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==>John: come home
The evening is becoming soft and purple outside when you come home. Your body is aching and tired, tired from lugging your books around all day, tired from trudging through wet, slushy sidewalks, and you are cold.
You really hope Karkat is still asleep, and you really hope he didn't use the recuperacoon today. You could really use snuggle time. Since he's older, he doesn't always need to use it; so sometimes he curls up in your bed, usually using your pillow when he does. You think the smell of you on the pillow helps him not have nightmares. (He'd never admit that, but you've seen him sniff your pillow when he thought you weren't looking.)
“Honey, I'm home,” you say quietly, because you know he's probably still sleeping, and you put your keys on the table just inside the front door. You know he didn't hear you...you just like to say it! The apartment is warm and a sleepy sort of dark. You can feel it pressing on your eyelids. You put your bag down quietly, throw your coat and hat over a chair and go into the respiteblock. (You like using troll terms for things. It's kind of neat!)
You rejoice inwardly as you see Karkat sleeping in your bed, curled up around your pillow, only his head above the nose showing above the covers. You take off your sweater and put it near his nose, so he'll catch your scent afresh. He reaches out unconsciously, his claws digging gently into the fabric. You have learned the hard way that it isn't wise to just wake Karkat up, even just to crawl into bed beside him.
(You'd needed stitches, and he'd almost moved out.)
After a moment, he stirs. “Jhohn?” When he's sleepy, things come out more Alternian than English, even though Alternian wasn't his first language. It does weird things to your stomach, hearing your name like that, the vowel sound surrounded by tiny growling consonants.
“Hey, Karkat. Just got home.”
“Coulda guessed that, bulgemunch,” he said sleepily, still slurring his consonants with a growl. “You comin' in?”
“Yeah, just a sec.” You strip off to your boxers, t-shirt and socks, and get in next to him. He tugs your back up against his chest, even though he's shorter, you're still the little spoon. His face is warm against your back, between your shoulder blades.
“Fuck, you're cold,” he says, smoothing his hand over your arm. His palm leaves a trail of warmth on your skin.
“I could put on some sweats,” you offer, but he pulls you against him again.
“Mmh, stay right where you are, idiot.” He pulls the covers up around your shoulders and tangles his legs with yours, his warm skin against you. You sigh and close your eyes. It was sort of...like being wrapped up in love. (Karkat would get all flustered and embarrassed if you said that aloud.) “The fuckhead mailman woke me up today. We got a Twelfth Perigees' box from Sollux and Aradia.”
“Aww, that was nice of them! Didja open it?” You know he didn't. Karkat loves Twelfth Perigees'/Christmas, and opening presents before Christmas Eve was just plain wrong.
“Fuck no, it's not time yet!” He sighs unhappily. You know that he's sad that one of his best friends was so far away.
You snuggle back into him and stroke your hands over the arms around your waist. “Are Gamzee and Tavros coming for Christmas Eve this year?”
Karkat goes quiet and then buries his face between your shoulder blades, making a tiny, distressed noise.
“Karkat?”
“Gamzee's mom wants to see him. I mean, it's rare enough that she even bothers these days ...so...yeah.” He breathes out, warm on your skin through your t-shirt. “It's only one day.”
You turn in his arms to face him, and put your hand to his cheek. “We can go visit my Dad if you want...Or we could go visit Jade...or just say here if you want.”
“Whatever you want.” Karkat shrugs and makes a miserable little whine. “I miss my Dad.”
You kiss him gently. “I'm sorry, Karkat. I'm sorry.” You cradle his head against your chest and he wraps his fists in your shirt.
“God, I suck. I'm such an idiot, don't listen to me, fuck...” he says vehemently as your shirt gets damp. This time of year is always difficult for him.
“It's okay. Shoosh...” You tilt his face up and kiss him while he's still crying, push tears off his face. You run your hands up his back, trying to get him to relax with you. He makes small, pathetic sounds that tear at you. You can't stand when he gets like this; when the pain is too deep for you to touch. You know he's his own worst enemy, and you try to soften it, try to make him see how great he is, how much you love him. You kiss him, his closed eyelids, you rub the base of his horns. He sighs and sniffles.
You fall into a rhythm with him, stroking your hands up and across his chest, following the lines of his unusual muscle structure, kissing shallow and gentle until you feel his shoulders finally relax. He makes a soft sound and wriggles against you. If you didn't know Karkat, you would think he was sleepy.
But you do know Karkat, so you know he isn't. Your heart beats just a little faster, hearing that soft sound. You lean over to trace your tongue over the edge of his ear. The next noise he makes is louder, with an edge of want.
When you first got together, you had spent many long, pleasant nights with Karkat, getting familiar with each other. He'd never been with a human before, and you'd never been with a troll. Most nights found the two of you naked and just trying different things, different touches, touching and kissing and lots of snuggling. Even now, after several months, you're still learning new things. You love discovering anything that will get Karkat to make those hot, super-cute noises. And Karkat was really good at making you incoherent.
You gently push him over onto his back and drag your teeth over his skin. Karkat makes an abrupt, high whine of need that does incredible things to your insides. Karkat presses two gentle fingers against the base of your spine and rubs there. You bite the skin on his chest, making him hiss and arch against you. He grabs for your shirt, his claws scratching against your skin, which isn't entirely unpleasant, and pulls it off, pressing his face against you. You nuzzle his hair, between his horns. He smells warm and sleepy and soft. You sigh again and wriggle closer, slipping your leg between his.
He huffs. “Ugh, were you planning to make me cry and then attempt concupiscent relations with me?”
You grin against his hair. “No, just that second thing. Unless you don't wanna.”
“Who said anything about not wanting to?” He knocks you on your head lightly with his knuckles. “Idiot,” he says affectionately.
“Okay, then.” You settle your weight on top of him and run your tongue over his lower lip, his mouth parting for you. You've learned how to kiss him so that he turns into a puddle of needy troll beneath you, slow and deep, without hurting yourself on his teeth. You pin him, and he lets you, his fists clenching and un-clenching as you hold his wrists against the pillow. You're aching with how hard you are, and you can feel his bulge start to unsheathe itself.
Although part of you wants to simply thrust into his nook until he comes, the greater part of you wants to take your time with him, to make him feel good, hoping, perhaps, that he won't feel as badly about his moirail not being here for Christmas when you're done with him.
You know that won't happen, but at least you can make him feel good, right?
You kneel between his legs and put your lips to his ear. “I want to suck you off.”
Karkat makes a strangled, pleading noise and just nods. You kiss him again and drag your teeth over his lower lip. You think he likes when you decide things. It lets him not worry about being good...just feeling good.
Which is all you want right now.
You kiss down his chest and over his belly, and he's already shaking. You stroke over his thighs to relax his legs, stroke your hands against the tendrils of his bulge that have slipped out to play. You let them curl over your fingers and stroke them gently. Karkat lets out a breathy little keening noise and you kiss his bulge. Sweet and soft and smooth, like his nook on the inside. You lick his bulge, letting it curl around your tongue, and you moan softly. He tastes good, he feels good. You kiss the base where it curls out from behind the protective bone, then take his entire bulge in your mouth, wrapping your mouth around it, bobbing your head as you suck. Karkat chirps and whines and his hand grabs your hair. You look up at him and he's looking down at you, his expression and eyes soft.
As far as you're concerned, there's nothing more beautiful than Karkat is when you're fucking him.
You haven't touched his nook yet. He knows he has to ask for it. You can hardly wait. But for now, you lavish the attention on his bulge, ignoring your own discomfort.
“Fffffuck, John. Jhohn. Shit, please. Please.” Oh, he's slurring his words into Alternian. God, that gets you hot when he's between languages and some words come out English and others in Troll. You suck just that much harder and he keens, his hand twisting in your hair. You touch his nook gently with your finger, just around the edge. You hesitate just long enough for him to answer your unspoken question.
“Yesssss, aye yes, please fuck, Jhohn...”
You slip a finger inside, and it's so gentle, so soft, so warm and wet and smooth. Karkat's breath hitches and you feel the walls of his nook clench and release around you. You slip another finger in while he's relaxed. His keening gets more urgent and rhythmic as you suck him and stroke your fingers inside his nook. You're starting to get horribly hot and bothered. Gently, you release his bulge from your mouth and move up to kiss him properly. You line yourself up with him so he can catch your dick and his bulge in his hand, which he does.
You moan deeply into his mouth, your body singing with his touch. You crook your fingers inside of him to hit the proper spot. You rock against each other, Karkat's noises getting deeper and more urgent the closer he comes to breaking.
And the closer he comes, the closer you get. He's using his teeth more, and it stings a little but in a really, really good way. You're going to be half-bloody after this, but you don't care. “Karkat, oh god, Karkat,” you breathe, gasping. Your lower lip is caught between his teeth.
Suddenly, he throws his head back and arches up underneath you, and he makes this sound that just sends you right over the edge, this high, frantic keening as he climaxes, thrusting up against you, and you just can't help following him, clutching him to you and muffling your strangled cry against his shoulder.
He takes a long time to climax, and he's still thrusting against your fingers after you've stilled. The genetic material releases into his receptive sacs and it takes a little while, as he holds onto you and shakes, making these sounds that just endear him to you even more, that make you want to wrap him up in warm fluff and keep him safe. “B-Bucket,” he murmurs to you, and you get it for him from beside your bed, and you kiss him softly as you reach down and help him empty himself into it, with a last whimpering keen as he does so.
You don't really understand why concupiscent relations destroy him as much as they do, but for a while, he's just a shaking mess, and you cuddle him close, all his angles and points softened against your body. He looks almost tormented but he always assures you that he's enjoying it. So you just hold him and kiss him till he calms and his eyes drift shut, his face relaxed into soft lines, the angry furrows in his forehead smoothed out.
You stroke his hair, which is oddly cool and soft, even as the rest of his body is warm. He makes this soft, contented sound and sighs.
“We can go visit your Dad,” he murmurs, bits of his accent slipping out between English words. “I'd like that.”
You yawn. “Okay, Karkat. I'm gonna sleep now, I'll call him later.”
Karkat nods and holds you closer. You know he's awake now, blinking his eyes into the darkness of the room as you drift off. It makes you feel safe, and you fall asleep, knowing that whatever happens, the two of you are together.
==>Karkat: Have a family Christmas
John's Dad is a very kind person, and you know he means well, but it makes you miss your Dad even more. Your own father hasn't been gone very long, only about two years, and Christmases are still difficult for you.
You're sitting on the bed in John's childhood bedroom, looking around. It looks, to be honest, a lot like your own room as you were growing up: movie posters, coding books (neither of you are any good at it), and computer desk. Sometimes, you wonder how it took you this long to get together with him, when you really did have a lot in common. The movies, for one thing (though you liked rom-coms and he liked action movies, you guessed they were the same amount of stupid stupid dumb), the lack of talent in coding for another, the ways you got your friends to work together even despite their differences.
At the same time, you really don't know why he's with you, sometimes. You don't think you're that great a catch, though John always seems to act as if you're the greatest person ever.
A knock came at the door. “Um, I'll be right out,” you say, a little embarrassed at being caught being all stupid and sentimental about John as you look around his room.
John's father comes in and makes a “don't get up” gesture to you, so you sit there awkwardly. He comes to sit down next to you.
“I was sorry to hear of your father's passing. He was a good man, and I know you miss him.”
Hearing him speak of your Dad makes an unexpected lump rise in your throat and tears prickle against your eyelashes. “Yeah,” is about all you can manage, before ducking your head and rubbing your eyes.
“I'm glad you came to visit with John. I was worried when he told me you two were dating. Not because you're a troll,” he says quickly, “but because I wasn't sure if he was ready to have a serious relationship. But I can tell that you're good for him.”
You look over at Mr. Egbert. “I hope so. John's too good to me.”
He chuckles warmly. “I'm sure he's just as good to you as you deserve, Karkat. Come down when you're ready, we'll have dinner soon.” He gives you a one-armed hug and leaves the room.
Despite yourself, you smile.
It's nice being at John's house. It feels like home in a way that your apartment never did, and the way that the apartment you share with John sometimes does. Sometimes, and more and more often as time passes and you're still together, you still find out things that just make you...happy. It makes you happy when you find out that he's taking classes in Alternian, even though he can't make the sounds properly with his fucking inadequate human vocal cords, it makes you happy when you find him scanning want ads for a new apartment—apartments that cater to trolls, with lots of shade and windows, adequate flooring to accommodate recuperacoons. It makes you happy, though it scares you a little, too. You've wanted to find your matesprit for as long as you can remember. It's been the fucking dream of your life.
But you thought you had that with Terezi and look how mistaken you were.
But John. John, John, John. He is just. Too perfect.
And you can't trust that.
Nothing you love lasts.
~*~
Christmas morning, and John's Dad has thoughtfully covered over the windows so that you can all have Christmas morning, and the lights on the tree are soft and beautiful, and they don't hurt your eyes. Most of the gifts are simple, necessary things. Dad goes a bit overboard on one thing for each of you, of course, for John, it's a new Kindle, for you a selection of classic Alternian cinema that you don't have yet (troll entertainment from pre-Earth arrival is really hard to find).
John gets you something subtle, not too expensive: a messenger bag in pearl grey. He knew anything extravagant would make you uncomfortable, because you couldn't reciprocate at the moment. Though you did what you could, having managed to find a replacement for that stupid as fuck green alien shirt he'd had some version of ever since you met him in eighth grade on Ebay. In his size no less.
He kissed you hard when he unwrapped it, making you fluster.
Still. It was a nice time, and then John remembered that he'd left Rose and Kanaya's gift to them in his bag. He hurried upstairs in socks, boxers and his bathrobe (your current favorite outfit for him, though you'll never admit it) to get it. It's wrapped in hideous red-and-green Squiddle paper. Fucking nightmare fuel, right there.
“Come on, Karkat, let's open it together!”
You roll your eyes. “What are you, five?” you say, but you help him with the paper anyway because you are just that fucking sappy.
Inside are two pairs of socks, one pair in blue and the other in grey with your symbol on it in bright fucking red. Real subtle, Kanaya, you think, but they're nice, soft and warm. “Huh, looks like a pair of mittens and...an oven-mitt?” And they're all in red.
“Hmm...” John looks at them for a moment, spreading out the oven-mitt looking thing. “Oh, no, I know what this is! It's soo cute!” He carefully spread the oven-mitt thing out on the carpeted floor—it was shaped like a fucking heart—and one mitten on each side. “Look, we each get one mitten, but we share the heart shaped one! See, there's a place for each of us to slide our hand into, and it'll keep our hands warm as we hold hands! It's called a 'smitten!' Isn't it cute?”
You stare at the layout of mittens on the floor, and you blink.
This was weird.
This was fucking weird.
You haven't been in a serious relationship since high school. And look how well that turned out. You manage to smile, though. “Yeah...it's cute.”
You don't know what you're doing, and you're convinced you're going to screw it up.
John, of course, wanted to go off walking hand in hand as soon as possible but you just...you close up, clam up. You don't want to screw this up but you know you're going to.
You're quiet during breakfast, but at least you have the excuse that you're tired, because it's daytime. You let John and his dad alone and go to bury yourself under the covers.
You take the black sweater you were wearing yesterday and use it to not mess up the clean white sheets with your tears.
==>John: wonder what the hell happened
You really don't understand what's going on with Karkat. He seemed so happy and then when you suggested going for a walk, he clammed up and was weird till you let him go back to bed.
“You okay, son?” Your dad sits beside you on the couch, slinging an arm around your shoulders. You lean against his shoulder and sigh.
“I just...Karkat. I just wish I knew he was...happy. With me. Sometimes he just gets so sad, you know, and I sometimes can bring him out of that and sometimes not, but...It's awful when he's sad, you have no idea.”
Your dad chuckles. “Oh, I think I have an idea.” He gives you a squeeze and kisses the side of your head. “Have you talked to him about this? I mean, really talked to him? Sometimes we think that we've said something, but we really haven't, not in a way that they understand anyway.”
“I...he knows I love him. I mean, God, how can he not? I tell him all the time!” You sigh again, your brow furrowing. “It's like he keeps thinking I'm going to leave him when...how could I, I mean. He's just. He's everything. I wanted him for so long and now I've got him and how could he think I'd want to leave?”
“He wasn't precisely expecting you, though, was he? You were a happy accident. He'd lost one person and now he has you, almost dropped right in his lap. You guys didn't have the regular relationship beginning where one person just asks another out, after all...”
You fall silent after that, thinking. The day you got together was a spectacularly...trying one, to say the least. It had begun with you being a silly, lovestruck derp, and finished with you being heartbroken for a time and then a cautious, intense joy.
Maybe that was what was wrong. Maybe it was too much too soon. You close your eyes—you didn't sleep much last night, because duh, Christmas Eve—but you're just thinking. Your Dad just keeps his arm around your shoulders, smoking his pipe. You don't smoke, but you like the smell of his pipe. It's comforting to you.
You remember when you first met Karkat, and you remember how he used to be, with Terezi. He wasn't much different, but he was...confident. He had Terezi and yeah, he was still pretty angry, but Terezi was a good matesprit for him and they'd been together for a long time, since even before you met him.
When everything went to shit in high school, it pretty much destroyed him. You remember that he'd attempted college, but when his dad died, that fell apart too. Then he'd gotten that shitty job and closed himself off while all of his friends seemed to just go on and leave him behind.
And it had all started in high school, with the absolute clusterfuck that their junior year had been.
Did he think that he'd abscond when things got bad? Was he worried about doing the wrong thing? Whichever, it was clear that Karkat was afraid of losing him. You'd assumed—you'd hoped—that you could make everything better just by being with him and helping him not be lonely. The idea that you might have to do a little more work to make things better doesn't really daunt you, though.
Karkat's worth it, after all.
==>Karkat: have your space invaded
The light has shifted to late afternoon: you're ultra sensitive to the shift of light and temperature, and the sunlight is on the other side of the house, making John's room a little colder.
The door opens and shuts, and you can hear John padding across the room in his sock-feet. “Karkat? Are you awake?”
For a couple of moments, you consider remaining silent. But then you feel that might hurt things more than you would like so you mutter, “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
You don't uncover yourself, instead, you listen to the rustling of fabric, the slight crackle of static as John pulls his sweater off, the soft click as he folds his glasses and places them on the bedside table. He crawls into bed beside you, and gently uncovers your head, pulls the slightly-damp sweater away from your face. He tugs on your shoulder till you turn towards him. You sigh, and roll over, and he pulls you close, close enough to nearly touch noses. He smells like cookies. It's wonderful.
It's killing you. Everything about John makes you so fucking happy you feel like you could die from it.
So why are you so miserable?
He just looks at you with his pitiful weak eyes, though you know he's close enough to see you clearly, with a soft smile on his face, and he brushes hair off of your cheek. He kisses you, tiny kisses that are almost moirail-pale if it weren't for the fact that your legs are entwined together and you're flush up against him.
“I'm never going to leave you, Karkat. Never.” His lips press warm above your eyelid. “I wish I could make you believe that it's going to be all right, that I won't leave, that you can trust me to be with you. And not hurt you.”
You look at him, at his stupid gorgeous face, and you just want to cry. Your eyes ache. “You'll meet someone better than me,” you mumble, and you immediately want to die because you are an idiot. You sound like a complete and utter wimp, like you don't trust John not to hurt you...
which you don't. You don't.
“I'm sorry,” and then your eyes are leaking all over his clean white t-shirt, all over his sheets, and you hide your face in your sleeve. “Now I'm fucking staining your sheets, goddammit...”
John puts his hands on your wrists and pulls your hands away from your face, and he turns you gently as he pins your hands beside you on the pillow and climbs on top of you, straddling your waist.
“Karkat, you are an idiot,” he says, and kisses you. Kisses you the way you like, running his tongue behind your teeth, pulling away with a light scrape against your lip. You look up at him over you. “Fuck the sheets. Fuck past you, he was a dumbass anyway. Fuck Terezi for hurting you and fuck Dave for lying to you, and fuck past me for not just acting on my stupid stupid dumb crush on you.” He's got all his weight on you, pressing your body into his bed, pressing your wrists into his pillow. He leans forward into your face. “I. Love. You. There is nothing I want more than you. I've dated other people. Anyone I've wanted. But I want you, you're all I want, and nothing is going to change that.”
Your breath is coming short and your blood-pusher feels like it's going to hammer it's way out of your chest, and you can't speak. Tears are running down your cheeks and into your ears. John pulls off his shirt and dabs at your face, at your ears, then tosses the shirt aside. “No matter who else comes and goes, it's you and me, palhonchos forever.” He grins at you, and you snort.
He's ridiculous. You're ridiculous.
“Karkat. Five years. I've wanted you for five years. Do you really think I'm going to suddenly find someone else when I tried for five years to find someone else? I was convinced you'd never want me. Now I have you. You're all I want, Karkat. So...could you please be happy we're together? Walk with me in stupid mittens and make people stare at us? Let yourself not worry anymore and be able to sleep again?” He pushes hair off of your forehead, away from your horns, and you feel...
Warm. Safe.
You look up at him and sigh out a soft noise, and he blushes. When was the last time you felt safe? John grins at you and nuzzles at your neck, and every bit of tension floods out of you. You feel safe, and secure, and not worried, and it wakes up your bulge in a really nice way. You make another soft noise, a noise with a trill at the end, almost like a wriggler noise but oh not really. Not really at all. You flush brightly.
“I've never heard you make that noise before,” John says softly, wonderingly. “It's good though, right?”
You swallow, manage to say, “It's good,” before your eyes slip closed and you push up against him with your hips. Your hands stroke gently down his sides and you feel him shiver. He slides his hands beneath your shirt and you help him take it off, but you hesitate before making another move. “The sheets are white,” you murmur, stupidly.
“Don't care,” John murmurs. “Want you.” He leans over you and licks your collarbone and you make that whimpering trill again, and John groans. “That sound is turning me on so much you have no idea.”
“It means that I feel safe,” you tell him, your voice wavering. “I...haven't done that in a very long time.”
“Oh,” he says softly, and his eyes widen. You push yourself up and wrap one hand around the back of his neck, hauling him in for a kiss. You're still tangled in the sheets but John puts his arms around you and pulls you close, chest to chest. Your eyes close and your mouth falls open slightly. You can feel his heart against your skin. Gently, you roll him over onto his back, and he blinks up at you with a little surprise.
You usually let John take control. You worry too much, and it's just easier for you to let John take control and not let yourself think, but not now. He's been so patient. You nudge his legs apart with your own, gently, and lean over him, putting your weight on him gradually. He sighs shakily and slips his arms around you as you press your lips against his. You roll your hips against his, making him groan into your mouth.
“I want you as my matesprit,” falls out of your mouth when you pull away from him. You can't believe you're doing this, but you're not going to let him get away from you. You really want this to last, and last forever. Your heart (not your blood-pusher, even you know that's a different thing) can't take much more of being thrown around. You have never been very good at letting go.
John beams up at you, reaches up to touch your face. “Yes,” he says, and you can hear his voice shake. “Yes,” he says and then his mouth works but nothing comes out.
Mark this shit on the calendar, you've rendered John Egbert speechless.
So you take advantage of that, and you put your fingers into his hair and make gentle fists as you kiss him, determined to make him feel how much you want him, how much you (are determined to) trust him. You slip his boxer shorts off without bothering with your own pants. You don't do this often because of the relative sharpness of your teeth, but it's not impossible, and you know how to do it without actually hurting him at all. You begin kissing your say down his chest and stomach, and you can feel his dick pressing against your chest as you go down.
John's still incoherent. You take a moment to smile against his hip before you kiss the tip of his cock. You fold your lips over your teeth carefully and take him inside, holding his hips down so he doesn't thrust up and hurt himself on your back teeth or hurt you by mistake. You feel his hands in your hair for a moment, then one leaves to go somewhere. You look up through your lashes and he's got one hand clapped against his mouth, dampening his moans—which you can tell, if he didn't, he'd be loud—and you smile and go back to sucking him off. Your tongue curls around his dick and he struggles to thrust up, though you don't let him. His hand tightens in your hair and oh, you love when he does that. You fall into a rhythm, suck-lick-swallow, and you can feel it just before he comes, how he gets so hard and it's harder to hold his hips down, and then your mouth is full and you suck-lick-swallow again and again, your blood-pusher thrumming in your chest, moaning around him and then swallowing again as he finishes, and you hug his hips and lay your head on his belly.
You can tell when he takes his hand away from his mouth because you can hear his breathless panting. His whole body shakes. He sounds almost like he's crying, breathing in choked little gasps, so you crawl up his body and kiss him again. You pull the covers back over him, wrapping him warmly and holding him close. Your bulge needs attention but you don't particularly care at the moment, you just want to hold him, savor this, savor the feeling of being happy, of being safe. You know your self-doubts are going to creep in again eventually but you know that he'll be here for you. You asked and he said yes.
Somehow, you're still enough of a sap to believe that means forever.
John turns to you eventually and puts his arms around you in return, kissing your face. “I love you, Karkat. I love you so much.” He curls up around you and slips his hand down your pants. You help him off with them. You are so soaked that it's almost embarrassing, or it would be, if this wasn't John, if he didn't look at the dripping mess that you are and make a soft exhalation of turned-on wonder. If he didn't lick a trail from your stomach to your mouth in soft, sucking kisses. If he didn't kiss you until you couldn't breathe, if he didn't tease you into even more of a whimpering, pleading mess than you already were. You try not to be too loud, but yeah, that's not a thing you can do when John is reducing you do a shivering mess of troll by stroking the edges of your nook so very gently-not-gently in the way you like but that he's too nervous to do often: stroking with the pad of his finger and edge of his blunted fingernail, the right combination of soft and almost-too-sharp that drives you crazy. He's always afraid that he'll hurt you, but he's doing it perfectly, making you want him to push inside of you. You want him inside of you, you want to feel him there so that you can feel like he's part of you and oh shit are you saying this out loud?
Well you must be, because John is looking at you like you are the fucking Holy Grail of whatever counts as sexual Nirvana oh fuck you're mixing your metaphors or something oh who cares--
John opens his mouth against your neck, bites down and you can't help the noises you make when he does that. You writhe beneath him and he pins your hips down with a murmured “careful” because he's got his fingernails near a very sensitive part of you, and he just...keeps...going and you can't finish like this and he knows that and oh god, oh god, oh god...
He shifts, lining his hips up with yours, and you feel him, hard again already, and he's pressing against your nook, pressing in and filling you, his hand stroking your bulge. He does everything the way you like it, just rough enough to almost hurt, and he's careful not to go over the line, and the fact that he's so careful, that he cares for you so much, and would never, ever hurt you, does things to you that make you dizzy with pleasure. He leans down over you and kisses you soft and sweet, whispers your name in your ear, breathy with desire, and that's it, you lose it completely, and you come so hard you see stars and your throat is hoarse from shouting John's name. He comes again shortly thereafter, muffling a whimper in your shoulder, and then sleepily goes to get the bucket, rubbing the small of your back as you empty yourself into it with tiny shuddering breaths.
He eases you back onto the bed when you're done, curling around your body and brushing your hair back with light touches and holding you snugly against him. The bed is messy and slightly damp, but neither of you care much at the moment.
You look up at him and stroke your fingers through his hair. It's soft and slightly sweaty and it sort of curls around your fingers in dark tendrils. You're stroking your fingers through your matesprit's hair.
It's so romantic that you want to strangle yourself for how much of a sap you are.
(But not really.)
~*~
Later on, after a late lunch wherein John's father absconded who-knows-where (you think, well, you know he heard the two of you, leaving a plate of sandwiches with a note saying I am so proud of both of you on them, he might be a bit embarrassed to face his son after that) you go for a walk. The mitten/smitten thing was awkward as fuck to put on, but once it's on, John looked so proud and happy and ridiculous that you don't even care how dumb it makes the two of you look.
“So, are we gonna send out save the date cards? We totally should. And we should do a Jack-and-Jill...though I guess in our case it would be a Jack-and-Jack? But that'll help pay for stuff...”
“John, what the fuck are you talking about?”
John whips around, kneeling right there in the snow, one mittened hand over the one that's in the heart shaped one. “Karkat, will you get human-troll married with me after I'm out of school? Can we have a married-spritship? We could get grubs of our own and it would be so awesome.”
You're blushing. You can tell you're blushing because your face feels like it's steaming in the cold weather. “John, you idiot, it's going to be at least four years till I graduate from whatever the fuck it is I'm going to go to school for...” You've narrowed it down, but you're still not entirely sure.
“That's okay! I will totally support you, and then we can have kids. It'll be so awesome, Karkat, please say yes.”
His eyes are so damn hopeful as they look into yours, and your insides melt into a little puddle because you are an idiot for him. You are an idiot for him and you acknowledge this and you will own that shit.
“Fine, only because I'm afraid what you'll do without me there to keep you from putting your hand into a blender,” you mutter, and John pulls you down for a kiss.