Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1009291.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Kankri_Vantas/Karkat_Vantas
  Character:
      Karkat_Vantas, Kankri_Vantas, Gamzee_Makara, Porrim_Maryam
  Additional Tags:
      Pale_Romance_|_Moirallegiance, Masturbation, Voyeurism, Comeplay,
      Tentabulges
  Series:
      Part 4 of The_Dreams_'Verse
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-10-18 Chapters: 1/3 Words: 6049
****** A Lesson In Love ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     "This has gone beyond a lesson you’re trying to teach him, beyond the
     excuses you were making just to get him to listen to your "wisdom."
     You want Karkat, unadulterated. Your body wants him naked, bare and
     unsheathed and with you always, you want your words from his mouth
     and your imprints in his skin and you want to spill all over his
     chest—
     You, Kankri Vantas, want, and you’re a sinner for it."
Notes
     Hey, remember me? lol
     It's been like what, eight or nine months since I updated the Dreams'
     Verse, but I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm ready to full-on Vantascest
     once more.
     A couple things: One, I started writing this in about December or
     January, so it's not current with the most recent updates at all. As
     far as we knew back then, it wasn't yet Year Three, Dave and Terezi
     were still possibly a thing, Gamzee and Karkat were definitely still
     a thing, and we weren't sure whether or not Karkat cared that Gamzee
     and Terezi were kismesises (so in my version of this story, he still
     cares quite a bit.)
     Two, there are a couple headcanons that I've incorporated into this
     after reading others' fics, such as the headcanon I have that
     moirails are meant to fill a pail together when they begin their
     relationship (as seen in urbanAnchorite's Case Studies on
     Moiraillegience). When there are weird little things like that that
     I've borrowed from other authors I'll be crediting them as such along
     the way~
     Three, there'll be in-fic POV changes between Kanrki and Karkat in
     here.
     And that should be it for now. I suck and it took me a long time for
     me to like this story enough to start posting it, but hopefully
     enough of you are still down to watch as I write a bunch of words of
     Kankri/Karkat porn for this valiant ship, lol
     EDIT: As of 1/22/14, I'm shortening this fic by a ton and it's gonna
     be more like a two- or three-shot as opposed to a really long multi-
     chapter, because I'm super slow at doing those.
And when I'm alone, you are near to me.
You have made a home in my memory.
There you will abide for forever,
And I’ll keep you warm in the night.
—Janelle Monae, "BaBopByeYa"
 
 
Kankri
(♋)
“Kankri.”
He’s your innocent, never been touched before like this and yours to mold with
your hands.
“Fuck, Kankri—”
He’s all pliant skin and sturdy, slender bones, shuddering under your
fingertips and staring up at you with big, black eyes like you’re holding onto
his heart.
“Harder, don’t stop—”
You thought he’d never let you do teach him this way, so openly. His shirt's
long gone and your fingers are thrusting half-in-and-out of his nook and you’re
a hundred and ten pounds of writhing troll-in-heat straddling his thighs,
grasping his neck with your lips, biting, sucking, rutting against him, he’s
shaking despite himself and singing your name like a prayer and you don’t think
you’ve ever heard a sound so lovely in your life.
His pants are unzipped, shoved down his thighs and your hands are all wet and
tangled up in his lewd anatomy.  You flick your fingers harder and faster, feel
his nook spasm around your knuckles and feel his bulge, shallowly,
rhythmically, thwack its way around your forearm; he’s sprawled out before you,
yours to keep and so gone right now that you still can’t believe that it’s you
who can take him here.
“Fuck, give it to me, please Kankri, harder, fuck, please don’t stop—”
“Karkat—”
You suddenly feel a sharp, almost-painful squeeze around your bulge, and before
you even realize what you’re doing to yourself, your vision blacks out and
you’re hyperaware that your hips are thrusting jerkily and that you’re coming,
tense and messy, over the top of your tightened fist.
You’re all alone.
You gasp out. Your eyes open swiftly. You’re in the dream-projection of your
respiteblock, and you look down to find that your spoor slime is so filled to
the brim with red, there’s almost no lime left to the tint of the liquid. Shit.
Your hands have done it once again, betrayed you in a haze-like daydream of
him, and almost as if they’re only half-awake and detached from you, they’re
still teasing and fumbling with your too-sensitive bulge, trying to coax it
back to rest. It’s making your throat let out these chirpy little moans,
there’s a slow burn flickering in your chest and you canfeel, everywhere, too
much.
“Enjoying yourself there, Kanny?”
Porrim stands in your doorway, one arm holding a basket and the other propped
against the wooden frame, her big white eyes, amused at best, falling on you in
your post-orgasmic state like fucking judgement day.
“Porrim!”
You jump inside your skin. You scramble and slushy glops of fluid-slime pour
and splash over the edge of the recuperacoon and onto the floor.
“What are you doing in here!?” You hurry to cover your thin, soiled, unwashed
body from her with your arms, curling in on yourself. “Don’t look at me, get
out!”
“Don’t yell."
Porrim ignores your discomfort as she enters the room like all’s normal, her
hips swinging fluidly with ease. She begins to pick up some of your sweaters
from various places on the floor like they’re her own (and well, technically
they are), and your flush incinerates you from the inside out.
“I have told you—” you shout, shakier and shriller, “repeatedly,to ask for my
explicitpermission before you enter my quarters!” She growls and tenses up like
your voice is the sound of claws retching down a steel plate. “I mean it, get
out, you’re triggering my anxiety!”
“I’m giving you back your laundry!”
As she moves close to your recuperacoon to put her basket on one of your
shelves, you cover your intimate bits even more with your hands. Porrim’s never
had any qualms about nudity—wouldn’t you know, judging by the way she’s always
half-dressed anyway—and she’s seen you naked before when you were both young,
she always tells you as much, but there’s just something differentabout it now
that you’re adults.
Sure, you know that you touch yourself, and you’ve studied the science and the
theory of masturbation enough to know that it’s healthier than it is wrong. But
as far as everyone outside of you knows, including her, you’re celibate to the
point that you don’t actually needanyone.
They can’t know you need anyone.
It terrifies you that your body keeps trying to betray its solidarity to your
thinkpan.
Heat still sears across your chest. Porrim gracefully begins to fold one of
your red sweaters like you’re not even there, as if you’re not stained with
your own humiliation right in front of her. She takes her time tucking in the
arms so that the garment lies flat in a perfectly-cornered square, and annoyed,
you turn away from her and look down at yourself, and your unseemly body.
Ever since you showed him how to touch himself for the first time, your body's
been doing this to you; whenever your mind gives you stark, lewd daydreams of
him to feed off of, your body reacts before you will it to, jacking itself off
to his image and rushing your pleasure before you can control it.
You sigh. As good as it’s felt the last two times you’ve thought of him like
this, it gives you a sinking feeling in your gut. You’re guilty for the lack of
control you imagine yourself having with him. This wasn’t supposed to be about
you touching him, ever, it was supposed to be about self-control.
And for the gods’ sake, all you did was kissKarkat, innocently,the last time
you saw him. And even that seems so long ago now. You’re pressed as to how he
keeps floating into your dreams in this way, sexually, even though you’re
apart.
“Come on out,” Porrim says, cutting into your thoughts, “I’m sure you feel as
miserable as you look in there.”
She’s right. Looking down at the glue-like stew in which you sit is starting to
trigger a little bit of nausea; usually you’ve scrubbed yourself clean of your
mess in the ablution trap by now, but shepresents a problem.
She caught you. Your humiliation still burns. You know what she must think of
you now, but she’s not doing anything to show it, and that bothers you.
You just want her to leave.
You rise, hands still covering your crotch.
“Don’tturn around,” you warn her.
“Then hurry up and get dressed,” she complains.
You’re careful not to slip on the wet bits of the slick, white floor as you
rush to a back corner of your room. You quickly produce a towel from your
sylladex, then pull a pair of soft, black pants up past your ribcage, and
realize with impatience that Porrim’s picked up the sweater you were wearing
earlier and thrown it in her basket. There are no shirts to put on in your
vicinity and you just need to be covered.
 “Are you quite finished?” you ask her, rapping your foot against the ground.
She glares at you over her near-glowing shoulder, then returns to her folding.
“You don’t have to fold them just like that you know,” you continue. “It’s
taking too long.”
“You asked meto fold them ‘just like this, you know,’ when you gave me your
laundry last time.” She sounds just like you when she mocks you. She knows you
too well, and itbothersyou.
“Well will you just hand me one already?” you snap. “I’m highly uncomfortable
with being this exposed—”
“You know this never would’ve happened if you would just do your own laundry,”
she groans.
“This never would’ve happened if you would’ve just knocked!"
A sweater comes hurling at you from her vicinity; it hits you in the face. You
wrap yourself in it in a hurry, pulling the turtleneck up over your nose to
cover your sullied cheeks. You inhale. The fabric smells like bleach and warmth
and a little bit of bitterness and spice, like Porrim’s own clothes, like
Beforus, like home; you burrow your nose further into the sweater.
You stay backed into the corner and stare at Porrim’s back as she works; the
stripes of tattooed ink curl and stretch with her muscle movements. After a
moment or two, she realizes you’ve gone quiet and perhaps she can feel your
eyes on her. She turns around to look at you again. Her eyes soften.
“Go wash off,” she tells you. “Putting clothes on doesn’t make you clean.”
You unfold the neck of the sweater just a touch to speak. “I will once you’re
out. And, once you promisenot to breath a wordof this to—“
She cuts you off with a terse laugh. “What makes you think I’d tell anyone
about this?”
“Please, you’re you,” you deadpan her. “If you don’t tell it willingly, someone
will coax it out of your mouth, perhaps while also offering you a complementary
filial pail fill.”
She rolls her eyes.
“So I caught you showing yourself a good time for a couple seconds,” she
groans. “And? We all do it.” She looks at your bookshelf. “You have eight
volumes written on it right here.”
“As usual, you don’t understand, Porrim,” you front. “It’s good and well that
my thinkpan is familiar with any and all physical, interquadrant practices, in
theory, but I,don’t ‘do it.’ I, cannot,‘do it.’”
“Hell, we get bored enough around here to do it with each other,” she
continues. She glances at you, smiling slightly. “You’re the only one who
hasn’t joined in on our mutual masturbation nights yet, by the way.”
“Ew,” you tell her.
Porrim's smile fades a bit, and then she looks into your eyes again.
“We’re nine sweeps now," she tells you.
You raise a brow, wait for her to keep on.
“We’re old,Kanny, and we’re gonna be here, dead, for a long time." She pauses.
"Probably forever.”
“What is your point?” you rush her.
“My point is, look at you.”
She’s finished folding your sweaters so she comes closer your corner. You feel
both drawn to her familiarity and put off by her proximity; why‘s she always
inserting herself in your businesslike this? Why does she care?
“You’re always alone,” she says. “You’re the only one of us who’s never had a
matesprit—“
“I don’t needa matesprit—“
“—and you refuse to stop caging yourself up like this even though no one cares
what kind of show you’re putting on now that we’re all dead.”
Her words affront you. You look away. She crosses her arms, tilts her hips,
looks at you harder all genuine and concerned and a touch pale, and it makes
you feel.
“When was the last time you eventalked to any of us?” she asks you, voice
softer.
You turn your nose up. “If you must know, I had a discussion with Cronus just
the other day about quadrant vacillation, and the dangers of swift red-black
interchanges, and the impacts that unchecked flushed and caliginous advances
can have on, trigger warning, Beforan rape culture and its—”
“He wasn’t even listening to you.” Porrim groans again. “That wasn’t to him,
that was athim.”
“Well maybe I like talking atpeople,” you bark. “Maybe it’s the only way I’m
actually heard.”
“No one wants to hear you when you aren’t willing to hear them--”
“Did I askfor you to come in here and lecture me, Porrim?”
“Oh, thatis rich." She laughs. “You, talking to me, about lectures.”
“The door is over there,” you spit. Your tone reaches toxic levels. “You’ve
done my laundry, Ms. Maryam, now you may see yourself out.”
She narrows her eyes at you.
“What’s going on with you? Are you okay?”
You pause. You’re still sticky beneath your clothes, your body’s still slightly
shivering from your orgasm, and you, Kankri Vantas, are not very okay.
“I’m fine.” You shut your eyes. Shut her off. “Besides the fact that you
triggered me by barging in here, trying intentionally to see me naked.
Pervert.”
“Jegus, even when you’re self-conscious you’re still a raging narcissist.”
You point to the door. “Goodbye,Porrim!”
“Alright, alright!”
Porrim leaves your room in a flourish of dark hair and bitter perfume. You
press your hands firmly against the door after she leaves, as if that will
somehow keep it sealed shut longer.
You thought you would be fine, after you saw Karkat last. And you were, for a
little while.
Because for a little while, you were only in it for him. When you kissed him
the last time you saw him, gentle and sweet, it was only to teach him; to teach
him how to find balance and identity in his body and himself, to show him that
someone, even if it was just an empty shell of a being like you, would always
care.
It wasn’t about you. You hadn’t gotten off, not really, and your emotional,
protective feelings for your young dancestor aside, the physical stuff between
you was meant purely to be clinical.
Just the vehicle for your lesson.
You thought, after watching him come, all lovely and liberated in your lap,
that you’d soon forget what his body looked like naked; you thought you’d never
let the realization that you saw another tangible, spiritual being in a sexual
way fester in your thinkpan; but now,
Now you, Kankri Vantas, are not fine. This has gone beyond a lesson you’re
trying to teach him, beyond the excuses you were making just to get him to
listen to your “lectures” and your wisdom. You wantKarkat, unadulterated. Your
body wants him naked, bare and unsheathed and with you always, you want your
words from his mouth and your imprints in his skin and your come spilling all
over his chest—
You, Kankri Vantas, want, and you’re a sinner for it.
You haven’t wanted in a long time, not since your wriggler’s daydreams of
Laluta, and no less someone younger than you, and no less someone you wanted to
keep safe just as much as you wanted to absolutely ruin.Karkat flushes so
beautifully red when he’s ruined.
But you can’t touch him. You won’tlet yourself touch him; only he can touch
himself. And besides, he disappeared the last time you saw him. You’re not sure
how much time his party has left, how soon it will be before they reach their
session; he just disappeared. Maybe he’s already left your reach.
Maybe he no longer needs you, and you are left alone, no longer celibate of the
mind, still wanting.
In the ablution trap, you scald yourself, scratch yourself, attempt to burn
your body clean.
It’s no use. Your young self, he has absolutely ruined you.
 
Karkat
(♋)
You miss being able to sleep in slime. You’d try to alchemize some yourself,
though it’d be a stretch, but it’s too bad your moirail would scarf it down by
the pieful and hit the refresh button on his furious quest for blood.
Your head aches.
You were just asleep. You’ve just come back from a nightmare in which there was
nothing but darkness, dull pain, and droning noise—probably horrorterrors—and
you don’t know what time you fell asleep, or what time it even is now.
You never do. You’re in fucking space.
It’s quiet in the room where you lie on your back, alone on Gamzee’s horn pile.
You figure the others must be off doing their own thing, as usual, not caring
one pulsing shame globe about what you’re doing, as usual. Not that it matters.
You’ve been continuing to isolate yourself from more and more from the five of
them anyway, even more so ever since Dave kicked your sorry ass in a strife on
the rooftop and everyone got see how huge of a fool he’d just made you, Terezi
included, (she hasn’t spoken to you since, but she has looked at you once or
twice over her should, and you think that’s made your isolation even worse. You
miss your dear friend so, and part of you will always still want her.)
Every once in a while you hang out with Gamzee in the air conditioning vent,
and sometimes you chat for a moment or two with Kanaya about the vaguely
ominous and uncontrollable future, but other than that, you continue to stay
alone. You’ve still been grouchy and testy, hardly letting anyone but Gamzee so
much as accidentally brush up against you, let alone actually touch you,
And you’re only so irritable because—how pitiful is this?—all you really want,
more than anything in this virtual world, is to see your ancestor Kankri again.
Lord English quickly approaches you and your friends. The true heroes, those
unlike you, are waiting for you to arrive so that you can all fight this glitch
to the death. The smell of your friends’ blood never quite leaves the air about
you, and your end in this game feels inevitable at this point too. It all just
makes you wish that you could sleep ‘til it’s over, or just sleep forever; you
were doomed to die young at home anyway. You wish that you could stay wrapped
up in a dream, in Kankri, in his safety, in an ignorant bubble of warmth and
denial and orgasm, forever.
He’d made you feel so goodand you can’t stop thinking about it. Pitiful,
pathetic.
It’s been unfairly long since your last trip to his dream bubble. Maybe twenty
or thirty human “nights,” by your count? Who cares even, “human” nights are
stupid. It’s been long enough that all of your scars from your fight with Dave,
the ones that Kankri gently mended for you, have either faded or healed
completely. It seemed silly to become attached to something like your own
injuries, but they were the last tangible evidence that you had of Kankri
touching you, and kissing, in reality.
Sometimes you still touch the few remaining scars with your fingertips. You run
your pads over them the way that he had before you’d woken up abruptly and left
him, right as you were about to settle into a lingering kiss that bothof you
wanted this time. It was unfair; you’d still been able to faintly taste him on
your lips upon your return.
You’d been horny just thinking about it, and had tried touching yourself to his
image by yourself, but you felt so stupid and frustrated that it couldn’t be
real, and that you were not him, and that his voice was more soothing and
coaxing and willing than your own, that you couldn’t get yourself more than
halfway to climax.
“Fuck.”
You’d slipped your sore hand of your pants, your legs trembling in your half-
assed arousal, your bulge cramping and the red flushing slightly bruised-blue.
You sighed, and shut your eyes, talking as though he could hear you, wherever
he was out there in the universe:
“Fuck you, I can’t do this without you.”
You don’t want to think about that now.
You emerge from the horn pile room and wander into the halls, picking up a
thinly-threaded human-blanket that you think belongs to Rose and wrapping it
around your shoulders.
You hear voices coming from one of the back rooms. Reluctantly you head towards
it, going to check on in its inhabitants like the leader you used to be would,
though you’re not intending on joining them.
You peek inside the dark room and they’re all sitting on the couch, watching a
romance movie on the projector Dave alchemized. Kanaya and Rose are sitting on
the farthest side with their legs intertwined, whispering to each other and
giggling and even from here, you can see that they both have smears of black
lipstick on their cheeks and neck.
Dave sits with his red-sleeved arm around Terezi, and is the first one who
glances over at your figure lurking in the doorway. He gives you one of those
cool guy head nods and a weird smile, as if nothing has even fucking happened
between the two of you lately, as if he didn’t grate your ass into the concrete
and give you beating during strife while everyone watched not that long ago.
The arm around Terezi tightens after he looks away from you.
Terezi faces forward towards the movie, lights from the screen dancing on the
surface of her shiny crimson glasses. She shoves popcorn from a bowl into her
mouth, claw after claw, gracelessly sucks the extra butter and salt from her
fingers with her long, black tongue and attempting to stick a few spare kernels
in Dave’s mouth every once in a while,
And Gamzee, with eyes glazed over, is sitting in a hunched position next to
Terezi with that freaky little Cal thing draped around his shoulders. You’re
pretty sure he’s not even remotely processing this movie right now, he’s just
sitting there to sit there like a flimsy juggalo voodoo doll, and it hurts you
a little bit to see it. The shadows and the flashing lights from the screen
flicker across the jagged scars on his nose and make him look extraordinarily
fucking creepy, as if he needed any extra help in that department.
You stand, awkward and uncomfortable in the door, watching them not watching
you; you're jealous.
At least they all fit in somewherein this unfortunate, tight-knit little group
of lost soldiers;all of them fit but you.
You feel like the only true alien in the room sometimes, like everyone else is
comfortable with each other in ways you’re not anymore, or never was, or like
everyone is suddenly in on something that you’re not. It's like at some point
you went into a deep sleep, and woke up to find something changed, but no one
will stop and tell you what it is, or what you missed, or even if you even
still matter.
And you’ve been sleeping a lot lately, which hasn’t really helped.
“Well look who all it motherfuckin’ is.”
Gamzee (and Lil’ Cal) look at you now, and Kanaya acknowledges you with a
pleasant, black smile.
“Hello,” she says, “we’re watching ‘In Which A Jadeblooded Troll Female
Protagonist Becomes The Object Of A Greenblooded Troll Male’s Flushed Desires,
Though She Is His Blueblooded Best Friend’s Matesprit; Nevertheless The Female
 And Male Gradually Form A Relationship In Secret And Fall Deep Into The
Flushed Throes; The Audience Is Meant To Discern That The Female Is Not Content
With Her Current Matesprit For Reasons Relating To Quadrant Misappropriation;
After Which Approximately Seven Scenes Of Heavy Kissing Are Shown, All Leading
Up To The Highly Climactic First Pailing; The Best Friend Discovers The Female
Protagonist’s Flushed Infidelity And Threatens To Cull The Male Protagonist,
Thus Revealing A Previously Unseen Antagonistic Aspect Of His Character; A High
Speed Chase Ensues Between The Male And The Best Friend, In Which The Best
Friend Is Eventually Thwarted And Fatally Injured, And The Female and Male
Protagonists Are Able To Resume Their Matespritship In The Open In The End.”
She says it all fluidly and Rose, who is drunk, looks at her like she’d like to
take her over a table; you cringe. “I hope you don’t mind that I stole, I mean
borrowed it from your collection,” Kanaya adds, wrapping her arm around Rose
tighter.
“It’s fine, just put it back when you’re done."
Dave yawns, his arms curling even closer around Terezi.
Gamzee looks at you searchingly. “Where’ve you up and been all this time?” he
asks.
“Doesn’t matter.” You sigh, curling the blanket even tighter around your
compact body. “Scoot over, will you? You’re the thinnest excuse for a still-
living entity that I’ve ever seen, like I seriously don’t know how you still
have skin over your bones at this point, so I know that if you’d stop taking up
the seat space of a troll eight fucktons your size and close your never-ending
slug legs, maybe I could actually fit next to you on this goddamn shitty
couch?”
Gamzee looks vaguely like he doesn’t recognize you for a moment, and then it
connects. “Happy to motherfuckin’ oblige of that for you.”
Gamzee shifts towards Terezi accordingly, nudging her over and everyone but
Dave does a little shift accordingly to make room. Once you sink into the
cushion, Gamzee instinctively wraps his gangly arm around the back of the
couch. You lean your head back and rest it on his wiry bicep by habit. His
claws are half-scratching your shoulder.
He turns to you about a minute later, asks something to the extent of, “What’d
you up and fuckin’ do to your face there, little brother?”, to which you scowl
a little and turn away, and huff “nothing.” It’s about time he noticed that
Dave did more damage during your strife with him than was necessary. You don’t
want everyone to be reminded once more of your formal ass-kicking though, so
you shun Gamzee’s question now and suppose you’ll let him touch what's left of
your scarring later on, during your next feelings jam. You nestle yourself a
little deeper into his embrace.
You begin to watch the movie. It’s not long before you start to get invested in
the film’s hot and heavy events; these characters and this plot in particular
have always done something to make your hopeless romantic’s bloodpusher stir.
The scenes are all so intense and passionate. You pay close attention to the
minute, romantic details that you’d missed before, every pitiful wandering eye,
every deep, meaningful kiss, every sexual, playful smile, every open display of
affection. It makes nooses tie tight around the necks of the butterflies in
your stomach to watch the female protagonist play with the male like he’s her
instrument, to hear their breaths bate and see their hands grope and notice
their bulges working hard against their thinly-sewn pants. You typically prefer
to watch your flush-crush movies alone and in silence because of these arousing
details (and because of how humiliatingly aroused you become while viewing
them), but of course, the others keep babbling and laughing and ruining
everything for you as it goes on. Watching it with them—with the ones who all
have quadrants filled but you—just makes you feel even more alone.
You used to study all of these romance movies so much and so closely to try to
model your behavior with Terezi after them. Things are so different now with
her now, aren’t they?
You hope that no one else notices how romantic your body is finding this. A
glance to your right finds Terezi’s thigh resting slightly on top of Gamzee’s.
Dave hasn’t even looked down to notice. Here and there you watch as she
“clumsily” misses her own leg when she intends to wipe the butter-grease off on
her jeans, instead swiping her hand across his thigh and stabbing her claws
into his leg before pulling away: foreplay. When Gamzee tenses a little against
you each time, you frantically look up at him to stabilize his reaction, but
besides regarding her with a glaring twitch of his eyes, and a slight shift of
his hips against hers, he hardly reacts at all.
Sitting near them’s making you wax gray; sometimes you wonder if they’re safe,
if he’s really as in control of himself as he seems, if he’s stable enough to
choke her while he fucks her without also snapping her neck—but you care about
her too, and just want her happy, and that’s why you know that getting between
them would only push her further away from you, she’s strong and doesn’t need
your pity to save her. It's not like you, as her auspitice, even wanna know
what she looks like when he makes her come—you try to wash your hands of these
thoughts.
When it gets to the first pailing between the matesprits in the movie, you
almost can’t watch, on account of the nudity and their intimate noises and the
rose-colored cinematography, it's all making you feel too heavy-limbed and
needy. The first pailing in every Alternian romance film, and especially this
one, is a special event, the climax of the movie, the most naked scene to film;
the first discovering of someone’s body, seeing all of them for what they are,
knowing what truly makes them open up and let go and come—this movie in
particular has the dreamiest first pailing scene you’ve personally ever seen;
it's like Kanaya knew this movie would get to you.
Your thinkpan retrieves something for a moment you don’t like to think about:
you were supposed to have a first pailing, though a different one than this.
You and Gamzee were supposed to fill a pail just once, as is customary for the
Alternian commencement of any great (adult) moirailegiance; But your
relationship happened under such, well, extreme and extenuating circumstances,
that you never got around to it. You’ve never even seen him remotely naked, nor
he you.
The thought only slips into your mind here and there. Other than that you try
to burn all traces of it. You could approach him about it now, you think, it’s
not like he’d reject you, but more than that, you’re far too scared to touch
him in any way that isn't conciliatory.
He’s been out of it lately, and by lately, you mean as long as he’s been your
moirail. With you anyway, he’s all slow movements and even slower words; he
drapes himself around you, and doesn't have much to say, and it’s not like he
used to be when he was high; he doesn’t smile anymore like he used to. It’s
more like his brain’s been incapacitated so severely by the snap, that he can't
be willed to make decisions on his own, or even, like—think. With you it seems,
he’s only half-living. You suppose that’s how it has to be, how you have to
make sure he stays, in order to keep him sane.
It doesn’t mean that some of your curiosity about him still doesn’t linger,
however.
What’s he really like? you sometimes wonder. He’s not himself when he’s high,
and you can feel he’s not himself when he's sober and you’re with him, so is
being in heat what makes him come to life again? Do you even want to know?
You’re all hormones, sitting there next to him on the couch. Gamzee keeps
drawing your focus away from your thoughts, stroking your arm back and forth
with his claws to keep you warm, and even though it’s meant to be a touching
gesture, you can’t help but shiver at the weight of his hands. You know he’s
just your palemate, but he’s the only warm body that gets close to you when
you’re awake—
And ever since Kankri made you actually come for the first time in your life,
you’ve been horny as fuck. With the way your dancestor coaxed you into
masturbating in his lap like that, all splayed and open for him to see, how
could you notbe?  It’s hard not to think of the way that he touched you, the
way you shook and cursed and climaxed and sank into the warmth of his arms. You
always mange to think about it in the worst places, too, always turning ruddy
pink and feeling heat in your chest and a rush of blood to your nook when
you’re around the others—
Such is the case right now—
And it doesn’t help that physical proximity with practically anyone has the
potential to make you want. You’ve become so pathetic that you have to
pointedly try to not stare at every pair of legs that ever walks by you,
Rose’s, Dave’s, Terezi’s, even Kanaya’s, fuck, no one is off limits to your
impatient bone bulge when you’re seven sweeps and the only action you’ve gotten
is with someone who you’re separated from by reality itself—
Your bulge twitches once in its sheath—
When you got into a fight with Dave even, when he pinned you down and kicked
you in the gut and drew slits of red blood across your arms and face, parts of
you swore that you were seeing black. You don't even like him, but what was to
be expected? He was all over you, rutting against you and ringing you out by
the neck of your sweater, engaging in so much shit talk with you that your
bulge mistook it for foreplay—your body gets so desperate sometimes that you’d
even take being wrestle-fucked by that asshole, not like he even remotely gets
what kismesitude is (he keeps on calling it “kismespades,” the numbnut)—
The point is, you just want something.You want to be taken, you want to be lost
and found in someone, you want to need, and you know that you don’t want it
with someone who doesn’t even like you, with someone that who’s not flushed for
you back, but it’s hard, and you’re lonely, and really, you’d settle for anyone
who didn’t think you were completely worthless.
Because what if this is it? What if, after the game, the dead don't come back
to life and you're among them? What if when Alternia returns as it should be,
you're still a freak, and still meant to be asexual to avoid being culled?
If these are your last moments, you just want to be loved in them by someone.  
You want to be released, be unwound, by someone who also loves you; you want
that stupid, fleeting, matesprit-romance to just be yours while you still last.
Is that pathetic? Shouldn't you want to fight? You can't even care.
You want to feel the way that Kankri made you feel for that small moment, when
he said,
“You went sweeps hiding yourself away from the world out of fear, but you look
lovely like this, Karkat. With this color all over you.”
Your bulge, engorged, oversensitive, starts to slip from its sheath and push up
against the inside of your pants, making you half-gasp and tense up in Gamzee’s
arms.
“I’m gonna—“
You're blurting words out without wlling them. Gamzee frowns a touch, looks
down at you curiously, and even Kanaya is looking over at you from the corner
of her eye at the sound of your voice.
“Go. Knock out,” you finish. You stand up from Gamzee’s side, quickly. “Fucking
tired.”
Gamzee mutters something at you as you leave, but you’re too in a hurry to
catch it. With the blanket for protection, you leave, and stumble into the part
of the hall where your book pile waits for you.
You curl yourself on top of it, knees to your chest, and can’t help but try
again to touch yourself. You try to curl your fingers like he did, try to go as
fast as he did, slip your too-rough fingers up your shirt to try and coax your
muscles to relax.
It doesn’t work.
You give up. You stare at the ceiling of the meteor, your pants half unzipped.
He’s ruined you, Kankri has—made your dreams that much better than reality, to
the point that you’re neither here nor there, to the point that the darkness of
sleep is better than life.
You sigh.
“The next time I see you I swear to god,” you mutter to him, wherever he is,
but you can’t even finish that thought.
When you close your eyes to sleep, it is dark. You expect the darkness to
remain this time, expect to feel yourself slip into the unconsciousness of a
nightmare, but this time, you don’t.
This time, once you slip into the dark, you come out on the side of the light:
a dream bubble.
You stand in front of golden, Prospitian stairs, and realize where you are
again, and you almost want to run off to find him, but before you can start,
you hear his voice, warm and familiar and breaking in its relief, coming from
behind you.
“Karkat," Kankri says, and you can hear his smile.
“Finally.”
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