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You feel like you’ve been waiting for this moment your entire life. The fact that it’s happening, it’s finally happening, right here and right now, doesn’t seem real. This has all been sweeps in the making, but it still feels like a fantasy. It’s way too good to be true.
You’ve been putting that stupid human idiom of pinching yourself to practice, and all you’ve managed to accomplish so far is giving yourself a bruise on your arm. It does nothing to dissuade your feelings of disbelief.
You’re staring up at the ceiling and contemplating how this could be happening to you of all people when the door creaks open. You don’t bother checking to see who.
“Karkat, what are you doing on the floor?” Kanaya is standing over you and blocking your view. She nudges you in the side with her foot. “Get up. You’re going to wrinkle your suit.”
“Fuck my suit.” You grumble as you stand up. “I didn’t want to wear it in the first place. It’s uncomfortable and hot and it’s way too fucking formal for my taste.”
She fusses with your jacket to make sure you didn’t wreck it by laying on the floor like a dumbass. “It’s a formal event.”
“I’d rather be wearing sweatpants.”
“Of course you would.” She rolls her eyes. “And Dave would, too. But we all had a discussion about that awhile ago and agreed that as prominent political figures at an extremely important formal event that it would be in everyone’s best interest if we all looked presentable.” Kanaya pauses and brushes something off your shoulder before smiling at you. “The happy couple especially.”
The happy couple.
Holy shit, this is really happening. You’re really doing this. Holy motherfucking shit.
“Besides, Rose and I worked hard tailoring these suits specifically to both of your tastes as an early wedding present. We spent a lot of time and effort on those.” She continues. “The least you could do is wear them.”
You feel completely dazed. “Oh my god.”
“What?” Kanaya asks, she looks concerned. “Is the suit really that bad?”
You shake your head. “It’s not that. Kanaya, I’m getting married.”
“I know.” She breaks out in a grin. “And I’m so happy for you!”
“Thanks.” You still can’t believe this, you’re so happy you could die.
“But before you can do that,” Kanaya takes your hand in hers, “we have to fix your hair first.”
“Why?” You ask defensively as she leads you over to a chair. “What the fuck’s wrong with my hair?”
“The same thing that’s usually wrong with it. You have an awful case of bed head and there’s no way I’m letting a friend of mine get anywhere near such an important event looking like this.” She sits you down in front of a mirror and starts combing her fingers through the knots in your hair. “When’s the last time you brushed this?”
“Awhile. I don’t remember the last time I did.” You admit. “Dave and I had a bet going to see who could go the longest without doing any personal hygiene.”
“Karkat, that’s gross.” Through the mirror, you can see Kanaya make a face as she removes her hands from your hair.
“The important thing is that I won.”
“That’s even worse.” She shakes her head. “I wish I’d known that sooner, I would have forced you into an ablution trap. Now there’s no time for that.”
“Duh. Why the fuck do you think I waited so long to tell you?” You turn around in your chair and watch her wipe her hands off on a rag. “I have to keep my winning streak going.”
“You’re disgusting.” She sighs, shaking her head. “Turn back around, I can’t brush your hair with you facing me.”
You turn back around, and Kanaya starts pulling at your hair with a brush. It’s painful and the amount of force she’s using is enough to throw your whole head back. You want to scream, but you manage to keep yourself confined to hissing between clenched teeth.
“This wouldn’t hurt so much if you’d bothered to brush it.”
“Don’t lecture me, Kanaya.” The brush rips a chunk of your hair out. Your eyes sting. “Ow! Shit!”
“Clearly someone has to lecture you.”
Kanaya continues brushing your hair, it would be nice if it didn’t hurt so goddamn much. By the time she’s done with the brush your head is throbbing and you feel like half your hair has been torn out of your scalp, which it probably has.
She goes back to running her fingers gently through your hair. It’s so much more pleasant than that fucking demon brush that just took blood straight from your head as a sacrifice to whatever shitty excuse for a deity a plastic brush gave tribute to.
“You’re being uncharacteristically quiet, Karkat.” She says. “Are you nervous?”
“A little.” You admit. “I don’t know why, though. We’ve been preparing for this for nearly half a fucking sweep, everything’s been all figured out and taken care of already, there’s nothing for me to worry about. Everything’s fine, I know that, but I’m still freaking out about it.”
Kanaya nods. “I had similar feelings when I was getting married. I confessed them to Rose before the ceremony and she told me that it’s a completely normal reaction that humans experience all the time during events like these.”
“Really?” How the fuck can having your stomach twisted into knots be considered a normal reaction?
“Yes. It was such a common thing they even had a name for it.” Her fingers pause, one of them tapping against one of your horns as she searches her memory. “I believe she said cold feet.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” You look down at your feet, which are far from cold.
“Nothing, it’s just what they call it.” Kanaya shrugs. “The point I was trying to make is that it’s completely natural to feel nervous about this kind of thing. The important thing to remember is that it’ll pass and you shouldn’t let it effect your judgment too much. Unless of course, you think this is more than just a bad case of nerves? Are you having doubts about this, Karkat? It’s okay if you are, I’m sure everyone would understand if you want to postpone until you feel more confident in your decision to get married.”
You try to shake your head, but she holds it still so you can’t move it. “No, you’re right, I think. I’m just being an anxious shit. I love Dave, and there’s nothing I want more than to spend the rest of my life with him. If that means performing some weird as hell human ritual to confirm my intentions with him, then fuck yes, I’m going to do it. I’m not going to let anything get in my way with this, not even my idiot douchebrained self.”
“It’s good that you’re so set on doing this, Karkat.” She laughs. “And that you’re so impassioned about getting married, but was the verbal self flagellation really necessary?”
Kanaya removes her hands from your hair, and you’re free to move your head again. You take the moment to check yourself out in the mirror. For once, you don’t look like an old vomit stain. “Someone has to do it, Kanaya.”
You can tell she wants to argue with you about that, but she holds back. “I think I’ve done all I can for your hair. Are you ready to go or was there something else you needed to do?”
“No, I think this is it.” You say, shaking your head. You pull at your sleeves a bit, you’re more excited than nervous at this point, but either way you still feel fidgety and a little uncomfortable in this getup. You take a deep breath to try to calm yourself down. “Let’s go.”
She offers you her arm, and you take it. You have a feeling that once you step out of this block, things are going to feel very real very fast, and you’re going to need someone else here to keep you going.
“How do you think Dave is doing?” Kanaya wonders.
You snort. “Probably a hell of a lot better than me.”
“Dave, calm down,” Rose says, crossing her arms over her chest, “you’re going to wear a hole into the floor.”
“What?” You’ve been pacing and running your hands through your hair for the past half hour. You hadn’t even noticed this was a thing you were doing until Rose walked in and pointed it out. Now you’re trying to make yourself stop moving. Your hands are still in your hair. “What the fuck are you doing in here, Rose?”
“Coming to get you,” she replies as she strolls out of the doorway and into the room, “it’s customary for the groom to be present at his own wedding, isn’t it?”
Groom. That’s you. You’re getting married. Holy shit.
Out of all the things you thought you would be doing in the future, holy matrimony hadn’t even crossed your mind long enough to consider it. There was a lot of other shit you had your mind set on doing, music, photography, comics, movies, archeology, and whatever other thing struck you as cool at the moment. Marriage was nowhere in that equation.
Things change, goals and future plans tend to do that as a person gets older. They definitely change after your entire fucking planet gets destroyed and you’re forced to fight for your life in a multi-universal fucked up game. At that point, your only plan for the future was to survive so you could fucking have a future.
Then you went god tier and spent time on the meteor. There you got to know Karkat, and you got to know yourself, and during all that coming of age self discovery bullshit you realized you really liked Karkat, more than you’d ever thought you could like anyone. Like quickly gave way to love, and soon you found your plans changing again to include him.
Now here you are, in the place where you never thought you’d be before the game. You’re about to get married. To a guy. A great guy, an amazing guy, a guy who fucking loves you more than anything and-
fuck, you’re so lucky to have a boyfriend like Karkat.
No, fiance. You keep switching back to boyfriend, he’s your fiance now, he’s been your fiance for over a year now.
And today he’s going to stop being your fiance and start being your husband. Yet another word you’ll probably stumble all over for a year before you get it down.
But that’s alright. After today you’ll have all the time in the world to get it right.
Mother of fuck, you’re so excited you feel like your heart could explode and you could keel over right here and now.
“Hello? Dave?” Rose waves a hand in front of your face.
“What?”
“You were zoning out. Did you hear a word I said?”
“Were you talking?”
“Yes, Dave, I was.” She sighs. “You’re acting strange. I’ve been standing here for two minutes and you haven’t said anything to me besides what.”
“So? Maybe I’m just saving it all for when I get up front. There’s nothing weird about that.”
“Yes, if this were a normal person we were talking about and not Dave “motormouth” Strider.”
“I’m offended.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Not by the nickname, but I am offended by how accurate that nickname is. You better not spread that shit, Rose. I don’t need you to ruin my fucking nuptials with everyone calling me motormouth. Can you imagine that shit? I get up there and we both say our vows and it’s all beautiful as shit, everybody’s tearing up like a bunch of weepy saps who just had to chop thirty pounds of raw onion with nothing but their bare hands. Everything’s amazing and as perfect as a cliche dream wedding should be, and then the fucking…guy…the ordained dude who’s legally allowed to marry us or whatever, he turns to me and he says “Do you, Motormouth Strider, take this weird alien crab to be your lawfully wedded best dudebro for all time?” And no one is going to take that shit seriously, Rose, no one, not a single person. Everybody’s just gonna be sitting there, laughing their asses off and pissing their pants because suddenly this wedding is the most hilarious thing that’s happened since Earth C was conceived. All that because you somehow convinced him that my name’s Motormouth. Rose, what the fuck, why would you do that? On today of all days? What the fuck?”
“Okay, so clearly rambling is still a thing you’re capable of doing.” Rose says. “I suppose the real indicator of you acting stranger than usual is the fact that your hands are still in your hair.”
She reaches up and yanks at your hands, a couple strands of your hair comes out with it. Apparently you’d had a death grip on the shit. Ow.
“Aside from tearing out your hair,” she continues, looking down at your hands “is there anything else you needed to do before we go?”
You brush the loose strands of hair off of your hands and shake your head in an attempt to fix whatever damage you’d inflicted to it.
“No, we should probably be getting a move on.” You reply, heading towards the door. “Gotta get this show on the road. Can’t keep everybody waiting.”
“That’s true. But before that, one last thing.” She walks over to you and takes your tie in her hands. “Who the hell taught you how to tie this thing?”
“Self taught.”
“Well you taught yourself how to tie a loose piece of shit, Dave.” She unknots it and ties it again tight against your throat faster than you can say fuck, which is pretty damn fast. “There, that’s better. We can go now.”
You look down at your tie and smooth it out unnecessarily. “Who the fuck taught you how to tie this shit?”
She’s walking out the door. “I’m self taught.”
You follow her out of the room and down the stairs. Everything outside of your room is so heavily decorated with wedding shit that you can barely recognize it as your own house anymore. Not that you mind all that much, it’s actually really fucking cool, especially considering all the decorating was happening while you and Karkat were getting ready, so you haven’t seen any of it like this before. Lace, ribbons, flowers, all that kind of stuff is strewn around everywhere. It’s beautiful, really. You think you would appreciate it more if the whole ceremony was taking place inside as opposed to the fuckall nothing that was actually happening in there. Everything’s actually going down in your backyard.
You push open the back door only to find that the backyard is even more extravagantly decorated than your house, and you were apparently the last one to know. Everyone’s already beat you outside, they’re all standing around talking and shit while you’re just trying to take this all in while blocking the door. Jade waves when she sees you, and you give her a nod in return. Everybody stops what they’re doing and turns to look at you now. You don’t attempt to mingle at all and continue to stand here, unmoving. You don’t think you could talk to anyone even if you wanted to right now. Your tongue feels like it’s tied up in knots.
This is it. You’re really doing this, man. You’re making this happen.
You’re getting married today. Holy shit. Stop the presses, Dave Strider is getting fucking hitched, bitch.
You take a deep breath and start walking towards the big, flowery arch in the middle of your yard. (You have no fucking idea how anyone managed to make that in the time you were upstairs. Your guess is it was probably the combined efforts of Roxy and the green thumbed space player brigade.) Your movement was apparently the cue for everybody else that you’re finally getting this whole shebang started. Everybody starts scrambling to get to their seats.
You make it to the arch where Rose and the Mayor are both waiting for you. You still can’t believe you got him to drop his mayoral duties for the day to officiate your wedding. Just that makes this even better than any wedding you could imagine.
“Thanks for doing this, Mayor.” You give him a fist bump when you reach him. “This really means a lot to us.”
He waves your thanks away like this is nothing. Fuck, what a great guy.
Rose nudges you in the arm. You give her a look, and she points you towards the back door. Karkat’s coming. You take another deep breath.
You’ve had your vows perfectly memorized for over a week now, but you still feel the need to run through them in your head one last time. You don’t want to mess this up.
The door opens. Your heart is pounding in your chest.
There he is.
You were still a bundle of nerves up until the moment you saw Dave. You saw him standing there, waiting for you, and suddenly everything made sense.
You’ve never felt so ready for anything in your life.
The music starts playing as soon as you step onto the grass. John offered to play the piano as a wedding present, some traditional human song called The Wedding March, which was a bullshit name because apparently you’re not supposed to march, what the fuck kind of fucked up misnomer is that?
You’re still hanging on to Kanaya’s arm as you walk, you’re clinging to her a little tighter than you should. You can’t help it, you need to be stuck to her so keep from embarrassing yourself by fucking running down the aisle over to him.
Fuck, if the urge isn’t strong, though.
Your gaze hasn’t left Dave for a second since you got out here. He looks amazing. You can’t take your eyes off of him.
Well, he looks like his usual self, only wearing a suit and smiling like an idiot, much like you assume you’re probably doing. The real difference is he’s not wearing his shades for once. So you can see it, you can see how happy he is, and his smile is so soft and genuine that it lights up his whole face. It’s so much different than the kid with the seemingly permanent poker face you met on the meteor, and so much better. You’ve both grown so much since then, and seeing all that hard work and effort you both put in together shown so effortlessly on Dave’s face like that is enough to make you want to cry.
He waves at you. Holy fuck.
“Kanaya, did you see that?” You’re trying your best not to laugh, but it’s hard. It’s so fucking hard.
She chuckles, and it makes your struggle all that much harder. “Yes, I did.”
“He just waved at me!” You continue. You hope nobody else can hear you because you’re close to losing it. “What a fucking dweeb!”
“I don’t know what you’re laughing about, Karkat.” She replies. “You’re marrying that dweeb.”
“I know,” you wipe a tear away, “I’m so happy.”
You meet Dave at the altar and take your place beside him. You finally release your death grip on Kanaya’s arm, and she stands at your right. You glance over at Dave, you want to take his hand in yours, but you don’t know if that’s something you’re allowed to do just yet.
Dave takes your hand and squeezes it.
The majority of the ceremony is lost on you. It doesn’t really matter, you were told during rehearsal that the only parts you really needed to pay attention to was the end, where you and Dave exchanged rings and vows and I do’s.
Even though it feels like it takes forever, the moment comes sooner than anticipated. You’re supposed to say your vows now. You turn so you’re facing Dave and take both of his hands.
“Dave,” your blood pusher is beating so fast, your chest hurts, “I love you, I love you so fucking much. I just wanted to start this off by saying that, even though I’m going to be doing that a lot during this. I know I say that all the time, but I can never say that enough. Dave, before I met you, I…wasn’t okay with who I was, I won’t sugarcoat it, I despised myself. Friendship, love, support, none of that was meant for someone like me, it wasn’t anything I felt I deserved. But then I met you, and you gave me all of that. You’re my best friend, my love, and my anchor. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted and all the things I never knew I needed. I like myself, all of myself, a lot more now. I’m more comfortable with who I am, and that’s all because of you, Dave. You liked me, all of me, and that made me realize that I don’t have to change who I am to please anybody else. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me, for being my friend and loving me and helping me grow as a person and learn to love myself, too. I can only hope I’ve been able to do even a fraction of the same thing for you. I love you.”
You’re clutching at Dave’s hands as hard as you can in an attempt to keep yourself from crying. Your vision is completely blurred, and despite your best efforts a few strays slip down your cheeks.
It’s okay, though, because once you manage to blink back the excess tears you can see that Dave’s eyes are glistening, too.
“Karkat,” Dave stops and takes a deep breath, “you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. I’ve had some of the best times of my life on that meteor with you. I don’t think I’d ever experienced real, honest to god fun until I met you. Because, Karkat, you made that feel easy. Being with you, being open and honest and real with you, feels like the simplest thing in the world. I feel like for the first time in my life, I can be emotionally open and vulnerable, because you make me feel safe. To me, Karkat, you’re the safest place in the entire universe. I feel so lucky to have you in my life. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for you. You’ve helped me grow in ways I’d never even imagined possible, and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life growing with you. I love you, Karkat, I love you more than I even have the words to describe.”
You’re openly bawling now. You don’t think you could stop crying even if you tried. It’s still fine, it’s your wedding you’ll fucking cry like a wriggler in front of all of your friends if you want to and they can all just sit there and deal with it. Plus Dave is sniffling, too, so it’s not like you’re alone on this.
“Dave?”
He takes his hand back to scrub at his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Fuck,” you’re sobbing so hard you can barely speak, “I love you so much.”
“I love you too, you fucking sap.” Dave grabs you and wraps you in a hug, and now you’re both clinging to each other and crying.
Rose taps Dave on the shoulder, and he pulls away from you momentarily. “He said you could kiss now.”
“Oh, fuck. Yeah, let’s do that.” Dave’s hands move so he’s cupping your face in his hands. You keep yours where they are and pull him closer.
You kiss Dave, and it’s the most fantastic thing in the world.
You slipped Karkat the old church tongue for your first kiss as a married couple.
Fuck, you’re a married couple now. That’s going to take some getting used to. It’s a good thing you have literally forever.
You’re cupping Karkat’s face in your hands, and it’s wet and slightly sticky from all the tears. You’ve never made anybody so happy that they cried before. Shit, you’ve never been so happy that you’ve cried before. You look forward to making someone so important to you this happy in the years to come. For now you’re just going to savor this moment as long as you can.
Karkat’s mouth tastes like cherries and salt. It’s a weird combination, but you love it all the same.
Eventually you break apart. As much as you love making out with your boyfr-
fian-
husband, you gotta remember that you have an audience this time. So, regretfully, you separate your lips from his. Before you can completely pull away, he pulls you back to him and plants a kiss on your nose.
What a dork.
You love him.
You only just noticed that everybody’s clapping and cheering for you and Karkat, which is both really amazing and also embarrassing. You just kissed Karkat in front of everybody you know and got applauded for it.
Karkat pokes you in the arm.
“What?”
“We forgot to exchange rings.” He holds up the little gold circle for you to see.
“Oh shit, I guess we did.” You reply. “Oh well, we can do this shit out of order. Who the hell cares?”
You take Karkat’s hand and slip the ring on it. He does the same for you. You stand there for a moment, just admiring how it looks on your finger. The weight feels foreign, but not uncomfortable. You’re not much of a jewelry type, but you like this a lot. You can’t wait to get used to it on your hand.
You and Karkat walk back, hand in hand, all the way to your back door. The rest of the festivities will be taking place inside for now.
On the counter in your kitchen is a cake that looks big enough to feed a small country if that country were made up of famished giants who were hopelessly addicted to baked goods. Jane told you she’d made it from scratch herself (with some help from her dad and her two girlfriends, but mostly herself).
All the guests file in after you, and you and Karkat make quick work of cutting the cake and smearing it everywhere on your faces except for your mouths.
“That’s not what you’re supposed to do with it…” Jane cringes while you continue to rub cake and frosting into Karkat’s hair.
“Aw, leave them alone, Janey! They’re having fun.” Roxy swats her on the arm. “Besides, there’s still plenty left for the rest of us to enjoy.”
She takes a fistful in each hand and smashes it right into both Jane and Calliope’s faces. Jane looks completely appalled to have her own hard work on her face. Calliope doesn’t seem to share that thought and giggles at the unexpected hit.
“Hey,” you protest, “no one gets to throw cake in each other’s faces until they’ve tied the proverbial knot! That’s the whole point of this shit, to be legally allowed to throw cake at each other. I can’t believe you would do this to me, Roxy, on this, the eve of my own wedding, and rub my cake all over your girlfriend’s beautiful faces. How dare you.”
“Relax, Dave.” She laughs as she runs a finger through the frosting on both girl’s faces. “We’ll get ourselves all tangled up in our own marriage knots soon. All in due time.”
Roxy winks and gets her eye slathered in frosting by Jane while it’s still closed.
Kanaya taps you on the shoulder, and you’re drawn away from the trio’s antics. “Does that mean we have permission to cake smear?”
“Fuck yeah, go ahead.” You scoop up some and put it in her hand. “There you go, go nuts.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
Kanaya disappears with her handful of cake to go find your sister, and you decide it’s probably a good idea to actually try to eat this thing.
You gorge on cake and literally nothing else until you practically can’t move, and everyone else follows your lead. After you eat enough that you don’t think you’d be capable of moving without the possibility of getting sick, you retire to the living room where all of the furniture’s been moved aside as you’d requested so there’s more room to dance. Because it’s not exactly a party if you don’t feel at least a little bit ill at some point.
At first you remain serious with your choice in music and pick a couple cliche romantic songs to slow dance with Karkat to. The first two were really nice and intimate, and pretty much exactly what you would expect from a happily married couple deep in the throes of love for each other.
Then you remembered that you only knew three romantic songs, and the third one was Never Gonna Give You Up. After a short debate with yourself, you decided that rickrolling your husband on your wedding night was probably not the best idea. Maybe Valentine’s Day. So after that you let everybody else pick.
You discover quickly that all of your friends have very different, but equally awful, taste in music. This struck a fight between everyone on what shit to play, a fight which you and Karkat stayed the hell away from.
There was a lot of yelling, name calling, and a surprising amount of cake throwing, but eventually everyone (except John, who still insisted on playing What’s New Pussycat for three hours straight instead) settled on just pressing shuffle on one of your old dance mixes.
You all dance for a couple hours, and it’s all really bad because, as expected from people who don’t know shit about dance music, none of them can dance. They try, though, and really that’s all that matters. You bump elbows and knees and hips with so many people you can’t even tell if you’re dancing well at this point. Karkat definitely isn’t, but he looks like he’s having fun, so you’ll make fun of his lack of moves later.
Even that fades to nothing soon, and everyone ends up sitting around in your living room just talking like you do on every normal day. You’re pretty tired out from everything that’s happened today, so the mellow atmosphere is nice. You start playing Bust A Move on a loop for background noise in case anyone feels the urge to start dancing again. No one does.
You’re having a complicated, in depth discussion with Dirk about anime (if he’s never seen one, why does he wear pointy anime shades? What the fuck?) when a hand claps you on the shoulder. You jump and turn to see Karkat. He looks happy, but mostly exhausted. There’s still cake in his hair.
“I’m going to bed.” He says. “I’m too tired to hold a decent conversation with anyone or pretend to give half a shit about what their saying. You can keep the party going if you want to, though.”
He shuffles out of the room, and you can hear him climbing up the stairs. You’re pretty tired yourself, and you don’t feel like you should have Karkat going to sleep alone tonight. As much as you love your friends, you feel like it’s time for them to leave.
You get everybody’s attention by turning up the music for a second and then turning it off completely. You clear your throat and try to say this as politely as you can. “Hey, first I wanna say thanks for coming and celebrating with us tonight, it’s been amazing. Y’all are the best friends a guy could ask for. It’s been fun, but honestly I’m fucking beat and Karkat and I are heading out bright and disgustingly early tomorrow, so I think I’m gonna go hit the sack. Thank you, good night, gift bags are by the door and I’ll be seeing you in about a week.”
You give a quick peace sign and leave everybody to figure out what they’re going to do for the rest of the night by themselves. You don’t have the time to shepherd them all out yourself. You take the stairs two at a time and try to loosen the knot Rose tied for you. You have it most of the way done by the time you make it into your room.
Karkat sits up, he’s already in bed. “Hey.”
“Yo.” You get your tie off all by yourself and start to unbutton your shirt in the dark.
He smirks at you. “I hope you’re not expecting to get any tonight, because if so you’re going to be severely disappointed.”
“No.” You shake your head. “I wasn’t really expecting getting busy tonight.” You step out of your pants and shimmy into bed next to him. “May as well save it up for the honeymoon tomorrow, you know?”
“Yeah.” Karkat nods, scooting closer to you. He’s really warm. “Tomorrow.”
Your feet are freezing, and you rub them against his legs. He doesn’t seem to mind. “Hey, Karkat.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re married.”
“Fuck yeah, we are.” He’s silent for awhile, and for a moment you swear he’s fallen asleep. “Do you want to hold hands as a married couple?”
“You have some weird kinks, dude, but as your husband, I won’t judge.” You reply, sliding your hand into his over the covers. “Hell yeah, I’ll hold your hand."
He snorts. “You’re a weirdo.”
“Takes one to know one.”
Karkat interlocks his fingers with yours. He’s still wearing the ring. You doubt he’ll ever take it off. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
You fall asleep quickly, your husband’s hand held tightly in yours.