Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1680122.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      John_Egbert/Karkat_Vantas
  Character:
      John_Egbert, Karkat_Vantas
  Additional Tags:
      Fluff_and_Smut, Hot_Tub_Sex, Sanitation_Issues, Prankster's_Gambits, John
      Is_Not_at_All_Apologetic, Karkat_Is_More_Disgruntled_than_Usual, Xeno,
      Shameless_Smut, Sorry_Not_Sorry, But_Karkat's_Pants, Okay_That_Part_I'm
      Sorry_About, Seadweller_Mutant_Karkat
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-05-24 Words: 4139
****** Are You Sure It's Not the Bubbles? ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     In which John is perhaps a little to fixated on a pair of pants and
     Karkat reluctantly forgoes antibiotic showers so they can do it in
     the Jacuzzi.
Notes
     So I basically just wrote hot tub sex cause HOT TUB SEX and yeah,
     this is where we are now. Heap on the judgment, darlings, it was
     going up on here, or anon on dreamwidth. Someone was always destined
     to suffer for this.
                “I’m not getting into that thing.”
                So he said, but Karkat was crouched at the edge with his nose
about to touch the water he was glowering at. John slumped lower against the
ceramic surface to hide his grin. What was Karkat trying to do, argue the
bubbles out of their inherent bubbliness?
                That thought was making John punch-drunk and giggly. It was a
very Karkat thing to do. Yes, yes, your eyebrows are very scary and they can
totally make the laws of physics their bitch.
                “Seriously,” Karkat’s head jerked up. His stern eyebrows took a
turn menacing John. “I refuse. I am telling you FUCK NO, deploy the necessary
measures to quell your disappointment. I’m not lacking enough in the thinkpan
to believe sticking my hide into a boiling stew of fungal pathogens, so I can
marinate like the latest batch of human carbohydrate worms, is an actual not
shitty idea.”
                “For clarification purposes, do you mean noodles?” Interjected
John. “And are troll noodles alive?”
                Karkat glowered at the water again, arms crossing behind the
brackets of his knees—ugh, John was sitting in a Jacuzzi and Karkat was making
him feel smothered just looking at him. It was June and they’d thrown all the
windows open to let in cloying summer air, everything was sizzling hot, so what
was Karkat doing wearing sweatpants? Even if they were the cute ones with the
words Disney Troll on the butt.
                The scowling troll insisted, “You’ll die from this.” He then
informed John that he was a “clam-banging trogolodyte.”
                Here we go, thought John, letting his ears drift back under the
water to deaden the ranting a little bit.
                Karkat started off roaring. “Are you expecting pity to follow
this excursion into stupidity? Well, joke’s on you. I’ll flip a page in the
audacious tabloid that is my whole fucking life—oh look! Egbert’s dead!—and I
will give so few shits that there will be a shit shortage across the entire
west coast, all attributed to you. And that will be your legacy, John Egbert.
Shit famine and death by rapidly multiplying bacteria—”
                Karkat’s face fell a little. John lifted his head above the
foaming water.
                “—so just how will you take care of yourself during the rapid
deterioration of your health? Ha, you can’t take care of a glubfish. Someone
who is not hallucinating from whatever mycobacteria are colonizing your
intellectually-disabled meatsack will be required. To fight the good fight and
try to obstruct natural selection a little longer! One of us must remain
unimpaired.”
                Oh yeah, right on time.
                You know, the people who gave John weird looks on the whole
Karkat subject—they just didn’t get their timing right. It was like a countdown
of creative profanity and then—ding!—out came the point Karkat was trying to
make, between the rat-a-tat-tat rapid-fire insults and outlandish turns of
phrase. Then you had this: Karkat glancing up at John from beneath his furrowed
eyebrows, thinking he was subtle. His eyelashes stabbed subtlety in the face
with their inky tips, and aww, John knew that look.
                That was the look when Karkat was thinking about hauling John
bodily from whatever perceived danger he’d come up with, and making him take
antibiotic showers. In the Troll Disney sweatpants. Ahgawd.
                John decided this was one of those moments where Karkat just
needed to come to him.
                You could mistake him for human in this lighting, since it
bleached out Karkat’s skin. Not that John wanted Karkat to be human. A human
would be easier to deal with, yes. Quieter and more convenient. But easier
would also be having a best friend who didn’t preface every expression of
emotion with a minimum twenty seconds of cursing. There was no ‘real’ Karkat,
only Karkat. No matter how much of a pain he was, this was the guy John wanted
to push buttons on. His skin was squeaky-dry around the wrists.
                John cackled, splashing backwards. Karkat let out a scree of
alarm and whoa, ack, claws. Claws in bad places. Ow ow ow.
                The troll’s head erupted to the surface like a blowhole
venting. John confirmed that he was bleeding while Karkat was spluttering out
outraged little clicks.
                “Gotcha!” John announced. He wasn’t bleeding enough for this
not to be funny. “Prankster’s gambit, on the rise once again!”
                Karkat slapped John upside the head. So Karkat still did not
know how to take a prank then. Ow.
                “I could have broken my neck!” Karkat bellowed. “Oh yeah,
you’re made of win alright—Heir of Fucking Breath, meet: GRAVITY. Gravity,
indirect assistant murderer of those daily victims of your shit. Only no, not
Karkat! We will spare Karkat. He hasn’t suffered enough to be released from the
unrelenting misery of your presence—tch, you’re not even bleeding that bad.”
Karkat’s nostrils flared.
                “I’m glad you’re not dead too,” John offered.
                Claws clamped down around John’s throat. “Shut up. Die of
agonizing plague. I just don’t want your human blood diseases.”
                Karkat’s tone threatened to make with the throat rending if
John continued to cast these highly unsolicited aspersions upon the noble
character of Karkat Squishy Underbelly Vantas. His claws were sharp and hard,
like the edge of scissors, and he was looking at John’s cuts again.
                2+2 equals: he’s holding you still so he can make sure you’re
okay.
                John was the goddamn Karkat whisperer. It was him. And oh boy,
Karkat looked all kinds of goofy in the water. The flailing had gotten his hair
plastered up in clumps, and it kind of made it all the more striking that
Karkat was—not that you should ever tell him this, mind you—pretty delicately
built. “Elven” wasn’t the first thing that came to mind, but it was a close
contender after “nocturnal predator”, and Karkat’s shirt was doing a full on
body-cling to his narrow shoulders. Okay.
                “Mrgh,” Karkat grumbled. “Next time don’t be such a grubtard
and dodge. What kind of apocalypse veteran are you even?”
                The kind with a sexy troll in my alchemized Jacuzzi, thought
John, who had gotten his arms around Karkat’s waist. Karkat, thoroughly
absorbed in his inspection, didn’t notice.
                 John wouldn’t call Karkat bony, but troll skeletons kind of
had handhold-things around the hips, and all these sharply jutting knots over
their spine—Rose said it was some kind of exoskeleton protecting vital nerve
connections and blood vessels (trolls had built-in armor; they were like tiny,
adorable mecha)—and they were really fun to wrap your fingers around and feel.
John giggled to himself, slipping his fingers along the curves of the troll’s
hipbones through the material of his sweatpants. Were sweatpants buoyant? The
sweatpants felt buoyant.
                Karkat growled into John’s chin. Uh-oh! Had he been caught?
Must try hard to earn mercy and ongoing survival.
                “Remove your hands,” Karkat hissed. “Before I—mrgh.” Well? Hm,
nope, he was still glaring. Nose kisses weren’t doing it this time. Karkat
shivered as John petted his knobby troll hipbones. “Cut it out. I hate you. I
fucking don’t feel well. It’s already setting in?!” His eyes widened. “Egbert,
you meatpuppet, I’m dying! Oh god.” Karkat pressed a hand to his forehead,
shoving at sodden hair. “I seriously feel faint. Shit.”
                “Sure it’s not just the heat?” John said skeptically, cause
yeah—from 0 to hot tub in 3, 4, 5 was probably a pretty dynamic shift. Even
with the sweatpants. One of Karkat’s tapering gray ears pricked up.            
                “Huh,” he said, which meant John was right. Karkat glowered
after a moment’s introspection. “These temperatures are unnatural to my biome
and I am not built to thermoregulate—“
                “Oh my god, shut up,” John said fondly, kissing the freckly
troll nose presented in front of him. Karkat splashed a hand against his chest
and left it there. John was in swim trunks, because he was, you know. Not
insane. Karkat’s fingers rubbed over the skin appreciatively, for all that
Karkat was still glaring when John pulled back.
                “Karkat,” John said, giggling through his teeth, “I promise you
I cleaned it really well before I tried to sit in it, okay? We’re not going to
die.”
                Karkat’s glare didn’t waver for a second. “Why,” Karkat
growled, “Did you fucking stop?”                
                Yeah, that was more like it! John kissed his nubby Karkat nose
until Karkat was all scrunched up and purring with both his ears flopped down.
He looked so terribly pleased about nose kisses. Ha, I have successfully pwned
the world with my cuteness once again. I am your god. Do that again.
                Arghsocute.
                John tugged the hem of Karkat’s shirt. “Want to get out of
this?” He asked hopefully. Karkat’s eyes narrowed—time for another kiss against
the tip of his nose, longer this time, tender and all please, Karkat, I would
really enjoy you not wearing a shirt—and Karkat sort of squeaked against him.
                “You’ve probably ruined these clothes too,” Karkat complained,
clearly bitching for the sake of bitching. “You suck so much. I don’t know why
I put up with you.” He raised his hands so John could slap his shirt against
the floor, lunging to bite the tip of John’s nose. John grinned back, pulling
his glasses off to set them aside—Karkat was all drippy.
                John was close enough to enjoy the view, anyway. Karkat was,
again, not as frail as suggested by the turtlenecks and deep-rooted fears of
haircuts (from what John heard, haircuts on Alternia were not something the
majority of the population survived). John had this theory that he was even
tinier than he looked, that Karkat was mostly just ripcord muscle and bone.
Those muscles were on display now, the skin already a little flushed from the
heat. Could have been the kissing too, a little bit. Karkat looked completely
loose-limbed and spaced out.
                At his sides, John could see Karkat’s gills fluttering. He ran
his fingers along them. Karkat made one of those soft, Not Cursing noises,
pushing his cheek against the pulse in John’s neck. “Hm.” John’s fingers ran up
the opposite direction for a soft whisper of breath. “Gnuh.”
                “So articulate,” John teased—fuck, ow, Karkat had just kicked
him in the foot. “Hey, why don’t you try breathing with them? We’re in water.”
                Not going to lie here, Karkat’s gills were a pretty much
endless source of fascination. John hadn’t had any idea they were under there
when they first started dating. He basically knew trolls came in two
flavors—fishy and less-fishy—but the fishy ones usually had fins and stuff too.
Karkat didn’t. Karkat did have a couple of scars that John still hadn’t worked
up the courage to ask about, because of how thready Karkat’s breath got when he
touched them and how he looked at John when John kissed the toughened skin.
                The gills, John had discovered by accidentally walking in on
Karkat changing. Divested of his sweater, Karkat had five horizontal slashes
running just under his ribs, the color of twizzlers. They weren’t twizzlers.
Karkat had screamed and nearly torn his shirt in half trying to cover it up
while John’s brain went from HOLY SHIT Karkat looks good with less clothes to
                HOLY SHIT I’m seeing Karkat with less clothes and then made
that Herculean leap to
                HOLY SHIT he’s trying to cover those freaking awesome fluttery
things on his sides, does this have to do with why he won’t let me do anything
but kiss and hold his hand?               
                For the record, John was fully down with the kissing and
holding hands thing. It was just, Karkat could make some very, uhhh…
persuasive, let’s go with persuasive noises, in the process of kissing and
holding hands. He’d get every bit as restlessly squirmy as John did, and he’d
have looks on his face that very emphatically communicated to the bits of
John’s brain that processed ‘he’s so red I want to spend hours just licking his
face’ and ‘oh my god, his mouth,hismouth, I’m pretty sure this just stopped
being legal’ encouraged him to A) get his hands up that troll’s shirt, B) get
that troll’s pants off and find out if pantsquids were as fun as they looked in
porn, and C) do it with the troll.
                Do it with Karkat.
                Who John really, really, um, it was kind of hard to say, but
uh. Not liked. The other one.
                Just, a lot.
                And inevitably, Karkat’s death grip on John’s fingers would
reassert itself and John’s arms would get pinned to his sides. Karkat would
attempt to convince John’s hindbrain of very different causes while his mouth
said, “No, let’s just, that’s too fast, get back here. You’re not homo. We have
to—mmmgh, EGBERT—ease y-you into it... kiss me again right now.”
                Helpful, Karkat. Real helpful.
                John had been understandably WTFing all over the place when he
realized Karkat was torturing John because he had secret mutant fish bits. John
didn’t get the mutant thing anyway. He’d liked this new development. Partially
because his boyfriend with his shirt off was bar none the hottest thing John
had ever seen, and partially because those gills were sort of waving hello at
him, and John was really interested in meeting them.
                There were looooots of fun things you could do with gills too—
                Off topic. Karkat was scowling at him.
                “Yes,” he said bluntly. “I could breathe, and inhale a lungful
of toxic chemicals. Thus poisoning myself before your eyes and choking to death
while I gasped air feebly through my windtube and failed to prevent my
unceremonious, shriveling end.”
                John ran his fingers along the fluttering, delicate surface.
“Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t then.”                
                Karkat rolled his eyes. “It’s hot, this is dumb, and you owe me
for being a dipshit.” John was briefly confused about how these things were
related. Then Karkat was kissing his lips, soft, brief hiccups of contact. Oh
yeah, John definitely needed to be extorted into this. So much eyerolling! He
ran a hand up the knots of Karkat’s spine to cup the back of his head. Karkat
sighed against him, and the kiss got a lot more substantial. John’s toes
curled. He felt Karkat purring against his palm, fingers back to exploring
John’s naked chest.
                Ohhh, very nice, Karkat was good at kissing. That or he was
just good at John. Both, potentially. John wanted nothing more than to melt
into the heat of the water and the frothing bubbles. His neck hurt from the
angle, but forget his neck. Karkat’s fingers skated over his chest and damn,
John was feeling dizzy himself.
                “Can you get on my lap?” He asked tentatively—sometimes this
would mean a ten-minute break from kissing while Karkat ranted, and
sometimes—oh, like that. Karkat climbed straight aboard, pressing against him,
wonderfully warm and slippery with water. Smirked down so John knew he was
officially drooling like an idiot. John giggled back, wrapped his arms more
snugly around the troll’s waist. So close. Close was nice. He leaned up to
kiss, neck thanking him when Karkat met him halfway.
                Oh yeah, melting, melting, melting. He was totally supported
between the Jacuzzi wall and the troll’s body, and enjoying every minute of it.
Karkat’s mouth tasted like ice cream. John kissed as lazily as he could get
away with and still be having Karkat’s breaths coming short and purring out of
him. Karkat squirmed.
                Oh, wow. Unf. Hot. John bit down gently on Karkat’s full, soft
lower lip, just the way he knew would make Karkat shiver. Karkat shifted again,
hips sliding against John’s stomach, and John could feel that Karkat was way
ahead of the game. “You must really like it,” he joked, a little breathless,
feeling the troll’s bulge already out and moving. Karkat bit his own lip,
grinding himself into John’s skin again. “The Jacuzzi, I mean. Is it the
bubbles?”
                “It’s not the fucking bubbles,” Karkat said—voice slurring out
with arousal, going kind of squeaky. It was cute. He was cute. When he got like
this, all his curse words sounded like the most saccharine of endearments, and
John had never heard him make a noise louder than a moan. Karkat was
surprisingly quiet in bed. “I don’t know, I just—“
                “Don’t stop on my account,” John hummed back, flattening his
palms to Karkat’s ass. Troll Disney moved in his grip, kind of satisfyingly
perfect-sized and shaped like Karkat intended to give perfectly nice people
heart-attacks by walking in front of them. Karkat seemed to like the
encouragement. His hips rocked against John’s stomach with the same lazy lack
of urgency in his tone. Well, okay then. Get Karkat off had just gone to the
top of John’s agenda; Karkat didn’t need to be stopping.
                “Really quick,” John interjected as the troll let out a breathy
whine. “Do you want me to participate, or just—“
                “You can just lie back and look gorgeous,” Karkat growled,
teeth flashing, his narrow eyes sparking this burst of racy shivers that
started at the base of John’s spine and headed directly to his groin. Karkat
was the one who groaned, rubbing against John again. “Fuck, you feel good.”
                John couldn’t help it. He snorted, trying not to laugh.
“Karkat, you sound completely out of it.”
                Karkat growled wordlessly, eyes shut as he leaned down. John
suspected he was being silenced. His first impulse was to resist this
unforgivable tyranny, but oh, the things he could do for love. He closed his
eyes, leaned back, and enjoyed the shit out of it, yes he did. Karkat’s mouth
was perfection; even his teeth felt good after a while, to the point where John
bumped his against them on purpose and giggled as Karkat’s tongue coiled back
into his mouth. And a lapful of writhing troll, sinuous in his hands, bulge
eagerly squirming against John’s stomach. Karkat flattered the shit out of him
with those noises too, reporting faster as John grinned into the kiss and
flexed into the contact.
                Karkat’s mouth pulled away, leaving John’s tingling like mad.
                “Gonna—“
                “I’m sure the Jacuzzi can handle it,” John attested, even
though he had no idea. Karkat was giving him a look like he knew John was
talking out of his butt, but he was waiting to be convinced, wasn’t he? John
moaned into the troll’s lips, and Karkat was shoving him flat, continuing to
work his bulge against John in short, rhythmic jerks, totally focused on what
he needed. John rubbed calming circles against his hips. Encouraging him to let
it go. Karkat slumped against his shoulder, trembling.
                John reached down, because his prankster’s gambit was cackling
into his ear, and rubbed his palm between them, finding where the clouds of
warmth were propelling from. Karkat whimpered, nuzzling John’s throat as John
stroked him through the fabric of the pants Karkat was most certainly ruining.
Karkat’s hips hitched a little, soon settling into a slow, eager grind.
                Trolls came forever and it was adorable to watch. No matter how
many times he was kissed during the process, Karkat’s response was a soft mewl
and the most desperately hot tongue-action possible in a world affected by
gravity. John made sure they were kissing while his hand took over the rhythm
of Karkat’s hips. Karkat followed any pressure. Karkat was chanting his name
between kisses like he thought he’d forget it.
                Even when he finished, he was happy to keep rocking into John’s
hand, kissing his mouth slower and sweeter. He looked dizzy enough so John was
grinning. Karkat purred loudly.
                “So? Was this a good idea or what?”
                More kissing. Karkat groaned, fingers scrabbling against John’s
crotch. John bucked with surprise and Karkat was pushing his shorts down—well,
there they went, bottom of the Jacuzzi—and so was his erection freed to the
world. Karkat whimpered, touching John ineffectually. Teasing him, for all that
Karkat claimed teasing was for wrigglers. “Not done with you yet,” Karkat
grunted.
                “Oh yes please,” John agreed, because he would be as good as
Karkat wanted if it got him what he was pretty sure the troll wanted. Having
sex with Karkat inspired miracles. His nook was the eighth wonder of the world.
Every time they did it, another rainbow appeared somewhere on Earth and
unicorns rescued abandoned puppies and kittens or something.
                Shit, and Karkat was so relaxed. Was this because he just came
or did Jacuzzi sex need to be a weekly occurrence? Because John didn’t have to
do anything to get him open. His dick went straight in and Karkat seated into
his lap, shaking and purring.
                They rocked together, wonderfully slow and slippery. No hurry
to come, just feeling good from each other’s kisses. Touching all over. The
water frothed around them, hot as hell, and John upgraded Jacuzzis from ‘Great
Idea’ to ‘Possible Best Idea Ever’. Karkat’s slick nook ground around him,
pulsing gently. John reared his hips just as playfully, letting the troll’s
panted cries make him laugh.
                He ended up pinning Karkat to the wall too, letting the troll
shiver and squeak into the jet, nook clamping as John nudged him forward and
into the massage with his dick. When Karkat came, bubbles blasted red to the
other side of the pool in time with his moans and Karkat let John turn his head
enough to share a filthy kiss while Karkat’s body throbbed.  John finished hard
enough for his vision to blur.
                It was kind of wonderful.
                Karkat fell back from the kiss with a yawning moan when he
finished, grinning with his eyes half-shut when John caught the back of his
head. The hot tub was not going to hurt him, but the solid ceramic edge might!
Geeez. John tried to frown, but it didn’t work. John’s face malfunctioned into
a smile. “…So. Are you sure it’s not the bubbles?”                
                “Fuck you,” Karkat said in a low tone that was 100% purr. He
was breathing hard and still bright red and looked deeply content with his
life. He made little whining hums as John snuck kisses over the skin that was
still goose-pimply from orgasm, pitching high every time John’s mouth moved. So
cute. Was he nuzzling John’s hair? …Survey said yes.
                “Pick me up,” Karkat commanded in his sex voice. “It’s too hot
in here. Put me in my recupercoon and leave me to my regrets.” He purred like
an engine. John barely opened his mouth before Karkat, eyes still shut, pointed
out, “You got sex, don’t you even think about complaining. Get your ass up and
sweep me off my feet, loser.”                
                “Oh, you do care,” John said a little dryly, nevertheless
slipping his arms around the purring troll and picking him up. Oof. Karkat was
heavier than he looked. Karkat sighed deep contentment, wrapping his arms
around John’s neck and purring against him like he was concerned that John’s
ribs weren’t yet buzzing. Karkat solved that problem exceptionally well. His
happiness vibrated into John’s heartbeat.                
                He grabbed John’s wrist when they were halfway up the steps of
the coon, eyes flickering open. “Come in with me,” Karkat said. John blinked.
Karkat wanted to share his coon? Karkat, ‘If You Put So Much as a Toe In, I’m
Going to Eat It’ Vantas? What devilry was this?
                He pointed out, suspicious, “Karkat, there’s seriously nothing
dangerous about the hot tub. I swear to you, it’s not—“ 
                Karkat kissed him. John shut up. “Just come in with me,” the
troll huffed, curling claws through John’s hair. Quieter, “Stay.” He squirmed
his way out of John’s arms easily—he did not need carrying at all, the huge
doofus—and tried to hip check John into the sopor with him. Wind kicked up,
keeping John upright.
                “At least let me turn it off!”                
                “Nope,” Karkat wrapped his arms around John’s waist, kissing
his chest sloppily. John shuddered. That was…
                That was a cheap distraction for Karkat tackling him into a
slime pod, was what it was. John resurfaced, shaking goo out of his eyes and
spitting as Karkat nestled against him with a reedy purr. John managed a “geez”
and got his arm around Karkat. Karkat kissed his chest some more, triumphant.
“Are we going to sleep now?” John asked, because he was genuinely unsure—it
couldn’t have been later than eight, but Karkat’s eyes were barely open and all
that purring was making John’s own eyes droop.
                “Shoosh,” Karkat said, and found that spot on John’s shoulder
where his head went. Immediately his breath began to tickle the right places
and John went melting warm. “I’ll pail you again in the morning.”
                John couldn’t help but brighten a little. “Hot tub sex?”
                “No, John,” Karkat said gently. “We’re going to have sex on the
moon.”
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