elbow again.
Dave doesn't even smile his tiny, secretive smile when people double-take at his apparently ladylike behavior, which irritates Karkat even worse even though he doesn't even get why his matesprit finds it funny in a first place.
He elbows a couple of fancy useless courtiers out of his way, signals sharp and impatient at Dirk's secretary, who scowls back at him from his ridiculous blueblooded height, but then booms out, "Make way for David Lalonde-Strider-Vantas, Duke of Lohac, Prince of the Blood, and Lord Karkat Vantas-Strider, Baron Lopah."
Karkat has never even been to Lopah. Stupid courtesy titles. But they have bigger fish to fry at the moment.
They walk up to Dirk, who is seated in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped couch. He nods at them, flicks his fingers to chase people off . "Little brother."
Dave bows shallowly. "Big brother." He moves in for a hug, which is funny because in private none of Dave's family touch if they can help it, apart from Roxy. When Dave is done Karkat bows in turn and sits where he's invited to sit, and tries to look like he's doing nothing more challenging or aneurysm-inducing than socializing.
"How are you two doing? Got enough of gallivanting, ready to come back home?"
"I will never be ready," Dave replies, and goes loose all over the couch, a smirk on his face like he just told a very funny joke. "By the way we've been hearing hella things. Especially me, 'cause funny enough they wouldn't tell them around the wife."
Dirk's face doesn't change at all, bland and almost bored. "Divorcing Karkat, remarrying human?"
"Figures you already knew," Karkat grumbles.
Dirk flicks his hand like he's scaring off a fly, lazily. His eyes are narrow like blades behind his smoked-glass spectacles. "Yeah, that's the part of the conspiracy that's getting cold feet over the actual plan. Don't worry, they'll forget about the two of you the second you're off for the mountains again. This is mostly a crime of opportunity."
He goes silent. Dave resists all of three seconds before he's stretching his legs and accidentally on purpose kicking Dirk. (Karkat resisted longer because he's on Dave's other side and couldn't have reached. Also, five years in and he still doesn't know Dirk well enough to be on kicking terms with him. Not that it would stop him if they weren't in public.)
"Main part of the conspiracy, please, Dirk?"
Dirk blows air through his nose, sneaks his brother an annoyed look. "You'll be gone again in three days and we handle this kind of stupid every other week around here. You don't need to come wading into it with those light-footed and elegant war boots."
"I don't need to stuff my war boot up your princely asshole either," Karkat muses, and even remembers to try to look casual, "and yet I'm probably still going to end up doing it. Ah, the sacrifices we make for human family."
Dirk narrows his eyes at him some more, and then looks away into the crowd, like he saw something... some kind of shift. His secretary -- what's his name, Zakahr, Zahhak -- leans in and whispers in his ear, and his jaw clenches.
"Well. The main part--"
"All rise for His Royal Highness, Prince Harold Strider-Lalonde, Prince of the Blood!"
Karkat rises without thinking too much, and then realizes that Dave didn't follow him up, that he's still seated beside Dirk, and that his eyes have gone wide with shock.
The Strider-Lalondes are Dave's family, but human families are kind of sprawling and confusingly weird and it takes Karkat a second to remember that thanks to the Condesce's vigorous trimming of their family bush those four are pretty much it.
Dirk goes, "There's my cue" and gets up, signals them to stay behind, opens himself a path toward the co-Empresses' dais. In the crowd another path is opening, several older men trailing a smaller, ash-blond human that Karkat cannot see in full due to so many stupid people in the way until he climbs up two steps and makes his bow to her Imperial Highnesses.
He looks like Dirk probably looked at six sweeps. Hell, if Dirk didn't look like this at six sweeps then he looks more like Dirk than even Dirk himself.
"What the fuck," Karkat says, and turns to Dave to see if he's got an explanation, but from the furrow between his eyebrows and the parted lips Dave is just as thrown as he was.
"No fucks involved, I'm afraid," Rose says from behind the couch, and makes them both jump a couple of inches off the cushions.
Dave is quick to turn this into a hug that ends up yanking her over the back of the couch, and she yelps.
"Dave, the crowd!"
"They're all watching that imposter," Karkat says, dodging to avoid being knocked in the horn by her slipper. "No one's watching you."
"Plus everyone knows we're cow-loving hick wannabes with no manners," Dave continues, and sets her between the two of them. Karkat nods a hello at Rose and cranes his neck to see the whole thing on the imperial dais. The kid is chatting up Empress Meenah with that little asshole smirk on his face that Dirk and Dave both show at their most smarmy. Looks even more obnoxious on a brat who doesn't look like he's even quite of an age to have filled his first bucket.
"Where'd the kid come from?"
Rose gestures lazily, an aimless twitch of her fingers. Black-purple flickers briefly around the three of them. "There, no more lip readers. The official story is that he's Dirk's natural son, and thanks to various political reforms that we've done recently to bring in line trollish and human inheritance the natural part doesn't matter as much as it used to -- for now."
Karkat blinks. "Natural son?"
"His parents weren't married," Dave goes, oddly terse. "One problem with that, Dirk is strictly dick only. And if he'd fricked with a lady--"
"He'd have made damn sure to check if there was any issue. Mmh." Rose frowns pensively at the dais as Dirk is allowed to climb in turn and the two meet. They seem to size each other up for a second, and then Dirk -- it's hard to say, he's got his back on them, but the kid looks briefly surprised. Maybe Dirk said something nice. They nod their heads at each other. "Dirk will detach him from his retinue and bring him back here pretty fast, so the highlights -- pressures means he will be forced to recognize him as his true heir. That might bring us some influence on the child himself -- might not. He's pretty deep into their plot, was probably raised in it. But he's sharp -- like Dirk."
"How much like Dirk?" Dave asks, voice cracking in a way Karkat doesn't quite recognize.
Rose doesn't answer. Karkat, watching the two of them walk back through the crowd, goes "Probably enough to wonder if there was any other parent thrown into the genetic mix at all."
They walk the same way, only Harold is still gangly, still fronting to look bigger; his swagger doesn't look as natural. They have the same kinks in their hair, the same regal nose. Same everything, apart from what can be accounted by Harold's youth.
The most telling is their expressions, though.
Harold smiles like Dirk would smile if he were evil. ... Well, more evil than he is. Karkat shakes his head. That's an Ancestor and Descendent pair alright.
Harold blinks when they cross the hazy barrier Rose set up, though Dirk doesn't. Dirk sits back down, casual, waves his hand at the three of them.
"My sister, Rose Lalonde." Rose gets up to sketch a little bow, sits back down between Dave and Dirk. "And my youngest brother, David Strider, and his husband Karkat Vantas. I'm sure you've been briefed -- even on them."
Harold stares down at the two them for a second, and then looks away like they're too boring to be worth all of his attention. (The little asshole.) "I have. Uncle David ... uncle Karkat. A pleasure."
"And this is Harold --"
A pleasant smile. "Hal, please--"
"--An eldritch creation from Old Scratch's workshop."
The kid's face turns to stone, or perhaps steel, not for real but in such a way that Karkat wants to reach out and touch his face to make sure the flesh still gives.
So. They've fabricated Dirk an heir. Next stop will be to get rid of the Empresses -- or would they get rid of Dirk first, and then have Hal raise his banner in rebellion?
"Please do sit down," Rose says pleasantly, like Dirk didn't just throw a slap in that kid's face he should still be reeling from a year hence.
Then again, he's Dirk's get, because he does sit, his face carved in marble.
"Am I correct in assuming," he says, all precise and sharp and so young, "that this spell disrupts understanding of what is said in here -- whether the interloper uses sound or sight?"
She nods. "They won't even be able to parse our body language. Feel free to cut loose."
"Very well." A dueler's nod.
He's so scrawny under the lace. He'll grow up tall, he is tall for his age already, but he's nowhere near that yet.
"You planning to recognize him?" Karkat asks Dirk, cutting off whatever Hal was planning to counterattack with. (No doubt something serrated, viper-mean. Not that vipers are mean animals, but when they bite, you feel it long after.) "If you say, here's my offspring--"
"Karkat, I appreciate your help but--"
"No you fucking don't, but you're going to. Pros and cons, now, chop chop -- Hal, Dave, shut your blathertraps."
Everyone is looking at him like they've never met him before and are wondering how this grizzly bear stuffed himself into such a fancy doublet, apart from Dave who looks half resigned, half about to burst out laughing. Karkat spares him a ghost of a smile.
"If I say, here's my offspring," Dirk repeats slowly, unimpressed.
Karkat has stared down brigands and highbloods with swords at his neck; he only arches his eyebrow pointedly. Dirk gives with a little huff.
"We gain a little time. They won't want to rock the boat and will advance their plans in secret. We gain some measure of control on him -- officially, at least, but they probably already set up some means of sending him his orders."
"I'm the one who sends orders," Hal says frostily. Dirk snorts.
"That you think. Cons, we're welcoming him into a prime position for spying, plus making the next step of their plan that much easier. Pros and cons of ousting him as a homunculus and a fraud -- pros, we're cutting them off at the knees."
"Cons, you can't prove it," Hal hisses, "and wouldn't it look so cheap and small-minded that a prince would go so far as to concoct such a ridiculous story to avoid acknowledging he has a son. Such a nice little scandal." He sneers, teeth bared. He hates Dirk with everything he is, it's obvious down to the core of him. "You know the Throne of Heart would acknowledge me. I'm as human as you are, and as pure-blooded as you are, and nothing will ever prove I'm not."
"So you're human now?" Karkat asks. The idleness in his voice throws Hal, he can see that in his blink. "No matter how you were made, you're human now, you're not going to fall to dust the second someone crushes a stone of power or pours holy water on you?"
"Maybe Oglogoth's Drool," Rose muses, "but then again, who wouldn't."
Karkat glowers at her. She puts her hands on her knees primly and smiles.
Hal's jaw is clenched so hard Karkat is surprised his teeth don't crack. "Wouldn't that be convenient. No. You'll have to stab me in the old-fashioned heart, I'm afraid."
He lifts his chin in defiance, as if he's daring them to get rid of him now, since he knows they'll do it sooner or later.
Dirk's eyes are cold like he's already decided when.
"You realize that by troll custom, he's your descendant, right?" Karkat comments. "He might not be your son, but he's pretty much genetically identical to you. Which makes him closer than if he were half someone else, not farther away. Even if you proved you didn't breed with a woman for him, he could still make a claim to your holdings by way of troll law. Since the Empresses have conveniently been having you all work on that."
Hal stares at him like he can't figure out why Karkat is helping, if he's helping at all. No, surely not, there must be a trap. Ah, that stupid kid.
"Recognize him," Karkat says, and takes Dave's hand as apology for what he's going to say next. "Make him your heir."
Hal has gone stiff all over, his eyes a touch too wide; his hand twitches toward that hidden knife he thinks no one else has noticed.
"And then lend him to us as a page, because I really could do with someone else to feed the goddamn pack horses. Lord knows if I never have to juggle the pack horses and Slick at the same fucking time it'll be too soon." He turns to Hal. "You've got a riding horse of your own? No? We'll get you one, there's plenty in the stables and no one ever works them enough, it's a travesty."
"What," Dirk says, "the hell, Vantas."
Karkat arches an eyebrow back at him. "I don't know about you, but killing off brats who haven't even wrung a single drop of spunk from their shame globes tends to look pretty bad to the normal folk. You give him to us, he's out of your hair while you deal with the rest of them, and with a little luck when we introduce him to the wide world outside highblood conspiracy it'll even spark something like a soul in him."
"Fuck you," Hal snarls. Karkat smiles as genially as he knows how. (Not very, but when it irritates people he can approximate.)
"Flattered, kid, but I'm spoken for."
Hal's shoulders have gone all straight and he drops his voice low, threatening as a six-sweeps old can be. "If you think I'm going to let you bundle me off to some mirthforsaken patch of wilderness and shove me off a cliff, you've got another think coming."
Karkat paps him right on the hawk nose.
"Shh. We have horses. Also a drake and a hippogriff. Dave will let you ride the hippogriff if you're good. She flies, if you're not afraid of heights I guess it's pretty alright."
Dave shakes his head and goes loose against Karkat's shoulder, which Karkat knows is acceptance, is love. "Dude, I don't even let you ride the hippogriff. No one rides the hippogriff. Nope. Not happening. Rose could put her saintly buttocks on Crow's saddle and I would tell Crow to bite the shit out of her, and I actually like the broad some days."
Karkat snorts at him, smiles. Yeah, right. Uh huh. Love you too. "Alternately in a couple of years you can apply for a war mount of your own."
"I am not fucking going with you!" Hal snaps back, and jumps to his feet, which even Rose's spell probably won't compensate for. And then he storms off through the shocked crowd, which definitely launches the meowbeast out of the swinging bag at high velocity.
The whole ballroom explodes into frantic whispers.
Dirk stares at the both of them for what seems a century, and then he starts smiling his thin, mildly evil smile. "I can have him bundled up and ready to go by tomorrow morning," he says, and swings up on his feet like he's made of silk and snakes.
"Six sharp!" Karkat calls after him. "Some of the horses will be out after that."
Dirk waves over his shoulder without looking back. Rose watches him go primly, and then snort-laughs into her hand.
"Did you just demand to foster a child? You lusus you."
She's too far for him to shove her, so Karkat just rolls his eyes. "Oh my swordfucking hellgod, shut up, I'm not lususing anything, do I look like a pale douche in opaque eyewear to you."
Dave pouts at him, which is so far from him being honestly irritated at Karkat's high-handed wigglernapping it's almost getting close to wanting to kiss Karkat for it. "My eyewear is not opaque, I demand reparation for this totally untrue slur."
Karkat leans in, forehead to forehead, and prepares a devastating comeback in lieu of tongue action.
"You realize you will never have a moment alone to have intercourse ever again," Rose says innocently.
"... Fuck." Karkat looks at Dave. "He's old enough to know to wander off for a couple hours in the woods without getting eaten, right? ... After we teach him some woodcraft?"
Dave stares at him for a couple of unbelieving seconds, shakes his head. "Hubby-dearest, darling, sweetmeat of my life. He's a pissy teenager who hates your guts. What do you think."
"Aw, fuck." Karkat slumps over the couch, glares at the ornate ceiling. "I guess we have to make the most use out of tonight's suite, then."
"Fuck yesss," Dave goes. "Five years in and I'm finally gonna get fricked on gold-threaded coverlets."
"Mind you don't get your hair caught in the embroidery," Rose says philosophically.
Anonymous said: Dorky Knights, a couple (two??) months later, trying to make out during some free time but their mounts won't leave them alone. Bad Crow.
The good thing about being a knight lawfully wedded to another knight is that he’s always got a partner. Especially because of the political angle to being a Dersite and a Prospitian, or a troll and a human — they get lots of peacekeeping assignments, not to the level of leading war parties but sort of pre-diplomacy. Diplomacy with teeth. Flattening the ground for the real diplomacy parties — and sometimes it turns out the problem can be resolved with a good talking-to, no need to bring in his hell-sister and turn everyone inside out.
Metaphorically speaking. Most of the time. But anyway.
The good thing, yes, is that Dave always travels with a partner. He’s not sure if they knew when they settled on Karkat as his match that karkat could and would actually follow him and not hinder him any — complete him in some ways, even — but it’s a pretty good partnership.
Only they have a ton of work, and they’re always on the move from one keep to the next, and oftentimes they’re even escorting travelers, or a bunch of guards, or thieves that need delivered to the proper authorities, which means finding ten minutes to maintain the wedding vows part of their partnership gets pretty difficult.
Especially the vows concerning their bedroom activities. Dave is pretty salty about those.
So here they are, just delivered a bunch of nuns to their dark and tentacley convent and who could blame them if they sneak each other a look and welp, it’s surely going to rain, let’s stop for the night early.
Of course Karkat insists to start the fire and see to their mounts first — the pack horses to one side with their grain, Crow and Slick to the other side lest they forget the horses aren’t their feed.
Not that Dave thinks Crow would forget. She’s been raised with horses; she thinks she’s one. Well, she’s two fourth of one, so she’s not really wrong. Slick is another matter, but Crow can handle him for the five minutes it — mnh — five minutes it’ll take for Dave to take off Karkat’s chain mail, slide his hands under his tunic, hello there, what do we have…
He’s sure it’s only five minutes. They’re just very fulfilling minutes, is all.
They come to an abrupt end with the piercing, offended caw of his dear, beloved hippogriff.
"Fluthlu’s many dicks, your son of a bitch tried to bite a chunk out of Crow!"
He disentangles himself in a hurry. It helps (sort of) that Karkat shoves him off with a great annoyed snort.
"Your stupid birdbrain keeps trying to peck him!" Karkat grumps as he goes to the drake and tries to lead him off. He needs to slap him over the snout for Slick to take a single step back.
Dave caresses Crow’s beak gently and looks superior when she preens his fringe. Drakes are stupid and mean and that’s the pure truth. Give him a hippogriff any day of the week.
"Maybe if you stopped trying to make up for his rotten self by rubbing him until his scales get all shiny, it’s not my baby’s fault, okay?"
"She’s not actually a crow!” Karkat yells back over his shoulder as he heaves at Slick’s chest. “The shiny is not an excuse!” The drake opens his jaws the way true dragons do when they want to spit fire, but fire is an ability that most drakes don’t have any longer and thank fuck for that or Dave might well be a widower by now. Disgruntled by his inability to incinerate his master, Slick snorts and lets himself be tied to another, farther tree.
Satisfied, Dave smoothes down some feathers, and hopes strongly that they’ll be able to go back to cuddling before the fire and possibly blowjobs very soon.
"—What the f— she has a fucking bald spot! Your hellbeast gave her a bald spot!"
"Hey! My drake is not a hellbeast, go fuck yourself on your sword"
"Excuse you, I’m the one whose state religion worships the horrorterrors, I know from hellbeasts, okay? Look at that asshole, he still has feathers right at the corner of his maw!"
They pause to stare at each other. Dave is frowning, more bewildered than truly angry.
He still has a chubby, but it’s fading fast. Augh. “Weren’t we trying to consummate our vows. Like, again.”
"I don’t know about you," Karkat replies drolly, "But personally I was trying to blow you."
Dave pinches his lips really tight. He’s still leaning against Crow’s fluffy orange chest.
"Cool. You up for angry sex?"
Karkat starts laughing. Dave follows him in the next second.
They meet by the fire and sink back down onto their abandoned cloaks, but all the urgency is gone and they keep breaking into random bouts of chuckling.
"Reconciliation buggering?"
"I’m game."
Karkat’s legs are in the air and Dave is attempting to aim when Crow, having untied herself from her tree, wanders up to them and preens Dave’s hair until his boner is only a faraway, hilarious memory.
--
Anonymous said: By the Letter (of the law), five years later
--
They don't really bother with court much. Karkat didn't enjoy Prospit's court already; Derse's makes him twice as happy that he's got disputes to slap down, speeches of friendship and country-wide news to deliver, and town-to-town enmities to mediate and scratch his ashen itch on. Even if he hated his current life he would hate it less than Derse's court.
The Empresses requested their presence, though, and he's good at hating things he's got to deal with anyways.
Case in point. "Dave I swear to all that is holy if you molest my gloves again I will slap you in the face with them."
"Huh."
"In a really not sexy way."
"Aw."
Karkat clears his throat and looks away from Dave's pouting lips. "You made us late enough with the boots, let's go already." He can still feel Dave's warm hands 'helping you tuck your pants in those stupid boots properly' all over his thighs.
He tucks Dave's arm in his and hauls him out of the door.
"Do you even like that kind of pain?" he grumbles -- quietly so the servants won't catch that they're discussing their sex life in public corridors once again.
"Face-slapping? Eh." Dave purses his lips. Karkat tears his eyes away. "I'd totally tolerate it if it made your clothes fall back off. They're so pretty, they'd probably make you look twice as good naked."
Karkat rolls his eyes, and vows to work twice as hard not to let on that the stupidly fancy court clothes Dave's brother sent them to wear are stiff and scratchy and ridiculously attention-grabbing, and make him miss his traveling leathers already. The lengths one will go to in order to please their matesprit, seriously.
--
Fifteen minutes later he's thinking his clothes are actually fairly subdued, and maybe he should thank Dirk. "I don't think we even wore that much lace and ribbons at our wedding," he whispers to Dave as he watches an older human swan by. He can't even tell if that's supposed to be a male or female human, and usually the dress styles are fairly distinct.
Not that the trolls in attendance are much better. Fancy attire is one human sin that trolls have been eager to roast for ever since the first Great War cooled down enough to allow for trade.
A half-hour later he's parked in a corner with a pitcher of wine and he doesn't intend to move again until his feet feel less bruised, and he watches Dave navigate the ebb and flow of the crowd. It's ridiculous how well he fakes it, reminds Karkat that if his recent human ancestors hadn't been destroyed by her Imperious Condescension that today he would be a prince.
A half-hour and five minutes in, Dave strolls back to him casually and goes, "Welp, we're gonna have to plunge in the eye of the storm to get Dirk or Rose."
He steals Karkat's drink. Karkat allows it, on probation. At worst it'll be something to yell at him over if his reason doesn't satisfy Karkat.
"Talked to like twenty people and five of them sounded me out on divorcing you and reestablishing a true and pureblooded human royal line. One of them even had a daughter with childbearing hips all ready to go."
... Yeah okay Karkat is satisfied.
Okay, not satisfied-satisfied, because that is one steaming pile of drake shit if he's ever seen one, but he supposes Dave can have the glass. Karkat gets a swallow from the pitcher.
The way he understands it -- he doesn't understand very much, it's mostly by rote -- Dirk is first in line, then Roxy, then Rose and Dave. Rose is a High Priestess of the Church of Horrorterrors, and her calling as a seer supersedes everything, so unless they all croak she's out of the way entirely. Roxy, if Karkat remembers right, the one thing trolls do better than humans about ruling is they don't care if you're a man or a woman. Fair bet that if they reestablish purely human laws she'll get saddled with a husband to do the ruling for her, and the only way they'd think that works is if they think she's really as silly as she acts like.
So basically someone is planning on fucking up their hard-earned peace and invalidating the months and months of peace talks Karkat had to sit his ass through -- and on bypassing Dirk entirely.
He almost doesn't take Dave's arm again because he wants to be free to swing. But you don't fight much at court, and when you do it's well-organized duels with referees and whatever the fuck else, so he lets Dave tuck his hand in his elbow again.
Dave doesn't even smile his tiny, secretive smile when people double-take at his apparently ladylike behavior, which irritates Karkat even worse even though he doesn't even get why his matesprit finds it funny in a first place.
He elbows a couple of fancy useless courtiers out of his way, signals sharp and impatient at Dirk's secretary, who scowls back at him from his ridiculous blueblooded height, but then booms out, "Make way for David Lalonde-Strider-Vantas, Duke of Lohac, Prince of the Blood, and Lord Karkat Vantas-Strider, Baron Lopah."
Karkat has never even been to Lopah. Stupid courtesy titles. But they have bigger fish to fry at the moment.
They walk up to Dirk, who is seated in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped couch. He nods at them, flicks his fingers to chase people off . "Little brother."
Dave bows shallowly. "Big brother." He moves in for a hug, which is funny because in private none of Dave's family touch if they can help it, apart from Roxy. When Dave is done Karkat bows in turn and sits where he's invited to sit, and tries to look like he's doing nothing more challenging or aneurysm-inducing than socializing.
"How are you two doing? Got enough of gallivanting, ready to come back home?"
"I will never be ready," Dave replies, and goes loose all over the couch, a smirk on his face like he just told a very funny joke. "By the way we've been hearing hella things. Especially me, 'cause funny enough they wouldn't tell them around the wife."
Dirk's face doesn't change at all, bland and almost bored. "Divorcing Karkat, remarrying human?"
"Figures you already knew," Karkat grumbles.
Dirk flicks his hand like he's scaring off a fly, lazily. His eyes are narrow like blades behind his smoked-glass spectacles. "Yeah, that's the part of the conspiracy that's getting cold feet over the actual plan. Don't worry, they'll forget about the two of you the second you're off for the mountains again. This is mostly a crime of opportunity."
He goes silent. Dave resists all of three seconds before he's stretching his legs and accidentally on purpose kicking Dirk. (Karkat resisted longer because he's on Dave's other side and couldn't have reached. Also, five years in and he still doesn't know Dirk well enough to be on kicking terms with him. Not that it would stop him if they weren't in public.)
"Main part of the conspiracy, please, Dirk?"
Dirk blows air through his nose, sneaks his brother an annoyed look. "You'll be gone again in three days and we handle this kind of stupid every other week around here. You don't need to come wading into it with those light-footed and elegant war boots."
"I don't need to stuff my war boot up your princely asshole either," Karkat muses, and even remembers to try to look casual, "and yet I'm probably still going to end up doing it. Ah, the sacrifices we make for human family."
Dirk narrows his eyes at him some more, and then looks away into the crowd, like he saw something... some kind of shift. His secretary -- what's his name, Zakahr, Zahhak -- leans in and whispers in his ear, and his jaw clenches.
"Well. The main part--"
"All rise for His Royal Highness, Prince Harold Strider-Lalonde, Prince of the Blood!"
Karkat rises without thinking too much, and then realizes that Dave didn't follow him up, that he's still seated beside Dirk, and that his eyes have gone wide with shock.
The Strider-Lalondes are Dave's family, but human families are kind of sprawling and confusingly weird and it takes Karkat a second to remember that thanks to the Condesce's vigorous trimming of their family bush those four are pretty much it.
Dirk goes, "There's my cue" and gets up, signals them to stay behind, opens himself a path toward the co-Empresses' dais. In the crowd another path is opening, several older men trailing a smaller, ash-blond human that Karkat cannot see in full due to so many stupid people in the way until he climbs up two steps and makes his bow to her Imperial Highnesses.
He looks like Dirk probably looked at six sweeps. Hell, if Dirk didn't look like this at six sweeps then he looks more like Dirk than even Dirk himself.
"What the fuck," Karkat says, and turns to Dave to see if he's got an explanation, but from the furrow between his eyebrows and the parted lips Dave is just as thrown as he was.
"No fucks involved, I'm afraid," Rose says from behind the couch, and makes them both jump a couple of inches off the cushions.
Dave is quick to turn this into a hug that ends up yanking her over the back of the couch, and she yelps.
"Dave, the crowd!"
"They're all watching that imposter," Karkat says, dodging to avoid being knocked in the horn by her slipper. "No one's watching you."
"Plus everyone knows we're cow-loving hick wannabes with no manners," Dave continues, and sets her between the two of them. Karkat nods a hello at Rose and cranes his neck to see the whole thing on the imperial dais. The kid is chatting up Empress Meenah with that little asshole smirk on his face that Dirk and Dave both show at their most smarmy. Looks even more obnoxious on a brat who doesn't look like he's even quite of an age to have filled his first bucket.
"Where'd the kid come from?"
Rose gestures lazily, an aimless twitch of her fingers. Black-purple flickers briefly around the three of them. "There, no more lip readers. The official story is that he's Dirk's natural son, and thanks to various political reforms that we've done recently to bring in line trollish and human inheritance the natural part doesn't matter as much as it used to -- for now."
Karkat blinks. "Natural son?"
"His parents weren't married," Dave goes, oddly terse. "One problem with that, Dirk is strictly dick only. And if he'd fricked with a lady--"
"He'd have made damn sure to check if there was any issue. Mmh." Rose frowns pensively at the dais as Dirk is allowed to climb in turn and the two meet. They seem to size each other up for a second, and then Dirk -- it's hard to say, he's got his back on them, but the kid looks briefly surprised. Maybe Dirk said something nice. They nod their heads at each other. "Dirk will detach him from his retinue and bring him back here pretty fast, so the highlights -- pressures means he will be forced to recognize him as his true heir. That might bring us some influence on the child himself -- might not. He's pretty deep into their plot, was probably raised in it. But he's sharp -- like Dirk."
"How much like Dirk?" Dave asks, voice cracking in a way Karkat doesn't quite recognize.
Rose doesn't answer. Karkat, watching the two of them walk back through the crowd, goes "Probably enough to wonder if there was any other parent thrown into the genetic mix at all."
They walk the same way, only Harold is still gangly, still fronting to look bigger; his swagger doesn't look as natural. They have the same kinks in their hair, the same regal nose. Same everything, apart from what can be accounted by Harold's youth.
The most telling is their expressions, though.
Harold smiles like Dirk would smile if he were evil. ... Well, more evil than he is. Karkat shakes his head. That's an Ancestor and Descendent pair alright.
Harold blinks when they cross the hazy barrier Rose set up, though Dirk doesn't. Dirk sits back down, casual, waves his hand at the three of them.
"My sister, Rose Lalonde." Rose gets up to sketch a little bow, sits back down between Dave and Dirk. "And my youngest brother, David Strider, and his husband Karkat Vantas. I'm sure you've been briefed -- even on them."
Harold stares down at the two them for a second, and then looks away like they're too boring to be worth all of his attention. (The little asshole.) "I have. Uncle David ... uncle Karkat. A pleasure."
"And this is Harold --"
A pleasant smile. "Hal, please--"
"--An eldritch creation from Old Scratch's workshop."
The kid's face turns to stone, or perhaps steel, not for real but in such a way that Karkat wants to reach out and touch his face to make sure the flesh still gives.
So. They've fabricated Dirk an heir. Next stop will be to get rid of the Empresses -- or would they get rid of Dirk first, and then have Hal raise his banner in rebellion?
"Please do sit down," Rose says pleasantly, like Dirk didn't just throw a slap in that kid's face he should still be reeling from a year hence.
Then again, he's Dirk's get, because he does sit, his face carved in marble.
"Am I correct in assuming," he says, all precise and sharp and so young, "that this spell disrupts understanding of what is said in here -- whether the interloper uses sound or sight?"
She nods. "They won't even be able to parse our body language. Feel free to cut loose."
"Very well." A dueler's nod.
He's so scrawny under the lace. He'll grow up tall, he is tall for his age already, but he's nowhere near that yet.
"You planning to recognize him?" Karkat asks Dirk, cutting off whatever Hal was planning to counterattack with. (No doubt something serrated, viper-mean. Not that vipers are mean animals, but when they bite, you feel it long after.) "If you say, here's my offspring--"
"Karkat, I appreciate your help but--"
"No you fucking don't, but you're going to. Pros and cons, now, chop chop -- Hal, Dave, shut your blathertraps."
Everyone is looking at him like they've never met him before and are wondering how this grizzly bear stuffed himself into such a fancy doublet, apart from Dave who looks half resigned, half about to burst out laughing. Karkat spares him a ghost of a smile.
"If I say, here's my offspring," Dirk repeats slowly, unimpressed.
Karkat has stared down brigands and highbloods with swords at his neck; he only arches his eyebrow pointedly. Dirk gives with a little huff.
"We gain a little time. They won't want to rock the boat and will advance their plans in secret. We gain some measure of control on him -- officially, at least, but they probably already set up some means of sending him his orders."
"I'm the one who sends orders," Hal says frostily. Dirk snorts.
"That you think. Cons, we're welcoming him into a prime position for spying, plus making the next step of their plan that much easier. Pros and cons of ousting him as a homunculus and a fraud -- pros, we're cutting them off at the knees."
"Cons, you can't prove it," Hal hisses, "and wouldn't it look so cheap and small-minded that a prince would go so far as to concoct such a ridiculous story to avoid acknowledging he has a son. Such a nice little scandal." He sneers, teeth bared. He hates Dirk with everything he is, it's obvious down to the core of him. "You know the Throne of Heart would acknowledge me. I'm as human as you are, and as pure-blooded as you are, and nothing will ever prove I'm not."
"So you're human now?" Karkat asks. The idleness in his voice throws Hal, he can see that in his blink. "No matter how you were made, you're human now, you're not going to fall to dust the second someone crushes a stone of power or pours holy water on you?"
"Maybe Oglogoth's Drool," Rose muses, "but then again, who wouldn't."
Karkat glowers at her. She puts her hands on her knees primly and smiles.
Hal's jaw is clenched so hard Karkat is surprised his teeth don't crack. "Wouldn't that be convenient. No. You'll have to stab me in the old-fashioned heart, I'm afraid."
He lifts his chin in defiance, as if he's daring them to get rid of him now, since he knows they'll do it sooner or later.
Dirk's eyes are cold like he's already decided when.
"You realize that by troll custom, he's your descendant, right?" Karkat comments. "He might not be your son, but he's pretty much genetically identical to you. Which makes him closer than if he were half someone else, not farther away. Even if you proved you didn't breed with a woman for him, he could still make a claim to your holdings by way of troll law. Since the Empresses have conveniently been having you all work on that."
Hal stares at him like he can't figure out why Karkat is helping, if he's helping at all. No, surely not, there must be a trap. Ah, that stupid kid.
"Recognize him," Karkat says, and takes Dave's hand as apology for what he's going to say next. "Make him your heir."
Hal has gone stiff all over, his eyes a touch too wide; his hand twitches toward that hidden knife he thinks no one else has noticed.
"And then lend him to us as a page, because I really could do with someone else to feed the goddamn pack horses. Lord knows if I never have to juggle the pack horses and Slick at the same fucking time it'll be too soon." He turns to Hal. "You've got a riding horse of your own? No? We'll get you one, there's plenty in the stables and no one ever works them enough, it's a travesty."
"What," Dirk says, "the hell, Vantas."
Karkat arches an eyebrow back at him. "I don't know about you, but killing off brats who haven't even wrung a single drop of spunk from their shame globes tends to look pretty bad to the normal folk. You give him to us, he's out of your hair while you deal with the rest of them, and with a little luck when we introduce him to the wide world outside highblood conspiracy it'll even spark something like a soul in him."
"Fuck you," Hal snarls. Karkat smiles as genially as he knows how. (Not very, but when it irritates people he can approximate.)
"Flattered, kid, but I'm spoken for."
Hal's shoulders have gone all straight and he drops his voice low, threatening as a six-sweeps old can be. "If you think I'm going to let you bundle me off to some mirthforsaken patch of wilderness and shove me off a cliff, you've got another think coming."
Karkat paps him right on the hawk nose.
"Shh. We have horses. Also a drake and a hippogriff. Dave will let you ride the hippogriff if you're good. She flies, if you're not afraid of heights I guess it's pretty alright."
Dave shakes his head and goes loose against Karkat's shoulder, which Karkat knows is acceptance, is love. "Dude, I don't even let you ride the hippogriff. No one rides the hippogriff. Nope. Not happening. Rose could put her saintly buttocks on Crow's saddle and I would tell Crow to bite the shit out of her, and I actually like the broad some days."
Karkat snorts at him, smiles. Yeah, right. Uh huh. Love you too. "Alternately in a couple of years you can apply for a war mount of your own."
"I am not fucking going with you!" Hal snaps back, and jumps to his feet, which even Rose's spell probably won't compensate for. And then he storms off through the shocked crowd, which definitely launches the meowbeast out of the swinging bag at high velocity.
The whole ballroom explodes into frantic whispers.
Dirk stares at the both of them for what seems a century, and then he starts smiling his thin, mildly evil smile. "I can have him bundled up and ready to go by tomorrow morning," he says, and swings up on his feet like he's made of silk and snakes.
"Six sharp!" Karkat calls after him. "Some of the horses will be out after that."
Dirk waves over his shoulder without looking back. Rose watches him go primly, and then snort-laughs into her hand.
"Did you just demand to foster a child? You lusus you."
She's too far for him to shove her, so Karkat just rolls his eyes. "Oh my swordfucking hellgod, shut up, I'm not lususing anything, do I look like a pale douche in opaque eyewear to you."
Dave pouts at him, which is so far from him being honestly irritated at Karkat's high-handed wigglernapping it's almost getting close to wanting to kiss Karkat for it. "My eyewear is not opaque, I demand reparation for this totally untrue slur."
Karkat leans in, forehead to forehead, and prepares a devastating comeback in lieu of tongue action.
"You realize you will never have a moment alone to have intercourse ever again," Rose says innocently.
"... Fuck." Karkat looks at Dave. "He's old enough to know to wander off for a couple hours in the woods without getting eaten, right? ... After we teach him some woodcraft?"
Dave stares at him for a couple of unbelieving seconds, shakes his head. "Hubby-dearest, darling, sweetmeat of my life. He's a pissy teenager who hates your guts. What do you think."
"Aw, fuck." Karkat slumps over the couch, glares at the ornate ceiling. "I guess we have to make the most use out of tonight's suite, then."
"Fuck yesss," Dave goes. "Five years in and I'm finally gonna get fricked on gold-threaded coverlets."
"Mind you don't get your hair caught in the embroidery," Rose says philosophically.
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Ahhhh yes, I didn't know I needed Lil Hal-i mean Harold in this story until now. Just imagining the tantrums and i-am-not-having-a-tantrum tantrums that are going to ensure *grins in happiness*
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they're so taken in by karkat's in your face yelling that they totally forget he's pretty crafty when he wants to bother. bwahaha. XD
lil haaaaaaaaaal ahhhh baby *__*
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"Maybe Oglogoth's Drool," Rose muses, "but then again, who wouldn't."
He lifts his chin in defiance, as if he's daring them to get rid of him now, since he knows they'll do it sooner or later.
Dirk's eyes are cold like he's already decided when.
Brrrrr.