i bet it was karkat honestly, i feel like hes freer with his emotions and loves dave so much that he just point blank asks dave if he wants to
man just imagine how insecure karkat probably was meeting up with everyone again and worrying that dave was going to want to go and live with the humans somewhere and how much anxiety he probably had over being so sure after being trapped with him for 3 years dave would leap at the opportunity to put some distance between himself and karkat’s shit
and then nope
karkat gets to work just literally making a replica of his own damn hive and dave is just standing there fidgeting like yeah man… that’s cool… i can dig it… glad you have a place to stay… nice youll have a real bedroom again instead of a weird ass laboratory with a bed stuck in the corner… it must be sweet to have an idea of a home you can go back to that makes you feel nice and nostalgic instead of… yeah no nevermind
and karkat is just like ??? do you want to … stay??? with me? still? and dave is like no i mean i dont need to STAY stay like im sure i can find a place like most likely john will let me sleep on his couch or something your probably looking forward to a break from me and i couldn’t blame you so hey i’ll figure something out
and karkat is just shaking his head like dave this fucking hive has like 12 extraneous rooms i was a particularly self indulgent idiotic wiggler look at this fucking floor plan you can just pick one. dave is like ok but, whhaaat if i pick the one youre using. and karkat throws his hands in the air with this overdramatic exasperated sigh and blusters about how annoying it will be to have to keep sleeping on a human bed to hide how relieved he is
they dont acknowledge any of it until really late that night and they both cant sleep because theyre separately wound up for different reasons and karkat is nervously going on about how like sorry if things are weird he was literally a wiggler when he built this place the first time and it seemed logical at the time to just remake it but it’s probably weird for a human, fuck its kinda weird to him and he MADE the place, so dave shouldn’t feel bad if it’s TOO weird and he’d rather go live with the humans or whatever in a proper human home
and dave is just quiet for a second and is like well, actually, this has been pretty sweet and probably the only thing i need for some place to feel like home to me is for you to be there too??? and karkat is like oh………………………. my fucking god….. you need to warn me before you suplex my fucking heart like this
and then they cuddle a lot and go to sleep LIKE IM GOING TO DO RIGHT NOW BEFORE I WRITE ANY MORE SELF INDULGENT WORDS LMAOOOOOOOOOOO g’night yall