Gotta Get a Move on Before the Sun

[infiniteandsmall]

             AN: I’ve been spending a lot of time off the internet at the barn/writing happy fanfic/listening to country music. My coping mechanisms they are fab. We all know that Dave totally has about a million ridiculous guilty pleasures oh Dave embrace the country. Also bonus Karkat because KARKAT BB. Unbetaed unedited here you are keepin' it real.
            Summary: Ridiculously fluffy with hints of John/Dave best flavor of sad-removal ice cream obvs. Even coolkids have to deal with broken air conditioners and friends who are very supportive of their uncoolness.

            Gotta Get a Move On Before the Sun

The sun’s hot enough that shimmers rise from the sidewalk, the air’s heavy but at least out here on the porch it moves.

 

John wonders if Dave feels like he’s thirteen and back in Texas again, remembers messages full of barely-concealed whining about sunburns due to frequent rooftop strifes with his Bro. If he does, he isn’t talking about it. He’s leaning heavily into John, eyes closed and eyelids flicking faintly. He’s listening to music, to John it sounds tinny and faint and distant with one earbud in Dave’s ear and the other clenched in his fist, but he can hear the fiddles.

 

“You’re listening to country, aren’t you?” John says.

“Wha?” Dave mutters, sleepy and slippery and boneless with heat, faint smile in the corner of his mouth.

“You’re listening to country. I can hear it.”

Dave’s eyes flick open, and he meets John’s gaze, straining his neck but still almost upside-down, sideways lazy smile. John’s palms hurt from pressing them into the concrete, but he doesn’t care, because it’s rare to see Dave this relaxed and easy and quick to smile, shades off, wide smiles that look like the southern twang that sometimes creeps into his voice would look.

“I would say it’s totally ironic,” Dave says. “But it’s not. Bro, I need an intervention.”

“No, you don’t. It’s kind of endearing.”

“Whatever you say,” he says, fiddling with the loose earbud. He’s quiet for a second, before he says, “I was expecting you to bust out the fucking rainbows and give me a rendition of an inspirational song that’s basically an It Gets Better video with delusions of grandeur.”

“But it is inspirational! Baby, we’re fireworks! We’re—“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, brief loud explosions of light that are quickly forgotten, I get it, you don’t need to get all fucking deep and philosophical on me here—“

“Dave.”

“What?”

“I want to listen.”

Dave fiddles with the earbud again, before pulling them loose from his iPod and laying them aside.

“Country music sounds better in the open.” He says, reaching around for the bottle of apple juice he’d been drinking from earlier. “Want to finish it?”

“No! I have no idea what you did to that bottle, bluh. Pour it in the bushes. They can take it.”

Dave acquiesces, then begins chopping off the top of the bottle with his sword, which he’d tucked out of sight behind the large harlequin statue that adorns John’s front porch.

The bottom of the bottle is probably still slightly sticky, but Dave puts his iPod in anyways, turns up the music, and heaves a deep sigh of satisfaction with a job well done. There is a large gash one of the porch posts and another in the harlequin statue, but John doesn’t care.

The porch is still standing, and he still really hates that statue anyways.

“Hey, Dave,” John says, after a few minutes. “If anyone asks, the country music is totally me, right? Or something deeply ironic.”

“Dude. Who else is out here? It’s about a hundred fucking degrees out here.”

“Sorry,” John says. “This is a shitty week for the AC to break. It happens to the coolest of us.”

“Eh, our AC is broke more than it works. Obviously, it does happen to the coolest of us. What I mean is: right now, the trees are fucking crying out for water, and all the stupid birds are caw-cawing like motherfuckers as their wings alight and they fly towards the sun in a fucking blaze of glory—“

“Dave—“

“All the girls at the strip club are shakin’ it, but they can’t compete. It’s hotter than a fucking orgy out there—“

“Dave.”

“Yeah?”

“I think the heat is getting to you,” John says, tapping Dave’s head a few times.

“Bro. What I’m trying to say is, do you see anyone out? Any little children, cruisin’ on their bikes? Young punks tryin’ to trespass on our lawn? Cheerful old couples takin’ walks? No. Everyone is inside, in the AC, on the internet, where they belong.”

“How do the old couples know how to use the internet? Oh my god, what do they do on the internet? Do they see the porn?”

“Oh my god. You didn’t. The heat is getting to you, okay. No one’s out here, anyways.” His head shifts against John’s shoulder (he probably has a sweaty spot there, but if it doesn’t gross Dave out he doesn’t mind). “And if they were, I guess I don’t really give a fuck. Look at our lives—“

“Look at our choices,” John sings out. He thinks they’re pretty good choices, personally. “I just thought—you know, it’s kind of a shitty vacation. If this is a vacation, with my dad pranking you all the time.” And okay, he can’t help but snort a little, thinking of Dave’s face after the rubber cake yesterday. That was a good one. His dad’s Prankster’s Gambit was strong.

“At least your dad’s pranks are about ninety-seven percent less likely to cause decapitation. Trust me, Egbert, this place is, like, the fucking Caribbean. I’m sipping my fruity cocktail right now, with my little umbrella, that’s, like, plated with gold leaf, while the waves wash up on the shore like the sweetest sweetest Enya song ever delivered to us by little Irish faeries.” Dave shrugs. “And anyways, it’s kind of nice to be someplace where I’m not, like. Cool. All the time. I mean, I know I do have a natural knack for being awesome as fuck and that my Ironymeter is on-point, but like. No one knows me here, and Bro’s not here, and after I leave they’ll just assume I’m some kind of goober Egbert cousin, probably.”

It’s entirely possible he revealed all that because he was pleased by his previous metaphor, which managed to fit fruity cocktails and Enya into one sentence. It’s also entirely possible that, through some kind of ectobiology science witchery, he is, in fact, a goober Egbert cousin.

“Dude, I’m not gonna let you get away with that. Everyone’s gonna know that you’re my fucking cool as fuck BFF who basically brings all the cool in the world possible from Houston, and someday we’ll be a cheerful old couple looking at porn together on the internet and everyone’s gonna know that Houston has no more cool. It’s all gone, and now the city’s, like, languishing and stuff. And they’ll all come to look at the cool, and they’ll be like, aw shit. The cool is sitting in the nursing home with that goober kid up the road John Egbert listening to country music and watching Nic Cage movies.”

“Oh? And at what point do we tie the knot and adopt half a dozen African children?”

“When we’re, like, thirty, and have steady jobs and shit. Duh, Dave, you need to have responsibility and, like, a stable income before you have kids. Get with the program.”

“Oh, Egbert, the program is so gotten with. I put the moves on that program. Gave her a taste of all-ll this. But don’t worry. Went ring shoppin’, popped the question. Made an honest woman of her. The program is one-hundred percent gotten with.”

“Well, now I know what I have to look forward to. I know you won’t, like, besmirch my honor.”

“Just a little.”

“My dad’s got a hand buzzer and he’s not afraid to use it,” John says.

“I believe you,” Dave says, yawning. “I’ll make sure you’re in white on your wedding day, babe.”

“Darling,” John mutters.

“Dearest.”

“Sweet hummingbird.”

Dave chuckles in response to that, humming slightly under his breath along to the music. Reaching for the iPod, he changes the song. The opening fiddle solo starts, it’s not a slow song but it’s still good for serenading, and he slowly winds his fingers through John’s. It’s not a toddler-crossing-the-street handhold but a full homo, engagement picture handhold. John starts to feel the need to put up his pokerface, even though it’s definitely on the faulty side. Dave’s hand is warm and soft, except for the defined sword calluses on the sides of his palms, and wow, John is kind of studying Dave’s hand with his own and stroking it and he should chalk this up to his Pranksters Gambit pretty quickly be doing something outlandish at once.

John laces his other hand into Dave’s, and they make exaggerated and ridiculous faces as they sing in a successful effort to rocket up the rungs of the Irony Echeladder twice as fast.

Dave swoons on John’s shoulder at the end in perfect time to the last guitar strum, which immediately shoots him straight to the title of MASTER OF PLAYING GAY. His lips kind of brush against John’s neck, but the next three songs are all fast and catchy and fun, and Dave knows all the words and shouts them out, making his accent thick and singing through his nose, and John knows almost all the words and when he doesn’t know them he hums.

Dave grins at him after the songs finish, and John grins back, even though he’s pretty sure he has some major pit stains and he can feel trickles of sweat catching in his eyebrows.

“Dude, I know that I’m turning into, like, the most hopeless of chumps, and chump trapped on a lifeboat and those fucking shark are circling, but this is—“

“Wicked fun?”

“Sure,” Dave says, snorting, “but less like I’m from Jersey.”

John paps Dave’s nose, because he can, and the next song starts up.

It’s a slow song, and it hangs heavy over the already-shimmering driveway and the dry heat of the crunchy brown grass. It’s the heat that makes it too close, John thinks, makes his skin feel soft and the warmth of Dave’s thigh feel close, but Dave is singing to him, and either he’s reached insane amounts of irony that has done some kind of double reacharound acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle into sincerity and goddamnit Dave really is the fucking irony master.

All the same, the ironic sincerity is kind of awkwardly sincere and John knows he can’t match it so all he can do is a. attempt some of kind of shitty dorky goofy look or b. actually be sincere, and his heart’s beating really fast already and he’s pretty sure he’ll have a heart attack and keel over and die if he tries the sincerity. He knows the words, though, and he whispers along, and he’s definitely on the verge of hyperventilating. He hopes Dave doesn’t notice, but Dave’s eyes are fucking piercing. Also John’s hands are sweating a lot now, he’s pretty sure they’re gonna start, like, dripping on the concrete soon.

“OH MY FUCKING GOG,” someone screeches behind him, and he jumps.

“What the hell?” Dave says, dropping John’s hands to fumble for his shades.

“Karkat?” John says. His hands feel cold and wet now as the breeze runs over his palms.

“I put up with your talks about feelings,” he says, emerging from the bushes by John’s front porch like some kind of wrathful forest creature with delusions of grandeur and John is so distracted by the leaves stuck on Karkat’s horns that he doesn’t even tease Dave about his frantic search for his coolkid sunglasses.

“Did you stick those leaves on your head on purpose?” John says.

“Psh. What? Um.” Karkat sputters, attempting to tear them off, but mostly he just succeeds in ruffling his hair until it sticks up in a little tufts. “What I’m trying to say, I’ve fucking put up with your feelings. All your coolkid pain and shit, that’s fine. I can take that. It made me want to get fucking sick to my muscular food digester, but whatever. I can take your human ‘country music’ and your shitty attempts at using irony to disguise the fact that you want to squish your faces together in extremely sloppy makeouts so much that it’s fucking rotted whatever shit you ever had in your heads. I can handle all the shit! I can handle when you scream the lyrics of your human ‘country music—‘”

“Dude, seriously, stop with the airquotes. We get it.” Dave says.

Karkat ignores him. “I can handle when you talk in the most atrocious fucking accent I have ever heard, okay. But I can’t fucking handle you two idiots whispering lyrics that include ‘hey, pretty girl, wanna take you home, my momma’s gonna love you’ in a completely fucking unironic way. Like, seriously, I know that bringing your human lususes into any kind of romantic relationship it something of a rite in your relationships, as you can see from the movie in which Troll Ben Stiller—“

“Oh my god,” Dave’s hunched over the porch, trying not to laugh. His sunglasses are crooked still and his hair is sticking out over one ear. “You’re serious here. You’re actually serious.”

“Listen here, coolkid,” Karkat begins, putting his hands on his hips and clearly gearing up for a rant of epic proportions.

“Um. Karkat,” John says, in an attempt to head the rant off. “Why were you hiding in my bushes?”

Karkat’s won’t meet John’s eyes, but for a second his gaze flicks to the window above the bushes, which is open. Beyond sits something circular and glazed white and pink, and now that he’s not surrounded by the smell of Dave (apple juice, sweat, something else), the faint and noxious aroma drifts by.

Unmistakable.

BETTY CROCKER.

“Bluh!” John wrinkles his nose. “You were hiding in our bushes to steal a shitty Betty Crocker cake?”

“Our bushes?” Dave snickers.

“Dude, take it. I don’t want it—“ John starts, but it’s too late. Dave runs after Karkat, who screeches and takes off down John’s driveway.

He’s no match for Dave’s speed (it probably helps that Dave has at least a foot on Karkat and legs that are like three million times longer), and then they the two of them are wrestling on the grass, and John’s still on the porch and he can’t move from laughing and he’s still groggy with heat.

“I’ve avenged you!” Dave calls, sitting on Karkat’s chest, voice far away from across the lawn. Karkat grabs him and flips him over, trying to pluck off Dave’s shades while Dave calls for John to help him.

“I will!” John calls, and grabs his hammer, hidden behind the harlequin statue.

Karkat pales and grabs Dave, trying to use him as a human shield.

“This is not fucking fair Egbert and you know it!” He blusters.

It’s actually a foam replica created for pranking purposes, but what Karkat doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?

“LEEDLE LEEDLE LEEDLE LEE!” John yells as his warcry (Spongebob hell fucking yes). Karkat starts backing down the driveway hollering about how Terezi will lock John up if he uses that hammer I SWEAR TO GOG and the music blares and the sun’s sharp on John’s neck and everything is pretty much perfect.