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You are looking at him and you know that somewhere, in some far-off pathetic excuse for a universe, someone might describe your eyes as being soft.
You'd like to give a big Fuck You to that person right now.
Your eyes aren't soft--they're glaring--because Professor Nooksworth decided to take a nap right in the fuck middle of your ‘coon and you are about to lose it.
He knows that's your space. The one miserable hole you can crawl into when all the mistakes in your life get to be too much.
And he's spread out, mostly naked, in the dead center and like he built the goddamn ‘coon himself.
You say mostly because he left his socks on. Socks that are two-thirds brown and one-third white because John doesn't seem to give a flying shit about putting on shoes when he needs to go outside.
"I'm just walking from one end of the yard and back," he tells you, grin firmly settled and a roll in his eyes, "it's not like anyone is gonna see or care."
He doesn't get that you fucking care. You're the one whose eyes zoom in on the flecks of dirt spread throughout the carpet when he tromps back in; you’re the one who will have to go through the exhausting practice of emptying your ‘coon of its now contaminated slime, only to bristle the walls free from spare grime before you fill it to the brim once again.
You just know he's going to stand behind you, trying to bring a sense of hilarity to the situation, but you will only want to shove him head first into one of Gamzee's pies. Anything to teach him how aggravating it is to fight against slime, anything to get your mind off that damn chuckle.
You contemplate all of this in one half of your headspace. And in the next half, you think of all the different ways you can go about knocking the idiot out of his sleep.
The tips of your feet nudge against the pair of shoes John's left next to the recuperacoon. Fucking obnoxious, leaving them out like that. You could make do by dropping them on his chest, watching him sputter and splash in the shallow drench of slime, but the thought rolls out of your head. That would only bring more contamination into your slime and you'd like to keep it decent enough for at least one more resting period before having to work up the energy to clean it out.
You don't know what to do, so you strip; might as well join the shitheel before knocking some intelligence into those ill-formed cells that make up his think pan.
The slime is contentedly warm and you let it seep against your legs as you continue staring at John's face.
If only visual irritation could cause physical pain. Then maybe you'd be set and the universes could twist and turn in goddamn harmony.
But fuck you for thinking such a thing could exist. It doesn't, and wishing for it only makes you want to heave enormous amounts of projectile hatred upon every single iteration of your self.
The absentminded spewing of your own self-loathing doesn't stop you from noticing the drawings on the wall.
"YOU BUSFUCKER!!"
Your scream rousing him wasn't exactly what you had in mind, but it seems pretty damn effective.
John sits up quickly, eyes squinting and words half tumbling from his lips. You want to hate him in this moment.
You realize, as with all the other moments set up exactly like this one, that you can't. You can't even hate yourself for not hating him.
You have it bad and you want rip off your own nubbed-fucked horns for that truth.
"I'm three-fourths of a millisecond away from tearing your chest cavity open with the dull edge of Homes Smell Ya Later if you don’t explain your thought process for mutilating my wall with your shitastic scratchings of ink."
Legs bend and tuck into a crouch, and a hand is gripped against the side of his neck, tugging, though with claws mindfully pressed against soft flesh, towards the destruction.
"Oh, haha! That's our shipping wall." He grins at you, blunt teeth on full display like he poses some sort of threat (he does actually, but you'd be knocked stupid before you'd admit it). "Geez, Karkat, I thought your super snazzy troll eyes were supposed to help you see really well."
"Thank you John. I'm as pleased as those bouncing tangerines that Jade shoves down my protein chute that you find my ocular orbs to be, what was it, snazzy? Really, I'm just leaking in gracious juices. Can you feel it, John? Can you feel these liquids entrench upon your skin?"
"Dude, gross."
John strains upward, grabbing the base of your neck and pulling down. He's not wasting any time or effort.
"Your ugly face clashes with the purple."
"Only my face?" John asks, looking at his caricature fondly, but you aren’t taken in by his poor attempts at pity.
"Yes, red goes fine with the purple backdrop. Blue, not so much."
"Fuck you, too, Karkat."
He pulls a bit harder and you comply, easing both knees to the floor of the ‘coon. Slime soaks to mid-thigh and you're already feeling the slight pull of sleep.
"I missed you today."
You know he did, which is why you can't actually be angry at the thought of him cradling himself into your 'coon. Irritated, sure, but not angry. You might have just as readily crawled under his covers on that flat pad he claims as an adequate resting surface. You wouldn't say it out loud, but that doesn't make it any less true.
His arms circle around to your back, fingers pressing against knotted muscles and aching bones, and you inch forward, craving the contact those fingers provide.
Your body makes sounds that you are nearly ashamed of: a quick beat of cricks and a deep rumble, near constant with its pace. They’re supposed to be a troll's subtle non-verbals, involuntary actions developed to help with communication, but nowadays all they seem to do is give John a reason to laugh at you.
Which he does now, and you bow your head to press a horn sharp against his skin. He holds still, refusing to bend or back off, stating silently how little of a fuck he gives to your aggression.
John's a sucker for abuse and it's a fact you've both taken to heart. (You don’t want to think about how he’s skilled at recognizing your bluffs now, either, but that certainly could be a thing to worry about.)
His hands slide up from your back to the curved peak of your neck. You can't tell if it's the pressure that does you in or the entire endearment of the act. A soft touch saying 'I'm here' and answered 'I know'.
You relax against him; you trust him to do right by you.
He steadies you with the crook of an arm, a safety net of firm muscle and unspoken promises. It's taken sweeps, but you know the strength that lies in this man.
There's a sense of deliberation in the way he sets you down next to the wall. And you watch as he pulls away to tug over one of those damn squishpods from the front of the ‘coon.
You’ve asked him multiple times why the fuck he keeps moving his shit into your space, but he always responds with a laugh in your face, a shrug, and a half-assed explanation that cushions are good for your head, so why not?
He sets the biggest squishpod against the wall beside you and he pats the surface to invite you to rest on it.
You're only a few inches higher as you resettle yourself, but the perspective has changed.
His chin is tilted up at you, eyes alight and eager, and you brush a hand through his hair, watching as he tilts into the contact.
You pull him forward and he rests his head against your stomach, a soft moan pulled from his mouth as you continue rubbing the skin along his skull.
Fingers touch against the free hand resting on your thigh and he's pulling your claws up against his mouth, kissing each tip like they couldn't separate skin from muscle on a moment's whim.
It feels as if the shiver that pulls through his body immediately connects to yours and you try hard to control your breathing.
He pulls back and looks at you as he presses each kiss to the inside of your wrist and in the center of your palm.
You're flushed, and you can't think of ever not being so.
He pushes your hand against his chest and you can feel his heart beat in a rhythm of red and pity and love.
He asks you how far you want to go tonight. You tell him exactly what you want with soft presses of a finger against his chest. You can almost see the message spell out in his head before laughs and answers with an agreement on the skin of your calf.
He settles himself more firmly before you and you feel the dull call of sleep drift away as you peak up to watch his movements.
He dips a finger in the slime, twirling it around lazily. You know where he's going to put that finger soon and you can't help but feel the mild irritation at the thought of how he's disrespecting the usage of sopor slime. The idiot's always finding ways to blasphemize your old culture; whether he means it or not, you don't even want to fucking know.
He's looking at you, eyes never leaving your face, while dragging that finger up between your legs. He leans forward, pushing his cheek against your own, as he eases his finger into your nook.
You listen as he mumbles short love letters into the shell of your ear, you feel as his thumb strokes against the base of your bulge as it twists upon itself-eager and uncontained, you shiver as he pushes more fingers in, pushing the walls of your nook, skin and knuckles and fragile-dull nails adding a texture you've learned to enjoy.
Hands reach forward and soon you're grasping his sides, claws pressed gently into the spaces between his ribs. You press your face closer, resting your head on his shoulder, and you welcome the darkness that greets you as you close your eyes when your face makes contact with his skin.
He's chuckling now, humming too, but you'd be lying if you said you hated those sounds. John Egbert is meant to be cheerful, he deserves it, and you relish in the joy of knowing you've brought him to these good emotions.
He's pulling his fingers out of your nook now, tracing the length of your bulge with soft touches, and he's asking you to turn over.
You lift your eyes from the warm spot on his shoulder and you nudge a horn against his head.
He adds a ‘please’ to his question and you figure why the fuck not. You know he likes it like that, and in those boring hours where you waste away time talking to your other selves (past, future, fuck them all), you type out with careful letters how much you like it too. Your other selves agree, and that's pretty much the only thing you can ever agree on.
That, and maybe how much you might actually pity the little pusbucket.
You crook and turn your body, twisting so your chest rests against the squishpod. Sopor slime greets your cheek and starts soaking the tips of your hair as you ease your face down.
You wait.
Because John's taking his fucking time again; staring at you in ways you would hate to be stared at by anyone else. You're laid out like some 12th Perigee Eve’s celebratory carcass your lusus would drag into your hive and you know it.
You count the seconds, the number of breaths you take, the rhythm of John's heartbeat, everything until you feel the touch of fingers against the skin of your back. The bulgemunching idiot's tracing the alphabet on your flesh with slime and you really don't want to think of how disgusting that's going to feel in a bit.
He presses down hard enough so you can understand his message and you think you might be momentarily grateful to Dave for giving John those extra tips and lessons on learning Alternian when you got too frustrated to do it. You're quiet as he spells and you can't stop the goddamn grin from working its way to your lips when you figure out the message, but you don't turn your head.
You want John to see it, even if it's a thing you won't ever admit to.
The warmth of his chest meets your back shortly after the final stroke of his fingers against your flesh and you breathe deep as you feel him settle down. He lays there, running his fingers and palms against your sides, down your arms and across the flats of your hands, between the spread of your thighs and back up. He takes his time and you have no desire to rush through this.
He tucks his hands under your shoulders and he curls his fingers up and around, pulling you even closer, and he presses in.
You try to spread your legs more, giving him room to work, because it's already tight at just the head. Nooks weren't made for something so non-prehensile.
Humming shortchanges into a moan and you feel him slide in just a bit more. Your body is adaptable; it's how a troll survives. You had to explain all of this the first time. The time when he was too afraid to try, too worried about injury. It was you who held him then, easing yourself down as you gave the most important lecture of your life; you who cemented to his memory how non-fragile your body is, was, and always will be, even if it's your most ‘sensitive’ area, as he was so apt to describe it back then.
You focus on the push, the tightness, the firmness, the solid grip of your nook against him, just as you do every time. And you try your best to regulate your breathing as the blood pushes its way to your face and your bulge with every slow movement he makes against you.
John Egbert does these things to you; things you didn't think could ever be done.
You could fill a load gaper full of the clichés you would spill when you tell yourself that you like this feeling. John surrounding you, within you, whispering soft breathes against your cheek. You gave up the hope of ever having such a connection a long time ago. But John, he wouldn’t let you go like that. He refused to watch you cave into yourself, relinquishing the hope for something so great.
You don’t know how much you deserve this, but you’re too attached to ever think of letting it go.
Your think pan zeros in on his touch. Even the aggravating squish of sopor slime against the press of your back does little to distract you.
An echo of quiet clicks fills the recuperacoon and it takes you a moment to realize that it’s you speaking. John doesn’t have quite as good of a control over his tongue to form these words so eloquently.
Embarrassment attempts to seize you, but you shove it off. You don’t have the patience for holding yourself back; you learned your lesson about playing quadrant games a long time ago and you won’t push yourself into that trap again.
John turns his face into the side of your head, still rocking against you while he listens to your jolted words, honest and unabashed, because you’re trying.
You tell him how you feel; about how you’re pissed-pleased and happy that you’ve both survived multiple universes being destroyed; about how comfortable you feel tucked next to him on the couch every night, good food and great movies as your only companions; about how you’re glad that he hasn’t run away yet, hasn’t gotten tired of the bullshit you spew.
He shushes you there and thrusts harder than before to force you into catching a breath, and then he takes over.
A firm hand wraps around your bulge and he taps his fingers in a forgotten song as he breathes his own confessions into your jaw.
About how much he’s needed you through all these years as he’s dealt with change and grief and confusion; about how you’re the one he thinks about when he should be thinking about work, but he simply can’t get you out of his head because you take up too much space and he loves it like that; about how he thinks of the years coming and how he’s excited to discover if troll hairs grey out too or if their skin wrinkles and sag with age.
And he laughs to himself because he’s an idiot and you’re half a second away from flipping your bodies over and kissing him even stupider.
These words have done nothing to cool your bodies, though. There’s a warmth buried deep in your chest and it’s spreading into every mutated cell, filling out your being and composition.
John slows his pace even more, pressing deeper and firmer, and your claws are tearing into the fabric of the squishpod and you know you’re nearing.
His breath catches in his throat and he lets out a shake and a moan before tucking his head into your neck and reaching his peak.
Your bulge wraps tighter around his hand and he pulls his fingers into sharp movements and your voice cricks rapidly as you finish too, words spilling out non-stop, fragmented and unprocessed.
He knows better than to flop on top of you, a lesson learned quick in the beginning of your relationship, so he eases himself out and off of you before settling you both more firmly into the comforting embrace of slime.
He smiles at you when you turn to face him and you sigh before pressing in close, sharing the kiss you had been waiting on since coming home after a long day of aggravating work.
It doesn’t take long for your mouths to separate, sleep tugging at the two of you, and John wraps his arms around your shoulders and you let yourself go.
Not that it lasts long though because soon he’s laughing again about the fucking Shipping Wall and you have literally no problem with punching him in the chest before attempting to climb out of the ‘coon and spreading your slime all over his recently washed bed sheets.
If he actually thinks that a bout of tender dickings would stop you from giving good retaliation, then there’s a memo to open and a rant to write.