I have no idea where this is going. [Bunch of ficbits]
urggggh no idea where these are going!
Dave is a coolkid. He has immaculate, no, perfect control over his face, his hands and all such bodily twitches that might have given away his complete and utter horror-embarrassment when Karkat had accosted him in the middle of the damn (library? Middleship? Communal area of the asteroid?) - the damn whatever with some trashy troll romance novel.
No wait.
Some trashy troll multisexual romance novel.
“What is that huge beefcake troll even doing…is he grinding against the little dudes shoulder what is even going on - why the fuck is he nude.”
Karkat’s face goes an amusing shade of muted red and on the rage-o-meter Dave estimates a four and rising rapidly. He manages to keep his sarcastic mode totally on and raging for the entirety of the conversation - and then Rose (his beautiful ectobiological sibling he will never make a remark about her and Kanaya again!) (lies) steals the book and Karkat is derailed and he uses the two point four seconds of silence to abscond the fuck out of this un-named place of despair.
Dave totally-not-at-all-ruffled the coolkid is sitting in what passes for a kitchen with a now cold cup of coffee-substitute with a distinctive and disgusting oily sheen on top when he hears a familiar cackle and one Terezi Pyrope pins him from behind, sandpaper hands almost as abrasive as the black claws attached to them (he’s got a bunch of scratchmarks already actually) and he Does. Not. Jump.
It suddenly occurs to him it’s been three hundred and forty-seven seconds which is long enough to what happened to reach Terezi and more than long enough for the coffee to congeal into gloop that he now won’t be able to drink and he is not going back to the coffee-maker.
“So I hear Karkles tried to educate you in areas of cultural sensitivity.”
Dave groans. Somewhere in between there feeble attempts at not-quite-dating and not-quite-baiting (Karkat) cultural sensitivity has sort-of-maybe started to translate to get your pink-skinned face over here so I can bitekiss the fuck out of it and then you have to have a cold shower and I lean back all teal-flushed and abscond too.
There is something about the smell of her skin that is stupidly fucking irresistible. Dave wonders if it’s like some shitty venus fly trap thing to lure humans in. It works really well and she’s bitekissing his face again all teeth and tongue and he isn’t whimpering coolkids don’t whimper even when one wiry future legislacerator is pressing up against you all hard angles and hot skin and nggrgh. It’s not a gasp when he pulls back but his cheeks may possibly be stained a little candy-red.
Terezi cackles again.
“You’re as red as roses, Daaaaave.”
She says his name like she’s tasting the damn thing (she actually might be. Dave has learned many things about Terezi Pyrope; primarily that her tongue is very talented). Oh hell that wasn’t a good thought abscond, abscond!
They might be half-dating but neither of them were taking it any further that the makeout stage and by the way Dave’s pants were feeling uncomfortably tight if they kept kissing much longer it was going to go that way.
Terezi leans in and flicks her tongue to catch a bead of blood from Dave’s lip. Troll teeth are sharp.
“Rez..”
Dave’s voice is closer to a groan.
She cackles.
“You should get Karkat to read you that book.”
---
Back in his own room in this godforsaken asteroid, slightly scabby white towel wrapped round his waist and shivering from the ice-cold droplets on his skin, Dave wonders exactly what she meant. They’ve never mentioned Karkat other than off-the-cuff teasing. Never anything…serious. And yeah he’s like, an albino coolkid of the body but ‘Rez is a trollian coolkid of the mind - nothing she says is ever without at least three sublevels of plotting.
He flops on his bed knowing if he doesn’t get up with four hundred and seventy eight seconds the damp will still be there when he comes to sleep on it and it’ll be damn uncomfortable.
He kind of plans to lie there anyway until he hears some kind of squawking outside his door and one Karkat Vantas is shoved through the entry door and he could almost swear he sees Terezi except Karkat and her are avoiding the shit out of each other - one of them absconds as soon as they’re in the vicinity of the other.
It takes him four point three seconds to realise he’s still naked with only a ragged towel to protect himself. Unfortunately it also takes him two point six seconds to stand up and grab his shades because the list of those who get to see him without is pretty damn small and Karkat is definitely not on them and by this time he has also flashed plenty of pale skin at said troll.
It takes six point eight-two-four-nine seconds after the second realization for either of them to say anything and then Karkat scowls.
“Get some damn clothes on. Your pink skin is repulsive.”
Dave grabs for the reprieve like a horrorterror for fresh meat.
“Well if you knocked - it’s quite simply really even you could get it, then perhaps you wouldn’t have to see it.”
His flesh is closer to white anyway but this is not really a discussion about colours. Dave grabs for whatever clothes he can find, and by this time (fourteen point three) Karkat has pre-emptively turned his back.
He gets dressed in a remarkably quick nine point six, probably helped by the pajama-like clothes of his god tier outfit. The lack of alchimeter in this shitty asteroid means they’re stuck to what was there, and what they could make with their domains. Not for the first time, dave wished someone had power over clothes so he could wear anything else than the same god-tier outfit again and again even if they’re magical and don’t seem to dirty.
Karkat makes a grumbling noise.
“Are you done yet or not?”
Actually dave was kind of debating whether he could abscond now Karkat’s back was turned but he speaks instead in a flat deadpan.
“Fear not oh little trollflower, your delicate eyes will not be ravaged by my skin; it is away.”
When Karkat turns back round he is looking distinctly uncomfortable.
“Lalonde gave me a translation of the book.”
Oh god Rose my horrorterror ectobiological sibling Dave thinks I am going to poison Kanaya’s lipstick or something because you did not just do that.
“Only Terezi spilt…something on it after Lalonde made me promise to give it to you.”
Karkat’s expression , Dave observes, is exactly the one he would be wearing if he were not a coolkid and controlling his face. There is no way it wasn’t deliberate.
“So ask her for another one.”
This is a last, feeble prayer. Dave knows that if Terezi has orchestrated this there is no way Karkat will be able to get one. It’s interesting how Karkat’s face is turning red though.
“She’s with Kanaya.”
He eventually bites out and Dave’s face is totally not red either because OH that is why he can’t get another one because Rose is indisposed and Kanaya is -
Ogodbadthought. Be the coolkid. Be the coolkid.
The coolkid opens his mouth to make a sarcastic comment but whatever thing has possessed karkat to be polite finally buggers off.
“Look, just sit your fucking ass down and let me read you the damn book because neither of us will get any kind of mothergrubbing peace until I do, okay?”
A seven on the rage-o-meter and more clawmarks in his shirt. Absently dave notices that Karkat’s hands are the same size as Terezi’s. He sits at one end of the bed and Karkat sits at the other like some kind of frozen doll, decaptchaloguing the book with a scowl on his face and flipping to a page that’s been bookmarked with a tiny staff.
“Ragh! The lowblood spat his rusty blood across the floor, orange-yellow spots spattering cross blue matting. His eyes, heavy with calignous feeling met those across the room. His long-haired lover, stalking forward with all the heavy-footed grace of a hunter, clothes long disregarded by the same claws that had left bloody imprints in his chest leading down to his-“
Karkat pauses, his face notching up another couple of degrees as he looks at Dave’s face which is carved. Out. Of. Ice.
“Is this troll porn?”
The deadpan voice of one coolkid cuts into the silence.
Karkat scowls.
“Troll porn? You are degrading this cultural encyclopedia to our situation into troll porn? You are the most insensitive-“
Karkat pauses when Dave begins to flush. The coolkid has an excuse okay; he thinks that the words cultural and sensitivity are hardwired to his cock.
“Are you - what”
Dave makes a strangled noise that may or may not have been a sarcastic comeback only one Karkat Vantas dickwad extroadinare is leaning in really, really close.
“Are you wearing scent or something you vain fuck? It smells- fuck it smells”
Karkat is practically on top of him his claws are in his chest and it hurts shit but Dave is totally okay with this scenting thing because Karkat smells just like Terezi. Well, no. He smells different but whatever the hell that venus-flytrap thing is he has it in SPADES.
It only occurs to him when Karkat pulls back a little that he may have said that outloud and Karkat is eyeing him like Eridan does Vriska when the dreambubbles overlap and then he is kissing him all teeth.
Dave thought Terezi kissed all teeth but then he’d never kissed Karkat Vant-he pulls back with red blood dripping over his lip and his shades must have slipped enough for Karkat to read his expression because
“OH FUCK!”
If he wasn’t otherwise occupied, Dave might have noticed it was an extremely impressive abscond.
--
Dave was pretty sure Karkat hated him before. Now he is dead on certain, even if the whole spadeykiss hadn’t left him with scabs. However, as he looks at the laundry day roster, he half-wonders if someone else doesn’t hate him too.
Because one Dave Strider, one Karkat Vantas and one Terezi Pyrope are doing it together.
He thinks if he wasn’t a coolkid he might cry. But Egbert will pull his stupid kicked-puppy face if Dave skips laundry day again, and only slightly more terribly, Rose will pull his guts out through his nose.
As he’s a coolkid he just slams his head on the roster.
Hard.
--
Dave’s doom comes in the form of white boxers.
--
Everybody’s clothing is in ¬¬¬¬the wash. He’s up at the crack of dawn and is standing in these stupid white boxers that he found clean at the back of the communal closet of things nobody wants, waiting for them to be done.
He kinda hopes they’ll be done before Karkat and Terezi get here, because it is really cold in here and if they get up early too then he is freezing himself for no reason.
With the way his luck is going he almost suspects Vriska’s involvement, because he can hear one stomping troll already. Karkat practically explodes into the room with a number of curses mainly relating to how he can’t find people’s washing and nor could he find any of his clothes and it better be a bloody troll he gets along with on laundry duty.
Coolkid as he is Dave can’t resist a snort.
“Sorry, Karkles, you’re stuck with me.”
He realises this is a bad idea only after he is on the ground with a troll clawing at his very naked chest and Karkat is very naked too and he can almost feel his boxers doing absolutely fuckall to hide his suddenly extremely interested erection.
Traitorous bonebulge. Karkat appears to be sporting something very similar in his black boxers though and Dave spares a Coolkid brain cell to wonder if troll anatomy is not that different after all. However exactly point nine four two three six seconds later he flips Karkat over, sits on the scrawny stomach of one Karkat Vantas, shades abandoned god knows where and says very firmly
“No.”
His dick is practically SCREAMING it’s disapproval and Karkat looks very very close to biting his and oh god he smells amazing and Dave cannot move not a muscle because otherwise he will be rubbing and grinding regardless of Coolkid status fuck
“Terezi…”
Karkat says it and for point three four eight one seconds Dave thinks he’s agreeing with me - as to why to stop until Terezi’s familiar wiry curves press into his back and water is dumped over the two of them.
“Arrgh!”
Dave takes some pleasure in the fact that Karkat’s strangled scream is louder than his own because jesusfuckargggghCOLD!
Drenched in cold water the two pull apart and both of them stare at Pyrope.
She is naked. Very naked. Dave has never understood the term very naked until now, but she is. Next to him Karkat is making some strangled noise and Dave is clinging to the last remnants of his Coolkid persona with all the fervent control he has managed to sum up and trying very, very hard to resist looking at Terezi’s dusky-dark nipples, almost black like her lips and tiny, well-formed and it takes all of his control to resist following the sharp curve of her hip downwards so instead he notices the fact that trolls don’t have bellybuttons.
It’s really hard to not look, and his white boxers, he realises, are see-through when wet. He starts to very slowly move his hand to cover himself, and then has two trolls following the movement like sharp-eyed raptors and Terezi grins, sharp-toothed and smug somehow, stepping forward to grab Dave’s hands and he was sure that wall wasn’t against his back a second ago oh dear god she has Karkat under her arm too.
“Now my candy-blooded boys, you wouldn’t be trying to start without me, would you?”
And all of a sudden, with all the grace of Jade chasing Jaspersprite, Dave realises that this is what Terezi has been plotting for.
Kakashi didn’t bond with people. His daemon reflected that. Wolves weren’t an uncommon sight among the village, even discounting the Inuzuka clan who skewed the bias, and even a large number of civilians had canine companions. They were pack animals, loyal to a fault but they were wild; a predator daemon. Ninja’s without predatory daemons were rare, and even fewer amassed high ranks. Of course there were exceptions - the three Sannin were a particularly humorous example.
Kakashi’s demon was not a wolf, but it was a predator. His father’s daemon had been a wolf. Too loyal to his packmates. His daemon had stayed a snowcat for so long Kakashi thought she’d settled in it. Alone; snowcats were lonely, lonely predators. They only got together to mate and even then nine times out of then they fought. Until Obito died and his daemon had shifted.
He’s pretty sure that somewhere there’s some medical thesis that says lifechanging events can change the form of your daemon. He’s also sure there’s a thesis that says hybrid daemons are the sign of a split soul and that those without daemons are soulless.
Kakashi knows Naruto has a soul because he’s seen people without daemons. They aren’t anything like him; those without daemons are dead - they might be breathing but they’re dead. Naruto is very alive. Defiantly alive, you might say.
His snowlion sits beside him all sleek fur and tufted tail and she turns her head and sighs. Even through her mask (there’s probably another thesis that says daemons can’t wear accessories but in a ninja village that’d get debunked pretty fast.) her expression is readable.
Doesn’t help he’s wearing the same one.
Soulless or not, Kakashi doesn’t want a team. Especially a team with the last Uchiha, the Kyuubi host, and what looks to be a fangirl.
A snow-lion isn’t a pack beast. It’s not one to be totally alone (Obito)(Rin)(Minato-sensei) but it bonds on it’s terms, and it’s terms alone.
And neither of them, daemon or man, wants to bond to a bunch of snot-nosed kids.
His wings have lain limp since he’s returned from Afghanistan. He could lie to himself, say that the gunshot wound caused it, perpetrate the belief that the body and the wingplane are connected when in truth when the gunshot wound happened he flew four miles without the slightest pain in his phantom limbs. That too is somewhat of a misnomer though. They’re completely solid, heavy mass of muscle and bones and his feathers used to be as much as a part of him as people’s fingers.
When he was in boot camp someone plucked a feather out. For luck or for anger or for rebellion John couldn’t say. But instinctively he’d spread his wings, knocked him down and had him in a headlock within ten seconds. It had been the sergeant and John hadn’t let go even seeing that because touching someone’s wings was like touching their soul; you got the briefing at school before puberty and even in the most poverty-stricken areas it was just - you knew! And the sergeant was only saved a broken neck by the fact that John recognised him mid-lunge.
Apparently it had been a test; when he let the anger recede he could feel the sergeant’s dislike for it, but the acceptance of the need for it. John knew why. Many wingers were too attached to them to go into warzones where they could have sensation after sensation. But John had never been the stereotypical one. A doctor, yes - but a soldier too. John’s wings had started off the same colour as all the others - white. Now, as he manhandles them into a brace that means he can travel with the unresponsive mass, he spares a second to watch the ripple of desert camo that marks his primaries.
When they lived on the island, Sora’s daemon changed fluidly from one shape to the next - a chittering squirrel or cawing bird when he was arguing with Riku, a dolphin or seal when they were frolicking in the water, and when they play-fought a lion or wolf cub, wriggling with joy and bouncing around. Riku’s usually took the shape of an eagle or a cat, proud and teasing - in the water it was a pike, silver scales flashing with sharp teeth. Kairi’s daemon was small, always close to her, on a shoulder on in her pocket if it took a rabbit shape - Sora didn’t think he ever saw it leave her person, whether it was a small mouse or a bird - even when she scolded them both it was a tiny monkey, admonishing them with one hand and the other gripping on tightly to Kairi.
On the night everything changed, Sora’s daemon took a shape he had never seen before. It looked at him with ageless eyes from a rabbit that shone like moonlight, and as he reached out to question him he remembered about the island and started running, the rabbit running faster beside him, and for the first time Sora wanted to call his daemon something that wasn’t his name, because Ventus somehow seemed exonarably connected to this shape.
Riku’s was a raven, but it was bigger. Angry. And when he held out his hand to him the raven stared at him with sad eyes and said nothing. The last thing Sora saw before he woke up was the raven shifting into a snake and curling round Riku’s neck.
As he adventured, grew, changed, his daemon shifted still, flicking from shape to shape as easily as it always had. The first time he saw Riku he thought that he still had a snake - only it hissed and flared it’s wings, and he realised it was a tiny palm-size dragon, but that took a back seat to the fact that it had just hissed at him. Sora’s face fell, and his daemon changed from the playful lioncub into an owl with sad eyes.
“Riku?”
“You’ve found new friends now!”
And Sora was dumbstruck because he looked back at Donald and Goofy and then at Riku and couldn’t he see that he didn’t like them? I mean, he liked them but not like that, not like he needed Riku.
Only then there was a heartless and he got distracted and his daemon was needed as a sharp-toothed alligator to rend the metal apart and by the time he looked back Riku was gone.
And there's a whole bunch MORE because I am a horrible thirty-billion files at once kinda guy. :/
Dave is a coolkid. He has immaculate, no, perfect control over his face, his hands and all such bodily twitches that might have given away his complete and utter horror-embarrassment when Karkat had accosted him in the middle of the damn (library? Middleship? Communal area of the asteroid?) - the damn whatever with some trashy troll romance novel.
No wait.
Some trashy troll multisexual romance novel.
“What is that huge beefcake troll even doing…is he grinding against the little dudes shoulder what is even going on - why the fuck is he nude.”
Karkat’s face goes an amusing shade of muted red and on the rage-o-meter Dave estimates a four and rising rapidly. He manages to keep his sarcastic mode totally on and raging for the entirety of the conversation - and then Rose (his beautiful ectobiological sibling he will never make a remark about her and Kanaya again!) (lies) steals the book and Karkat is derailed and he uses the two point four seconds of silence to abscond the fuck out of this un-named place of despair.
Dave totally-not-at-all-ruffled the coolkid is sitting in what passes for a kitchen with a now cold cup of coffee-substitute with a distinctive and disgusting oily sheen on top when he hears a familiar cackle and one Terezi Pyrope pins him from behind, sandpaper hands almost as abrasive as the black claws attached to them (he’s got a bunch of scratchmarks already actually) and he Does. Not. Jump.
It suddenly occurs to him it’s been three hundred and forty-seven seconds which is long enough to what happened to reach Terezi and more than long enough for the coffee to congeal into gloop that he now won’t be able to drink and he is not going back to the coffee-maker.
“So I hear Karkles tried to educate you in areas of cultural sensitivity.”
Dave groans. Somewhere in between there feeble attempts at not-quite-dating and not-quite-baiting (Karkat) cultural sensitivity has sort-of-maybe started to translate to get your pink-skinned face over here so I can bitekiss the fuck out of it and then you have to have a cold shower and I lean back all teal-flushed and abscond too.
There is something about the smell of her skin that is stupidly fucking irresistible. Dave wonders if it’s like some shitty venus fly trap thing to lure humans in. It works really well and she’s bitekissing his face again all teeth and tongue and he isn’t whimpering coolkids don’t whimper even when one wiry future legislacerator is pressing up against you all hard angles and hot skin and nggrgh. It’s not a gasp when he pulls back but his cheeks may possibly be stained a little candy-red.
Terezi cackles again.
“You’re as red as roses, Daaaaave.”
She says his name like she’s tasting the damn thing (she actually might be. Dave has learned many things about Terezi Pyrope; primarily that her tongue is very talented). Oh hell that wasn’t a good thought abscond, abscond!
They might be half-dating but neither of them were taking it any further that the makeout stage and by the way Dave’s pants were feeling uncomfortably tight if they kept kissing much longer it was going to go that way.
Terezi leans in and flicks her tongue to catch a bead of blood from Dave’s lip. Troll teeth are sharp.
“Rez..”
Dave’s voice is closer to a groan.
She cackles.
“You should get Karkat to read you that book.”
---
Back in his own room in this godforsaken asteroid, slightly scabby white towel wrapped round his waist and shivering from the ice-cold droplets on his skin, Dave wonders exactly what she meant. They’ve never mentioned Karkat other than off-the-cuff teasing. Never anything…serious. And yeah he’s like, an albino coolkid of the body but ‘Rez is a trollian coolkid of the mind - nothing she says is ever without at least three sublevels of plotting.
He flops on his bed knowing if he doesn’t get up with four hundred and seventy eight seconds the damp will still be there when he comes to sleep on it and it’ll be damn uncomfortable.
He kind of plans to lie there anyway until he hears some kind of squawking outside his door and one Karkat Vantas is shoved through the entry door and he could almost swear he sees Terezi except Karkat and her are avoiding the shit out of each other - one of them absconds as soon as they’re in the vicinity of the other.
It takes him four point three seconds to realise he’s still naked with only a ragged towel to protect himself. Unfortunately it also takes him two point six seconds to stand up and grab his shades because the list of those who get to see him without is pretty damn small and Karkat is definitely not on them and by this time he has also flashed plenty of pale skin at said troll.
It takes six point eight-two-four-nine seconds after the second realization for either of them to say anything and then Karkat scowls.
“Get some damn clothes on. Your pink skin is repulsive.”
Dave grabs for the reprieve like a horrorterror for fresh meat.
“Well if you knocked - it’s quite simply really even you could get it, then perhaps you wouldn’t have to see it.”
His flesh is closer to white anyway but this is not really a discussion about colours. Dave grabs for whatever clothes he can find, and by this time (fourteen point three) Karkat has pre-emptively turned his back.
He gets dressed in a remarkably quick nine point six, probably helped by the pajama-like clothes of his god tier outfit. The lack of alchimeter in this shitty asteroid means they’re stuck to what was there, and what they could make with their domains. Not for the first time, dave wished someone had power over clothes so he could wear anything else than the same god-tier outfit again and again even if they’re magical and don’t seem to dirty.
Karkat makes a grumbling noise.
“Are you done yet or not?”
Actually dave was kind of debating whether he could abscond now Karkat’s back was turned but he speaks instead in a flat deadpan.
“Fear not oh little trollflower, your delicate eyes will not be ravaged by my skin; it is away.”
When Karkat turns back round he is looking distinctly uncomfortable.
“Lalonde gave me a translation of the book.”
Oh god Rose my horrorterror ectobiological sibling Dave thinks I am going to poison Kanaya’s lipstick or something because you did not just do that.
“Only Terezi spilt…something on it after Lalonde made me promise to give it to you.”
Karkat’s expression , Dave observes, is exactly the one he would be wearing if he were not a coolkid and controlling his face. There is no way it wasn’t deliberate.
“So ask her for another one.”
This is a last, feeble prayer. Dave knows that if Terezi has orchestrated this there is no way Karkat will be able to get one. It’s interesting how Karkat’s face is turning red though.
“She’s with Kanaya.”
He eventually bites out and Dave’s face is totally not red either because OH that is why he can’t get another one because Rose is indisposed and Kanaya is -
Ogodbadthought. Be the coolkid. Be the coolkid.
The coolkid opens his mouth to make a sarcastic comment but whatever thing has possessed karkat to be polite finally buggers off.
“Look, just sit your fucking ass down and let me read you the damn book because neither of us will get any kind of mothergrubbing peace until I do, okay?”
A seven on the rage-o-meter and more clawmarks in his shirt. Absently dave notices that Karkat’s hands are the same size as Terezi’s. He sits at one end of the bed and Karkat sits at the other like some kind of frozen doll, decaptchaloguing the book with a scowl on his face and flipping to a page that’s been bookmarked with a tiny staff.
“Ragh! The lowblood spat his rusty blood across the floor, orange-yellow spots spattering cross blue matting. His eyes, heavy with calignous feeling met those across the room. His long-haired lover, stalking forward with all the heavy-footed grace of a hunter, clothes long disregarded by the same claws that had left bloody imprints in his chest leading down to his-“
Karkat pauses, his face notching up another couple of degrees as he looks at Dave’s face which is carved. Out. Of. Ice.
“Is this troll porn?”
The deadpan voice of one coolkid cuts into the silence.
Karkat scowls.
“Troll porn? You are degrading this cultural encyclopedia to our situation into troll porn? You are the most insensitive-“
Karkat pauses when Dave begins to flush. The coolkid has an excuse okay; he thinks that the words cultural and sensitivity are hardwired to his cock.
“Are you - what”
Dave makes a strangled noise that may or may not have been a sarcastic comeback only one Karkat Vantas dickwad extroadinare is leaning in really, really close.
“Are you wearing scent or something you vain fuck? It smells- fuck it smells”
Karkat is practically on top of him his claws are in his chest and it hurts shit but Dave is totally okay with this scenting thing because Karkat smells just like Terezi. Well, no. He smells different but whatever the hell that venus-flytrap thing is he has it in SPADES.
It only occurs to him when Karkat pulls back a little that he may have said that outloud and Karkat is eyeing him like Eridan does Vriska when the dreambubbles overlap and then he is kissing him all teeth.
Dave thought Terezi kissed all teeth but then he’d never kissed Karkat Vant-he pulls back with red blood dripping over his lip and his shades must have slipped enough for Karkat to read his expression because
“OH FUCK!”
If he wasn’t otherwise occupied, Dave might have noticed it was an extremely impressive abscond.
--
Dave was pretty sure Karkat hated him before. Now he is dead on certain, even if the whole spadeykiss hadn’t left him with scabs. However, as he looks at the laundry day roster, he half-wonders if someone else doesn’t hate him too.
Because one Dave Strider, one Karkat Vantas and one Terezi Pyrope are doing it together.
He thinks if he wasn’t a coolkid he might cry. But Egbert will pull his stupid kicked-puppy face if Dave skips laundry day again, and only slightly more terribly, Rose will pull his guts out through his nose.
As he’s a coolkid he just slams his head on the roster.
Hard.
--
Dave’s doom comes in the form of white boxers.
--
Everybody’s clothing is in ¬¬¬¬the wash. He’s up at the crack of dawn and is standing in these stupid white boxers that he found clean at the back of the communal closet of things nobody wants, waiting for them to be done.
He kinda hopes they’ll be done before Karkat and Terezi get here, because it is really cold in here and if they get up early too then he is freezing himself for no reason.
With the way his luck is going he almost suspects Vriska’s involvement, because he can hear one stomping troll already. Karkat practically explodes into the room with a number of curses mainly relating to how he can’t find people’s washing and nor could he find any of his clothes and it better be a bloody troll he gets along with on laundry duty.
Coolkid as he is Dave can’t resist a snort.
“Sorry, Karkles, you’re stuck with me.”
He realises this is a bad idea only after he is on the ground with a troll clawing at his very naked chest and Karkat is very naked too and he can almost feel his boxers doing absolutely fuckall to hide his suddenly extremely interested erection.
Traitorous bonebulge. Karkat appears to be sporting something very similar in his black boxers though and Dave spares a Coolkid brain cell to wonder if troll anatomy is not that different after all. However exactly point nine four two three six seconds later he flips Karkat over, sits on the scrawny stomach of one Karkat Vantas, shades abandoned god knows where and says very firmly
“No.”
His dick is practically SCREAMING it’s disapproval and Karkat looks very very close to biting his and oh god he smells amazing and Dave cannot move not a muscle because otherwise he will be rubbing and grinding regardless of Coolkid status fuck
“Terezi…”
Karkat says it and for point three four eight one seconds Dave thinks he’s agreeing with me - as to why to stop until Terezi’s familiar wiry curves press into his back and water is dumped over the two of them.
“Arrgh!”
Dave takes some pleasure in the fact that Karkat’s strangled scream is louder than his own because jesusfuckargggghCOLD!
Drenched in cold water the two pull apart and both of them stare at Pyrope.
She is naked. Very naked. Dave has never understood the term very naked until now, but she is. Next to him Karkat is making some strangled noise and Dave is clinging to the last remnants of his Coolkid persona with all the fervent control he has managed to sum up and trying very, very hard to resist looking at Terezi’s dusky-dark nipples, almost black like her lips and tiny, well-formed and it takes all of his control to resist following the sharp curve of her hip downwards so instead he notices the fact that trolls don’t have bellybuttons.
It’s really hard to not look, and his white boxers, he realises, are see-through when wet. He starts to very slowly move his hand to cover himself, and then has two trolls following the movement like sharp-eyed raptors and Terezi grins, sharp-toothed and smug somehow, stepping forward to grab Dave’s hands and he was sure that wall wasn’t against his back a second ago oh dear god she has Karkat under her arm too.
“Now my candy-blooded boys, you wouldn’t be trying to start without me, would you?”
And all of a sudden, with all the grace of Jade chasing Jaspersprite, Dave realises that this is what Terezi has been plotting for.
Kakashi didn’t bond with people. His daemon reflected that. Wolves weren’t an uncommon sight among the village, even discounting the Inuzuka clan who skewed the bias, and even a large number of civilians had canine companions. They were pack animals, loyal to a fault but they were wild; a predator daemon. Ninja’s without predatory daemons were rare, and even fewer amassed high ranks. Of course there were exceptions - the three Sannin were a particularly humorous example.
Kakashi’s demon was not a wolf, but it was a predator. His father’s daemon had been a wolf. Too loyal to his packmates. His daemon had stayed a snowcat for so long Kakashi thought she’d settled in it. Alone; snowcats were lonely, lonely predators. They only got together to mate and even then nine times out of then they fought. Until Obito died and his daemon had shifted.
He’s pretty sure that somewhere there’s some medical thesis that says lifechanging events can change the form of your daemon. He’s also sure there’s a thesis that says hybrid daemons are the sign of a split soul and that those without daemons are soulless.
Kakashi knows Naruto has a soul because he’s seen people without daemons. They aren’t anything like him; those without daemons are dead - they might be breathing but they’re dead. Naruto is very alive. Defiantly alive, you might say.
His snowlion sits beside him all sleek fur and tufted tail and she turns her head and sighs. Even through her mask (there’s probably another thesis that says daemons can’t wear accessories but in a ninja village that’d get debunked pretty fast.) her expression is readable.
Doesn’t help he’s wearing the same one.
Soulless or not, Kakashi doesn’t want a team. Especially a team with the last Uchiha, the Kyuubi host, and what looks to be a fangirl.
A snow-lion isn’t a pack beast. It’s not one to be totally alone (Obito)(Rin)(Minato-sensei) but it bonds on it’s terms, and it’s terms alone.
And neither of them, daemon or man, wants to bond to a bunch of snot-nosed kids.
His wings have lain limp since he’s returned from Afghanistan. He could lie to himself, say that the gunshot wound caused it, perpetrate the belief that the body and the wingplane are connected when in truth when the gunshot wound happened he flew four miles without the slightest pain in his phantom limbs. That too is somewhat of a misnomer though. They’re completely solid, heavy mass of muscle and bones and his feathers used to be as much as a part of him as people’s fingers.
When he was in boot camp someone plucked a feather out. For luck or for anger or for rebellion John couldn’t say. But instinctively he’d spread his wings, knocked him down and had him in a headlock within ten seconds. It had been the sergeant and John hadn’t let go even seeing that because touching someone’s wings was like touching their soul; you got the briefing at school before puberty and even in the most poverty-stricken areas it was just - you knew! And the sergeant was only saved a broken neck by the fact that John recognised him mid-lunge.
Apparently it had been a test; when he let the anger recede he could feel the sergeant’s dislike for it, but the acceptance of the need for it. John knew why. Many wingers were too attached to them to go into warzones where they could have sensation after sensation. But John had never been the stereotypical one. A doctor, yes - but a soldier too. John’s wings had started off the same colour as all the others - white. Now, as he manhandles them into a brace that means he can travel with the unresponsive mass, he spares a second to watch the ripple of desert camo that marks his primaries.
When they lived on the island, Sora’s daemon changed fluidly from one shape to the next - a chittering squirrel or cawing bird when he was arguing with Riku, a dolphin or seal when they were frolicking in the water, and when they play-fought a lion or wolf cub, wriggling with joy and bouncing around. Riku’s usually took the shape of an eagle or a cat, proud and teasing - in the water it was a pike, silver scales flashing with sharp teeth. Kairi’s daemon was small, always close to her, on a shoulder on in her pocket if it took a rabbit shape - Sora didn’t think he ever saw it leave her person, whether it was a small mouse or a bird - even when she scolded them both it was a tiny monkey, admonishing them with one hand and the other gripping on tightly to Kairi.
On the night everything changed, Sora’s daemon took a shape he had never seen before. It looked at him with ageless eyes from a rabbit that shone like moonlight, and as he reached out to question him he remembered about the island and started running, the rabbit running faster beside him, and for the first time Sora wanted to call his daemon something that wasn’t his name, because Ventus somehow seemed exonarably connected to this shape.
Riku’s was a raven, but it was bigger. Angry. And when he held out his hand to him the raven stared at him with sad eyes and said nothing. The last thing Sora saw before he woke up was the raven shifting into a snake and curling round Riku’s neck.
As he adventured, grew, changed, his daemon shifted still, flicking from shape to shape as easily as it always had. The first time he saw Riku he thought that he still had a snake - only it hissed and flared it’s wings, and he realised it was a tiny palm-size dragon, but that took a back seat to the fact that it had just hissed at him. Sora’s face fell, and his daemon changed from the playful lioncub into an owl with sad eyes.
“Riku?”
“You’ve found new friends now!”
And Sora was dumbstruck because he looked back at Donald and Goofy and then at Riku and couldn’t he see that he didn’t like them? I mean, he liked them but not like that, not like he needed Riku.
Only then there was a heartless and he got distracted and his daemon was needed as a sharp-toothed alligator to rend the metal apart and by the time he looked back Riku was gone.
And there's a whole bunch MORE because I am a horrible thirty-billion files at once kinda guy. :/