
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/218930.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      John_Egbert/Karkat_Vantas
  Character:
      John_Egbert, Karkat_Vantas, Sollux_Captor, Kanaya_Maryam, Terezi_Pyrope,
      Dave_Strider, Rose_Lalonde, Jade_Harley
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-07-04 Words: 18416
****** Enforced Cultural Exchange ******
by Miko
Summary
     Karkat is all for cultural exchanges and trying to see each others
     point of view, but there is such a thing as going too damned far.
Notes
     After seeing this amazing comic, I just had to write something
     related. It deviates from the comic pretty quickly, but I just love
     the expressions on their faces so much.
  This work was inspired by
      Bodyswitch_comic by cakeitup.tumblr.com
Since the humans had arrived in the Veil, Karkat had come to have an increased
appreciation for how hard the job of a Lusus was. He'd already had a pretty
high opinion of them after the hours he'd spent herding ectobiological
wrigglers around, so that was saying something. Playing Lusus to the humans in
a desperate attempt to keep them out of trouble felt an awful lot like herding
wrigglers.
To be fair, Strider and Lalonde annoyed him, but could be trusted not to do
anything that had the potential to blow up the asteroid or lead Jack to them or
engage in any other life-and-death stupidity. Mostly.
Harley and Egbert were another story.
Especially Egbert.
"Don't touch that," Karkat snapped for at least the third time in the last ten
minutes. "Can you not keep your disgustingly soft prehensile appendages to
yourself for one god-damned second? Am I going to have to tie them behind your
back?"
"I'm not hurting anything," John protested, pouting. Fucking pouting at him,
what the actual fuck. "The equipment is all inactive, anyway."
"For the moment it is, but the whole reason we're down here is that we're
trying to find something that is working," Karkat pointed out caustically.
"Preferably something that will give us some damned supplies."
"Well, what if we walk right by the machine that might save us because it was
in hibernation mode or something, and we didn't poke it to wake it up?" John
asked in what he probably thought was a reasonable tone.
"And what if we find the machine that might save us and you fucking break it
before we can realize what it is?" Karkat countered. "Shut up and keep looking.
And for the last fucking time, don't touch anything!"
With only ten hours or so on the timer until whatever was going to happen to
the asteroid, none of the trolls had been worried about the fact that they had
no source of food. Now that Dave had taken the eight remaining players far into
the asteroid's past, however, they found themselves with pretty much unlimited
time on their hands. That was great in that it gave them time to come up with
some kind of plan, but not so great in that it meant they were all going to
starve to death if they didn't find a solution soon.
Karkat had a sneaking suspicion the trolls would outlive the humans if it came
down to that - and it had nothing to do with which species could go longer
without food. He'd rather avoid them turning on each other, if at all possible.
"I'm sure we'll find something," John said with a confidence Karkat wished he
could share. "After everything we've all survived, I refuse to believe we'll
die of something as lame as lack of food. Oh, hey, what's that over there?"
Karkat followed John's pointing finger, and his eyes widened as he saw blinking
lights on a computer console in the next room. "Finally," he said, picking his
way quickly through the lab to the next doorway. "I was starting to think we'd
come back so far in time that nothing was working at all."
As they approached, the rest of the equipment came into view and Karkat
identified it as one of the many ectobiology stations scattered throughout the
labs. He let out an annoyed breath. "Well, that's helpful," he said, rolling
his eyes. "So if we want to create more mouths to feed, we can start
experimenting with combining our clones. Of course, we could have done that
with the equipment upstairs, without having wasted three hours searching
first!"
"At least we know some things down here are still working," John replied, as
cheerful as always. He moved closer to the equipment, peering at the console.
"Huh. This doesn't look quite the same as the one I used to make our paradox
clones."
"No, you're right. This is more like the stuff Kanaya and I used to breed
frogs," Karkat agreed, moving closer as well. "Only sized up to be big enough
for trolls. Or humans, I guess."
"I wonder what it's supposed to be for?" John said, and before Karkat realized
what he intended, he reached out to poke curiously at the controls. With a
wordless shout of horror Karkat lunged for him, trying to block his arm.
Instead all he accomplished was to knock them both on their asses.
Right onto the central platform.
Green light enveloped them both, and it felt to Karkat like something grabbed
his body and started to disassemble it, one cell at a time. If he could have
combined every other moment of pain he'd ever experienced in the rest of his
life into a single, concentrated sensation, it still would have paled beside
what he felt right now. He'd have screamed, if his lungs weren't already busy
dissolving.
Then the process seemed to reverse itself, and that was even worse.
After untold eons of agony, the green light finally faded. Karkat found himself
lying flat on his back, gasping for air and staring at the ceiling. He could
barely see it; the room was much darker than it had been before, and what he
could see looked strangely blurry. The sudden brilliant light must have screwed
with his eyes.
"WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU ABOUT TOUCHING ANYTHING?" he shouted the moment he
had the breath to speak again. The words came out strangely, slurred and
indistinct. It felt almost like his tongue was too short and thick, and his
teeth too far forward at the front of his mouth. "What the hell?"
Beside him John groaned and stirred. "Ah dinnt meen tu... ow! Wha th he?"
Karkat recognized the last words only because they matched his own. With a
growing sense of dread, he forced his head to turn enough to see the human
lying sprawled half beneath him.
And found himself looking at a troll.
A very familiar looking troll, with the same features Karkat saw every time he
looked in the reflective pane. John was still wearing his glasses, and the
frames sat oddly on the troll features, the arms not quite long enough to hook
over his now-pointed ears. The look John was giving him was probably a good
match for the one Karkat imagined was on his own face. Sheer, utter confusion.
"Please tell me I don't look like a pink, squishy human," Karkat begged,
shaping the words as carefully as he could. Unfortunately he was pretty sure he
already knew the answer.
To his complete disbelief, the confusion in John's expression was rapidly being
replaced by what could only be described as glee. Not only was that a
completely inappropriate reaction, it was also horribly foreign on Karkat's
face. "Oh, wow," John breathed out, speaking as slowly and carefully as Karkat.
"Oh, wow! Karkat... Karkat, you're me!"
"Fuck my life," Karkat groaned, and lifted his hands to stare at them. His
soft, pudgy hands, with their blunt, useless nails and skin so disgustingly
pale he could see the colour of his still-freakish blood. They were less blurry
than the ceiling, but still fuzzy around the edges. "This is not happening.
This cannot be happening. NOT EVEN MY LUCK IS THIS BAD!"
"Are you kidding? This is awesome," John raved, pushing himself up to a sitting
position. "Why's everything so blurry? Oh, wait." He reached up to his face and
touched his glasses, and laughed. "I guess you need these, instead of me?"
He pulled them off and offered them to Karkat, who just stared back at him for
a long moment. "This is not awesome, Egbert, it's awful." Reluctantly he
reached out and accepted the glasses, and slid them onto his nose. It took him
two tries to settle them properly, but the world sprang instantly into sharp
focus again.
It was still as dark as a double new moon, though. "Your eyes are completely
useless," he raged, rubbing at them under the lenses as if he could force them
to function better. "Not only are they weak enough to earn you a swift and very
painful culling, but everything is totally dark!"
"Now you know why we keep turning the lights up," John told him, unsympathetic.
"And now I know why you guys always bitch and moan and turn them back down
again! Wow, it's as bright as day!"
He was getting to his feet now, and Karkat hastily pushed himself up as well.
God only knew what other disasters John might precipitate if Karkat didn't keep
him restrained. And Karkat wanted off that platform, just in case the machine
decided it wasn't done with them yet.
Thankfully John seemed more interested in examining his new body than in
playing with the equipment more. He stared at his claws in wonder, flexing his
fingers and fucking giggling like they were the most amazing thing in the
world. "How the heck did this happen? Ow. And how the heck do you talk without
cutting your tongue open on your teeth all the time?"
"I don't know, we just do," Karkat snapped. "Stop grinning like an idiot with
my face, bulgemuncher! And stop laughing." It was disturbing to hear himself
laugh like that. Did he normally sound like that when he laughed? So... so
bright and, and happy, it was sickening. Actually, he couldn't remember the
last time he'd ever laughed, so it was hard to say.
Trying to distract himself - and hopefully find a solution before the situation
got any more unnerving - he examined the console in the area where John had
touched it. "Oh, fuck," he said when he realized just which button John must
have pushed. "Fuck me and forget the pail, we are screwed."
John's answer was a soft, startled moan which... did very strange things to
Karkat's lower body. Very strange things. He made a startled noise of his own
and squirmed, which only made the sensation worse. John moaned again, deeper
this time, and Karkat turned to see what the hell was wrong with him.
To his horror he found the former human with his hands around his horns,
exploring the base where they met the skull. His eyes were half closed and a
blush spread over his cheeks, dark enough that Karkat could see it despite his
now pitiful night vision. "Wha... stop that, what the fuck are you doing?" he
exclaimed, slapping John's hands down. "Don't fucking touch your horns in
public, you wriggler, what the hell is wrong with you?"
"Uh? Oh, uh..." John sounded a little dazed, which wasn't surprising. The
effect wasn't as all-consuming when you did it to yourself, but the rush of
subduing endorphins was still pretty strong. "I just wanted to see if they were
the same shape as yours, and then, um..."
"Yes, they are, and don't fucking do that again, moron," Karkat snarled. "You
know what, the depths of your stupidity never cease to amaze me. Just when I
think I've reached the absolute bottom, seen the most idiotic move you could
possibly pull out of your ass, you do something else that tops everything else
combined, and I am stunned all over again. I would be speechless, except that I
would explode with the sheer force of my rage and horror if I didn't vent it
somehow."
"Hey, how was I supposed to know they were so sensitive?" John protested,
blushing harder. "I mean, they're horns, you wouldn't think they'd be, you
know..."
"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT TOUCHING YOUR HORNS, YOU MONSTROUSLY ENOURMOUS
NOOKSNIFFER," Karkat shouted, waving his hands as if that would help him drill
the words into the idiot's think pan. "I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU FUCKING PUSHING
THE BUTTON THAT SCREWED US OVER!" He took a deep breath, and managed to
continue at a slightly more conversational volume. "Do you have any idea what
you've done to us?"
"Oh, you figured out what happened?" John said, blush fading a little. He still
looked excited by the whole thing, and not in the least bit appropriately
repentant. Karkat facepalmed, because it was that or punch him. Punching
someone who looked like him felt a little too weird.
If they stayed this way much longer, though, he was pretty sure he'd get over
the hang-up.
"Yes, I know what happened. There's a function on the machine that lets you
scramble the genetic code of however many frogs you put on the platform,
randomly reassigning each trait. It's so you can try out different combinations
without needing to actually create a million new frogs in the process. AND YOU
JUST DID IT TO US!"
"Wow, that's really cool," John said, grinning again. He looked far too much
like Terezi for Karkat's peace of mind, the sharp-toothed smile stretching
halfway to his ears. He'd had absolutely no idea his face was capable of
smiling like that.
"It is not 'cool', it is not 'awesome', and most of all, it is not the fucking
'best thing ever' like you seem to think it is!" Karkat raged at him. "We are
stuck in each other's fucking bodies!"
"Yeah, I know," John said, eyes sparkling. "It's totally like in Face/Off,
where John Travolta ends up wearing Nick Cage's face and Nick Cage ends up
wearing his, and they trade lives for the rest of the movie. Only they didn't
really switch faces, obviously, it was just the actors pretending to be each
other. This is way cooler! Can you imagine the pranking possibilities of this?
My prankster's gambit will be so full it'll overflow and fill the whole
asteroid! Oh my god, Karkat, everyone will think I'm you and you're me and
we'll completely break their brains!"
Momentarily dumbfounded, Karkat could only stare him. Pranks? They were trapped
in each other's bodies through the most unbelievable fuck-up in the history of
all fuck-ups, and the little grubfucker was thinking about the pranks he could
pull? Pranks which undoubtedly involved him going upstairs and making everyone
else think that he, Karkat, was making an idiot of himself?
"Egbert, I will crush my own fucking chitinous windtube before I let you go out
there and prank the others wearing my face," he said, his voice low and
intense, putting all the outrage and indignation he felt into his expression,
volume rising with each word. "No, better yet, I will crush your windtube
before I let you do that. In fact, I think I'll do it anyway, just because you
are the reason I'm am stuck in this soft, squishy meat-sack of a body, with all
the offensive capabilities of a fucking wriggler, and even fewer defences!"
He didn't even realize he was advancing on John with his fists clenched until
John ran into the wall and couldn't retreat any further, and Karkat found
himself shouting the last words directly into his own face. He reached up and
caught John's throat between his hands, digging his fingers into the skin and
cursing when the blunt nails barely even left a dent. Troll skin wasn't nearly
as hard as the shells of the insects they'd evolved from, but it was tough
enough to be able to resist what damage he could do with John's weak, pathetic
monkey hands.
"I can't even fucking hurt you, look at this," Karkat snarled, squeezing as
hard as he could. John coughed and flailed a little, his air restricted by the
tight grip, but his throat was far from being completely destroyed the way it
should have been. "Your body is weak and soft and blunt, you don't have a
single sharp edge, and now I'm fucking stuck in it!"
"K-karkat," John squeaked, fingers scrabbling at Karkat's hands to try to pry
him off. Karkat swore again when the sharp claws raked over his ridiculously
fragile skin, opening deep gouges. He couldn't stop himself from reflexively
pulling away from the source of pain, leaving John braced against the wall
drawing deep, gasping breaths.
"Karkat, stop, okay, I'm sorry, I get it, you're pissed off," John croaked,
wincing like each word hurt to get out of his throat. Karkat was able to take a
certain amount of vindictive satisfaction from that, though not enough to make
up for the way his hands were now aching and dripping blood all over the place.
"Oh crap, I hurt you, I didn't mean to! I'm sorry, here, let me help."
"Fuck off and die," Karkat snarled, slumping against the nearest solid surface,
which turned out to be one of the ectobiology tubes. "Better yet, fuck off and
leave me to die. Why does the universe hate me so god-damned much?"
"I promise I won't prank anyone as you, all right? See, look, this is me being
nice and good and a great friendleader, giving up the most epic chance ever to
fill my prankster's gambit, just to make you feel better," John tried to soothe
him. "I'll go change us back right now, just get on the platform and..."
"Don't you fucking dare!" Karkat howled, lunging for him and tackling him
straight to the floor. At least John was taller and heavier than Karkat - or
rather, he had been, which meant Karkat was now the one with the weight
advantage. He pinned John to the floor, torn between rage and sheer terror.
"Has your think pan gone so soft you're not even capable of rational thought
anymore?"
"Well, I'm not really eager to go through that again either, it really hurt a
lot," John said, sounding bewildered. "But it'll be worth it to get back in
your own body again, won't it?"
"What part of 'randomly assigns traits' did you not understand, fuckwit?"
Karkat demanded, shaking him by the shoulders as if he could rattle some sense
into the moron. "Do you have any idea how fucking lucky we are that it switched
everything? Next time it might leave us with half human organs and half troll
organs, and god knows if they'll be biologically compatible! Next time we might
not be us anymore, because it might scramble our fucking brains, too!"
There was a long, drawn-out pause, during which he watched half a dozen
emotions flit across John's face - surprise, confusion, horror, and guilt
primary among them. "Oh," John said, and the single word contained even more
conflicting emotions than his expression did. "Fuck. We're really screwed,
aren't we?"
Unable to think of anything to say in the face of such blatantly stupid
obviousness, Karkat just leaned down enough to be able to thump his forehead
against the floor repeatedly.
===============================================================================
"Please?"
"I said fuck no!"
"C'mon, pretty please? Since we're stuck like this anyway, we might as well at
least take advantage of the opportunity," John wheedled. The pleading whine in
his voice was grating on Karkat's nerves.
"Is 'no' just not a word in your miniscule vocabulary? Is that what your
problem is?" Karkat said. "I'd be happy to introduce it to you, especially by
way of my fist in your cartilage nub."
"I think you might hurt yourself more than you'd hurt me," John said
thoughtfully. "Your body is really tough! It's kind of amazing."
The reminder of his current pathetic condition did nothing to improve Karkat's
mood. "You are still not pranking them while wearing my face. No means no!"
When John continued to look at him imploringly, he had to resist the urge to
snarl. He had a sneaking suspicion that the expression was less intimidating
and more ridiculous when he used it with these blunt teeth. "I was serious
about crushing your windtube first, you know!"
"Okay, okay," John finally capitulated with an exaggerated sigh. Then he perked
up. "Well, it's going to be pretty funny to see their reactions anyway. Can we
at least not tell them outright until they realize what's going on?"
"Oh, fuck you and may all your pails have giant leaks," Karkat snapped. "Can't
you think about anything other than your nookwhiff prankster's gambit?"
John blinked at him for a moment, nonplussed. "Wow, that sounds like a pretty
nasty thing to wish on someone, if what I understand about pails is right," he
finally said. "You're really mad about this, aren't you?"
"You're just now noticing this?" Karkat said, seething.
"Well no, I mean, I knew you were upset, but... I suppose maybe I should have
realized something was up when you tried to choke me," John admitted
guilelessly. "Except you weren't trying all that hard, so I figured maybe it
was just a sort of concrete example?"
"Oh, I was doing my best to make it a very concrete example," Karkat said. He
would have savoured the memory of his hands wrapped around John's throat,
except that it was too embarrassing. "Your pathetic squishy meat-sack of a body
is just even more useless than I already knew it was."
"Ahahaha, but you wouldn't really have killed me, right?" John asked, laughing
nervously. Karkat just narrowed his eyes, and John's laugh turned shriller
still.
"Stop fucking laughing, and stop making that hideous expression with my face
right fucking now," Karkat demanded. "Fuck, they're going to think I've snapped
completely, and cull me before I can go hiveshit on everyone like Gamzee did."
"I'm sure it won't be that bad," John said, but he didn't sound like he was
looking forward to the upcoming conversations quite as much as before.
Too bad for him, because they'd finally reached the transportalizer back to the
main room. Growling under his breath, Karkat stepped onto the platform, wincing
as the momentary sensation of being molecularly scrambled brought back the
memory of the pain of being rewritten with John's DNA.
He stepped off the platform to find the other six trolls and humans clustered
excitedly around a piece of equipment that hadn't been in the room before.
Presumably at least one of the other search parties had been more successful in
their endeavour than Karkat and John had been.
They certainly couldn't have been much less successful.
He heard the zap as John came through behind him, and cringed as he waited for
the undoubtedly moronic comment that was sure to come. "Hey guys, you won't
believe what we've been up to!" John exclaimed as he stepped off the pad.
The others turned to face them, and there was a moment of surprised silence,
along with quite a few double-takes. Karkat just glared back at them,
especially at the other trolls, daring them to say something about his newly
weakened state. Not that glaring would have much effect on Terezi or Sollux,
who were the most likely to needle him about it.
Sure enough Terezi started cackling, and he heard Dave snort in amusement.
"Damn, you move fast Vantas," the human said. "I take it you're lifting the ban
on sloppy interspecies makeouts, then?"
"What," Karkat said, the word coming out flat rather than questioning.
"What do you mean?" John echoed, obviously confused.
"Well, it's only fair," Dave said, smirking. "If you're gonna put the moves on
John, you can't be bitching at the rest of us for the same thing."
"What," Karkat repeated, nearly hissing this time.
"Um, I think you guys are kind of getting the wrong idea," John said, and god
help them both he was blushing again. If he kept this up, it wasn't going to
take long for the others to finally figure out what colour Karkat's freakish
blood really was.
Maybe he could blame it on the genetic mix-up, and claim they both got stuck
with John's disgusting human blood? Actually, that might be the one good thing
that came out of all this. Not that it really mattered anymore.
"While I would have thought the two of you might take this quest for supplies a
bit more seriously, seeing as you are the leaders and therefore responsible for
all of us, nobody is upset that you got distracted," Kanaya assured them.
"However if you were planning to attempt to hide what you have been up to, you
might have wished to take more care when re-dressing yourselves to choose the
correct items of apparel. It does make it rather obvious that said items must
have been removed at some point during your absence."
Glancing at John, Karkat finally realized just what they were all going on
about. Only their bodies had changed; John was still wearing his ridiculous God
Tier pyjamas, and Karkat still had his own pants and shirt, though he'd been
forced to take John's glasses. So it looked like they'd changed into each
other's clothing.
He promptly proved that he was just as capable of blushing as John, much to his
dismay.
"No, no, no, that's not what we were doing at all," John exclaimed, horrified
and waving his hands as if to shoo away the very concept.
"So you simply decided to exchange outfits?" Rose said, raising an eyebrow at
them. She wasn't smirking quite as obviously as Dave, but there were hints of
it in her expression. "Was this an attempt to understand each other better by
literally walking in each other's shoes? Or perhaps a desire to share the
burdens of your recent pasts by sharing such iconic pieces of your identity..."
"We are not wearing each other's fucking clothes, Lalonde," Karkat snarled,
unable to stay silent any longer. "Would you all please stop smirking long
enough to make an attempt to gather the scattered fragments of your think pans
from the far reaches where you seem to have flung them? Maybe if you combine
them all, you'll have enough to allow one of you to clue the fuck in to what is
actually going on, here!"
Another moment of stunned silence followed his outburst, broken only when
Sollux hesitantly asked, "Wait, which one of them said that? It was Egbert's
voice, but that sounded like KK."
Fifteen minutes of somewhat scrambled explanations later - John kept jumping in
to defend his actions, which made it difficult for Karkat to eloquently convey
the sheer depths of the former human's stupidity - Karkat was pretty sure
they'd managed to convince Jade. Actually she seemed to believe them after the
first, brief statement that they'd switched bodies, but everyone else remained
sceptical.
"Wow, that is so cool," Jade said, bouncing on her toes, as gleeful as John had
been when he'd first realized what had happened. "You get to see what it's like
from the other side!"
"I know, right?" John agreed, grinning right back at her. Karkat didn't think
he'd ever get used to seeing that ridiculous expression on his own face. He
didn't want to have to get used to it.
"While I will admit that your impressions of each other are quite impeccable -
nearly flawless, I would go so far to say - your story does lack a certain
quality that might lend it verisimilitude," Rose said, tapping her lips with
one finger. "That is to say, realism."
"Doesn't help that we all know you'll do anything for a prank, Egbert," Dave
agreed. "Though I'm impressed you managed to convince Vantas to go along with
it. I didn't think he was capable of actually smiling, I figured it would break
his face."
"Yeah seriously, Karkat, who knew your acting ability was so good?" Terezi
chuckled. "Why can't you be this relaxed and easygoing all the time? Maybe you
should take a page from Egbert's book and just stay this way."
"Well, he does kind of need to relax," John agreed, eyeing Karkat who was
grinding his teeth hard enough that it was likely audible. "Please don't break
your teeth, Karkat, I know you're not impressed by them but you kind of need
them and there aren't really any dentists available here."
"The last thing this group needs is two mindless morons of Egbert's calibre,"
Karkat snapped. "Especially since none of the rest of you bulge-munching
wrigglers seem to be up to the task of putting two and two together to get
four. That. Is. Not. Me."
"Haha, well obviously I'm not you, that would be impossible, since you're right
there," John laughed at him. "I think what you meant to say is that I'm not
Karkat."
"I don't know about the rest of you, but this is starting to weird me out,"
Sollux complained. He'd been listening mostly in silence, frowning every time
one of them talked, but now he was rubbing at his forehead like he was
developing one of his migraines. "I can't keep track of who's supposed to be
who when they talk, they sound too much like each other right now."
"Yeah, it was pretty funny at first, but really you guys can drop it now,"
Terezi agreed, shrugging. "If you drag it out too long the joke stops being
funny, you know."
Desperate, Karkat tried switching to Alternian, hoping that would prove that he
was who he said he was. None of the humans spoke the language at all. "Would
you all just shut up and start taking me fucking seriously?"
Unfortunately he'd forgotten about John's less flexible tongue and strangely
shaped teeth. He'd gotten good enough to work around it while speaking English,
but human mouths and throats proved to be simply incapable of making the
intricate buzzes, clicks and trills of Alternian speech. The words came out
even more mangled than his first attempt to speak English after the switch, and
what he actually said was something more like, "Would you all just start
fucking me seriously?"
Sollux snorted and clamped a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking as he tried
to suppress his laughter. He might as well not have bothered, it was as obvious
as a neon sign. Terezi certainly didn't even try, cackling her fool head off,
and Kanaya was blushing a brilliant shade of green.
"While I am impressed by your ability to remember such a long string of sounds
that presumably make no sense to you, I'm afraid you really would have to work
on your accent before it would be a believable attempt to convince us," Kanaya
said.
"Why the ever-pitying fuck would I have tried to teach Egbert to say that
particular thing?" Karkat demanded, grasping at straws. "How could I have known
that would be appropriate?"
"Well, it is sort of the obvious thing Karkat would say when we didn't believe
you," Terezi snickered.
"Why, what did he say?" John asked curiously.
"You know perfectly well, and I'm impressed that you were able to stop yourself
from laughing," Sollux said, finally recovering from his laughing fit.
"Fine. Fine. His useless human mouth won't let me make the right sounds, so you
guys all speak Alternian instead and I'll prove I'm me when I can understand
it," Karkat growled, throwing his hands up.
"They're really taking this pretty far, aren't they?" Terezi said, obediently
switching to their native tongue.
"Yeah, I'm surprised KK is still going along with this," Sollux agreed, and he
at least sounded a little perturbed. "He's usually the one trying to get us to
stop kidding around and be serious."
"I am trying to get you to stop kidding around and be serious, nookwhiff,"
Karkat growled in English. "If you'd fucking pay attention for a god-damned
second, that would be obvious."
There was a brief, shocked pause, as all the trolls turned to stare at him.
Well, Kanaya stared. Terezi and Sollux both looked blankly in his direction,
but their startled expressions were identical.
"There's... no way KK could have predicted we'd say that, in particular,
right?" Sollux ventured after a moment, still in Alternian.
"And no way that Karkat could possibly have taught the John human that much of
our language in such a brief period of time," Kanaya agreed, blinking. "Unless
he is a linguistic genius of considerable talents..."
"The only thing Egbert is a genius at is being idiotic," Karkat cut in
impatiently.
"Hey," John protested. "I'm a genius at lots of things. Like pulling pranks!
What are you guys all saying, anyway?"
Kanaya looked at John, then back at Karkat, her eyes huge in her glowing face.
"Karkat?" she nearly squeaked, disbelieving.
"Yes, fucking finally, now can we all start taking this fucking seriously?"
Karkat exclaimed.
"Wait, you're not saying you actually believe them?" Dave said incredulously.
"Look, you just don't know Egbert as well as we do, he's really good at faking
it to be convincing..."
"Dave! Come on, do you really think even I would go so far as to learn to speak
troll in, like, three hours?" John said. "Anyway, you're all right that this
stopped being funny a while ago, and I know better than to drag out a prank
until it's so dead it's rotting."
"That is true," Rose said slowly, sounding as if she couldn't believe she was
considering accepting their story. "Though I've certainly seen John get carried
away on occasion, I have never witnessed him flagellating the proverbial
deceased equine. Certainly not to this extent. And while I'm sure he has many
impressive qualities, some of which I am even cognizant of, I do not believe
linguistics is one of them. Or he would not have so much difficulty rendering
meaning from my own discourses with him."
"Um, thanks? I think," John said, frowning.
"So we're seriously accepting that Egbert is a troll now?" Dave said, staring
from John to Karkat and back again. "And this is, like, forever?"
"Maybe Vriska would have been confidant enough of her luck to risk trying that
twice, but I have no desire to die because my internal organs don't connect to
each other properly anymore," Karkat growled, slumping back in his chair and
crossing his arms. "Or become a drooling idiot because I've got half of my
brain and half of his. Though that would be an improvement, in his case."
"It was not a problem with the frogs, because of course they all had the same
basic genetic code, it was only small differences that were being tweaked by
the machine," Kanaya agreed thoughtfully. "It is actually rather amazing that
the two of you fared so well, considering how much more complicated the changes
would have to be."
"Yeah, though I do feel kinda bad for torturing the little fuckers, if they
went through half as much pain as we did," Karkat muttered.
"I guess we'll get used to it eventually?" John said, sounding hopeful. "And in
the meantime, we should just think of it as a really great opportunity for
cultural exchange! I mean, we've already figured out why the lights are such a
big issue, and I'm sure we'll just keep understanding each other better and
better as time goes by. Maybe this is actually for the best! Don't you think,
Karkat?"
Sadly, Dave and Kanaya managed to grab him by the arms in time to stop him from
making a second attempt to tear out John's throat.
===============================================================================
Despite his best efforts to stop himself from nodding off, with a reasonably
full stomach and nobody likely to try to kill him in the next five minutes
Karkat found it difficult to fend off sleep. His restriction on sleeping was no
longer practical now that they might be here for weeks or even months, but he
still resisted it as hard as he could. He had no desire to meet up with the
horrorterrors again.
So he was grateful when the thunder of someone pounding on his door jerked him
out of a half-doze, even though it made him growl and flail in confusion. It
took him a moment to re-orient himself, especially since the room seemed so dim
to his new eyes.
"Karkat! Damn it, Karkat, open the fucking door! Oh please be there, please let
me in. Karkat!"
It was John's voice, his tone wavering from outraged to terrified and back
again. Grumbling, Karkat forced himself up out of his pile to answer the door.
"What the hell do you want," he growled as he yanked it open, only to be
brought up short as he got a good look at the human-cum-troll.
John was frantic, eyes wide and bloodshot, traces of red on his cheeks where
tears had dried, and his teeth bared in a vicious snarl. The last part should
have looked normal on Karkat's features, except that it was so out of character
on John. His hands were clenched into fists so hard his claws had dug into the
skin, and sluggish trails of candy red blood dripped down through his fingers.
"Karkat, thank god," John exclaimed, throwing himself at Karkat and clinging to
his shoulders like they were the only thing keeping him upright. "I don't know
what's wrong, please tell me this is some fucked-up thing your body is doing to
me!"
"Well, if I had any idea what in the name of the mother grub your problem was,
maybe I'd be able to tell you," Karkat said, but there wasn't as much of a bite
to the words as he'd intended. John was shaking against him, his whole body
shivering. Karkat still wasn't sure if it was fear or rage causing it, but it
made him look completely pathetic.
"I want to kill someone," John blurted out, shaking his head like he could deny
the words even as he spoke them. "I just want to... to hurt someone, rip them
apart and stomp all over the bits and dig my teeth into their skin and chew
them up and..."
"Fuck," Karkat groaned as he realized what must have happened. "You went to
sleep, didn't you?"
It had been hard enough for those of them who'd been born trolls to adjust to
sleeping without sopor slime to quell the violent urges that bubbled up in
their brains while they slept. It had caused persistent problems throughout the
span of the game, frequently setting even the closest of allies at each other's
throats right after waking up. They'd all developed various ways of coping;
after the first experience, Karkat and Terezi had simply agreed that only one
of them was allowed to sleep at a time, so that they never again both woke
snarling at the same time.
He could only imagine how much worse it must be for John, who had no previous
experience with a troll's diurnal delusions - from the sound of it, he hadn't
even known about them, so how could he have braced himself for them? It was a
testament to his self-control that he'd come running to Karkat for help rather
than turning on the nearest person and tearing them to shreds. For that matter,
it was pretty amazing that he was only clinging to Karkat now, not attacking
him.
Come to think of it, maybe that was why he was shaking. It was the struggle to
rein himself in, stop himself from aggressing Karkat, that made his body
tremble with the effort. Karkat found himself reluctantly impressed by John's
willpower, even as he felt the first faint stirrings of pity for the pathetic
human. Troll. Whatever.
He shoved those thoughts away, and concentrated on the much more urgent matter
at hand. "Egbert. Breathe. It's just sleep rage, okay? You'll get over it, you
just have to wait it out."
"It's just what?" John said, clearly bewildered.
"Sleep rage," Karkat repeated. "From diurnal delusions, made worse by dealing
with the fucking horrorterrors now that our dream selves are dead. We don't
have any sopor slime to sleep in, so there's nothing to stop the rage from
building up while you're asleep and can't vent it in other ways. We're... I
mean, trolls are aggressive by nature, remember?"
He himself was only barely starting to get used to the fact that he wasn't
constantly fighting the urge to attack something, anything, anywhere and
anytime. It was going to be very, very weird to wake up without an excess of
hormones driving him half out of his mind with aggression.
"This is normal?" John exclaimed, trembling harder. "You... you deal with this
every time you sleep? You all feel like this?"
"Yeah, and as a note, I should probably warn the rest of the humans not to go
near any of us when we first wake up," Karkat realized, muttering half to
himself. When he brought his full attention back to John, he had to bite off a
curse as he realized he'd been absently rubbing John's back in an instinctive
effort to comfort him. Acting like... like a fucking matesprit, for crying out
loud.
"Sit," he ordered, shoving John away from him abruptly as he attempted to
recover his dignity. "Just sit down and fucking breathe, already."
"I can't, I can't stay still, I have to keep moving or I'm going to, I don't
know, attack you or something," John insisted, starting to pace, fists flailing
in wild gestures. He looked haunted, almost sick, and it pulled at something
deep inside Karkat's chest.
If it had been any other troll, Karkat would never have dared to consider what
he did next, but John wasn't a normal troll and didn't understand even the most
basic rules and taboos of their culture. With a hand that shook slightly from
the sheer audacity of his actions, Karkat reached out and grabbed at the base
of one of John's horns, pressing his blunt nails hard against the spot where
rough horn gave way to soft flesh.
"Oh," John breathed out, a soft, surprised exclamation. Then he went limp, his
knees giving way beneath him, and only luck and a quick push by Karkat let him
land in the relatively soft pile of movie cases. "Um," he said as he stared up
at Karkat, looking dazed.
"Breathe," Karkat reminded him yet again, and this time John obeyed, drawing in
a deep breath and letting it out again slowly. "Better. Don't ever, ever do
that to another troll, by the way," Karkat warned him, kneeling beside him in
the pile. "They'll fucking rip your head off."
"Why? Wow, that felt really good," John mumbled, blushing. "Actually I feel a
lot less like taking your head apart and eating your brains for breakfast now,
thank you."
The weirdness of being thanked for invoking someone's submission reflex made
Karkat pause for a second. Hearing John outright admit that he'd enjoyed it was
even stranger. "Just don't," he insisted, struggling not to blush himself.
"It's fucking rude. You couldn't be ruder if you just reached out and grabbed
someone's bone bulge, all right? Actually, that might be less rude."
"Then why did you do it to me?" John asked, blinking.
"It got you to calm the fuck down, didn't it?" Karkat retorted. "Emergency
measures, that's all. Nothing short of that was going to get through the
density of your think pan when you were that deep in sleep rage. You're fucking
welcome."
"It did help, although..." John squirmed and looked uncomfortable. "It, um, is
kind of doing weird things to..."
"Stop," Karkat shouted, clapping his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes
shut for good measure. "Just seal your seedflap shut before the vomiting geyser
of your awkward social ineptness can drown us both in spewing shame. I don't
want to hear it!"
Especially because he knew exactly what was making John so uncomfortable. Like
most young trolls, Karkat had explored the sensations evoked by touching his
own horns a few times - in private, with several locked doors between him and
the possibility of anyone realizing what he was doing - and he was certainly
familiar enough with his own body to know how his bulge was likely reacting to
the touch.
And knowing that, imagining John reacting that way, was doing things to his
ridiculous human body that made him just as uncomfortable as John had looked.
Whatever it was that made John not a homosexual, it either wasn't genetic or
else that bit of DNA hadn't transferred over with the rest of it, because
Karkat was one hundred percent disgustingly certain that what was happening to
his body was supposed to be a symptom of sexual arousal.
"Sorry, it's just, um, there are some parts of your body that really kind of
freak me out a little," John said, and unfortunately Karkat was able to hear
him just fine despite the fingers plugging his ears. "Like, really. Oh god, I
think going to the bathroom earlier was the most embarrassing, horrifying thing
I've ever done in my life."
"Tell me about it," Karkat muttered, cautiously opening his eyes and unplugging
his ears again. Since it wasn't helping anyway. "I swear to god it's like your
revolting meat-sacks are designed to be as vulnerable as fucking possible. How
do you manage to get through life walking around with your most sensitive parts
just hanging out there like a giant fucking target?" He'd been horrified when
he realized what the dangling bit of flesh between his legs was supposed to be,
and how easily someone could hurt him because of it.
It also made the early stages of arousal kind of really fucking obvious, since
there was nothing to hide the shift in his anatomy other than the far too
insubstantial cover of Karkat's pants. Hopefully John wouldn't look down. On
second thought, Karkat shifted from a kneeling position to sit with his knees
drawn up to his chin. Much better.
"Well, whose fault is that?" John countered, managing a weak smile. "I mean,
you keep reminding me that you created us. I guess you only have yourself to
blame, huh?"
"Oh, go fuck yourself," Karkat said. "You would throw that in my face right
now. Bulgemuncher."
"Ugh, oh man, suddenly it's so much grosser when you call me that," John said,
pulling a face. "Now that I know what a bulge actually is, I mean! And
nooksniffer, oh my god, if that's what I think it is, so disgusting, I don't
even want to think about it."
"So if you're feeling better, you can feel free to go back to your own damned
respite block now," Karkat pointed out, rolling his eyes. Not that he actually
had anything better to do than sit there talking to John, but he didn't want to
get involved in a conversation where they explained the various more personal
and less obvious parts of their new anatomies to each other.
"Um." John's slowly returning cheer evaporated immediately, and he hugged his
knees to his chest and gave Karkat a forlorn look. "But, what am I going to do?
I have to sleep sometimes. I don't know how to handle this! What if next time I
run into someone in the hall before I get here?"
"Sollux said he's going to fiddle with the molecular inversion paradox machine
to try to make it produce sopor slime next, so you should have some soon
enough," Karkat said. "I'll tell him to make sure you get the first batch,
you're the least equipped to deal with diurnal delusions. Just stay awake until
then."
"But, I don't think I can," John protested, shoulders drooping. "I've been
awake since before we started our game session, well, unless you count dying,
but that was surprisingly not very restful. Oh, and the times Vriska sent me to
sleep, but those were pretty short naps. It's been, like, nearly two whole
days, I'm really exhausted."
Karkat grimaced. He'd forgotten that the human's session had been so
ridiculously short, and so packed with events that of course none of them had
been given a chance to rest. From his point of view, scrolling around on the
humans' timelines, jumping from important point to important point and skipping
all the boring bits, it was easy to miss the fact that there hadn't actually
been many boring bits.
He couldn't send John back to sleep alone in his respite block, though. John
was right that the next time he woke up, he might not be as lucky, or he might
not have such amazing control over his urges the second time. Karkat would feel
responsible if John maimed or killed someone while in the throes of a sleep
rage.
It had absolutely nothing to do with how pitiful John looked at that moment,
huddled in on himself and peering up over his knees at Karkat with bloodshot,
woeful eyes.
Heaving a massive sigh that was only slightly exaggerated, Karkat gestured his
defeat. "Fine, then just go to sleep here. Bury yourself in the pile, it makes
you feel less vulnerable if you're closed in, that's why we made the damned
things. I'll make sure you don't hurt anyone when you wake up."
He was fairly certain he could handle John if the troll woke and came after
him, since he'd be expecting it. His new human body might be nigh-on useless,
but he still had his sickles and still knew how to use them.
Looking somewhat doubtful, John nevertheless began to burrow himself into the
pile of movie cases. Karkat helped, scooping up more cases from the sides of
the pile and heaping them on top, until only John's head remained in the open.
"Huh, that actually does kind of make me feel better," John said, yawning.
"Even though it's sort of really uncomfortable, what with all the hard
corners."
"Obviously," Karkat said, chucking one last case on top of him with a little
more force than was necessary. He stifled a yawn of his own, wondering how long
it had actually been since he had last slept. At least a full day and night
cycle. Longer? Not since he'd passed out while Kanaya was hacking off Tavros'
legs with her chainsaw, and he'd finally woken up as his dream self just in
time to see Prospit destroyed. That hadn't exactly been restful, either.
"Karkat?" John said hesitantly, after a long moment. "Um, this is probably
going to sound kind of weird, but... do you think you could... maybe touch my
horns while I fall asleep?" The last words came out in a rushed mumble, and
Karkat was half certain he'd heard wrong. "It really did help earlier, and
maybe that way I won't wake up quite so angry next time, since you're going to
be right here next to me and I won't have time to cool off a little before I
find you. I don't want to hurt you."
"That is completely depraved," Karkat told him flatly. John's expression fell,
and Karkat cursed silently to himself. Was it understandable or just messed up
that it was harder not to feel pity for the little fucknub when he was wearing
Karkat's own face? "Oh, fuck it. Move over, grubtard, you're taking up all the
space."
He didn't bother to bury himself quite as completely, since humans apparently
didn't need that sort of enclosed, protected sensation to help keep their sleep
peaceful. John's position in the pile, combined with the need for Karkat to be
able to comfortably reach his horns, meant that Karkat wound up half curled up
around John's head, so that they were perpendicular with John's head near
Karkat's stomach, facing each other.
Swallowing hard, Karkat reached out and found one of John's horns with his
fingers, trying not to think about how sick and screwed up this was. John let
out a little sigh and tilted his head into Karkat's hand, rubbing his horns
gently against the soft flesh of Karkat's fingers. He reached out and caught
Karkat's other hand, careful not to re-open the barely healed scratches from
earlier, twining their fingers together in a gesture that was entirely too
sappy for Karkat's dignity to acknowledge. So he ignored it.
And that was how they both fell asleep, tangled up in each other, both of them
with the faintest of smiles on their faces.
===============================================================================
Dreams with the horrorterrors proved to be not quite as bad when he didn't have
to deal with the added build-up of aggression and violence, Karkat discovered.
They were still pretty bad, but bearable. Which was good, since he really
wasn't going to be able to avoid sleeping again.
As he slowly returned to wakefulness, however, he had another reason entirely
to be horrified. That part of his body was hard, the way it had started to do
earlier when he'd been reacting to John's squirming arousal. "Oh my god, humans
are sick," Karkat mumbled as he forced his eyes open.
He'd forgotten about the fact that he had company, until John stirred and made
a questioning noise. Turning his head, he was startled to find that the two of
them had shifted until they were completely curled around each other, heads
pillowed against each other's stomachs. They'd released their joined hands at
some point, but Karkat still had the fingers of his other hand loosely clasped
around John's horn.
That was apparently a good thing, because when John opened his eyes to look
back at Karkat there was no sign of the enraged aggression he should have been
feeling. Instead he looked a little dazed, with an edge of arousal that made
the tightness in Karkat's groin even worse. So the submission reflex worked
even better than sopor slime to suppress sleep rage, who knew? Somehow Karkat
didn't think he'd be informing the others about the discovery any time soon.
"Why are we sick?" John asked, the word drawn out and sluggish, like he was
struggling to remember how to talk. Probably a combination of the effect of
Karkat's hand on his horn and the still-unfamiliar configuration of his new
mouth.
"Because you apparently get turned on by dreams of horrorterrors," Karkat
informed him, hastily withdrawing his hand before he could make things worse.
"If that's not sick, I don't know what is!"
"Huh?" That seemed to wake John up a little more, and he stared at Karkat
blankly for a long moment before blushing. Hard. "Oh. Oh. No, it's not... it's
got nothing to do with dreams, well, unless you're having those kind of dreams,
which I guess we can't anymore since we only dream in bubbles? Um, anyway."
"Then why?" Karkat demanded, fighting his own blush.
"Uh, well, you know how you wake up all angry and wanting to kill someone?"
John stammered, refusing to meet Karkat's eyes. "Human guys tend to wake up,
um, well, it's just a reflex, it's not really the same thing at all. It's not
like we're driven to go out and, you know, hump something the way you guys seem
to need to go hurt something."
Humans woke up aroused the way trolls woke up angry? Karkat considered that for
a long moment. "Okay, that's still unbelievably fucked up, but slightly less
sick," he conceded grudgingly. "How do I make it stop?"
"W-well, you can, uh, just wait it out," John said, blushing harder still. "But
it's faster to, you know, take care of it oh my god I can't believe I'm having
this conversation. A-anyway it can't be that fucked up, my body is, um, kind
of, I think I'll just shut up now." He rolled over and buried his face in the
movie cases.
Karkat sort of wanted to do the same thing, but he refused to act like a
wriggler the way John was doing. "That's because you made me touch your horns,
stupid, which is even more fucked up. And if I knew how to 'take care of it' I
wouldn't be asking you, would I?"
"Just, just take care of it," John insisted, still not lifting his head. It
didn't matter - he was blushing so hard Karkat could actually see his ears
turning red, what the fuck. "With your hand." He finally peeked up through his
messy black bangs. Karkat just gave him a blank stare in return, and waited
impatiently for the grubtard to start making sense. "Trolls must do that too,
right? I mean, what do you do when you get... like this?"
"Go find our matesprit or kismesis, obviously," Karkat replied impatiently. "I
don't have either of those."
"So what do you usually do, then?" John asked, looking confused. Sort of
adorably confused, actually, but Karkat told himself it was just the fucked-up
human hormones talking.
"Nothing, stupid," Karkat snapped, realization slowly dawning. "Wait, you mean
you... you fill pails by yourself? What the fuck is the point of that?"
"I keep telling you we don't fill pails, and yeah, what's wrong with that?"
John asked, hiding his face again. "I mean, it's not something you talk about,
and I don't know why we're talking about it right now, but everybody does it.
Even girls, I think, though I'm not quite sure how."
"But it's totally useless," Karkat protested, stunned by the thought of the
monumental waste. "And you do this every morning? How do you even have any
genetic material left by the time you need it?"
"It's not like there's a fixed amount, you just keep producing more," John
replied. "Anyway you don't have to if you don't want to, you can just ignore it
until it goes away, it's just annoying and takes a while. I guess that's what
I'm supposed to do? Do you guys only ever have sex to reproduce, not just for
fun?"
"Yeah but you can only produce so much, so fast," Karkat said. He finally lost
the battle against his own embarrassment, and buried his face in his hands so
he wouldn't have to look at John. "Of course we do it for fun, but you have to
restrain yourself for the perigee before the drones come or you won't have
enough material to fill the pail, and then you're dead. And you certainly don't
ever waste it doing it alone!"
The perigee after the drones visited tended to be rather full of sloppy
makeouts as a result of the forced dry spell, which made the waiting pretty
worth it, or so Karkat had heard.
"Well, there are no drones coming and nobody needs to fill any buckets, but you
can do what you want," John finally said, pushing himself up with a clatter of
movie cases. "I'm going to... go back to my room for a while."
"Yeah, fine, whatever," Karkat said, waving him off without looking at him. He
waited until he heard the sound of footsteps and the door opening and closing,
then let out an explosive breath and curled up in the pile, tugging his knees
tight to his chest.
He knew perfectly well what John was going off to do, and he couldn't stop
himself from imagining it. Trying to picture it without someone else involved
was a little harder, but it wasn't that difficult. Hell, there were probably
trolls who did it; there had been times when Karkat's curiosity had gotten the
better of him and he'd worked himself up to the point where he'd semi-seriously
considered it himself. If you didn't do it very often, you could get away with
it, you just had to be careful not to drain yourself so that your future
matesprit or kismesis wouldn't think you weren't capable of producing enough
genetic material to fill a pail. Fuck, nothing would get you dumped flat on
your shame globes faster than that.
But John was right that there weren't going to be any drones coming for them,
so it didn't really matter anymore. They could all do it ten times a day and
the only result would be that they'd hardly need to worry about buckets, they'd
be coming so little each time. Sloppy makeouts ahoy.
Realizing that he was breathing hard, Karkat whined and pulled his legs in
tighter. That crushed his still-hard bulge - or whatever the humans called it -
between his legs and his stomach, putting pressure on it in a way that made him
squirm helplessly. Or maybe that was the thought of John with his hand down his
pants, coaxing his sensitive bulge out from behind the bone that shielded it,
stroking his fingers over it and oh what the fuck, why not...
Karkat had a hand inside his own pants before he'd even consciously accepted
that he intended to give in to the urge. He cried out as his fingers brushed
against his bizarre bulge, and promptly clamped his other hand over his mouth
to muffle any further sounds.
It was weirdly not as sensitive as he'd expected, but maybe that was natural
considering it was always just hanging out and being stimulated all the time.
Without the bone shield to protect it, if it had been as sensitive as a troll's
bulge the stupid humans would just be orgasming constantly all the fucking
time. Or else walking around in eternal agony.
There were places where it felt amazing to touch, though, and actually it was
all pretty fucking good. The lack of claws and softer skin of his fingers
proved not to be a down side here, since he could handle himself pretty much as
roughly as he pleased. The tip especially felt good, and a spot just under the
ridge of the widest part of the head. When he slid his hand down further he
discovered that the squishy sac hanging beneath the bulge was sensitive too,
though the lack of a nook was a little bizarre.
Mentally shrugging, Karkat returned to exploring the bulge, arousal winding
tighter and tighter in his groin. That part was familiar enough, though he was
rapidly approaching a point that was farther than he'd ever dared to push
himself before. It felt good, so good, and yeah, okay, he could maybe see why
the humans would do this as often as they could if there was no pressing reason
not to, fuck. And the knowledge that John was back in his room doing exactly
the same thing made Karkat feel so overheated he almost wondered if he would
explode.
The shrill chime of his husktop interrupted him just as his breathing was
starting to turn into short, sharp panting. Startled, Karkat jerked his hand
away from his bulge in a reflexive attempt to pretend he wasn't doing anything
wrong, as if someone had just caught him at it. Well, maybe they had - as far
as he knew none of them had figured out how to troll their own timeline as well
as the humans', but what if Sollux or someone had finally managed it? Fear and
humiliation did a wonderful job of shutting down his arousal.
Groaning, he stretched out one shaking hand and pulled his husktop closer,
checking the Trollian status window. He snarled when he realized it was John
that was pestering him, and nearly threw the husktop across the room in sheer
frustration.
ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]
EB: um, karkat?
EB: this is going to sound like a weird question, and you're probably going to
make fun of me a lot, and i don't really blame you.
EB: but, um... how do i get, er, alternian stains out of fabric?
EB: ...
EB: karkat?
EB: are you there?
CG: ...
CG: YOU FORGOT THE FUCKING BUCKET, DIDN'T YOU
carcinoGeneticist [CG] blocked ectoBiologist [EB]
===============================================================================
"What do you mean, it won't be ready for days?"
Sollux sighed, and rubbed one temple. He looked exhausted, like he'd been up
coding for three days straight - which he probably had, actually. That made
Karkat feel a little guilty for dumping on him, but this was an urgent problem.
"Look, KK. Converting energy into matter takes a fucking lot of energy, ok? The
stupid molecular inversion paradox machine can only hold so much of a charge at
once. It can produce exactly so much mass, and then it has to recharge for a
while before it will work again." Sollux gestured at a readout on the machine,
where a green bar was creeping slowly from one side towards the other. "If I'd
set it to make nothing but sopor slime from the moment I got the code written
for it, maybe there would have been enough for one person by the next time we
need to sleep, but I doubt it. And that assumes we were all willing to go
without food until then."
Growling, Karkat worked the numbers over in his head, but he couldn't make them
contradict what Sollux was telling him. Even if one day was enough to produce
sufficient quantities of slime for one troll, and even if they were all willing
to go without food until then, it would still take at least another full day
for there to be enough slime for John. Realistically, it was going to be more
like two or three days.
"Well, you heard him," he said to John when he finally admitted defeat. "You'll
just have to stay awake until then."
"Ahaha, yeah, sure," John said, but he didn't exactly sound enthusiastic. "No
problem, I'll just, um, watch a lot of movies. Or something."
"Oh, fuck, that's why you're so anxious," Sollux realized, turning his blind
gaze in John's direction. "Yeah, I guess letting him sleep without it isn't
really a good idea, since he's not used to it. Sorry, Egbert."
The sympathy in his voice made Karkat's hand twitch into a fist at his side.
Was Sollux pitying the pathetic sack of epic-level fail? Why the hell did
Karkat even care if he was? Oh, right, because sloppy interspecies makeouts
were forbidden, and it was his job as the leader to enforce his rules.
Did it still count as an interspecies makeout now that John was a troll? Fuck,
this was all getting too complicated for him to keep track of.
"We could always just tie him down so he can't hurt anything when he wakes up,"
Karkat suggested, half seriously. "Then he can sleep all he wants."
"That's not a bad idea," John agreed, but he sounded so miserable it made
Karkat feel guilty despite himself. The memory of the frantic look in John's
eyes the day before, when he'd come running to Karkat for help controlling the
vicious urges he was suffering from, tugged at Karkat's conscience. Tying him
up would make the violent impulses ten times worse, as his instincts fought
against the perceived threat.
"Fuck it, we'll figure something out," Karkat muttered, patting John awkwardly
on one shoulder. John looked briefly confused, then hopeful, and Karkat
promptly changed the subject before the grubtard could blurt out something
incriminating.
Like, 'does that mean you'll touch my horns while I sleep again?'
"So I take it that means you've at least made more food today?" Karkat asked
Sollux.
"Yeah, and this time I managed to make it produce something a little better
than 'vaguely nutritious glop', or whatever Kanaya said it was labelled as,"
Sollux said, perking up a little."I can't promise whether the human food will
be any good, but Harley helped so it should at least be edible."
"Um. That might be debatable," John said a little nervously, glancing over at
where Jade was standing with Dave and Rose on the other side of the room. "But
it's got to be better than last night's mush, that's for sure."
"Hey, that was still better than nothing," Karkat retorted. "And 'nothing' is
exactly what we'd have gotten if it had been entirely up to you and me, thanks
to your fuck-headed antics. We're just lucky Pyrope and Strider found this
damned thing, so you'll take whatever you're given and shove it down your
protein chute, and like it."
"It's not entirely unpalatable, actually," Rose commented, apparently
overhearing them. "There is still vast room for improvement, of course, but
considering that our culinary conductor is both unfamiliar with the terran
gastric palate and literally working blind, the result is quite satisfactory.
Indeed, even deserving of adulation."
"The grubloaf is pretty damned good too," Terezi put in, and shoved a plate of
it at Karkat.
He sniffed, and squinted at it suspiciously. It looked half decent, if a bit
dry and crumbly, but there was definitely something off about the smell. The
scent was sour instead of tangy, and something about it made his gastric acid
bladder churn uncomfortably.
Well, he could hardly protest after he'd just gotten finished lecturing John
about being grateful for whatever they had, so he scooped up a pronged utensil
full and shoved it in his mouth.
And promptly spat it right back out again, struggling mightily not to retch as
the rancid flavour coated his tongue. It was horrible, the worst thing he'd
ever tasted, and he'd eaten some pretty dubious meals while travelling through
the Medium. Coughing and scrubbing at his mouth, he groped blindly for
something to get the horrible taste out until someone apparently felt sorry for
him and put a glass of water into his hand.
"Oh god, what was that?" Karkat cried when he could speak again without
vomiting all over the computer lab. "Egbert, if that was one of your stupid
pranks, I swear I am going to rip all your limbs off and grind them up for the
next meal!"
"It wasn't me, I swear," John said, and he sounded as ill as Karkat felt.
Surprised, Karkat rubbed at his watering eyes until he could see again, and
found John leaning hunched over against the wall, making faces like he was
trying equally hard not to throw up. "But whoever it was, damn, well done. You
got us both pretty good, that's a heck of a prank!"
"But it wasn't a prank," Jade said, and she looked bewildered and hurt.
"Really, John, that's the same meatloaf the rest of us ate!"
"Indeed, and as I stated previously, the quality was not so abysmal that it
should have induced such repugnant reactions from you," Rose said, brow
furrowed.
"Yeah, seriously bro, it wasn't that bad," Dave agreed.
"Perhaps this is an indication that it would be best to ensure that the food
supplies of each species are not inter-mixed in the future?" Kanaya suggested
hesitantly. "It would appear that our tastes do not appeal to each other in the
least."
"You mean I can't eat perfectly good food because of this revoltingly useless
body?" Karkat exclaimed, staring at his plate in horror. "Oh my god, what else
is going to go wrong because of this?" He snuck a look at the plate John was
carrying over, and grimaced. The food on it was brown on the outside and pink
in the middle, and it looked completely disgusting.
"Um, your food is green, is it supposed to be that color?" John asked, with a
similar look of distaste on his features. "It looks kind of like somebody
ground up snot as the main ingredient"
"Well, yours looks like one of you freak-blooded failtastic mammals bled into
it, so I'd say that makes us even," Karkat grumbled, snatching the plate out of
his counterpart's hand.
They each scooped up a scant portion of their new food, traded hesitant
appalled expressions, and shoved the food in their mouths.
It... wasn't half bad, actually. Karkat chewed with a little more enthusiasm
after the first few moments, though it took him a few tries to get the hang of
the grinding motion required by the ridiculously flat back human teeth. His
second bite was larger, and it was just as edible as the first bite. Glancing
at John, he found the human-cum-troll taking another mouthful as well.
"Well, that settles that, I guess," Karkat sighed when his mouth was clear
again. "No interspecies taste testing parties."
"Aw, too bad," Terezi said, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder and nearly
clawing half his cheek off when she missed. "Sollux was gonna try to make
grubghetti tomorrow, isn't that your favourite?"
"Yeah," Karkat snapped, pulling away. Damn it, she didn't have to rub it in.
"Whatever, probably would have been half-assed anyway."
Finishing dinner was difficult enough, when he had to eat his food without
looking at it and kept sneaking longing glances at the much more appealing-
looking grubloaf the others had. It was worse when the four humans left - well,
three humans and a former human. Without them, the conversation naturally
switched into Alternian, which was far easier for troll mouths and tongues to
manage, especially while eating.
Karkat tried twice to join in the conversation in his native tongue, shaping
the sounds as carefully as he could. He wouldn't even have cared if the result
had been that he sounded like a mentally deficient grub, if it had only been
understandable, but his human mouth just was not capable of making the sounds
required. He gave up after the second try made Sollux choke on his grubloaf and
Kanaya and Terezi both blush, even though the sight of Terezi blushing would
have been worth boonbucks to him on any other occasion.
He stuck to English after that, which was certainly functional enough; it
wasn't as if the other trolls couldn't understand him that way, or as if he was
prevented from being able to understand them. But it felt awkward and left him
thoroughly miserable with the reminder that he was no longer properly one of
them, and never would be again. What was worse was that the others seemed
equally awkward towards him, as if they didn't quite know how to react or treat
him now that he looked like one of the humans.
It made him feel alien, that was the word he was looking for. And it wasn't
like he could just go off and hang out with the humans and feel at home that
way, because he was even more alien to them despite his new superficial
similarities.
By the time he was done eating Karkat was thoroughly sick of socializing. "I'm
going back to my respite block," he announced, standing abruptly. "Troll me if
there's any problems."
"Yeah, sure thing, KK," Sollux agreed. A little too quickly? And did Kanaya
look faintly relieved? Or was that Karkat's overactive paranoia talking?
Hurt and trying desperately not to show it, Karkat turned and stormed off,
making an effort to keep his posture angry instead of pained. At least until he
got out of the main room. Then his shoulders slumped and his stomping stride
turned into a miserable shuffle, and he couldn't decide whether he ought to
hate or pity himself as he dragged his feet through the halls to his respite
block.
He slammed into his room with every intention of throwing himself down into his
pile and indulging in a massive and well-deserved rage fit, only to be brought
up short when he turned the lights up high and was met by a pained cry from
someone already inside the room.
John sat huddled on Karkat's pile, looking every bit as miserable as Karkat
felt, wincing and shielding his sensitive eyes from the painfully bright light.
For a moment Karkat considered leaving the lights up, as a way of chasing the
other boy out again, but in the end he dimmed them back to something only a
little higher than the trolls preferred, but not so dark he couldn't even see
John sitting there.
"What the fuck are you doing here," he snapped, too depressed even to swear
creatively at him.
"I... I just..." John pulled in farther on himself, a pathetic ball of wretched
troll curled up on the pile. "I couldn't stay with the others. It was so
awkward, and they kept trying really hard to make me feel better and that only
made me feel worse, because it meant they were rubbing my nose in how different
I was."
"At least you can speak your own fucking language," Karkat snarled, refusing to
feel sorry for the other boy when by all rights he should feel sorrier for
himself. "I can't even have a fucking conversation with my friends without it
being painfully obvious with every word that emerges from my seedflap that I am
not one of them and never will be again!"
He flopped into his pile, uncaring that he was scattering movies everywhere,
and winced as the sharp corners dug into his ridiculously soft skin. He kept
forgetting about that, forgetting how stupidly, uselessly vulnerable this body
was, how ridiculously easy it was to bruise and tear the skin. He wondered if
he would ever get used to it, even as he despised the fact that he needed to
get used to it.
"I hate this body!" he yelled into the pile, pushed past the last limits of his
tolerance. "With the burning fire of a million flaming suns gone supernova,
with the destructive power of a hundred thousand Imperial planet-crusher
missiles, I hate it! I hate it even more than I hated you the first time I ever
talked to you! It's stupid and useless and soft and blunt and I can't fight and
I can't see and I can't talk and I..."
He ran out of breath and was horrified to realize he was unable to draw another
because of the sob caught in his throat, the tears pouring over his face. He
was even more horrified when he felt hard fingers combing through his hair, the
touch delicate as if their owner was afraid to hurt him, which he probably was.
Which he probably would, if he pressed even a little harder, sharp claws
dragging against the soft skin of Karkat's scalp.
"Don't you dare," he growled, thrashing but not quite throwing off the
comforting hand. Because it was comforting, and as much as he hated it, as much
as he couldn't admit it even to himself, he wanted that comfort so badly right
now. He wanted not to feel alone. "Don't you dare pity me, I am not pathetic, I
am Karkat fucking Vantas and I am more badass than you could ever be! I am so
fucking unpathetic that I will never be able to experience redrom, because
nobody will ever be able to feel anything but awe and adulation towards me. And
even if I was the most useless troll in all of fucking Alternian space, I would
still be less pathetic than you!"
"I'm sorry," John whispered, his voice choked with what might have been tears
of his own. "This is all my fault, and it's not fair that you're suffering so
much more than me. And don't say that you aren't, because now that I know kind
of what it feels like to be a troll, I can understand why you'd feel so
helpless in my body. And you're right, at least I can speak my own language,
and I don't have to worry about my friends turning on me or something because
I'm suddenly helpless or whatever, and... oh my god."
Karkat yelped as the fingers tightened abruptly in his hair, claws digging into
his skin. "Oh, my god," John repeated, in the dazed tone of someone who has
just had a revelation. "I get it now. I think I do. Oh my god, Karkat, I get
it!"
"Get what, nubwit?" Karkat demanded, turning his head enough to let him see
John. He looked just as stunned as he sounded, staring down at Karkat with an
utterly gobsmacked look on his face.
"The whole pity and hate thing, I think I finally get it," John insisted, eyes
wide. "I could never understand why it was supposed to be a good thing to pity
the person you cared about most, but... you're hurting so much and all I can
think about is how much I want to take that hurt away, wrap you up like you're
made of spun glass and make sure that nothing ever hurts you again, and...
Karkat, I think I totally pity you, and it feels amazing!"
The words should have left him flushed and reeling, blood-pusher pounding with
the overwhelming feelings invoked by such a passionate confession.
Intellectually, he was, but emotionally Karkat found he was kind of angry, and
a little hurt, because it felt like John was totally looking down on him. And
that didn't make any sense, because hell, Karkat had even had a few stray
pitiful thoughts directed at John since this whole thing had started, so why
was he getting mad about it now?
Was it possible that humans just really, truly were built in such a way that
emotions didn't mean the same thing to them? And because Karkat was now a
human, even though his mind could comprehend that what John was saying was a
good thing, his stupid hormones and emotions couldn't grasp it?
Even the anger and hatred he'd experienced since becoming human had all been of
the platonic sort, Karkat realized now, not a single blackrom emotion slipping
in anywhere. That just wasn't natural for a troll... but maybe it really was
natural for a human?
"Fuck," he breathed out, dismayed all over again by this new revelation. "All
this time I thought you were just so deficient in your think pan that it was
more like a think cup, but it actually wasn't your fault that you couldn't
understand a simple concept like the quadrants. I am so fucking mad at you for
saying that shit to me, I could tear your face off, it hurts."
"Oh. Oops?" John looked chagrined. "If it helps, I never really pitied you
before this, I liked you a lot and I mean I felt bad for you when Gamzee was
chasing you around killing people, but that was because I was worried about you
and I didn't want anything to happen to you! Which I guess is kind of like
pity, but not quite the same."
"You liked me," Karkat repeated, and there was a queer throbbing feeling in his
chest which he had previously taken for pity, but now that he was examining it,
it wasn't really pity at all. Because actually it felt stronger when John was
smiling, happy, the furthest possible thing from pitiful. Seeing him upset like
this made Karkat hurt, but in a different way from pity. It wasn't so much a
drive to stop him from feeling bad as it was a need to make him feel good, and
even though those things might seem to be equivalent on the surface, he was
realizing that they really, really weren't.
"I think... I understand what you meant by that, now," he admitted, his voice
so low even he could barely hear the words.
"Really?" John's expression went from wide-eyed wonder, to soft happiness, to
hesitant confusion. "So, I mean, you like me? Like-like me? In a, uh, romantic
way?"
"Maybe," Karkat mumbled, looking away briefly before wrenching his eyes back to
meet John's. Be damned if he'd let the moron think Karkat was ashamed of his
feelings somehow. None of this 'but I'm not a homosexual' crap for him. "What
about you? Pity is romantic for trolls by definition, you know. Your equipment
is pretty fucking freaky, but I'm definitely still a guy."
"Yeah, um... that doesn't really seem to matter much," John said, and now it
was his turn to blush and look away. "Actually the weirdest part is being
attracted to someone who looks like my twin brother or something. I'm sure Rose
would have all kinds of things to say about the Freudian meaning behind this."
"Lalonde can go fuck herself," Karkat said succinctly. "This is about you and
me."
"I..." John finally looked back at him, cheeks flushed with embarrassment...
and something warmer. "I couldn't stop thinking about you, this morning. When I
was... you know. I kept wondering if you were going to do the same thing, and
then I couldn't stop picturing it, and then before I knew it... I realized why
you guys are so insistent on the whole pail thing."
Karkat couldn't quite stop himself from snorting in amusement, despite the
irritation provoked by the reminder of his earlier frustration upon being
interrupted. "I was doing the same, until you fucking pestered me just as I was
getting to the best part, and totally killed the mood."
"Ahahaha, uh, sorry?" John offered, smiling weakly.
"Well, you'll just have to make it up to me," Karkat huffed, and finally gave
in to the need to look away. He peeked back from under his lashes, however, and
was pleased despite himself to see the heat building in John's eyes. "So? What
are you waiting for, an invitation engraved onto your bone bulge to remind you
what you're supposed to be doing with it?"
"I'm actually not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with it," John
admitted, flushing harder. "Maybe you can show me?"
"Fuck, only you would need instructions on something any wriggler would know by
instinct," Karkat said, rolling his eyes. "Fine. I'll teach you yours, if you
teach me mine."
"Deal," John said, and his smile was only a little shaky as he reached for
Karkat.
They quickly learned that kissing was going to have to be led by Karkat, unless
they were trying to recreate one of Kanaya's rainbow drinker novels. Karkat had
known that his teeth as a troll were sharp, but he hadn't quite appreciated how
sharp until they were gnawing on the much more delicate skin of his new human
lips.
He pulled back and readjusted, and they managed to find an equilibrium that
felt pretty good. Then John slipped his tongue out and Karkat met it with his
own, clumsier tongue, and 'pretty good' didn't even come close to describing
how it felt.
Then John started growling in the back of his throat, the deep rumble overlaid
by a higher whine, and the sound ran straight down Karkat's spine into his
bulge. It was an aggressive, needy sound, normally reserved only for a
matesprit or kismesis, intended to tell the troll's partner to brace themselves
because they were about to get thoroughly fucked.
Karkat braced himself, hanging on to John's shoulders and shivering, just in
time as John tore his mouth away and lowered it to Karkat's neck. "Teeth,"
Karkat hissed, embarrassed that he had to beg for mercy but not finding the
knives buried in his shoulder nearly as sexy as they should have been.
John eased up with a mumbled apology, licking and kissing the spot he'd just
savaged, and Karkat managed to take his first deep breath since they'd started
kissing. "Okay, just... take it easy, you're letting your instincts run away
with you," he coaxed, his voice trembling a little. With need, not fear, though
there was a tiny curl of that making flutterbeasts dance in his acid sack as
well.
Moaning, John let Karkat push him back by the shoulders, until they were laying
stretched out flat on the pile. Karkat squirmed until he was on top of John,
finding it much more comfortable to sit on the other boy than the hard cases.
And also enjoying the sounds John was making, like Karkat's wiggling was
driving him out of his think pan.
Panting like there suddenly wasn't enough oxygen in the room, Karkat lowered
his mouth to John's neck instead. His blunt teeth could hardly do any more
damage than his soft nails had been able to that first day, but he gave it his
best shot, biting down hard on the tough skin of John's throat. The growl
kicked up a notch, and John writhed beneath him, hands coming up to clutch at
Karkat's back and dig into his hair. His claws pricked, but it didn't hurt
nearly enough for Karkat to want to stop him.
Troll sex tended to be rough and a little painful, even between matesprits.
Karkat was able to infer from things the humans had said and his own experience
in this frail body that human sex was probably gentler. In some ways it was a
very good thing that they were doing this for the first time now, when John's
sweet nature tempered his instinctive drive to dominate and damage, and
Karkat's socially-ingrained appreciation of roughness overcame the greater
amount of pain this body experienced. If they'd done this in their own bodies,
Karkat might very well have irreparably damaged or just frightened John off
before he ever realized what he was doing wrong.
Instead they managed to balance right on the line between too much for one and
not enough for the other, and it was amazing.
When John's stupid God Tier hoodie got in the way of Karkat's explorations, he
snarled and broke off long enough to claw it up out of the way. John sat up
enough to help him, then insistently pulled at Karkat's shirt as well before he
would let Karkat return to what he'd been doing. Only when they were both half
naked did Karkat manage to get his mouth back on John, biting and sucking as
hard as he could at the expanse of grey skin.
John slid his hands up over Karkat's chest, dragging his claws just lightly
enough to sting but not break the skin, and Karkat couldn't stop himself from
squirming in reaction. Then John reached the odd, flat little disks of darker
skin on the upper half of his chest, which Karkat had been highly confused by
and had finally written off as very weird scars.
They weren't scars, as it turned out. They appeared to be the human equivalent
of horns, at least for sexual purposes, because the moment John tweaked them
Karkat nearly went through the roof.
"Oh fuck, do that again," he pleaded breathlessly. John happily complied, and
Karkat moaned and arched into the touch as he scrambled to get one hand up to
John's horn to return the favour. He was careful not to apply much pressure,
ghosting his fingers over the base of it, because he only wanted to start the
endorphin rush, not leave John limp and unmoving.
He seemed to manage the trick of it, because John's growl doubled in volume and
he shivered under the touch, but he didn't stop running his hands all over
Karkat's body. They traded a few sloppy kisses, and part of Karkat's brain
giddily noted that he really was going to have to lift his ban on interspecies
makeouts, because he wasn't selfish enough to keep them all for himself.
Then John's squirming took on a slightly more frantic tenor, and his growl was
interspersed by a desperate moan. "Yeah, okay, this is the part that kind of
really freaks me out," he said, his voice shaking with need and a bit of
discomfort. "Seriously, Karkat, your body is kind of weird."
"Only because you lot apparently have no issues with walking around letting
your most sensitive parts hang out there," Karkat retorted, biting at his neck
again. "You're just aroused and feeling safe enough to let yourself be
vulnerable, don't fight it."
John moaned again and arched against him, and Karkat finally let go of the
other boy's horn in favour of pushing his ridiculous blue pyjama pants down
over his hips. John's bulge was about half extended from behind the bony
sheath, writhing a bit with the intensity of the sensation of airflow and skin
against it. Carefully Karkat took it in his hand, for once grateful for the
lack of hard claws because it let him be a little less delicate than he might
otherwise have to be.
The noise John made when Karkat touched him there was almost painfully
exquisite, a chirping whine that made Karkat's breath catch in his throat.
Sliding his fingers along the twitching surface of the bulge, Karkat decided
somewhat giddily that it was his new mission in life to force John to make that
noise as often and as loudly as possible.
His own bulge was hard enough to hurt, pressed against the front of his pants.
Karkat was just about desperate enough for relief to let go of John long enough
to undo them, when John suddenly dropped his hands and did it for him. He
moaned and jerked his hips into the touch as John tentatively drew his fingers
over the tip, which seemed to be weeping colourless fluid. Karkat really hoped
it was supposed to do that, but since John didn't say anything he figured it
was safe to assume that was normal.
They both took a moment to wiggle out of the last of their clothes, then
returned to exploring the bodies that were so familiar and yet so different
when someone else was wearing them. Karkat gently untangled his fingers from
the length of John's bulge, now fully extended, and slid them down to rub over
the edges of his nook. John gasped and retaliated by wrapping his fist around
Karkat's bulge and pumping, an action that would have been incredibly agonizing
on a troll's body but which apparently a human's very, very much appreciated.
There was no way in hell Karkat was going to be able to get his monstrous alien
bulge into John's shallow nook, but that was okay, because thanks to the lack
of claws there was nothing stopping him from using his fingers instead with no
fear of hurting the other boy. He had to bite down on his own tongue to help
him concentrate, because that steady pumping on his bulge was more than a
little distracting, but he managed somehow.
Trying to mimic the writhing motions of a troll's bulge by rubbing his fingers
together inside John apparently worked well enough, because John gave a
startled shout and arched up until Karkat was amazed his spine didn't crack.
"Buh, fuck, bucket, Karkat, I need..." he gasped out, clearly struggling to
hold on with everything he was worth.
"Are you fucking kidding me? You just came earlier today, fuckass, you're not
gonna have anything left," Karkat informed him, just as breathless. "Just
fucking go already!" He felt like he was trembling on the edge of something
huge, something that would sweep him away and leave him completely senseless,
and he wanted to make sure John was taken care of, first.
Sexually frustrated trolls had been known to seriously injure their
disappointing partner, after all.
Finally John gave a high, thin, warbling scream and his whole body shook
against Karkat's as he came. It turned out he did have some genetic material
left, a thin trickle of red fluid leaking down over Karkat's fingers to coat
his hand, easing the friction of skin against skin as he pulled out.
Then John recovered enough to shift his grip on Karkat's bulge, running his
thumb over the weeping slit at the top with careful delicacy, and that was it
for Karkat's self control. He thought he might have shouted as he came, too,
but he couldn't be sure over the rushing sound of his own blood in his ears. He
collapsed down onto John, spasms wracking his whole body, as it felt like he
emptied everything inside of him over John's hand.
It took a long moment before he could move again, but when he tipped his head
down enough to see he was amazed to find that he'd hardly produced any more
material than John had. No wonder humans didn't understand the need for pails,
if they always only came this much.
"Wow," John said, somewhat fuzzily. He was nuzzling at Karkat's neck, teeth
safely tucked away behind his lips, and the gesture felt... affectionate. A
concept a normal troll wouldn't really grasp, but which Karkat was discovering
felt pretty damned good. "Wow, that was really... wow."
"Yeah," Karkat agreed, his voice husky. "Okay, maybe human bodies aren't
completely useless at everything."
He shifted so that he wasn't completely crushing John anymore, but arranged
himself so he could still use the other boy's body between him and the hard
movie cases. Lazily he slid one hand up into John's hair, resting just the tips
of his fingers against the base of John's horns, and enjoyed the way that made
John shudder against him.
"I'm tired," John said, as if he was surprised by the discovery.
"No shit, I wonder why," Karkat snorted, but there was no heat behind his
words. Not the heat of anger, anyway - there was a different sort of warmth
there, something that he thought might be what the humans seemed to mean by
'love'. "Go to sleep, nookwhiff. We can do it again in the evening."
"Mmm, yeah, okay," John agreed, sliding his hands up to rest on Karkat's back,
holding him close but not crushing him. His eyes fluttered shut and he drifted
off quickly, his breathing slow and relaxed as Karkat gently stroked his horn.
Karkat stayed up for a surprisingly long time, just watching the human/troll
sleep, feeling a sappy smile playing over his mouth and a stinging fist
squeezing his emotions in the best possible way.
===============================================================================
Pounding broke through the quiet of slumber, rattling the metal door in its
frame. Karkat mumbled an incoherent protest as he tried to burrow further into
his pile to escape the noise.
Something warm and solid beneath him prevented him from going any deeper. He
cracked one eye open in irritation, then smiled again when he saw that it was
John and remembered what had happened. John frowned and stirred, twitching with
the first signs of waking rage, but Karkat stroked his horn and he subsided
again.
Now, if only whatever was causing that god-awful racket at the door would go
away and let them sleep. It couldn't have been more than an hour since he'd
closed his eyes, surely.
"KK! C'mon, wake up, this is important," Sollux called over the noise of his
pounding.
With a groan Karkat tried to order him to go away, but the words wouldn't form
right and he couldn't seem to raise his voice enough. Giving up on the attempt,
he buried his face in John's shoulder and decided to ignore it until the
irritating freak went away.
Unfortunately Sollux was more determined than Karkat had given him credit for.
"Okay, KK, I'm sorry for invading your space like this but seriously I need you
to wake up," he said, and to Karkat's disbelief he opened the door and came
inside. If Karkat had still been a troll his natural territorial instinct would
have driven him to try to rip out Sollux's throat for the invasion, especially
since he was half asleep.
As a human he didn't seem to have the same urge, but unfortunately it appeared
that John had come to regard this respite block as his space as well, and he
was waking up enough to register Sollux's presence. The growl that resonated
through the room had very little in common with the sexy sound he'd made
earlier for Karkat - this one made the hairs on the back of Karkat's neck rise,
a very strange sensation.
Sollux stopped dead in the doorway, staring blankly into the room. "What the...
KK? Humans don't make that noise, do they? Ohhhh... fuck, Egbert's in here,
isn't he," he realized, and hastily retreated back into the hallway. "Sorry,
sorry, just... get out here as soon as you can, will you?"
Embarrassed that Sollux had caught them naked and vulnerable in the movie pile,
Karkat scrambled to retrieve their clothes. At least Sollux couldn't actually
see them, he consoled himself.
"Egbert, wake the fuck up, and stop that, it's not a threat," he ordered,
smacking the half-asleep troll hard in the shoulder. A moment later he was
appalled at his unthinking action, and braced himself for John to rip him a new
one. Literally. Horn-dazed or not, any troll would attack someone that struck
them while they were half asleep, unless it was their matesprit.
Somewhat to his amazement, John grumbled but didn't attack, only opening his
eyes and yawning instead. "Whaa?" he said, a bit incoherent still but obviously
aware enough to be asking questions. And not deep in the throes of sleep rage,
thankfully.
"I don't know, Sollux wants something and it must be damned fucking important
for him to actually come in here," Karkat grumbled, quickly pulling his pants
on. He tossed John's clothes at him, and after a befuddled moment John started
dressing as well, clearly waking up more by the moment.
"This had better be fucking good, Captor," Karkat said as he yanked the door
open again, tugging his shirt down with his other hand. "Like seriously,
everyone else in the asteroid had better be dead or dying because Noir finally
found us, or something equally life-threatening. Are you out of your fucking
think pan?"
"Yeah, sorry about that," Sollux apologized again, and Karkat was marginally
appeased to see a hot splash of yellow across his cheeks. "I thought it was
just you in there, and it doesn't seem like the humans care much when someone
wakes them up, so I figured it would be okay. Why was Egbert sleeping with you?
Though it at least means we don't have to go hunt him down."
"So I can keep him from going hiveshit on anyone when he wakes up," Karkat said
bluntly, grateful the other troll couldn't see his answering blush. "It's a
fuckload better than tying him up."
"Sollux?" John said, finally stumbling up behind Karkat, rubbing at his eyes
with one hand and trying to stifle a yawn with the other. "What's going on?"
"I think we've figured out how to reverse what happened to you," Sollux said,
and it felt like Karkat's blood pusher stopped dead in his chest.
"You what?" he and John exclaimed on the same breath, staring at the blind
troll like he held the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
"I've been trying to reprogram the machine that switched you, and I finally
managed to parse the damned code," Sollux explained, shuffling his way down the
hall. He was getting better at navigating by scent thanks to Terezi's lessons,
but he was still going far too slow for Karkat's peace of mind, especially if
what he was saying was true. Karkat grabbed his arm and hustled him along, and
for a miracle Sollux actually let him without protesting.
"When the fuck have you had time to be working on that?" Karkat demanded.
"Pretty much constantly since it happened," Sollux told him. "I lied about the
molecular inversion paradox machine not being able to produce much mass, I just
haven't had a chance to touch its programming beyond making slightly better
food. I didn't want to tell you what I was really doing and get your hopes up,
in case I couldn't find a way to fix it."
"You can really change us back?" John said, practically bouncing along behind
them, now wide-awake and eager.
Sollux turned his head as if he could look back at John, and his expression was
a mixture of confusion and unease. "If you just woke up, and I invaded your
space, why aren't you trying to kill me right now?"
"Huh? Oh, because Karkat figured out that hemmmphghhhn." Karkat tightened his
hand a little more over John's mouth, glaring bloody murder at him, uncaring
that he'd just nearly made Sollux brain himself because he'd let go so
abruptly.
"Never mind, that's not important," Karkat snapped, only releasing John when he
was certain the idiot had gotten the hint. John gave him a slightly shaky
smile, blushing, and nodded sheepishly. Thank fucking god.
"Ooookay," Sollux said slowly, and shrugged. "I don't want to know, do I?"
"No, you fucking don't, so get back on topic," Karkat said, taking his arm
again impatiently.
"Anyway, yeah, I've remapped it so that there's basically an 'undo' function
now, that will exactly reverse whatever its last action was," Sollux said. "So
unless somebody's been mixing frogs on there since you two stumbled into it, it
should switch you back to the way you belong."
"How sure are you that this will work?" Karkat asked, blood pusher pounding in
his chest.
"About... ninety percent sure," Sollux admitted. "I can't get it any closer
than that, KK, I'm sorry. It's up to you whether you want to take the risk."
To be able to be himself again, with proper teeth and claws and horns and
bulge, to not have to feel like a weak, vulnerable, pathetic sack of fail who
couldn't even speak his own language and who felt like an alien even in a group
full of aliens... fuck yes, it was worth the risk. To Karkat.
But Karkat wasn't the only one who needed to make the decision, and he couldn't
force John to risk death or drooling idiocy if the other boy didn't want to.
No, he probably could force it, but he wouldn't. Was that pity, or love? He
wasn't even sure any more.
"Egbert?" he asked, turning towards the other boy.
"Do you even have to ask?" John exclaimed, shaking his head. "This stopped
being funny a long time ago! I'm not as miserable as you, but ninety percent
sure sounds good enough to me!"
"That's still a one in ten chance it'll fail," Karkat felt compelled to remind
him.
"And nine in ten that it will work," John countered. "C'mon, I'm sure Vriska
must have willed me some of her luck. Otherwise how would we have managed to
survive this in the first place? I say let's do it."
"Fuck yes," Karkat exclaimed, relieved more than he could say.
It seemed to take forever for them to reach the room where the up-sized frog-
cloning equipment was. As they approached Karkat realized that Kanaya was there
as well, and frowned. "The screen has not changed since you left," she told
Sollux as they drew closer. Karkat realized that Sollux must have needed her to
read the screen to him, since he couldn't see it and couldn't read by smelling
yet the way Terezi could. "I did not look away even for a moment, as you asked.
There have been no blips or alterations."
"Thank god, I really did not want to go through all that again," Sollux
breathed out. "Not that I thought it was likely something would go wrong, but I
didn't want to take the chance. Thanks, Kanaya, I couldn't have done this
without you."
"Is this why you two were so relieved to get rid of me after dinner?" Karkat
exclaimed, and a weight lifted from his shoulders that he hadn't even realized
was there.
"Were we that obvious? I apologize," Kanaya said, blushing slightly. "I did not
mean to give you the impression that we were not comfortable with your company,
Karkat."
"Yeah, I knew we were close to solving this and I wanted to get it finished
before something could go wrong," Sollux said.
"If this works, I will forgive you for just about anything short of leading
Noir to us all, so don't worry about it," Karkat told him fervently. "Let's
fucking do this, already!"
He turned to step onto the platform, more than ready to brave the excruciating
pain again. A tug on his hand stopped him, and he looked back to see John
standing there uncertainly, worrying at his lip with his sharp teeth. "Changed
your mind already?" Karkat asked, voice tight with anxiety. Once again he
reminded himself that he would not push John into this if the other boy didn't
want to take the risk.
"No, it's just... Karkat?" John gave him an imploring look. "Will we... I mean,
if things go back to normal, and... what about..."
Realizing what he was getting at, Karkat snorted. He flicked a quick glance at
their audience, but decided that this was important enough that he didn't even
fucking care who was listening. "Are you kidding me? I'll have even more reason
to pity the pathetic sack of utter fail that is all things John Egbert, now
that I know just how weak and useless you really are."
John's eyes lit up, and he smiled wide enough to show off all his fangs. "Yeah,
well, I guess I'll have even more reason to like you, now that I know you're
not a jerk all the time."
"You sure about that? Not going to go back to being not a homosexual?" Karkat
couldn't resist taunting him.
"Um. I guess since you're an alien with totally different parts anyway, it
doesn't really count?" he said, blushing.
"Yeah fuck you, I'm still definitely a guy," Karkat retorted, unable to stop
himself from smiling just a little. "You're the one with the weird parts."
Sollux coughed awkwardly, interrupting them. "Uh, not to interrupt your
touching moment of pity or anything, but you might want to get this over with?
I'm a little worried about the power burping and erasing the program, that's
why I left Kanaya here to watch it in the first place."
"Right," John said hastily, and stepped up onto the platform, pulling Karkat up
after him. "Okay, I'm ready."
"Do it," Karkat ordered, gritting his teeth in anticipation of the pain.
He wouldn't have believed it was possible, but the process hurt even worse the
second time.
Karkat tasted blood in his mouth when he finally came back to himself, and when
he swallowed painfully he realized he'd actually screamed himself bloody. Other
than that and the lingering pain of transformation, however, everything seemed
to be working well enough so far. He was breathing, and his blood pusher was
pounding, and he could feel all of his arms and legs and fingers and toes.
"Oh, ow," John moaned beside him. Half afraid of what he would see, Karkat
turned his head, and was relieved to find the same pasty, puffy human face that
he'd seen through his Trollian viewport so many times.
A slightly blurry version of it, anyway. Wincing at the effort it took to move,
he lifted his hand and pulled off the glasses, shoving them at John. "Here,
stupid, these are yours. Take them before I crush them out of sheer gratitude
not to need them anymore."
"I love you too, Karkat," John said happily, if somewhat painfully, as he
accepted the glasses. His derpy smile had never looked so good, and Karkat
definitely preferred seeing it on John's face instead of his own. "And uh, you
certainly look pretty pitiful at the moment!"
"Yeah, shut it," Karkat muttered, but he let himself smile just the slightest
bit in return. For once, they understood each other perfectly.
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