Archive of Our Own

It starts, like a lot of things, with a knock on the door.

Which is odd, because no one except Roxy ever really comes to visit you, and if it were Roxy, you know from experience that she would simply let herself in. Your interest piqued, you carefully slip your soldering iron into its little holder before standing up and stretching. Oh god, that was a lot of bones you just heard. You’ve got to work on your posture.

The knocking repeats itself, a little more insistent than before, sounding almost annoyed, so you blink the static from your vision and shuffle to the door. It’s light outside the windows. Wait, how long have you been working? Through the whole night? You yawn, mildly surprised, and open your front door.

You’re greeted with the sight of a disgruntled Karkat– redundant, but true– looming in his dark Knight of Blood getup with a raised fist as though he was just about to knock again. He lowers his fist hurriedly and folds his arms over his burly chest. “About time,” he rumbles.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” you ask cooly, folding your own arms as well. Two can play at that game.

Karkat gives you a once-over of pitying disdain. “When was the last time you slept? Not counting nodding off while working.”

As he adds that last part, your mouth closes from where you’d started to prepare your defense. You try again. “What does that have to do with why you’re here?”

“Because I am here,” he snaps, “to keep your sorry ass from withering into nothing as you work yourself to the bone for no gogdamn reason.”

Oh, lovely. An intervention. “And everyone delegated you to represent? For your calm and soothing nature, I’m sure.”

To your surprise, Karkat just laughs in that harsh way of his. “Good try, Strider, but the truth is that I’m alone. It’s all me. Gog forbid someone thinks about how you’re doing every now and then.”

“I’m doing fine,” you lie, and you go to close the door. He catches it in one massive hand and wrenches it back open, shoving past you to step inside.

“Bullshit,” is all he deigns to say to you while he invades your home.

It’s really not fair how Karkat’s adult molt a couple of years ago made him so fucking huge. Broad, tall, and dense, he’s like a moving wall as he walks through the halls of your house. He checks every door, but doesn’t enter any of them. You really ought to protest, or something, but you’re not sure you could force that troll to do anything.

You trail after Karkat with a sigh, and almost run into him when he stops abruptly to check your bedroom door. He opens it, peers inside, makes a noise of triumph, and turns to face you again.

“Either you’re going to get into your weirdly soft human bed of your own accord, or I am going to put you there myself.” Karkat’s voice has a deadly finality to it that signals he means business. He’s not smiling. His biceps absolutely look like they’re up to the task of wrangling your lankiness. “Your choice on whether or not you get to retain your dignity.”

You snort. “If you wanted to bed me that badly, you’re going to have to ask a little nicer. Try some seduction, maybe. Whatever you might have heard, I’m not that easy–”

Karkat ducks and scoops you up in one powerful motion, throwing you over his shoulder with his arm clamped around your midsection, pinning your arms. You squawk. Now you’re actually putting up a fight. You wriggle and shimmy as Karkat steps into your room, but it’s like trying to escape a boa constrictor. Anytime you accidentally give him any ground, his muscles close in and tighten. Fuck.

He tosses you onto the bed unceremoniously, and it knocks the wind out of you long enough for him to flip you onto your front and flop onto your back like the world’s angriest weighted blanket. “I’m not leaving until you get eight unbroken hours of sleep, minimum,” Karkat growls into your ear, and your body releases all of its tension at once when you realize that there is truly nothing you can do to escape this.

“I have things to do,” you protest weakly against the pillow.

“Yeah, like sleeping,” he counters, “and eating real food, and drinking water, which is next on the list.”

He has a list. Today just keeps getting better. “Can’t sleep,” you try.

“I’ve got all day.”

Goddamn it.

Karkat’s warmth is starting to finally cut into the chill of your body, his bulk defending you from the harsh airflow of your AC. Almost absentmindedly, he reaches with one hand to pluck your shades off of your face and set them on your nightstand. Now that you’re paying attention, you also note that he’s keeping most of his weight off of you, letting only just the amount needed to keep you pinned press into you. A deep, low purr, barely audible to the ears but exquisitely resonant, has started to rumble within the troll, and it’s the perfect white noise.

Your eyelids droop, struggling to keep themselves open, until you decide to conserve energy by closing them. Just for a minute. Tactical retreat is a valid strategy. This way, you can focus on how to escape, how to continue to resist.

When was the last time you slept?

You find that you genuinely cannot remember the last time you actually slept in your bed for any extended period of time. You don’t even know what day it is. You’re tired.

Maybe, you muse to yourself as you feel your consciousness drifting away, it wouldn’t hurt to snag another short nap.

For once, the world comes back to you slowly. The dim, warm light of a lamp slowly colors the room around you in a soft orange, and you’re under the covers, no longer held hostage by the mass of a full-grown troll. The smell of cooking fish and spices is wafting through the closed door, and when you turn to the window bleary eyed, it looks like it’s the darker side of twilight outside. You can hear noises in your seldom-used kitchen.

Shakily, you peel yourself out of your bed, noting the creases and lines on your skin from the sheets, and stand on wobbly legs. You don your shades again. The cooking food has roused your stomach, and now it rebels against you with a hungry gurgle. You pad over to the door and open it, the smell of the food strengthening, and wander down the hall.

From your vantage point between the kitchen and dining room– where you’ve converted the table to your workbench– you can see Karkat’s back. He’s fretting over something on the stove, and you can see that the sink is finally cleared of dishes. The dishwasher is running quietly.

When Karkat turns around at the sound of your bare footsteps on the floor, you see that he’s abandoned his cape, hood, and overshirt, with the sleeves of his blood-red undershirt rolled up to the elbows. It’s not a bad look.

“Come on and sit over here,” Karkat waves a hand at the chair he’s dragged from the dining room and placed at the counter in the kitchen. “Food’s almost ready.”

Dumbly, you walk over and stop beside the chair to see that he’s already set a plate for you, complete with silverware, napkin, and a glass of icewater. “Food?” you ask, eyes flicking to the stove. There’s a pan on one burner. The oven is also on.

“I went and got some things while you were sleeping. Dinner is baked salmon and potatoes with pan-seared asparagus and mushrooms.” The troll turns back to the stove and shakes the pan a little, eliciting a sizzle and another waft of the cooking vegetable scent.

“Why are you doing this?” You can’t help but feel as though you’re missing something in this equation. “I’m a grown ass man. I’ve been taking care of myself my entire life. Including now, please see: I am a grown ass man.”

Karkat scoffs at you. “It’s a damn good thing I know that the Striders and Lalondes are a bunch of lying liars who lie.” He points down at the chair from his spot at the stove with one clawed finger, not even bothering to look at you. “Sit. Now.”

It’s been so long since someone’s visited you for more than maybe an hour, so you decide to humor him. You sit. No matter what game Karkat is playing here, you’ll be able to shut it down if he goes too far. Once he finally leaves, you can go back to your projects in peace, and also make the effort to hide your all-nighters better.

“Look, Dirk,” begins Karkat as he finally turns off the stove and bends to open the oven, “I know you’re capable of self-sufficiency in terms of survival. But just because you’re not dead doesn’t mean you’re really living.”

You watch as he pulls a glass nine-by-thirteen full of generously seasoned salmon and potatoes out of the oven and sets it onto a row of potholders by the sink. “So, what, you want to go to a theme park? Watch a movie? Stare into my smaragdine orbs until I realize what a fool I’ve been and then we kiss like we’re in one of your romcoms?”

“First of all, your eyes are orange, not green, smartass.” The troll swipes up your plate and starts dishing generous portions of everything onto it.

“Semantics.”

“Second of all,” Karkat continues, “as your friend and co-creator of this universe, I can’t in good conscience stand by and watch you destroy yourself in the same way a caged barkbeast will chew on its frond.”

The pieces of the picture have finally come together. “Glad to know I inspire enough pity to make you go full housewife,” you sneer.

Your plate lands in front of you again, fully loaded with some of the most delicious smelling food you’ve ever been close to, with slightly more force than necessary. When you look up to see Karkat’s eternal resting bitchface, he’s angry enough that he’s starting to redden under his gray skin.

“If a healthy gogdamn moirallegiance is what you fucking need, then yeah, the pity is there,” he snarls. Moirallegiance– Pity? Oh god, is he talking about troll romance horseshit? That’s not anger behind his flushed skin, it’s embarrassment.

“Oh, so you’re doing this because you think I need a therapist, then,” you sit back in your chair and fold your arms. “Or whatever it is that the pity quadrant entails. What’s next, holding hands? The scandal.”

Karkat opens his mouth to yell something, probably, but he stops himself and pinches the bridge of his nose instead. His blush deepens. “We can talk pale after you eat. Don’t think I haven’t been hearing your digestion bladder’s whining.”

Unfortunately, he is right about that. You’re starving. Karkat stomps his way back to the stove while grumbling under his breath, starting to put away the extra food into tupperwares, and you allow yourself to pick at the plate in front of you.

The first bite you take of the salmon and potatoes is so good that you’re pretty sure you let out a moan. For the next ten minutes, your vision tunnels to focus solely on the food, and you find yourself having to make a conscious effort to slow down eating before you’re sick all over the counter.

“Fucking hell, when was the last time you ate?” Karkat’s voice is equal parts impressed and alarmed.

You shrug.

He just sighs and closes the fridge from where he’d just put the leftovers away, and begins to tidy up the kitchen. By the time you clean your plate of everything save for a puddle of excess lemony-butter sauce, Karkat is halfway through scrubbing the dishes. You stand from the counter and bring your plate to the sink. He takes it wordlessly.

“Thanks,” you muster up lamely.

He grunts and waves you off. “Give me a second and we can talk. Properly,” he adds with a side-eye.

Dismissed in your own house. The gall. You can’t really find any actual anger about it in yourself, though, especially not on a full stomach, so you wander over to your couch in the living room and flop down. Damn, you’re tired again already.

You hear the sink turn off and the sound of Karkat’s heavy footsteps, and then the troll is sitting on the opposite end of the couch with his arms folded as he leans back into the corner of the armrest. He takes a deep breath, and then speaks.

“I know you probably don’t give a squeakbeast’s ass about the details and nuances of troll romance, but trust me when I say that you would benefit from a relationship that either is or closely resembles a moirallegiance,” he starts. “You’ve got no one checking in on you, and a mind like yours is a danger to itself and likely others if left unpacified.”

Your eyes narrow. “So you want to whore yourself out to me paleways for the greater good. How noble.”

“No, you fuckwad, I fucking care about you, and so does everyone else, but I am the only motherfucker immune to the patented Strider bullshit, it seems!” he shouts. “Maybe everyone else is content to give you distance with the assumption that your ‘I-don’t-give-a-shit’ persona is at least partially true, but I’m not! You have never asked for help when you really, really needed it, so guess what, asshole? No asking necessary! I’m here whether you want me to help or not! I have a gogdamn calendar.”

With a flourish, he snags an actual, honest-to-god paper calendar out of his sylladex, along with a pen. You peer at the calendar from where you sit, and– is it annotated?

“I would ask you how you feel about movie nights being on Wednesdays, but I know for a fact that for the past two months at least, you’ve only left this house three times to scrounge for any food you couldn’t alchemize in your basement.” Karkat taps the calendar with the back of the pen before looking up at you expectantly. “So there shouldn’t be any clashing of schedules there.”

Okay, joke’s over. Karkat’s had his fun. “You’re not seriously going to engineer a little troll-besties marriage of convenience thing between us,” you state flatly. “And I’m going to kindly ignore the fact that you’ve been stalking me, provided that you leave my house now. Thank you for the dinner, thank you for doing the dishes, you can go home, do not pass go, do not collect a hundred dollars.” You stand up abruptly and point to the door.

He laughs at you, perfectly comfortable in his spot on your couch. “Oh, please. Like I’m not the most interesting thing to happen to you in weeks.”

Eye twitch. “How would you know?”

Karkat slowly stands up from the couch and recaptchalogues his calendar and pen. “I’ll be honest, I’m surprised you entertained me as long as you did. Just goes to show that a little social contact can go a long way.” He’s forced himself into your personal space now, just enough for you to be acutely aware of the three or four inches and several dozen pounds he has on you. “How about this. Next Wednesday evening. One movie. No commitment to anything past that. I’ll bring dinner. After that, I leave you alone.”

It’s actually tempting. Fuck. “If I say yes, will you leave?”

“Mhm,” he affirms.

“Fine. Wednesday. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

To your relief, he nods and makes his way to your front door, and lets himself out with no further argument. You lock the door behind him.

Just one movie night. You can grit your teeth and do this.

“Can I come in, or what?” Karkat grumbles. He’s standing on your front step, holding a casserole dish, and it’s eight thirty on the dot. You would be letting him inside right about now, if it weren’t for the extremely tight tank top and sweatpants that he’s wearing, which you are taking your sweet time to ogle. Does he really walk around like this on casual days? Interesting.

After you get your eyeful, you step aside and let him stomp his way into your home. He beelines for the kitchen and sets down the casserole dish, before rummaging through your cabinets for plates and silverware. You follow him, and take the lid off of the dish to peek inside.

It’s some kind of chicken and vegetable pasta bake. Naturally, it smells fucking divine, so your face curls into a scowl when Karkat swats your hand away from the lid like you’re a child. “Do you ever actually feed yourself?” he snaps. “Actually, don’t answer that. I pity you enough as it is.”

If it were a human saying this to you, you’re pretty sure you wouldn’t have taken that as well as you are right now. Watching Karkat’s cheeks flush as he realizes the species-specific connotations of what he’s just admitted to you, however, is worth keeping your cool. Flustered, he takes a big spoon and doles out a large portion of the pasta bake onto a plate, shoving it into your chest with a grumble. It’s a little endearing.

Not to mention that it’s nice to be desired, as the selfish recesses of your mind point out. You let that thought sit in the forefront of your brain for a moment, weighing it, before promptly crossing it out and discarding it. He’s here for one night and then he’ll leave you alone. Then, business as usual, and Karkat can tell the others that he tried.

“What movie are we watching?” you ask. Might as well brace yourself.

Karkat sets the spoon down after dishing himself up a portion of the pasta bake, and makes his way to your couch. “It’s one of my favorite romcoms from Alternia. Managed to get at least one surviving piece of my culture to this universe unscathed. I know you don’t actually give a fuck about the name of it,” he grumbles, before setting his plate onto the coffee table and snatching a disc from his sylladex.

Fair enough. You sit down on the other side of the couch and watch as Karkat struggles to figure out your TV with a kind of mild interest. He figures it out soon enough, and finally moves back to sit on the couch, except.

He sits right next to you.

When there is a whole couch to sit on.

“Kindly explain?” you ask, irritated, instinctively shrinking back so that he doesn’t touch you.

“This doesn’t have english subtitles, for obvious reasons, dipshit,” Karkat snarks. “If I’m gonna play translator, I don’t want to yell over the dialogue.”

“Since when has volume ever been a concern of yours?”

He shoots you a dangerous look. “Can it, Strider.”

You acquiesce for the sake of getting movie night over with as fast as possible. Turning back to face the TV, Karkat fiddles with the remote. It’s so small in his big, powerful hands.

Dramatic, alien music floats through the speakers as the movie begins. The movie title is, as expected, practically the length of an essay, all in stylized Alternian script. It looks like the main character is a ceruleanblood who works the troll equivalent to a high-paying office job, and a lot of the workplace banter and squabbling between characters is lost on you even with Karkat muttering translated dialogue. The nuance of the interactions between different blood castes is fairly interesting, though, especially when the ceruleanblood’s love interest is introduced. She’s a bronzeblood, and she’s treated like dirt. Figures.

“Bronzebloods usually work agriculture,” Karkat informs you during a quieter part of the movie. “Her audacity to try working up the ranks in a white-collar field is pissing off Calgar, so not only is she his work rival, but he’s also dealing with the fact that he’s crushing pitch for a lowblood.”

You hum. “Thought Calgar already had a kismesis,” you note, before cursing internally. Goddamn it, you’re invested now.

Karkat waggles a finger excitedly. “Ohoho, he does. But he’s vacillating pale for him now, and only Gerdha knows. Wait, shush, this is a good scene and I have to translate.”

The drama continues, in typical romcom fashion, although with considerably more violence. There’s vacillating, arguments, and physical brutality that makes you wonder what action movies were like on Alternia if the levels you’re seeing are bog standard for a romcom. It’s fascinating, anthropologically speaking. And nothing more.

Your proximity to Karkat means that his body heat is slowly seeping into your side, especially since, you notice all of a sudden, you’re both a lot closer to each other than before. You tell yourself you’re just taking advantage of the warmth. Considering your bodily proportions and fat (or lack thereof) distribution, it’s a miracle you don’t freeze to death in your sixty-two-degree house.

“Oh, fuck that!” Karkat yells at the movie, so absorbed in the drama of the main couple’s big argument that he’s commentating without translating the dialogue. “This part always pisses me off so fucking much, the writing is great right up until this scene, Gog, I can’t believe–”

Without thinking, you bring your hand up and gently pat his face away, your eyes still scanning the TV screen for context clues. “Shush,” you mutter. “Can’t focus.”

Much to your surprise, Karkat goes quiet, and it isn’t until he pauses the movie that you realize he’s looking at you in a stunned silence. “You really…?”

“What?” You withdraw your hand.

“You shooshed me,” he says, blushing furiously. “And papped me.”

You scoff. “I shushed you. There’s a very human difference.”

“Like fuck there is!” Karkat hisses. “Here I was, thinking I’m such an idiot for crushing pale, and you’re just as fucking bad!”

“I told you, I’m human, I don’t do troll romance horseshit,” you grind out. He’s starting to actually piss you off now. You’re also going to ignore the way your face is flushed in… anger, yes, because you’re angry at him.

He stares at you like you’re an idiot, before he rolls his eyes and sighs. “Humor me one more time, and let me try something. If you hate it, I’ll leave now and we’ll never talk about this again.”

Good. You can finally get your peace back. “Fine.”

Karkat scoots even closer to you than he already is, and slowly brings his hand up to your face like you’re a skittish animal. You stay perfectly still, because you are no such thing.

“Shoosh,” he murmurs, in that deep, resonant voice of his, and carefully presses his hand onto your cheek. He’s so unbelievably warm. He pats your cheek a couple times, softly, and much to your eternal dismay, you find your body leaning into his touch. “See? There we go.”

What is happening?

“This doesn’t make me your moirail,” you snap, still not drawing away quite yet.

Karkat shrugs, still patting your cheek lightly. “Might not be so bad if you were,” he says soothingly. “‘Who watches the watchmen’? Or just insert some other sanctimonious bullshit that’ll get you to accept a little fucking tenderness.”

You’d be more visibly fuming if it wasn’t so goddamn nice to be held. “So glad to be your charity case,” you spit.

“Keep that up and I’ll start waxing pitch, chucklefuck,” he warns you. “Is it really so hard to believe that I actually care about you? Want you to calm down and get out of your own head a little? Not just for your own good, but because I’m selfish and I want you?”

A little spike of fear jumps through your body. After what happened with Jake, you’d sworn to yourself– never again. You’re the Prince of Heart, after all.

But.

It’s been so long.

And pale romance isn’t really dating; you’re human, you have friendships– though sometimes you wonder why– and that’s what a moirallegiance is, really. Probably. You can afford yourself this one exception.

It’s not like you can’t also afford to lose it if it goes sideways. You’ve been doing fine by yourself thus far, and you can always shut him down if need be.

You’ve also been quiet for too long, and Karkat starts to pull his hand away. Catching his large wrist between your long, thin fingers, you startle both yourself and him when you speak next.

“Fine,” you acquiesce. “We’ll try… this. Provided that it won’t be a federal fucking issue if and when I choose to end it. And that no one else gets to hear about it.”

“Acceptable terms,” Karkat agrees, before pulling you bodily into his side. You almost protest, but again, the troll is so goddamn warm, and he’s already unpausing the movie, so you remain stoic as he continues his translation. He rumbles directly into your ear now, a volume level that sounds flattering on him.

The big scene of the movie is just as fraught and dramatic and violent as the rest of it, with the ceruleanblood and the bronzeblood finally coming together in a massive fight-turned-offscreen-fuck that Karkat describes as “the epitome of pitch”. It also has an unusually happy ending that you wouldn’t have expected from a troll movie, with the main character’s former kismesis happy to vacillate pale for him. Blood is shed, but quadrants are filled, and the movie ends with a fade-out into the credits to the tune of the opening theme reprised.

Much of the movie’s caste-specific nuance went over your head, but it wasn’t terrible. You feel a loss of more than just bodily warmth when Karkat stands up from the couch, so you do likewise and follow him to the door.

“You keep the rest of the casserole,” he murmurs. “I’ll pick up the dish from you sometime later this week.”

You unlock the door and slowly swing it open. “Goodnight, Karkat.”

As soon as he leaves, you close and lock the door before beginning the trudge back to your room in the dark.

It’s a lot colder than it used to feel.

Karkat does, in fact, make good on his promise to pick up the dish later in the week, and by that time you’d already eaten the rest of the pasta bake and washed the ceramic clean. Afterwards, it sits on your counter for a whole day, untouched, the anticipation of his arrival driving you to seek solace in the solitude of your bedroom. The distance between your room and the front door is still not enough, by far, to render the sound of his knocking inaudible, as you soon learn.

“Here,” you hand him the dish, fully expecting him to grunt out a thanks and leave you with a reminder for another movie night, perhaps, on next Wednesday night. To your dismay– and that little jump of your pulse is dismay, you tell yourself– Karkat captchalogues the dish and clears his throat expectantly.

He’s dressed casually, again. This time in a burgundy hoodie and blue jeans. You’re somehow feeling underdressed, in your sweaty tank top and athletic shorts, shit, you didn’t even think to change out of those and now your weird knobbly legs are visible. Distracted by your newest coding project, you haven’t even showered in… a length of time you don’t want to acknowledge. That’s rare.

“How have you managed to undo all of my progress and somehow look even more like shit than last week?” Karkat eventually sighs, taking in your… everything. You’re still just standing dumbly in the doorway, the bright light of the day foreign and hostile even behind your shades.

Some part of you is able to read the room, though, and you find yourself stepping aside to let Karkat into your home. He closes the door behind him, making sure to lock it at your wordless gesture, before steering you further into the house. “Make yourself at home,” you mutter sarcastically, allowing yourself to be herded.

Karkat says nothing as he guides you to your master bathroom, shoving you lightly inside before he speaks. “You smell like stress and Redbull sweat. Take care of yourself and then we’ll discuss the agenda for the day.”

“Always wanted to have Achilles and Patroclus no-homo adventures with a camp counselor. Historians will say they were best friends.”

He just laughs and closes the door.

From what you can hear, it sounds like he’s stomping to the edge of your bed and taking a seat, settling in. Great. You might as well get yourself clean while you’re here. You begin to strip, tossing your clothes into the overflowing laundry hamper, setting your shades onto the counter as you turn on the water and wait for it to reach a scalding temperature.

The sigh you make as you step into the steaming spray is completely involuntary, and you’re reminded of just another way in which you have not been taking care of yourself. Your dick, heavy between your legs, is dangerously close to perking up, and as much as you’d otherwise be willing to entertain its whims, you have a guest only a wall away. A guest who is uncomfortably close to your exact type, yes, you will admit.

He’s tall, dark, broad, and domineering in a way that makes you bite your lip when you remember all the times in the past week where he’d bossed you around with the full confidence that you’d obey. Fuck. Okay, your dick is definitely paying attention now. You quickly go through the motions to wash your hair and body first, only giving your dick a singular, perfunctory stroke that still makes you choke down a groan. It’s no time at all until the suds are draining at your feet, and you decide to employ the fast-and-loose method of jerking off just to get it out of your system.

Under the pouring water, you close your eyes and brace yourself against the tile before you wrap your fist around your cock. Fuck, it’s been way too long. You allow yourself a singular shaky exhale. Then, you start to move your hand.

God. You wish Karkat was in here with you, pressing you against the glass from behind as he jerks your dick. Would he be rough and fast with it? Would he take his time, tease you and murmur into your ear with that sonorous cadence?

“Shit,” you hiss very, very quietly, panting.

What would his bulge look like? You’ve only gotten a vague idea from diagrams and the internet, but you can imagine a blood-red tentacle in proportion to his massive body moving between your legs and around your hand as you pump yourself faster. Would he spin you around and kiss you hard, biting into your mouth as his bulge twines around your leaking cock?

You’re close. Your face is screwed up and tense with the effort of staying silent, and your legs are starting to shake in that familiar way that tells you exactly just how close you are. How does Karkat sound when he’s about to cum? Does his voice go high and breathy, with just a touch of a whine? Or does he drop an octave, his breathing ragged and feral as he cages you in and sucks dark hickeys into your neck, one massive hand still stroking your cock so fast you sob?

A second’s warning is all you get before you cum hard all over the wall of the shower, chest heaving in silence. You wash the evidence away with a gnawing sense of dread. Prospective moirails-of-convenience probably don’t masturbate to thoughts of the other, and Karkat’s probably wondering what’s taking you so goddamn long.

You turn the shower off after another minute of wallowing and step out, wrapping your towel around your waist after you dry your hair with it ferociously. Time to face the music.

When you crack the door open, you see Karkat sitting propped against your bed’s headboard, and he’s… knitting. He notices the door opening, and gives you a single glance before returning his attention to whatever it is he’s making.

“Feel better?” he asks, and for a split second, you freeze, thinking that he somehow knew what you were doing in the shower, before you relax again.

“Can I get dressed now?” you ask in return, nudging the door open a hair more.

He doesn’t look up from his project. “Not stopping you.”

Maybe it was a good thing that you jerked off in the shower. You step into your room and whip off your towel as nonchalantly as you can, slinging it over your shoulder as you walk over to your dresser and pick through your clothes. Gray boxers and plaid flannel pants will do just fine. You forgo a shirt as you head back into the bathroom to hang up your towel and blow dry your hair, stealing a sidelong glance to see if Karkat’s watching. Nothing.

You do hear a muttered curse when you enter your room again, hair now fully dry and shades back in place, but when you stop and stare at the troll with a raised eyebrow, he just waves a needle. “Dropped a fucking stitch,” he clarifies. “Today’s agenda is mostly parallel play. You’re on your own for dinner, because I’ve got a banquet to attend in the Troll Kingdom later. Something about a dedication for a school.”

Hearing this does not make your heart drop. You’ve got shit in the fridge, probably. In lieu of a verbal response, you grab your laptop and sit next to Karkat on the bed, leaning back against the headboard as you resume your work.

Karkat hums a low note and continues knitting. The sound of the needles clicking together isn’t the annoyance you thought it would be, and it fades into the white noise of your keyboard tapping. Even without a shirt, you’re perfectly warm just from the radiating body heat of the troll beside you, and it isn’t until you feel the brush of his hoodie against your bare shoulder that you look over and see that he’s packing up his things.

“Banquet?” you ask. He grunts an affirmative as he finishes captchaloguing his yarn.

“Mm. Keep yourself out of trouble and get some sleep,” he orders, as he throws his legs over the side of the bed and stands.

You stare at his back balefully. “Need I remind you that I am a grown ass man?”

“And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get some real sleep.”

As if. You snort and close your laptop, setting it on your desk as you pass it on the way out of the room, following Karkat. He lets himself out, and this time you linger in the windows after you lock the door behind him. As soon as he’s most of the way down the front walk, he sweeps his hand in a dramatic gesture, clothing himself in the Knight of Blood regalia as his wings snap open. An instant later, he’s airborne, a swirl of deep rusty-red in the sky, quite literally disappearing into the sunset.

A yawn forces you to reckon with the fact that sleep does sound very tempting. The fatigue of the past few days is catching up with you, and you blame Karkat, because it never used to bother you this much before. He’s making you soft.

You remember your shower and reconsider. Hm. Not that soft.

By the time you register that your feet have taken you back to your bed, your resolve has weakened enough that you slump down onto it selfishly without a second thought. You set your shades onto your nightstand and turn off your lamp. Maybe some sleep would improve your efficiency, and Karkat doesn’t have to know; even if you’re playing pale with him, it’s not like he’s actually in charge of you.

Cozying up into your blankets, you notice that your pillow smells like him. It’s the last thing you think before sleep claims you at last.

You’re dreaming.

It’s not a dream bubble, it’s not an alternate timeline, it’s just a normal, run-of-the-mill dream, and you know you’re dreaming, but everything feels hazy and loose and you can’t bring yourself to care. Karkat’s in the kitchen, and you’re fiddling with some of the final wires on a new robot at your dining room table. You distantly hear the clattering of dishes being pulled from a cabinet.

A minute later, Karkat enters the room holding two plates and some silverware. He sets one plate down by your elbow, and you instinctively clear a spot for him to set down his own. It’s pancakes and bacon. He even produces a carton of orange juice, and sets it in front of you.

“Take a break, babe,” he murmurs, nudging the plate at your elbow.

It’s a dream, and you know it’s a dream, the same way that you know the two of you are married, and to each other, and have been for a couple of years. Your brow furrows.

“This isn’t real,” you state, standing abruptly and abandoning the robot.

Karkat’s standing now, too, with a warm hand on your shoulder as he peers at your face, searching. “What?”

“This is a dream. I’m dreaming.” You glance at the hand on your shoulder. It’s got a simple titanium band on the ring finger, glinting in the morning light that streams through the window. “We’re not married.”

He looks concerned, but his expression is soft, and then he cracks a slight smile. “I mean, yeah, I can hardly believe it myself,” he huffs.

You want to believe it. You want this, want him, want to play pretend just a little longer, and weirdly loving attention is a hell of a drug after years of self-enforced solitude. It’s selfish. It’s disgusting how much you yearn.

“Are you feeling okay?” he asks, your silence starting to worry him.

It’s a dream. It’s just a dream. “Sorry, I… It just kind of hit me, you know. Marriage.”

The adoration writ clear on his face nearly makes you sick with envy. “Come here.”

He pulls you in with the hand on your shoulder, and you automatically tilt your face up to meet his lips with your own like you have a thousand times before. He kisses like he’s apologizing, and you almost cry, he tastes like toothpaste and you are ravenous, using your hands to grab the sides of his face and kiss him harder.

Surprised, he makes a little noise in the back of his throat, but he rises to the occasion with aplomb. His other hand snakes around your waist and pushes you flush against his hips, and you whine into his open mouth. He chuckles darkly and turns the kiss into a sensual slide of tongues and lips, fuck, it’s so hot. His teeth are sharp but controlled as he nips at you gently.

“Careful,” he rumbles, moving his mouth to your exposed throat, the vibrations of his words traveling straight to your groin. “Keep going like this and we’re gonna end up breaking the table.”

The image in your mind that forms at his warning makes you moan. Your shaking legs over his shoulders as he pounds into you, your hands scrabbling at the sides of the dining room table, his grip a hot brand into your waist. You shudder and gasp when he bites down on your neck just shy of breaking skin.

“I want it,” you slur, and it’s probably the truest thing you’ve ever said, because you want this relationship, this love, and yes, you want him to fuck you so hard that the two of you break the goddamn table.

He brings his head up to kiss you on the lips again, this time chastely. “You can have it,” he promises, like he knows every way that you meant it, and then your vision blurs, and-

You wake up with a heaving breath that turns into a sob. God damn it all.

You knew it was a dream and you still let the act of waking up hurt you. This is stupid and you’re an idiot for getting this close to Karkat. It never should have happened. You promised yourself never again, and then you have one lapse in judgement, and now shit is en route to the fan. First class, express tickets. Welcome to the splash zone.

Jake was right to be wary of you. He was right to be hesitant, and god does it hurt more than anything else for Jake English to be correct about something, but he is, in this singular capacity. Whatever it is that lurks in your heart, it’s not love. You crave, you obsess. You consume and devour and take until you tire of your victim, and Jake saw this, too afraid to hurt you even though you could do nothing but in return.

You can’t do that to Karkat. You can’t do this to yourself. This has to end, now.

“Dirk fucking Strider, if you don’t open this gogdamn door this fucking second, so help me Gog I will break it down!”

The dulcet tones of your… friend? Ex-moirail of convenience? hook their way into your eardrums like claws. Karkat is not, apparently, taking your very clear rejection and nullification of the ‘relationship’ well. When you sent him the carefully and coldly worded message on Pesterchum an hour ago, you probably should have expected that he’d come running. If for no other reason than to yell at you in the flesh.

“I mean it,” you hear the troll growl threateningly through the door. You don’t even bother looking up from where you sit tinkering at the dining room table. The reinforced steel of your door is deceptively hidden. He can try all he wants.

It isn’t until you hear the creaking and groaning of slowly splintering metal that you consider the possibility that you have never properly tested defense measures against the full, unbridled strength of a troll with a bone to pick. Maybe you should have.

With a deafening screech, you hear the sound of what is probably the lock of your door being ripped out. You spend the next two seconds before Karkat storms his way into the room considering whether or not drawing your sword will be necessary, but the question becomes irrelevant when you allow yourself to be dragged to your feet to face him. He’s unarmed, but that hardly matters when he’s built like a brick shithouse with an attitude to match.

He studies your face, fuming, before he speaks again. “You better have a good fucking reason to try this bullshit with me today, Dirk, because it’s not funny. Am I smiling? Do you hear a laugh anywhere? Didn’t fucking think so. Now explain what the hell that message you sent me was about before I really lose it.”

“I thought I was rather explicit,” you say smoothly. “Your little project ‘Rehabilitate Dirk’ is over.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, this wasn’t a project!” he shouts.

Good. He’s angry. You hit him with the verbal suckerpunch you prepared just in case. “Maybe not for you,” you muse, tone chilly.

Oh, that landed. Karkat’s expression goes flat. “What.”

“This has been a fascinating experiment, Vantas, but I’m done. Humans don’t do troll romance.” You look down at your nails, studying them, trying your best to ignore the fact that Karkat still has a fistful of your shirt in his grip.

Silence. Then, a snort. “I get it. Okay. I see what you mean,” he says, a smile in his voice that sounds lethal. The fist in your shirt collar releases, and he steps back. “I see exactly what you’re doing here.”

Your eyes snap up from your nails to Karkat’s face, currently locked in a rictus of faux-cheer. His teeth are bared; you’re not foolish enough to consider it a smile.

“You’re trying to get rid of me.” A beat. “Why?”

“I told you, humans don’t-”

“No,” Karkat interrupts you, waving a hand as if to clear the air. “Cut the shit. We both know you’re lying to cover up something else, don’t insult my intelligence.”

Deadpan in place, as always, you try circling back to the original issue at hand. “Uncharitable of you to assume I’m being dishonest, especially when I thought, again, I had made it quite clear that whatever this was, it’s over.”

Karkat peers at you with his blood-red eyes narrowed, before he folds his arms. “I think you’re afraid.”

A cold shard of fear slips down your spine. It’s followed by hot anger. How dare he? “I think maybe you’ve worn out your welcome here.”

“You’re afraid of this,” he asserts again, gaining confidence. “You’re afraid of getting close to people. I think you want this, somewhere inside you that you’ve tried to bury, and you’re desperate for it, but that doesn’t fit your brand, does it? Well, too bad, because I lo-”

“Shut the fuck up,” you stop him before he can finish that disaster of a sentence he was about to unleash. God, you hate how your voice is starting to shake. “Shut the fuck up right now. You don’t fucking know me. No one fucking knows me and that’s exactly the way I want it, exactly the way it needs to be. I’m not fucking scared of you.”

He laughs. “You don’t have a gogdamn clue what to do about this, do you? You think cutting everyone off is going to make things better. Newsflash, asshole! Everyone needs a fucking support system! It’s a good thing I know the difference between what you want and what you need, and what you need is someone who doesn’t fall for your bullshit. And here I am! Gog help me, I volunteered! You want to know why?”

You step forward in an instant and snarl into his face. “Get out of my house.”

“It’s because I love you, Dirk,” he snaps. “You are the most obstinate, aggravating son of a bitch in this gogdamn universe, and I can fucking relate. Will you, for once in your life, just fucking let someone love you?”

“Do the words Prince of Heart mean nothing to you?” you growl. “Everyone knows about the disaster that was Jake and I, and I’m not exactly dying for a repeat performance.”

Karkat throws his hands up in exasperation. “Oh, like I’m not the Knight of Blood? Protector of bonds? Addendum: Does it look like I give a shit about whatever the hell you and Jake had? Newsflash part two! I’m not Jake fucking English!”

He leans in and points a single huge finger into your face. “You’ve got a fucking choice here, Dirk. You’ve done the lone barkbeast thing before. You say no one more time, you’ll get your solitude. And you already know how that story ends. It’s an ending that you think you have no choice but to keep living. But,” his voice lowers into another register, “if you decide you want to take that leap anew, to stare down that great unknown? It’s a lot fucking easier with someone beside you. And I will not disappoint.”

When he leans back and folds his arms again, you’re tempted to draw your sword and force him out of your home by its point. Another part of you is tempted to find out exactly what he means when he says he won’t disappoint. The two halves are fighting. You don’t know which one you want to win.

(You know.)

You’ll hurt him if you love him. It won’t be nice, it won’t be forgiven. You can’t afford to let yourself love him.

(You already do.)

“Fuck you,” you spit, the prickle in your lower eyelids threatening tears, and you grab his face to kiss him.

Like winter melts into spring, Karkat untenses and gathers you up into his arms, kissing you back until it’s your turn to melt into him. He’s gentle, far more gentle than you deserve. His mouth presses against yours firmly, like he’ll never let you go, and it is pure agony to tear yourself away just long enough to ask him a question.

“Thought you wanted pale,” you mumble.

Karkat cups your face in his large, warm hands, and the love in his gaze is tempered with embarrassment, making his expression sheepish. “I, uh. Quadrants can be a little blurry for me. I thought moirallegiance would be the best way to ease you into the, uh, idea that I had feelings for you.”

You stare at him for a second. “We’re going to circle back to that,” you promise, before kissing him again.

As you kiss him, you can feel the smile on his lips. Karkat’s hands move back down to your waist, pulling you into him by your belt loops until your hips are flush. When his hands continue lower and grab your ass with a squeeze, you make a noise that is absolutely not a yelp. He takes advantage of your surprise to make the kiss open-mouthed and indulgent, and you moan into him obscenely.

Without a word, the hands on your ass dip just a little lower and hoist you bodily into the air. Fuck yes. “Bedroom,” you gasp, wrapping your arms around Karkat’s neck. He grunts and starts walking, still kissing you, and once he reaches the door, he shifts your body weight onto one massive arm to open it.

He tosses you onto the bed with a restrained urgency, and you lie back on your elbows to watch him strip his shirt off like a troll possessed. The muscles on his torso are even better than you could have imagined, gray skin rippling as they flex underneath, and you are shameless in getting your eyeful.

You can tell he’s preening a little when he stretches. Bottom lip between your teeth, you palm yourself through your jeans at the sight and sigh in satisfaction. Karkat blushes all the way down from his face to his chest, and then he sets a knee on the edge of the bed and crawls his way on top of you, bracketing you with his tree-trunk legs.

“Like what you see?” he murmurs, lip quirking into a grin at the cliché line.

“Fuck me until my legs shake,” you murmur back, just to see his eyes go wide and his pupils dilate.

In response, he snatches your shades off of your face and sets them neatly on your nightstand before he kisses you again, lowering himself onto you so he can grind his hips into yours. The contact makes you groan heavily. You pull away from the kiss to tear your own shirt off so you can press your chest to his, skin to skin.

He’s burning hot. God, it’s incredible. You suck on his tongue and he nips at your lip, growling deep in his throat, as he cradles your head in his hands. He’s still grinding against you, and you’re fully hard now, shifting your hips in little back-and-forth motions for relief.

Karkat drags his hands down your neck, over your shoulders, and down your sides until he reaches your fly, popping it open. He sits back to wrangle your jeans off of your legs, and you lift your hips to speed the process along. Before you can reach for his pants, he’s already pushing them down and off of himself as he crawls back over you.

“Nice boxers,” you deadpan. He’s wearing a pair of deep, rusty red boxers patterned with lighter red crabs. He rolls his eyes and reaches down to stroke you through your own– respectable gray, thank you– boxers, which is an excellent distraction. “Mmgh, shit,” you whine, eyes fluttering. Point to Karkat.

As he strokes you, he hooks the waistband of his boxers down until his fully unsheathed bulge slides out, just as lurid red and proportionally large as you’d imagined. Jesus, maybe larger. It’s slick with translucent red fluid all over, seeping into both of your boxers, and all you can think about is how much you need that thing inside you.

You’re about to ask him to get on with it already when he fishes your cock out of your boxers and scoots closer. As soon as his bulge makes contact with your dick, it starts to wrap around it and slide up and down, slick with precum both human and troll, and the sensation melts your brain a little. It’s a hot, wet pulsing that feels so fucking good, you can’t stop yourself from throwing your head back and thrusting into it.

“Fuck, you look gorgeous like that,” Karkat moans, voice rough.

All you can do is pant and whine as you feel yourself barreling towards orgasm. Karkat leans in and pushes your back fully onto the mattress, trapping your dick and his bulge between your stomach and his as he latches onto your neck and bites.

The cry of sheer ecstasy that rips its way out of your throat as you cum is loud and sharp, devolving into a stream of whimpers as Karkat’s bulge pulses around your cock. “Karkat, ungh, Karkat please!”

His breathing is ragged as he sits up and disentangles his bulge from you, letting it wrap around his hand as he slicks up his fingers. When he hoists one of your legs up and into your chest for better access, you hold it in place for him so he can circle a finger around your rim. You whine at the feeling.

Karkat glances up at your face, questioning, and you nod, so he continues. After pulling more precum from his bulge, he slides a fingertip in. It’s going to be a few more minutes at least until you can get it up again, but the feeling is exquisite. He pushes further in and starts to thrust very slowly in and out with one finger.

“More,” you beg, once he’s able to move a single finger with ease.

He gives you a stern look, but indulges you regardless, adding a second finger and pumping them in and out with just a little more speed and force than before. It’s perfect. You gasp.

You don’t even need to ask him when he adds a third, and he takes his sweet time fingering you until your cock makes a full recovery, red and leaking onto your abdomen. He’s swiped against your prostate a couple of times, just enough to tease, but not enough to get you over the edge.

With a deep inhale, Karkat removes his fingers and lines himself up, and when the tip of his bulge brushes your rim, you let out a high moan. It slips inside easily, every inch thicker than the last, and your eyes roll back when the tip of it prods and slides against your prostate. The broken noise Karkat makes as you clench around him is one you think you’re going to remember for the rest of your conditionally immortal life.

He starts to thrust into you, grinding and smooth, more of his bulge moving in and out with each motion until he’s able to pull nearly all the way out before slamming into you again, sheathing himself completely. He pounds into you, huffing and puffing while you grip the sheets tight enough to tear them. You can barely hear the sounds spilling out of your mouth with all the blood rushing in your ears. It feels amazing.

You can feel the heat in your gut mounting, mounting, mounting until you cum a second time, untouched, sending your body into spasms of pleasure as you choke out a strangled curse. Karkat whines and pulls out a few seconds later, his bulge pulsing translucent red fluid in torrents over the lower half of your body and the bed. Your ears are ringing as you stare up at the ceiling and try to catch your breath.

Karkat flops beside you, face down, and pulls you into his side so he can nuzzle into your neck. “Sorry about your bed,” he mumbles.

“It’s… fine,” you manage. “We need showers.”

He hums. “Ablutions can wait.”

You snuggle further into his bodily warmth, sticky and sweaty and smelling of sex. He starts to purr, low and faint but gaining volume, and you’re tempted to agree.

“Also, if we wait a bit before we shower, I can suck your dick,” Karkat murmurs into your ear. You shiver.

Alright. The shower can wait.