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It said something about John Egbert that he was twenty-one, had not inconsiderable social skills, and was spending Friday night sprawled on his best friend’s couch while said best friend--Dave--giggled with his girlfriend in the kitchen. One John Egbert masterfully ignored this and shoveled more popcorn into his mouth.
“Guys, you’re missing the best part,” he commented.
More giggling. Were they ignoring him? John had the sneaking suspicion that they were.
John glanced over the back of the sofa and… yep, that was whipped cream. They appeared to be taking turns spraying it into each other’s mouths. Judging from the predatory smile on Terezi’s face, John doubted this was a fully innocent activity.
He turned back to the television and didn’t think about it again. Bros don’t interrupt bros when they’re getting their mack on. Not cool.
Even if it is a weird, whipped cream macking?
Even then.
----
He was in physics and immunology with Rose—his other best friend; John had been graced with an assortment of best buddies—so they spread all their textbooks out on the floor and crammed together before exams. It was a good arrangement, typically. John had no ability to stay on task without someone to tell him to stop counting the creases in his jeans and Rose learned best when she got to explain things. Kanaya reclined in the corner, of course, sewing something with a sort of subdued, elegant menace. Karkat had prowled through the room briefly. He’d taken one sneering look at the block of text John was trying to parse through and then disappeared to be grumpy and vaguely disapproving… somewhere else?
Anyway, Dave was contributing his support by texting John urls to hour long video game tutorials that Rose wouldn’t let him watch, and Jade had promised to bring pizza.
Basically, John had good friends. All things considered, his social life was pretty epic.
Rose proceeded to successfully explain type III hypersensitivities to John, who had taken one look at the words ‘complement system’ and stuffed his head in a pillowcase. He poked his head back out, mollified that the world once more made sense, and caught Kanaya offering Rose a celebratory lollipop.
Aw, that was kind of cute. They made romance look like a Hallmark channel special. John grinned, waggling his eyebrows in an attempt to make Rose blush, and Rose just arched one of hers, taking the root beer-flavored confection between her teeth.
Rose and Kanaya kept doing the candy exchange all evening. Halloween had been just a little while ago, so John figured it was just leftover candy or some weird study system that had evolved from their effortless lady love connection. He didn’t bother asking, although he did make a small tower of candy wrappers by Rose’s elbow and snicker violently when she upset it. Karkat returned at this point, saw John laughing, and unquestioningly sat on him until he begged for mercy—Rose, meanwhile, was across the room, ignoring them as she slid a lollipop into Kanaya’s expectant mouth. The girls were off in their own world.
Karkat and John shared a look. “Gross,” John declared. Karkat wrinkled his nose and nodded his agreement. Rose snorted at them; Kanaya set down her knitting with a wicked gleam in her eye. John eyed the window as a potential escape route, which was when Jade showed up and made Karkat get off of John. Pizza! Yesss.
John got a cupcake in the morning because he was kind of craving something sweet. Halloween did not need to be over, seriously.
----
And then after exams it was movie marathoning with Karkat. There was simply no question. You did not skip out on movie night. It was MOVIE NIGHT, in all caps and bold type and everything. The forces of nature had decreed it so, and their sacred commandment was that you just did not fuck with an evening of junk food and cinematic splendor. John watched upside down, one of his ankles periodically bopping the side of Karkat’s head and Karkat grabbed his hand tight enough for his bones to creak when the heroine confessed her love.
Tears were shed. Manly tears.
“One more?” Karkat asked, growling and swiping at his face with the back of his hand as the credits rolled.
“One more,” John agreed, for the third time tonight and they ransacked the DVD collection.
“Oh yeah,” Karkat murmured, as he slid the disk in. “Jade was saying something about wanting to see the new superhero thing that came out. You going to go?”
“Cool! Definitely,” John agreed. “I’ll go. But not on movie night.”
“There is no such thing as movie night, Egbert.”
John threw popcorn at the troll. “Not on movie night.”
“…Fine. Not on movie night.”
----
Jade rolled her eyes magnificently as John explained his stipulation. “I don’t see how you can have a movie night without a set time, or day, or viewing location.” She slurped at her soda, and watched John with very judgmental eyebrows.
John stared back in polite befuddlement. He loved Jade—she was the best sister a guy could have, and another epic best friend for always—but really, he didn’t get her sometimes. Movie night was a thing of divine simplicity. Karkat, couch, movie. Attain mastery over all spirituality, ever. This worked especially well on Friday nights when all his friends were being weird and datesmoochy.
So he changed the subject, “How’s your programming class going?”
“Pretty well!” Jade exclaimed, grinning. “Sollux and I are competing.”
Oh, thought John. This won’t end well.
“But I think we made the teacher nervous? It was just one really quick, temporary hack. We put everything back where we found it! We were trying to prove a point, and the school’s mainframe really could be better protected, don’t you think? It should take longer than ten minutes.”
Yep.
Jade winked at John. “What about you, Mr. College Student with a Bright Future?”
John shrugged, smiling back. “Same old thing. My life is boring.”
“You gotta grab life by the horns, John!”
“Funny story,” John snickered. “The last time I said that to Karkat, he punched me.”
----
John and Karkat were roommates.
Well, not exactly. They had a cheap, admittedly shitty apartment with separate rooms, but Karkat’s door didn’t lock and he was over in John’s room pretty much all the time anyway. They saw each other way too much and John felt like it should drive him crazy. It didn’t.
He liked the angry way Karkat ranted about everything. Karkat was the type of person you could laugh with until you felt good about the way things had turned out, because no matter what mood Karkat was in, he was quintessentially and ferociously unique, and by that John meant ‘hilarious’. He was Karkat, and it worked. Neither of them could cook. They ate too much pizza and ran their laundry together.
Movie night was perfection.
It was weird to be living with a troll, but come on, after Sburb? This was normalcy at its finest. John had lived with consorts for three years; he could put up with a little trolling.
He did observe, viscerally, that Karkat could be pretty quirky. Trolls took forever to wake up in the mornings and you could get Karkat to do pretty much anything if you asked him while he was half-asleep (oh, the pranking possibilities). The smell of sopor slime was almost impossible to wash out, so Karkat’s presence tended to be announced by maple syrup and old pennies. And although Karkat’s eating habits were basically normal, occasionally Karkat would run raw steak in the microwave and eat it on the stairs with his hands when he thought John was in the shower. Karkat scratched his horns when he was thinking. And, like all his horned, gray-skinned brethren, he had a diabolical sweet tooth. There was always candy somewhere in their apartment, and usually baked goods or ice cream as well.
John was fully behind the ice cream policy, by the way.
----
Tonight’s movie night came fast on the heels of Friday’s—it was Saturday (and really more noonish than night, but no one cared). Karkat had wrapped himself around a collection of three pillows and was making an intensely pitiful sound. One of his troll dramas was playing—even John had to admit they were pretty addictive. Also, gut-wrenchingly brutal. They killed someone off once per twenty minutes like there was a quota to meet.
Karkat looked like he needed a hug.
Normally John would handle that like there was no tomorrow, but right now he was stretched out comfortably and didn’t want to move. So he grabbed a mini candy bar from the bag as Karkat’s whimpered at the television screen. Careful not to flail an elbow in front of his buddy’s eyes, John poked the chocolate against Karkat’s lips. They opened automatically. Success! Consoling chocolate deposition complete.
And Karkat abruptly wasn’t watching the movie anymore. He spluttered, turning red, clearly wowed by John’s suave maneuvers. “You’re missing it,” John pointed out as he crunched his own chocolaty goodness. “The matesprit is about to die, I think!”
For once, Karkat did not seem greatly affected by this revelation. “Egbert. Is my think pan at last giving into its overwhelming uselessness, or did you just stick one of those sugary abominations down my gullet?”
“Hush, you liked it,” John muttered, distracted. Seriously, was the matesprit going to die? Shit. John was rooting for the guy and—
Wait, what?
John looked back at Karkat, who was staring down with microscopic intensity. John pouted at him. “You did not just pause movie night.”
Karkat growled, all clicking and too low to have come from normal vocal cords. John shivered at the alien sound, unwrapping another piece of chocolate. “Egbert, we are about to have a serious fucking discussion, so I’ll thank you not to—gmph.”
“Karkat,” John said, a hand clamped over Karkat’s mouth to prevent the troll from expelling chocolate into his face. He tossed the wrapper to the floor and attempted to unwrap another one for himself one-handed. Abysmal failure followed this. Wow. “You eat these all the time. You love these.” Karkat growled through his palm. John bared his teeth back in mock seriousness. “Don’t act like I’m abusing your right to decide. You want another one?”
So Karkat bit him.
----
“Way to go,” John complained, still sulking a bit over movie night being interrupted. Karkat studiously ignored him, and refused to explain the biting. “You’re lucky I don’t need stitches. Also? You suck.”
Karkat was muttering something under his breath about how all humans should be firebombed to extinction. It seemed to be calming him down, though, so John left him to it and put the movie back on. Within an hour, Karkat was crammed back to his side, snarling whenever John reached for the candy bag now in Karkat’s lap.
Oh yeah, movie night rocked.
----
Karkat was kind of funny after that—he probably felt bad about biting John; he felt bad about a lot of things given time to wallow in regret—and John just tried to wait it out, as he had done many a time. Karkat took drama to a whole new level. You got used to it.
Yeah, it was weird that Karkat was openly staring at him, silently watching John’s movements like he expected something extraordinary to happen. And he talked a lot more than usual… Well, okay, ‘talking’ was pushing it. It was more like Karkat erected scholarly blockades of words between them, while somehow failing to impart any information other than his ongoing emotional state of surly. He was more like Kankri than he thought.
He was also hoarding all the candy under his bed, which was fine. John wasn’t addicted to the stuff the same way Karkat was.
Did trolls do PMS? Was this troll PMS? John asked Dave, but Dave responded by blocking him.
When at last John was allowed custody of something with a reasonable sugar content, Karkat leaned against the wall and outright gawked as he ate. Even John, with his high tolerance for troll bullshit, was unnerved enough to laugh and set the sugar down. Back away slowly. “Dude, it’s okay. I don’t want it that badly.”
Karkat’s voice came out gravelly and terrifying. “EAT.”
John wrinkled a frown at him and popped a jawbreaker into his mouth. “You’re being really odd, Karkat. Should I be worried?”
Karkat inched closer to him. John was sort of expecting violence to follow, but no… Karkat was just crowding him. Apparently watching John nervously clack his teeth against hard candy was an interesting experience. Karkat was staring like he thought he could make John spontaneously combust. “…Egbert, the depths of your willful stupidity continue to amaze me.”
Karkat for: You’re an idiot if you don’t know that I like you way too much to actually gut you with my teeth, no matter what I say.
He looked very serious. John couldn’t help but poke the bear a little bit.
Karkat reeled away with a hiss. Too late, though! John’s prankster’s gambit took a level in badass. Karkat’s fangs were clutching awkwardly at a surpise!jawbreaker as John grinned around his, pleased with his handiwork. “Ha ha! Another victory for the forces of so-called willful stupidity!”
Karkat blushed a fantastic shade of red. He made another click-click-click growl and then darted forward. He smacked John upside the head—ow—and then sort of… headbutted his shoulder? And… stayed there. Huh.
Well, okay. John didn’t mind getting his snuggle on.
“You’re supposed to ask before you shove things in other people’s mouth, you tactless fuck. Couldn’t your lusus expend one hour of his survival period to impart a manner in your general direction?”
John grinned and scruffed up Karkat’s fluffy mess of hair. “Yeah, but the manner I got was about saying thank you and stuff. Such a shame. If only my dad had been more concerned.”
Karkat’s head tilted up to fix John with a slightly abashed expression. He was still bright red with anger, but this was the least infuriated he’d looked all week. Also, his hair was really soft and John’s heart sort of melted with friendship. “…Thank you,” Karkat grumbled in a tiny voice.
Then he headbutted John again. Oof.
----
It became a thing after that—a weird, alien, inexplicable kind of thing. They ate together a lot, and when John tried to pass Karkat a cranberry scone one morning, instead of grabbing it like a normal person, Karkat leaned over the table and bit into it, carrying it away from John’s fingers like a very sleepy puppy. It was early and Karkat’s hair was jutting in every direction, his gaze blearily soft from sleep, and he still had sopor on his cheek. He chewed the scone slowly and made a happy little sigh that had John wondering why trolls were so cute without trying.
“Mmmnuhthanks,” Karkat warbled when he finished the baked good. John proceeded to pat his head because Karkat was too sleepy to push him off. Karkat purred at the breakfast table and idly dug scores in the wood with his claws.
Trolls, man. Way too cute.
They shared celebratory milkshakes at DQ after their victory against Dave and Terezi at video game championship tie-breaker #211, as was customary. There, John noticed that Karkat was kind of watching him again—automatically he held out his chocolate shake for Karkat to take a sip. He had no problem sharing.
Karkat’s eyes widened and he started spazzing out like John was offering his beverage to someone else hanging over Karkat’s shoulder.
Too late, it occurred to John that they were in public and this probably looked weird to people who did not understand the structure of the most epic palhoncho friendship ever. He laughed awkwardly, but before he could retreat, Karkat latched onto the straw and drained approximately half of the milkshake with surprising fierceness.
It was impressive. When John tugged, hoping to get his dessert back, Karkat snarled at him and took two more huge gulps out of spite. Then John was allowed to take his milkshake back and stare sadly at its anemic remains before Karkat whopped him upside the head with his own Styrofoam cup.
“Here,” Karkat said, eyes gleaming, and John sincerely doubted that it mattered much to Karkat that he wasn’t the biggest fan of raspberry. He took a sip to pacify the troll. Karkat’s eyes narrowed. John sighed.
“My neck hurts,” he pointed out, because leaning over the table at an odd angle clearly hadn’t bothered Karkat and his xeno-bones, since he’d spent about ten minutes abusing his sharing privileges. John was unfortunately just working with regular human bones, and it was giving him a crick in his neck. “Can I at least sit up and hold it myself?”
Karkat responded instantly. “No.”
Sighing, John closed his lips around the straw and wrinkled his nose. Karkat responded in kind and they proceeded to have the most epic funny face battle in the history of the world, and be asked to leave the restaurant because Karkat’s funny faces were growing steadily more disturbing and had made one small child cry. Karkat sniffed and stood, John dropped an arm over his shoulder, and together they marched out the door to take on the world.
“So. Wanna go to the human arcade and brutally massacre every pixelated horrorterror in sight?”
This was why Karkat was the best. It was him.
“Yep!”
----
It ended up falling together naturally; movie night fused with a diabolical contest to see who could sneak sugary substances into someone at their most emotionally devastated. John won this game a lot. Karkat didn’t seem to mind. When John successfully executed a clandestine consolation acrobatic maneuver, Karkat would make raspy-whine troll noises at him and proceed to become extremely cuddly. John approved of this. Snuggling was an activity second to none in his book, especially when accompanied by movies, snacks, and Karkat’s hysterically funny commentary about Frodo.
It was second nature to squish a snack against Karkat’s lips, as was the fact that Karkat didn’t turn him down, ever, because oh my god was Karkat addicted to sugar. He’d turn down other food—John had tried to sneak a pizza roll in his mouth and Karkat had practically pulled something jolting away. Which was stupid, because Karkat loved pizza rolls. But no, he snatched the snack out of John’s hand, brutally murdered it with his teeth, and then declared emphatically, “No.”
“No?” John repeated, munching on his own pizza roll.
“No. I know your weird human rituals may sometimes be confused with behavior that is in any way appropriate to those around you, but no. That is disgusting, and I will remove your eyeballs and shove them down your protein chute to you if you insist on pranking me.”
John’s eyebrows went up. Okay then. He didn’t know what a protein chute was. “Think you just one-upped me on disgusting, Karkat.”
“Fuck you and your pizza rolls,” Karkat declared, swiping another one out of John’s hands. “You repulse me, John Egbert.”
“Uh-huh,” John said. He observed that Karkat—done cringing from dinner—had now rejoined the symbiotic entity of the Couch Blob, as was proper. Karkat was half on top of him, their legs were all tangled together, and Karkat’s fluffy hair had a dent in it from John’s chin.
Karkat stole pretty much all the rest of the pizza rolls.
----
For Rose’s birthday Roxy and Kanaya decorated, so the end result was an ostentatious explosion of vibrant color and subtle good taste, and Rose standing in the middle of it with her mouth curling up around the edges in spite of herself. John promptly upended a bucket of confetti on top of her, to Rose’s surprised gasp and the shrieks of horror of every troll in attendance. Karkat socked John so hard his arm went numb and John laughed his head off with Jane and Jade giggling helplessly on the other side of the room.
“I told everyone I didn’t want a big celebration on my birthday,” Rose observed, attempting to sound critical as she shook herself free of the sparkly pink confetti. “How kind of you all to remind me how greatly you value my wishes.”
John, now in a headlock from a growling Karkat, coughed brightly, “Surprise! Happy birthday, Rose!”
“Thank you, John,” she said, breaking out into a brief, genuine smile and leaning in to kiss his cheek while Karkat asphyxiated him. “This was a lovely surprise. I’ve prepared cake and ice cream for us all, if we all would like to adjourn to the kitchen.”
Did Dave just teleport? Oh man. Using time magic was cheating!
Jade and Terezi raced ahead towards the sugar in the kitchen, while John and Karkat continued at a more sedate pace. “Not acceptable, Egbert,” Karkat was hissing. “That was utterly foul, my ganderbulbs are attempting to eject themselves as I speak—and your human sensibilities are lacking even the most basic of social taboos. HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT BUCKETS.”
Kanaya glanced back at them, looking terribly amused. “Karkat, are you still attempting to schoolfeed John? You must know by now that it will never work.”
“It really won’t,” John offered, reaching back and successfully executing a nose poke. He giggled as Karkat made a noise of incoherent rage. “Ha ha! Wow, Karkat. You make all kinds of interesting angry noises.”
Karkat made more interesting angry noises. Kanaya laughed softly, sliding an arm around Rose’s waist. “You do have a talent for… self-expression. Of course, all your instruction makes you sound like John’s lusus—or his matesprit. You’re making us blush here.”
John groaned in the back of his throat as they fell into Rose’s assorted chairs. “Oh my god, not quadrant shenanigans. Please, please, let’s not talk about the quadrants.” Karkat reluctantly released John’s neck, and huddled into his own chair, eying Jake’s flailing elbows as he gesticulated his way through his excitement over ice cream and cake. Jade was flailing back at him.
“Quadrants are a vital part of troll culture,” Karkat grumbled into his elbows. “All philistines be forever silent. Egbert-Moron, this is directed at you.”
“They’re booooring and I don’t get them,” John whined.
“You get them fine,” Karkat muttered, which was unusual. Was Karkat passing up an opportunity to call John an idiot? Whoa. He must have been really excited about the cake.
Then cake came out and yeah, there were much more important concerns.
The cake was amazing. Everyone was laughing and chattering, hyped up on sugar and the power of battle and IM-forged camaraderie. Naturally, in no time at all the proceedings turned into a food fight, with cake and icing getting smeared everywhere. Terezi had squished Dave into his plate and was cackling madly; Rose and Kanaya appeared to be acting out a wedding ceremony with the solemnity they fed each other, Jade had somehow gotten icing all over her hair, and John, who had dropped cake into his lap twice, this time managed to prod Karkat’s cheek with a forkful. Karkat grumbled at him, considerably mellowed out from the sugar, and snapped up the offering. John was preoccupied with balancing another gob of cake on his fork (he wanted to see how many times in a row he could reach Karkat’s mouth before he dropped cake in someone’s lap again) and didn’t really notice how the table had just gone quiet.
Well, he did notice, but only because he could very audibly hear one of Karkat’s soft, relaxed purrs. That made him look up from the cake because whoa, that was practically a movie time exclusive. They needed this cake recipe to, er, pretend that one of them could cook. Also, everyone had been screaming their heads off five minutes ago; how come he could hear Karkat so well?
Aaaaand was everyone staring at John? Staring silent and still. Er.
“Uh,” said John, dropping his fork out of alarm. “Everything okay, guys? I don’t, uh, have something on me, do I?”
He totally had cake all over his body. But so did they. A most puzzling development.
“Egbert,” Karkat muttered, and John looked over to see Karkat staring too—but, like, normally. It was your basic Karkat stare, all grouchy and malcontented. With Dave’s mouth was open so wide some cake was actually falling out (gross), Karkat’s exasperated expression was at least a little comforting. John hoped some kind of explanation, but Karkat ignored the weirdness of their friends. He was holding out a forkful of cake, grimacing, and his eyes were glued to John with the shy desperation that accompanied Karkat’s every attempt not to begin conversations by calling people douchelords.
John forgot the staring a little too. His heart was busy going melty at Karkat fumbling his way through niceness, and he grinned around the fork, chewing another delicious mouthful of cake. Ah, that hit the spot. The tension went out of Karkat’s shoulders, and for a moment his eyes were very, very soft. John’s stomach pretty much felt like pudding. Argh, Karkat and his powers of meltiness!
Someone’s chair clattered. John’s attention jerked back down the table. Jade was standing. John looked over expectantly as Karkat resumed indulging his sugar addiction. “John!” Jade exclaimed, with a huge smile that looked ridiculous with her frosting hair. “Come with me, please? We’re a mess.”
“Everyone’s a mess,” John observed, and found his arm caught in Jade’s grip. He considered the fact that Karkat looked bewildered, everyone was still staring, and Jade’s grip was about as soft and requesting as a steel bear trap. “Uh, I’m going to go try to peel frosting out of my sister’s hair,” John said wisely, and stood. “Don’t eat all the cake?”
“Dude,” said Dave, who was still gaping. Terezi had apparently grown bored of the arbitrary John-staring and was cackling at a red-faced Karkat. John hoped that didn’t develop into a fight while he was gone and allowed Jade to march him to the bathroom. As soon as the door closed behind them, she spun around and faced him wide-eyed and with absolutely no smile on her face.
“Um,” said John, beginning to feel very nervous.
“John, this is really important, okay? Don’t be a doofus and just answer my question. Are you and Karkat dating?”
John choked. Literally choked on air. If he’d been drinking milk, it would have exploded from his nose like a bullet. “Whoa, Jade!” He yelped, coughing. “What did you get that idea from? Oh man, I’m gonna kill Dave—“
“Dave has nothing to do with this,” Jade declared, and John narrowed is eyes—he was so sure. Jade tapped her foot on the floor. “John, you just made moony eyes at Karkat. And fed him birthday cake on you fork.”
Oh.
John squirmed a bit at how that must have looked. He and Karkat had their weird sugar-exchange thing, and maybe showcasing it while all the couples they knew were being romantistupid wasn’t the best plan. “That? Ha ha… Wow. You got the wrong impression. It’s not like that.”
“John,” Jade groaned, slapping a hand over her eyes. “How do you get yourself into these situations?”
“What situations?” John asked, now thoroughly lost. There was some kind of ruckus going on outside, which he suspected was costing him most of his cake prospects. “Jade, stop being so weird. We’re missing out on all the fun! What’s wrong?”
Jade put her face in her hands. “John, feeding each other is a troll romance thing.”
John froze. Jade sighed into her hands. Eventually John explained to his sadly misguided sister, “No, it’s not! Karkat and I do it all the time.”
Jade reached out and slapped him upside the head.
“Ow! What was that for?” John demanded, ducking to avoid a repeat offense. “I’m serious!”
“So am I!” Jade exclaimed, looking up at him with exasperation in her gaze. “You feed each other bitter stuff for kismesises, and salty things for moraillegance, and sweet for flushed. It’s a romance thing, John. How on earth did you manage to declare a matespriteship with Karkat without even realizing it?!”
“Matespri—“ John spluttered inarticulately. “It’s cake, Jade! Or, like, Snickers minis! There is nothing remotely homosexual about it!”
Jade smacked him again. Harder, this time, and it successfully reduced John to pained hissing. Jade stepped in front of him, and as annoyed as she looked, there was also a bit of concern in her gaze. “John, think for a second,” she sighed. “Are you really sure Karkat gets that?”
“Whatever, Jade,” John grumbled, fumbling for the door. He did not want to stand in a bathroom and be abused by his sister all day. “Karkat has just adjusted to human culture. It’s not like you’re making it out to be. It’s not gay.”
Jade grabbed him by the arm. “So he just decides to feed you in front of a room full of trolls who understand the cultural significance?” John blinked at her. Um. “In front of all of his friends, because he wants to show you off?” Now Jade was outright glaring at him. “John, I love you to death, even if you are a blockhead. But you can’t keep doing this to him!”
“Karkat doesn’t like me like that,” John said flatly, voice coming out oddly constricted. “We’re best buddies.”
Jade dropped her hand away from his arm. “Oh my gosh. I can’t even deal with this right now. John. You know what?” She spread her hands in mock wonder, “You don’t get to decide who likes you!” She pushed him out of the way and stormed out of the bathroom, proud sugary tresses and all. John watched her go, bewildered and hurt. Maybe that was too much sugar all at once, but all of a sudden he didn’t feel that great. He… should probably just stay in here a little bit. Let his stomach settle.
He could hear his friends shouting and laughing—by now the ice cream must have been out—and he felt a little bad that he couldn’t go join in. He hoped Rose was having a good time and sat on the toilet, waiting to feel a little less dizzy. His eyes opened when he heard footsteps, thinking that maybe Jade had come back to apologize, but no… It was Karkat.
He had his hands in his pockets and a totally unconcerned look on his face that screamed to the sky ‘I Am So Concerned For You.’ “Hey,” Karkat muttered, scuffing a shoe against the tile floor.
John couldn’t help the smile that came to his face. “Hey. You’re missing the party.”
“Yes, observe the obvious. It’s endearing and doesn’t make you look at all like a fuckwit,” Karkat snapped, rolling his eyes and collapsing onto the lip of the bathtub opposite John. He scowled at John’s shoes. “…You okay?”
“Just too much sugar, I think,” John said, and Karkat nodded, not looking like he was in any hurry to go away. John felt a surge of fondness for his best buddy, and his stomach settled all at once. He bumped his knee gently into Karkat’s. Karkat’s crimson eyes flickered up and John grinned at him. “Hey. Let’s go dump ice cream down Dave’s shirt.”
Karkat snorted, standing up and sticking a hand down for John to grab. “Boy, are you behind, Egbert. Terezi stole his shirt and he’s pretty much covered in those candy cherry things.”
John wordlessly groped for his cell phone with one hand. You simply did not pass up blackmail opportunities like this. He grasped Karkat’s hand with his free one. Karkat’s fingers curled around his wrist and hauled him up, claws never once scraping his skin.
----
When they got home, Karkat made a beeline for the bathroom, claiming that sugar fumes were making his judgment questionable, and John stripped out of his probably ruined clothes while he waited for the bathroom to be freed up. Karkat took forever as usual, so John wandered around on the kitchen tiles, bored and chilly in his underwear, seeing if they needed to do a grocery run. They did not have any soup. They should have soup.
He heard the door slam. John stepped away from the pantry as the hallway produced a Karkat covered in towels and with a contented expression on his face that only came from attempting to fry his skin in scalding water.
The expression died in a fiery train crash when it met John’s bare chest.
John tried to understand why Karkat looked like he couldn’t breathe while the troll simultaneously clenched his jaw into a cement block. It wasn’t like John didn’t walk around the apartment half naked plenty of the time. When, you know, Karkat wasn’t there. Because it had always felt kind of… uncomfortable. Karkat always covered up and then there was that alien crush thing from forever ago, and the stuff Jade had said and…
Holy shit, John realized, stomach flopping. I’m kind of flirting with Karkat. When did this start?!
“Um,” Karkat said, dropping his eyes. His voice sounded very strange. “Take a shower. You smell like a goddamn batterwitch factory.”
John’s throat was not producing words. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to whip one of those towels over every inch of his exposed skin or… Well, you know. Not do that so much, and continue freezing to death in his underwear.
He took a shuffling step forward. He was going. To take a shower. Right? As he advanced, Karkat inhaled audibly, shifting his weight—his whole body turned towards John without looking. Lining them up. If John tried to reach for him, Karkat would be right there.
“Kaycoolthanksbye,” John squeaked in a rush.
He fled for the sanctuary of showers and their cleansing thoughts and oh god oh no oh god Karkat. What in the world was going on?! He didn’t feel any better when he got out, only like the shower’s heat had gotten trapped under his skin. In the mirror, he looked demented, and when he stepped out of the bathroom—the first thing he saw was Karkat bundled into his usual oversized sweater and jeans. John’s body responded to this by suddenly dialing up the temperature to spontaneous combustion levels.
Karkat’s eyes flickered away from his book, shuffling on his chair to line himself up with John even though there were yards between his seat and the bathroom door—and the thing was, it looked totally natural. John was noticing because he was looking.
How long had Karkat been just… tuning into him?
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“Wow, is the air conditioner broken?” John babbled. “Ha, it feels broken! We should call our landlord. You have that number, right? My gosh it’s hot.”
Karkat responded by raising his eyebrows and saying, “It’s January.”
Fuck!
“Are you feeling alright?” Karkat asked, snapping his book shut as John proceeded to sweat away any benefit of his shower. Karkat was narrowing his eyes. “…And why are you talking like that?”
“Ha ha, like what?”
“All high-pitched and,” Karkat made a face. “Giggly. You sound like that time Eridan got his mentally diseased fins on helium.”
“Ha, I’m not giggly,” John squeaked, as still more hysterical giggling bubbled up in his chest. His bare, unclad chest, which he did not have a towel for. Oh god.
“Whatever,” Karkat decided. John realized with a lurch in his stomach, that Karkat was trying for nonchalant. He could tell because his friend was about 90% twitchier. “Movie?” Karkat offered, while acting like he had a neck tick and refusing to meet John’s gaze.
This was the worst possible time for movie night. But John still nodded. At the very least, there was no way for movie night to make this any worse. Movie night made things better, right? Right. Karkat went to the living room DVD player and insulted its parentage; John went to the nearest bedroom, got dressed (he had tons of his stuff stashed in Karkat’s room; Karkat had separate sock and underwear drawers in John’s. They were both ridiculous), and tried to calm down.
He eventually sat on the opposite end of the sofa, hoping that wasn’t too weird. They didn’t always sit together, did they? The Couch Blob was not a mandatory state of being.
But thirty minutes into the movie they were all tangled up again and John honestly couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there. Karkat was stretched on top of him, pointy chin resting on John’s chest. His heavy, sedated breaths made his ribs slide beneath John’s hands. There was a light flush on his face—he always looked like this when he’d had too much sugar (when John fed him too much) and one of his feet had curled around one of John’s, rubbing idly. Did Karkat not feel John turning into a human fireball? No, apparently he did not. Or just didn’t care.
“Karkat,” John finally said, voice hoarse, “Uh. So, about the party…”
Karkat made a groaning noise in the back of his throat. “I fucking knew it.” John’s heart didn’t know whether to fall or race. It just sort of ran confused circles around an invisible racetrack as Karkat looked away from the movie and into John’s eyes. He was glowering, flushing a little more, foot curling around John’s nervously. “I was an inconsiderate douchebag, right?”
“Um,” John hedged. Can you blame him? Twenty-one years of goofing off, surviving a lot of murderous shenanigans, and regretting college had not prepared him to go about telling Karkat that whatever troll culture said, John hadn’t meant to do quadrant things with him.
Karkat, you have it all wrong! Like Dave says: (human) dudes be all up and getting nasty with the ladies—not the other dudes, ha ha. I am SO getting you an informational pamphlet on homosexuality this Christmas. But I don’t mind that you have weird alien feelings! Nope, no way. We’ll just put this behind us and totally still be best friends for always, and, and it doesn’t have to be weird and
Oh god, Karkat was going to hate him forever, wasn’t he.
“Sorry,” Karkat muttered, while John panicked. “I know you’re, uh. New to this. I didn’t mean to push.” His head nestled into the crook of John’s neck, soft and warm, hiding the worry in his gaze. Almost too soft to hear over the onscreen dialogue, Karkat whispered, “I know I’m really, really fucking lucky that you’re letting me just be near you. In our own hive. Fuck. I’m—I’m just really sorry, okay?! Accept my goddamn apology. I shouldn’t have paraded you around like a new wriggling day notch. So get the fuck over it and say something, please, Egbert.”
John felt nauseous. Karkat was curling into him, breathing too fast, and every bit of resolve and mangrit John had ever possessed went the way of pudding from Karkat’s soft huffs of breath. His arms wrapped around Karkat because what else could he even do? “Don’t be sorry,” he said weakly. “You’re—Karkat, you’re great. The greatest. You deserve…” his throat closed with the truth of the statement. “You deserve everything.”
Karkat snorted. “Everything?” He repeated dryly.
“Everything,” John confirmed. “All the things. Things for miles.”
Karkat laughed a little bit, which was so rare John could have done nothing but listen to that for the rest of the night. Only Karkat stopped all too quickly, and pulled back. His eyes were bright and his cheeks were ruddy and he looked so stupidly happy that John thought he was going to throw up.
No, Karkat wasn’t going to hate him if John pushed him off. Karkat was going to be so, so hurt. Why did he have to have that squishy underbelly? Why couldn’t he be every bit as thorny and heartless as he pretended to be? Because John didn’t know what he could tell Karkat right now that would make it be okay when Karkat stopped grinning at him.
“Here,” Karkat murmured, oblivious. He produced a licorice stick and John’s mouth opened automatically. He wasn’t in the mood for anything else sweet (and he kind of knew better by now), but it was completely second nature. He chewed, trying not to think about anything. Watching this fierce, warm satisfaction spreading through Karkat’s smile. As the licorice stick vanished, Karkat slouched against him, returning to his nest on John’s torso.
“Karkat?” John asked, after twenty minutes of completely failing to notice the movie over the pounding of his heart and deep-seated concern that Karkat could hear it. He still felt like he was combusting.
“Yeah?”
“You have another one of those?”
Karkat beamed a little, fangs catching on his lip. He had another one, but before he could stick it in John’s mouth, John stole it from him. Karkat growled at him a little bit, acting like he’d claw John for his betrayal. He didn’t. Karkat closed his eyes and his mouth opened up demandingly.
John swallowed. He tried not to stab Karkat in the throat with nervousness.
Sometimes things got twisted, if you didn’t pay attention. Like, you realized that the troll girl you were starting to like was this whole other person outside of your head. Or you met your best friends after three years and were shocked that they’d grown up and become people you had to get to know all over again. When you stared at someone’s smile and really understood that there wasn’t much you couldn’t do if it would just stick around.
It was so bizarre, all of a sudden. Karkat’s eyes were locked to his, molten and good, and John didn’t notice the licorice was gone until Karkat’s tongue chased it, soft and insubstantial against John’s thumb. John’s breath caught. He shivered. Karkat leaned in, nearly taking John’s thumb into his mouth with his insistence, focused like he wanted every bit of sugar cleaned away. He was bright red, and not fooling John for a minute. John touched his hair with a shaking hand.
The funny thing was that the kiss didn’t have the slightest bit of tongue in it. Karkat retracted it just in time and they shared a dry, soft press of lips that was sending shivers all over John’s spine. Sick ones, good ones, scary ones. Was this okay? Karkat made a fragile, DO NOT DROP kind of noise, and their noses bumped, and when they pulled apart Karkat didn’t stop purring for the rest of the movie.
John breathed slowly.
Holy. Shit.
----
Feeding Karkat sugary things was a little harder to do now, knowing what it meant. Well, not really knowing. Guessing? Was this the equivalent of alien hand-holding? Only no, they kind of did that already. And cuddling. And kissing—well, just the once. John was sort of surprised. Matespriteship was something Karkat had once described with the term ‘mating fondness’ (and other horrible-sounding phrases that John definitely was not un-banishing from his thoughts). For someone feeling the ‘mating fondness’, Karkat did not seem to be all that much in a hurry to do anything beyond activities that John was totally comfortable with.
John wasn’t sure how to feel about this.
He must have been acting funny, because the next time he, Karkat, Dave, and Terezi had a video game marathon, Dave took him aside and proceeded to stare at him in perfect silence until John squirmed. Dave deemed this an appropriate awkward interval. John was broken down sufficiently to answer all of Dave’s questions, good. Let the interrogation commence.
“So. You and Vantas.”
John made a noise like a chicken being strangled.
“I’m not judging, man,” Dave offered before John could imitate any other farm animals. “It’s this weird alien shit, am I right? Alien invasions out the ass.”
John was really not comfortable with the word ‘ass’ in the context of alien invasions. “Dave,” he said, through his fingers. He’d put his head in his hands, purely out of the need to hide the massive blush on his face. “I’m kind of fucked.”
“Me too, bro,” Dave said, and bumped John in the arm with a soda. They shared a companionable, fizzing silence.
Then Dave said, “So yeah. You’re not actually together with him, are you?” When John whipped up his head and stared, Dave shrugged at him and took another swig of his soda. “Egbert, the day you get into a relationship, you’re going to be the most ridiculously annoying mofo that has ever lived. I’m not getting any romantistupid vibes over there. Well,” Dave amended. “Not from you. But Vantas can’t live if he’s not pining after something, probably.”
“Fuck,” John groaned, finished his soda, and crumpled it in his hand. And kept crumpling it. He wanted to be holding a metal sheet, goddammit. Craters were unacceptable. It needed to be completely straight.
“Egbert,” and now Dave was taking away his half-completed artistic masterpiece. Damn him. “Not going to tell you how to live your life, dude. But you might want to tell him he’s got the wrong impression. Vantas will bitch for like, a directly proportional time period to how many hearts he doodles around your name.”
John stared at Dave. He paused to glance at the living room, where Terezi and Karkat were still amicably pulling each other’s hair before hissing at Dave, “That’s easy for you to say! He’s going to be miserable—well, okay. Miserable is a strong word—“
“No,” Dave shook his head. “Miserable. Got it in one, Egderp. Vantas has a continent-sized crush. I thought I was going to have to fling him off the asteroid so he’d shut up about you.” While John’s stomach went sick and his face when hot, Dave frowned at him. “Do not fuck up your bro thing. You guys are solid. Just tell him.”
John nodded.
“Like, tonight. Or sometime this week.”
John nodded again, silent.
When he sat back down with the trolls, Karkat had managed to defeat Terezi’s button-mashing skills. Terezi promptly smooched Dave (there was a lot more of that going on in front of John now that the entire free world was convinced he was dating Karkat). Karkat turned towards John expectantly—and the air got sucked out of the room—before Karkat poked his lips with a candy bar. John could feel Dave’s eyes on him. Face burning, he opened up and chewed the snack. Karkat hid a pleased smile by grabbing a game controller and declaring war on Dave’s newly spawned character.
Dave sighed, and looked away.
----
So, John sucked.
Jade called John let him know this. Without preamble, she shouted into the receiver, “Either tell Karkat the truth, or I will do it for you and you will have no friends for being such a jerk-face, John!”
She hung up before he could shout back at her.
John threw his phone across the room. He then noticed Karkat drifting past the doorway—but thank goodness, Karkat hadn’t heard. He had headphones on. John’s spine returned to its standard location.
For a few days now, in addition to being eaten alive by guilt, John had gotten pretty jumpy. So when Karkat actually poked his head in John’s room later, he nearly fell off his bed. Karkat, generously, did not proceed to point and laugh, and instead brandished a paper menu. “I’m getting Chinese and you’re paying for half. Want anything?”
“Not really hungry,” John said, forcing a smile. “I guess I’m stressed out about all these tests? Man.” He had yet to crack a textbook this week. “College sucks, huh?” College, and all grown-up problems, like how you tell the male masculine dude guy you’re fake-dating that it was all a mistake.
It was a mistake.
Really.
Karkat frowned and stepped into the room. John barely managed not to flinch when Karkat bent towards him—and Karkat smacked a kiss against the top of his head, glancing and fond. John, against his will, instantly felt better.
“I’ll get you some eggrolls or some shit,” Karkat decided. “You might get hungry later, and I sure as hell refuse listen to you whining like a spurned wriggler…” John grabbed at his hand before he could leave and twisted their fingers together. Karkat hummed, turning back towards John with a faint smile. “…What the hell, dumbass?”
“Stay a little?” John croaked. He felt like the world’s biggest asshole.
Wordlessly, Karkat sank onto the bed next to him, considerately kicking one of John’s unopened textbooks out of the way. John watched it go nervously, and then yelped as he was folded into Karkat’s arms. His head was stuffed onto Karkat’s shoulder, his legs bunched awkwardly between them, and it was warm all over. He felt extremely awkward and just… held. Safe. You wouldn’t think that was how it would be, with everything else flipping its shit so hard, but yeah. Troll meltiness.
Karkat meltiness.
Karkat ran clawed fingers through John’s hair, never scratching, just pure comfort. John threw caution to the wind, squeezed his arms around Karkat’s neck, and snuggled.
Okay, he was clinging. But he just felt so much better when he did. This part, he didn’t have to fake.
“Karkat, I kind of fricking love you,” John said. Because it was true, and he could at least use this dumb counterfeit relationship to say it and not have the meaning be questioned.
Karkat pulled back—well shit—and John couldn’t move. He didn’t flinch as Karkat kissed him. Slowly, terrifyingly, gently. The first kiss had been awkward and kind of weird. The second kiss made John feel a lot of things he wasn’t ready for. John’s fingers knotted in Karkat’s sweater and he pressed upwards into the contact, seeking heat so he wouldn’t feel like he was boiling. Karkat was super warm.
“Dumbass,” Karkat said again, voice a little choked up. John suddenly couldn’t breathe. He pulled away too soon—regretted it because Karkat’s face wasn’t flushed and he wasn’t smiling. He didn’t quite look at John. Something was wrong, maybe. Good luck figuring out what; everything was wrong.
----
John figured it out eventually. Karkat was right—he got hungry later. Dinner was necessary to his ongoing survival. Who knew that finally studying math and stressing out epically over his sort-of boyfriend was such hungry work? So he skulked out of the studying lair to go paw through some take-out.
He found Karkat eating noodles out of a carton, swinging his legs off the kitchen counter. The food rested by his hip, smelling enticingly of grease. When John approached, Karkat made a Can’t Talk, Noodles sound and fumbled through a plastic bag to retrieve John’s eggrolls. And when John moved to take them, Karkat held one out between his claws. John reached for it; Karkat jerked his hand back.
And then, glaring at him, Karkat held it out again.
John stared.
He looked from the food to Karkat’s expression, which was neutral enough that he didn’t know how to read it. John awkwardly held his hand. Karkat had the eggroll right in his face; if John leaned forward an inch to snag it, didn’t that mean they would be in a different quadrant? Eggrolls weren’t sweet. Jade had said that mattered. Karkat sighed and hopped off the kitchen counter.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. John’s mouth opened to ask what the hell, and Karkat crammed the eggroll in. He left his noodle carton behind like he’d found a bug in it and headed into the darkness of his room without another word.
John’s hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the phone twice before he just logged on to pesterchum.
what did you tell him????
It didn’t really matter. Jade’s explanation—apparently Karkat had called her because John had been acting like a spaz—didn’t really sink in, and John ended up leaving her hanging. He went to Karkat’s closed door and knocked. “Karkat? Oh man, Karkat, please open up. We’ve gotta—”
He was surprised when the door opened up almost immediately. Karkat was giving him a black look, but not really blacker than usual—just sort of. Back to normal? Not so sweet anymore. No hint of a smile. “What?” Karkat demanded with characteristic abruptness and John’s heart squeezed. It hurt.
He said the only thing he could, which was, “I’m sorry.”
Karkat eyed him for a moment and then shrugged. “Yeah, well. I should have known better.”
John really didn’t like how bitter he sounded when he said that.
“There was no reason a cultural illiterate like you would have known what you were doing, I just…” Karkat threw his hands up all of a sudden, a burst of anger making him snarl. “I guess I’m just so fucking desperate I hallucinated my own happy fucking ending. I wanted this to be something, so I played along. How especially shitty is that? And I probably have irreparably shat out the contents of my bile pouch all over this friendship of ours, congratulations once again to Karkat Vantas, screw up extraordinaire, you found the one person literally too nice to just tell you he didn’t want your sorry ass! So now, Egbert, I’m going to fucking beg you not to platonically hate me, even though I deserve the shit out of it, because I can’t—“
Karkat’s voice broke and the anger collapsed in on itself like the world’s most transparent house of cards. John pushed forward and crushed Karkat into his chest, thinking he could hug him tight enough to stop the painful twisting in his ribs. Karkat’s fingers clawed into him, for once not gentle at all, just hanging onto him like they were fifty feet up in the air. “I’m sorry,” John said again, helplessly, as a tremor ran across his friend’s shoulders. “I am such an idiot. Karkat—there’s nothing wrong with you! Please don’t cry.”
“Fuck you,” Karkat sobbed, and the sound of his voice was an open wound. “Be my moirail. Be my anything, okay?!”
“Moirails, okay,” John said, in spite of the fact that this was more weird quadrant shit he didn’t really get. He didn’t care. Anything to make Karkat’s voice sound less like he’d just had his insides ripped out of him. “Sure. That’s, um, not a black one, right?”
“I pity the fuck out of you,” Karkat murmured into him, which was a viable answer. He didn’t sound so horrible anymore, just exhausted.
And it was weird and a little off that an eggroll could do this, but John sat on Karkat’s bed, hugging the everloving shit out of him, until Karkat fell asleep and drooled down his shirt. He looked exhausted. The twisting in John’s guts wrenched harder at how pronounced the bags under Karkat’s eyes had been getting.
John did not sleep that night.
----
Things sort of went back to normal after that.
There was movie night. There was still cuddling—Karkat very clearly delineated what moirails did and did not do, watching John’s face like a hawk for any sign of discomfort. Not that there was anything! Trolls, apparently, had a quadrant for snugglebuddying a lot and trying to make sure you were okay and showing your squishy underbelly feelings. This was pretty much exclusively PERFECT and what John would have wanted with Karkat Vantas from day one if he’d had a word for it. Moirails, best friends, same thing.
Especially when Karkat was acting so normal. It made John want to comfort him relentlessly because he, John Egbert, definitely wasn’t normal about this. He doubted Karkat was, because Karkat, well… He was pretty melodramatic over getting the wrong toppings on his pizza. This felt somewhat more severe.
John told himself that he wouldn’t let things get weird. But he still found himself apologizing at dumb times, and wanting to yell at couples for making out in front of them. All the sweets in the house had systematically vanished. Could trolls even survive that? Wouldn’t there be some kind of epic sugar withdrawal?
Or… had Karkat just had kept all the sugar around to hint that he was flushed for John? That he wanted to feed him candy? Was that a thing?
And fuck no, John wasn’t going to ask anyone else. He still hadn’t entirely forgiven Jade. So what if Karkat had demanded to know why her ectobrother was acting like he was on drugs? Best friends didn’t tell, even if concerned trolls were asking. Jade was on John’s shit list at the moment.
See? If things were back to normal, he would have forgiven Jade—she had been right. Karkat had needed to know. It wasn’t fair to make the dude even more confused and John, he, well, this was how it was supposed to be.
John was still pissed.
What was still wrong? He had everything he wanted. Karkat was making an effort at being normal. Everybody had written the whole thing off as another silly interspecies shenanigan. Only when they laughed about it, they weren’t loud, and they glanced at Karkat out of the corner of their eyes as he ignored them and leaned against John’s side in a display of solidarity about as subtle as a boot to the face.
And John was just… pissed off at life.
----
Rose confronted him about it during their study session. Kanaya had just fed Rose some kind of nougat, and John was glaring at them without really meaning to, grinding his pencil into the carpet. Rose chewed slowly, flipped a page in her textbook, and asked John, “And how is Karkat?”
Feeling judged, John stuffed his face in a notebook. Karkat was at home, working on some kind of coding project with Sollux. This either meant that he was doing the grunt work Sollux didn’t want to do, or designing viruses to attack Sollux’s software. It was a toss-up with them. “Karkat’s great. We’re all great. How does thermodynamics work?”
“I’m not explaining three whole chapters to you,” Rose said gently, and laid a hand on John’s notebook, easing it back to the floor. “Close your eyes.” When John scowled, she added in a much steelier tone, “Do it.”
John obeyed. You did not argue with Rose’s business voice. Ever.
“I’m going to ask you a very simple question,” Rose said. “Because I can tell you don’t understand why you’re angry, and I think it will help. You may consider it purely rhetorical, if you are so inclined.”
Didn’t that defeat the purpose of the question, if you didn’t want an answer? Rose was silly.
“I’m giving this to you,” she said. This wasn’t even a question. John was a college student at this point, and could tell the difference.
The thing weighing between his palms was a question though, just a little bit.
John didn’t open his eyes for a while, but when he did Rose had put away all the textbooks and was leaned close to Kanaya. They whispered softly, completely ignoring John’s presence. John’s stomach continued flopping around like a beached fish. He got up to go.
----
John slammed the front door, not bothering to take off his shoes or coat, charging straight to Karkat’s room. He didn’t bother knocking this time, just stormed up to the troll who was staring with both eyebrows inching towards his horns. John tugged Karkat to his feet. “John, what the,” Karkat began, not even looking mad, just bewildered. John reached into his coat pocket. Karkat went stiff as a broomstick, eyes widening as John unwrapped the candy, letting the plastic fall. It crinkled dramatically to the floor. Karkat’s eyes were glued to the chocolate. His voice came out very small.
“If you’re not serious, don’t you dare put that thing within an inch of me, Egbert—“ he cut himself off as John ate the chocolate, silky sweetness on his tongue. “—Oh.” Karkat swallowed as John peeled off his winter gloves. His eyes were full of hurt in spite of his tone. “Oh. Good. You, just, what are you doing in my room—?”
John grabbed Karkat’s face in both hands and kissed him.
Karkat jolted in his arms, like John’s lips were live electricity. John relentlessly angled their faces, pressing and nudging until Karkat’s mouth was open and John’s tongue pushed the chocolate in. Karkat growled, sharp and as addictive as any sweet taste. John licked the taste from him as Karkat’s arms went around his neck like it was that simple all along.
“Sorry,” John panted when he needed air again. “You know I’m an idiot. But I think this has got to be right after all, because I want to see the face you make when you’re stupidly happy, even if it does make me feel like the air conditioner is broken. I guess I’m probably going to screw this up again. But if I mess things up, you’ve got my back—I’ve got yours. As long as that doesn’t change, I really want to try doing quadrant things with you. I want to kiss you. Um.” He allowed, reluctantly, “I’m getting myself that pamphlet on homosexuality for Christmas. And I’m babbling, aren’t I? Help!”
Karkat’s eyes swam with emotion. His mouth stained with candy. Out of all the loud, ranting things he could have said, Karkat whispered in a shattered voice, “Please kiss me again.”
John inhaled sharply as he pressed in, Karkat gasping like an asphyxiated fish, both hands sliding into John’s hair. John stumbled forwards, trying to get Karkat closer. They hit the wall. Ow. John stubbed his toe. Double ow. Karkat, pinned to the wall, flushed maroon, and his mouth wet from kissing, was probably the most amazing thing John had ever seen.
As Karkat licked his lips, John stared at him, befuddled by how much he actually wanted to do that smooching thing again with this troll. Karkat’s sweater was stupid and his hair was a wiry mess and his skin looked like what happened to paper after you erased too much, all over. John wanted to kiss him because of those things—because Karkat was Karkat and John had almost missed this fact. They’d been practically glued together since the game ended. And he’d maybe been flirting a little bit on purpose since before that.
Oh man. It was definitely someone else’s fault, but now was not the time for such contemplation. John heard himself make a pained groan and leaned in to meet Karkat’s tongue with his own.
He should have done this the first time Karkat had kissed him. He should have done this all along.
Karkat breathed soft troll-noises to him, clicking and whirring like machinery and music. John was already pretty sure that he was in love with Karkat, but if he wasn’t yet, he was getting there now, introduced to the friendliness of Karkat’s tongue and the way Karkat’s hands just kept guiding his head back into Karkat’s lips. “I pity you,” Karkat gasped, which was almost a turn-off until John’s addled brain managed to equate that to weird troll love. “Pity you so much, pitied you since forever…”
“Flushed?” John offered, not entirely sure he had the word right. Until, wow, Karkat’s body arched into his and John’s mouth was smothered in kisses.
“Flushed for you,” Karkat breathed in between, in the reverent voice of someone teaching sacraments. It sounded like a love confession that happened after montaged years of a romcom plot, and okay, Karkat’s hands were getting pretty proprietary there. John gasped when they crawled up his arms, clawed fingers rubbing his bare skin hot. “So flushed for you, flushed as your mutant human blood, flushed like the inside of a furnace, John.”
“Yeah?” John asked, licking into Karkat’s mouth again as Karkat’s fingers pushed beneath his shirt and drew patterns into his overheated skin. “I think we’re finally on the same page, then. I human-like you. Like-like you,” he captured Karkat’s face between his fingers, kissing his nose. Karkat’s eyes widened. His mind appeared to be blown. John kissed his nose again, because that was the best thing ever. “That’s human-flushed… right?”
When Karkat kissed him again, John’s knees gave out a little. John sagged into Karkat, the victim of a giggle fit.
“You’re purring.”
Karkat didn’t seem extremely interested in stopping either. “Fuck you,” he answered—purring away. His throat vibrated against John’s cheek and John impulsively cupped his palm to the sound. Purring felt ticklish, and really nice against his fingers. Like a massage chair going haywire.
John observed, “I never thought I’d end up making out with something that purrs.”
This did make Karkat bristle, if only briefly. He made it through the preliminary rounds of, “Oh yes, let’s all applaud John Egbert’s amazingly fucking inaccurate powers of precognition. Excuse me while I go tear out all of my fuuuaagh—“
Karkat really seemed to like biting. John was going to keep that in mind.
When he pulled back, Karkat’s eyes were half-closed and he looked dopey enough that John’s stomach did the melty thing and he ended up kissing Karkat’s crooked smile. Karkat’s arms snuck around his neck and he was pushing up against John’s and rolling John’s back against the wall to attack him. Their mouths separated and John’s was tingling as he grinned. Karkat grinned back for a sliver of a second before he was scowling to hide the his eyes were about as soft and gooshy as John’s stomach. John had put that look there. He wanted to do it more.
Karkat’s grip had John totally at his mercy. He used this to prod at John’s scalp.
“You really don’t have horns,” Karkat observed. John shrugged. He couldn’t do a whole lot about this. Besides, wouldn’t that make wearing hats really weird? John liked his hats. Karkat mumbled, “Fucking weird. Not that I, hm. Mind.”
John found himself smiling hard enough that his face hurt. “I kind of like the purring,” he confessed. “Movie night cat noises will never be the same again. Kinda steamy now.”
Karkat raised an eyebrow. “Oh please. For the last time, Egbert, there is no such thing as movie night.”
John considered this. Pinned to the wall like a bodice-ripper heroine and being made to helplessly take the tenderly reverent stare of his dashing paramour, the threat of a smile playing on Karkat’s lips, and his thumbs rubbing over tiny patches of skin over and over like he couldn’t believe they were there (seriously, Karkat’s expression should have been illegal) John offered, “…Date night?”
Karkat’s eyebrows snapped together and his mouth opened. John felt him shiver, forearms trembling over John’s shoulders. The purring filled up the room like a chocolate fountain, too sweet for words, and John, yeah, you can guess. They leaned their foreheads together, like words weren’t even a thing. When they kissed, it was because they both listed towards it and the middle existed for them to collide.
Karkat didn’t taste like chocolate anymore, but this kiss was still sweeter than anything John had ever put in his mouth.
----
A month later and John had gotten that pamphlet. So You Think Your Son Might Be Gay? Discovering the potential gayness of his hypothetical children had not been helpful. Largely because he’d already determined without its assistance that he was in love with Karkat Vantas. This was not a decision taken lightly. It seemed basically impossible to reverse. Particularly when Karkat Vantas was in his lap, eating pizza and cursing loudly every time something exploded on the TV.
“Shit!” Karkat savaged his pizza slice in excitement. “If they annihilate less than ten public structures before this film ends, I’m going to fucking put my sickles in the microwave and deploy assistance. Dear gog.” He snickered as another bomb went off. The heroes rushed away from their handiwork, with the fires of justice flaring behind them, and all the while, Karkat had a piece of pepperoni pizza dangling out of his mouth. Something else exploded. Karkat’s eyes narrowed and he squeezed John’s hand. “Oh yessss.”
John counted off the moments until the next one. Three, two… They both whistled at the same time. Karkat dropped back against John with the sigh of a troll whose life is utterly fulfilled. John responded by tickling Karkat until that got him smacked. They gaped at the explosions and the gunfight that followed, and when the end theme began to wail out of the speakers, John had a mouth full of Karkat.
Oh yes, please.
“Jade’s coming by later,” John broke away to inform Karkat (who promptly nipped the tender underside of John’s jaw). “She says, ah, that if we haven’t decorated for Christmas, she’ll call the police? Meaning Davesprite.”
“We decorated,” Karkat insisted, in between fitting his tongue back into John’s mouth until John’s hands were under his sweater. “We have a tree.”
“We have a coaster, shaped like a tree,” John corrected. “That Jade gave us.”
“We’re all going to celebrate at Strider’s anyway,” Karkat grumbled. “Why do you humans continue to enforce your stupidity on perfectly rational beings? Gristmas is a stupid holiday.”
Spoken like someone who had yet to spend the holiday with John. Plans to force-feed Karkat enough gingerbread to kill an army and play every Christmas movie in their collection were already well under way. For the glory of the country. “You gotta get off of me, buddy. We have to throw tinsel on the blender or something.”
“Don’t care,” Karkat insisted quite eloquently, and indeed, when Jade arrived, it was to a sad lack of decorations and two mussed, breathless young men who refused to keep their hands off of each other. Jade rolled her eyes at them and pelted Karkat with ornaments whenever he tried to drag John back to the sofa. The apartment got decorated. Jade stole John’s glasses and dove into the bathroom for purposes unknown. Lost, John looked to Karkat.
Karkat responded by jerking John down by the collar and making good use of the lack of Jade ornament barrages.
“What if I’d fed you sour candy?” John asked when they somehow found themselves on the sofa, tangled up and overheated from kissing too much. Karkat blinked at him in dazed confusion, purring nonstop as John curled careful fingers around his horns. He’d gotten a very thorough education on these suckers. Any opportunity he got, he was petting them and Karkat was making soft, buzzing moans under his hands.
Karkat looked like he didn’t understand the question. He was also glaring slightly. Why, John, have your hands stopped moving? Horns. Petting. NOW.
Obligingly, John squeezed until Karkat trembled. “I’m talking about that first night, way back when. I fed you a chocolate and you thought I was asking you for a matespriteship. But what if I’d fed you sour candy? We had sour candy. Would you think I ashen-liked you? Or does that still count as sweet?”
Karkat frowned at him slightly. After a moment, he expressed this in slightly slurred words, “Sour is sour. It would mean you wanted to insinuate yourself into my life and prevent me from murdering any one of a choice assortment of murder-able assholes.”
Straight-faced, John managed, “Sexy.”
Karkat growled up at him, between bouts of purring. The effect was like a musical score, and John added to it by running his nails along Karkat’s horns. The harder he pushed, the higher Karkat’s voice climbed.
This was fun.
“I,” Karkat panted when John backed off to let him breathe, “Would have. Vacillated.” When John stared, Karkat sighed. “Ashen to black, black to flushed. My gog, Egbert, the things you need explained to you. If you made any kind of effort with the quadrant system, you’d see—“
John interrupted with a smile, “You’re my quadrant, Karkat.”
Karkat turned bright red. A helpless smile spread over his face.
He recovered by punching John in the ribs. John declared an immediate tickle fight. They rolled off the sofa, each struggling to get the upper hand. Karkat was stronger, but John was craftier and proved it. As soon as Karkat had him pinned, he stole a kiss. Karkat’s grip went slack and John surged up to kiss him harder and tuck a sour gumdrop neatly in his boyfriend’s mouth.
Karkat was growling when John pulled back, straight-faced and extremely proud of himself. Karkat had both his hands pinned down and was giving him one of those looks that made John either want to laugh or run away. “Ha ha! Now I’m your all-spice!”
“Auspistice,” Karkat corrected, tone extremely dangerous.
“Okay, that,” John replied agreeably. “We sure flip quadrants a lot, huh?”
Karkat made an angry noise that seemed to shake the floorboards and curled John’s toes.
“I guess you’ll just have to convince me again,” John sighed, voice shaking only slightly. He was grinning and bright red, and sort of shuddering all over. “You’re pretty good at that.”
The look Karkat gave him was impressive.
----
Jade took one look at them upon exiting the bathroom and groaned. “Oh my gosh, you guys! At least pretend you haven’t been making out the whole time I was in there!”