reject the melancholy cabbage

There’s so much wrong with this for how long it took (and, incidentally, apparently I wrote literally exactly the same fic for General Armstrong this time as last time… but… with Shin Sawada from Gokusen… so… ellipses… what I’m saying is, SORRY. SORRY FOR ME.)

*

Rose looms over them better than you’d expect her to be able to. “Brother, if you’ll not retire, I’ll retire alone. The day is hot and highbloods are abroad.”

“The day is hot,” Dave says, adjusting his head in Terezi’s lap. “The week is hot, the month is hot, the summer is the eternal inferno. Terezi, did you bring the hells with you?”

“A superstition that ill becomes you, my sweet,” Terezi tells him. “And if they come, Rose? We’ve swords enough for the three of us. Are you scared to meet them in those skirts?” She frowns, and sniffs the air. “Dave, she left.”

Dave yawns. “I wish she had ta’en me. I’m for the hells myself, and soon, an this ache does not pass.”

“Ah yes! You drank the seven seas last night, my love.”

“And matched you drink for drink, and you are skin and bones,” Dave complains, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Or smiles and bones. If I could ope to check, I know I’d see you gaping like a natural. You ought to have gone for folly. It would suit your natural demeanor.”

“And give you competition?” she says. She shifts, and he lets out a noise of protest as it sends another wave of headache through him. “I like not this silence in the streets,” she admits. “This is the very weather for spiders.”

Dave groans. “Rose had it aright. If you find Vriska, kill her quiet, I beg you, quiet. A one-two and under the arms. None of these games of art.”

There’s an unexpected silence from Terezi, and he makes the Herculean effort and removes his arm again to get a look at her unhappy face. “If I did kill her,” she says, eventually.

“When,” Dave says, and then wants to bite his tongue out. “If,” he says, hurriedly. “Go to. You’ll not kill her save if needs be.”

“And if needs be?”

“Then you’ll run her through,” Dave says. “Your arm is good. Or not. Whatever you will. ‘Swounds, Terezi, I’m no counselor. Go ask my sister.”

“No,” she says, beetling her brows at him. “I love your sister well, but you are the man who rests his head so discourteously in my lap and prevents me from prudently following her in. I want not your advice. I want your aid.”

He reaches back for her hand, and after a minute she takes it, weaving her claws through his fingers. “You’ve title to all you can get from me,” he says. “My liver’s a sad thing and my heart’s wandering in my bowels, and my head is stuffed with wax. Yet I might be your man of straw, and draw her good jousting blows while you skewer her from behind.”

She smiles, just barely. “A goodly plan.”

There are footfalls, and the sound of voices, across the square. The haze of heat obscures their faces.

Dave sits up with his hand already on his sword.