"Umm, I don't need to be a troll to notice that hating on each other makes you guys miserable."
Karkat stood silent in the computer lab, a hand pressed to his mouth. Beside him Sollux was half-swooned over the back of his chair, head still hanging back as he stared up at Jade behind him.
She'd just zapped in, planted one on Karkat mid-word (with tongue) and then she'd pulled Sollux's chair backwards and floated herself up to yank him away from his keyboard and kiss him upside-down, like in In Which A Reporterrorist In Training Gets Bitten By His Blind, Radioactive Lusus And Gains Non-Psychic, Biologically Inaccurate Powers And Becomes A Vigilante Etcetera which was a scene Karkat did not squee over the dozen times he rewatched the movie and which might arguably have been even more distracting than being kissed his own self.
"Proof!" she proclaimed, wagging a finger under Karkat's nose, her other hand still ready to tug Sollux's chair back and off-balance, "Every single time you argue, Karkat mopes! And Sollux sulks. And you're both huge buttholes to everyone else, so it disrupts the group, and Kanaya told me that was a totally acceptable reason to ash it up!"
Karkat spluttered through the hand on his mouth. His face was, he was pretty sure, a fetching (not) scarlet.
Then again Sollux was pretty mustardy, so. Jade looked a little flushed but from the way she was glaring it might just have been the proprietary (oh, oh, oh) annoyance.
"But ashen kisses aren't supposed to," Karkat said, on automatic, and then his husktop trilled a warning at him he'd never heard before. "Uh, wait a sec."
TA: dude iif you tell her about the no tongue thiing ii wiill kiill you my2elf, and *then* kiill my2elf
TA: thii2 ii2 totally the kind of 2exy dii2tractiion ii am entiirely ready to admiit wiill work liike magiic on me
TA: except, you know, wiith le22 fakey and more 2exay
CG: NEVER TYPE THE WORD "SEXAY" EVER AGAIN...
"Aren't supposed to what," Jade growled, ears flat on her God Tier hood, and rapped Sollux's knuckles with his own keyboard. "Not be all hate-bitey? I could do that! And Sollux if you crackle at me again I'm zapping you into a pile of snow."
... Ngh.
"Aren't... supposed to..." Shit.
Jade was so pretty when she was glowering, though, and the kisses were really nice, and having her be so concerned and authoritative about their tiresome bullshit was really really nice, and.
CG: ... AND YOU HAVE A DEAL.
"It was. Pretty forward of you to just lay one on us without asking us out first. Is all."
Jade rolled her eyes, and then leaned in and pecked him on the mouth, firm and a little annoyed. "I am totally sweeping you guys off your feet. I am the forwardest, it is me."
"I for one welcome our new silvered overlord," Sollux droned, and slumped against her bracing hand. Karkat made the vocal equivalent of a keysmash, and sank in flusteration into his own chair, hands thrown up in the air in a way he pretended was annoyance and not surrender.
"Okay, jegus, fine! Be an arbitrharlot! I surrender to your involved and subtle seduction methods."
He turned pointedly away. Even the back of his neck felt hot.
"Well, good," Jade said behind him, and ruffled his hair so roughly his scalp smarted. "I'm serious, no more squabbling, it's super annoying and it makes you guys so whiny and mopey it's just too sad to look at."
"Yes, Jade," Karkat and Sollux somehow said in unison -- Karkat sulky, Sollux mock-indifferent, and Karkat wondered if Jade could even hear the note of relief in his or Sollux's voice at all.
Probably one day he might even manage to open up enough to tell her so.
But not before they'd even had their first date, for shame, he wasn't that kind of troll.
He heard her plant a rough kiss on Sollux's head, and sat rigid and expectant until she planted one on his horn. She zapped out with a stern "Behave!" and he spent the next half-hour swooning over his keyboard and stealing looks at Sollux to make sure the asshole was swooning too.
(The asshole totally was.)