Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/4665945. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Homestuck Relationship: Dave_Strider/Karkat_Vantas Character: Dave_Strider, Karkat_Vantas, Rose_Lalonde, Other_Character_Tags_to_Be Added Additional Tags: 30_Day_OTP_Porn_Challenge, Naked_Cuddling, Eventual_Smut, Other Additional_Tags_to_Be_Added, This_isn't_nearly_porny_enough, naked kissing, discontnued_bc_i_just_discovered_im_lowkey_sex-repulsed, sorry_: /// Stats: Published: 2015-10-04 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 2690 ****** How To Kill Three Years: A Expository Guide By Dave Strider And Karkat Vantas ****** by RockYouPie Summary In Which A Mutant Blooded Troll And His Interspecies Mate Struggle To Find A Balance Of Culture In Which They Can Both Agree While Also Struggling With Seemingly Everlasting Boredom -- This is pointless practice porn with the complex thought patterns of Dave Strider's pointless rambles. Please, enjoy. -- Written for the 30 day nsfw challenge -- Notes Witness me See the end of the work for more notes ***** Pull Out ***** Chapter Notes This feels like a rev up to a major story, not some porny smut thing. Fuck. Witness me. Trolls are a beautiful if not complex and confusing species. Rose would agree with you, a lot of people would agree with you. Hell, you’re pretty sure that even the majority of the trolls you’re kicking it with would nod along with you to some extent. Your name is Dave Strider, and you really love trolls. More accurately, you love one troll. Which, in retrospect, sounds really sappy and unmannerly when said in any context. You’re not sure when you fell in love with him, or why out of everyone, is was him you ended up head over heels for. Even with such slim pickings, you couldn’t blame that factor. It might have been the way the two of you fit together on the couch. Him reading a book, while you went off on your spiels while an absent grey hand combed through your hair, an occasional grunt sounding off when you paused. It might have been the way he gave you the affirmative that he was listening. That he made sure that even in something so offhanded and simple, that he cared enough to let you know it mattered. In return you let him settle his weight beside you when you were about to turn in for the night. You’d let him get into your space, wrap his arm around your waist and prattle off his half-hearted whims about how badass Alternia was. The other space goats up in this joint weren’t all for listening about the phantasmal ideology of an across the board mutant, about a society that would have him blazed at the stake. Only, he didn’t talk about that. He talked about how the sky wasn’t such an endless expanse of black, with pimples dotted around its prepubescent face filled with millions of assholes that resembled alternate versions of himself. He also liked to tell you about how he was going to be the next thresh-prince, that the idea was dumb and farfetched, but somehow, he was still going to do it. Really though, he didn’t talk about his post-game hopes for the future. You think it makes him sad, or angry, you’re still not having the best time figuring out the difference. Rose thinks that Karkat channels his sadness into anger. Rose thinks a lot of things. She also says a lot of things. Karkat says that he’d never doubt the two of you being ‘human related’. Part of you thinks that he understands half the human orientated stuff you toss his way, and he’s only letting it fly over his head to piss you off. Which is fair, considering the debt you have to pay off from being a capital asshole for the first few months of this trip. He tries to tell you that he was also being a major asshole, but a lot of the time you can’t help but feel you invalidated a lot of things he cared about. That’s probably why while thinking back to how you two used to act towards each other, makes you feel like you’re in a trance. It’s as if they’re memories that were constructed to fill blank spaces where there wasn’t enough happening. None of it feels real. Everything that happened before the game tends to pale in comparison to the life you’re living now. Maybe you just had a really dull existence prior. But then you remember that dull and better left forgotten are very different things. You’re blazing down trails at the speed of light towards your impending doom, and life is still better than ever. If that doesn’t say something about you, you’re not sure what kind of tool you turned into. Everything feels more familiar now, more than it did when you lived in Huston. When you walked down the halls of your apartment, you were never sure what’d be waiting for you around the next bend. On the meteor though, it feels like you’ve ran your hands over the same steel plated walls over a hundred times. You’re able to go down a corridor and know full well what petrified horror terror you’ll be coming face-to-glass-to-tentacle with. Karkat and yourself have started naming them. The one down the west stairwell is named Geromy. The dude still refuses to call him that, but honestly who the fuck names a terrifying tentacle monster Wesley? Apparently your Matefriend. Boysprite. The point is, life is good. Life feels good. Before, you thought life was alright, but something always felt balled up in your stomach, wanting to bust out and shine bright like those diamonds that were shining so bright in the sky. And here you are now, zooming through the sky almost like it was meant to be. When you still lived in Huston, everything felt cramped, like it was a puzzle that some asshole kid was just forcing together because they were too impatient and void of skill to keep it together. Sometimes you wonder if you were that kid, and if that kid was you. Now, you’d probably be thinking that if you weren’t so busy trying to wake your arm up. Karkat gets clingy post-coatis. You get clingy post-coatis. Things tend to turn into one big disgusting mosh pit of conjoint and equally trialed baby koala impressions. A lot of the time it’s you getting the short end of the stick, opening your eyes halfway through the night (?) to find one nubby horn getting up in your nasal passages while your arm is wheezing and would be more happily amputated than made to suffer another second under the whole of Karkat’s weight. The dude is built similar to a dancer or a gymnast, firm everywhere and flexible as a sheet of plastic. He doesn’t look totally human though. With sharp edges and corners sticking out at inhuman angles, his chest has some bulk to it though, which seems to be a universal attractant. His chest is on your arm. It’s fun how these things work out. Fun fact about Karkat, he hates being woken up. Once, near the start of this road trip, he’d been more ornery than usual because of some turbulence experienced while heading through a dreambubble. That was possibly the most you’d ever been impressed with his vocal chords, and you’ve heard him get pretty loud. Seeing no other way out though, you still tug at your arm in a futile attempt at freedom. You’ve already accepted and resigned yourself to this fate and to be honest you’re a little confused on why you’re even still trying to wrangle your way out. Then again, Karkat is nothing if not a knight in the most blinding, shimmering, headache inducing armor ever forged from your own anguish. “Your arm’s digging into my lung plate you limp panned shit flinger,” Karkat’s voice is muffled by the pillow his face has been buried in for approximately the last thirty minutes. Dude fucking loves pillows. It’s the same routine as always. He’ll probably be more grumpy for the next couple of days and fulfill his apparent destiny as Rose’s successor in the ‘let’s be passive-aggressive towards Dave’ armada. “Even half asleep you’re keen as ever,” Somehow you manage to mumble back a response, tacking on “sashay to the right a bit,” His head of hair shifts so his cheek is pressing into the pillow giving him a weird intent across one side of his face and pushing the other side up. The fact that you managed to hold in a laugh might be you’re greatest accomplishment ever. “Dave, this is a masterpiece of a sleeping position, dare I say a work forged through the angst of fifty Troll Leonardo DiCaprio’s and his primordial successors.  I’m not doing shit to compromise the serendipity that is the comfort I’m feeling for once on your inane human sleeping slate, just pull it out,” “That’s what she said,” You reply oh so maturely, giving it a go but the pins shooting up your arm are just blaring white noise all over your body. With a small shift you turn your head, blinking hard. “Dude, seriously just scoot a little over and we’ll be tucked in and tidy,” The body resting atop your poor bare arm seems to get heavier and you’re starting to think he’s doing this intentionally. “I’m not shimmying, cha cha sliding, bringing it back now ya’ll, salsaing, gyrating in a ventricular motion or taking part in any sort of rightward movement as of right now. Just. Pull. Out,” “But-” “It’s a very simple concept, just pull back, then we’re all saved from this primal shenanifuck, can you accomplish this simple task for your poor presently incapacitated Matesprite!” “Whoa hey, don’t yell at me, you’re the one who decided my triceps would be a good place to hit the hay, now you just gotta stand up and deal with your life choices,” “I’m not yelling!” “Bro,” “Just pull out!” “Karkat,” “DAVE I DON’T FEEL YOU RETRACTING YOURSELF FROM BENEITH ME. JUST FUCKING. PULL. OUT!” “JESUS FUCK, ALRIGHT!” You pull your arm back and dislocate your shoulder. You’re pretty sure that at least half the meteor could hear the yell you let out upon doing so. You need to remind yourself you love him. ===============================================================================   Rose meets you in the common room the next morning after you’d made your resolve to give Karkat some space for a day or so. It really should not be a surprise when the first thing out of her mouth is a quip about walls having ears. You tell her to fuck off but you both still end up settling on the couch with your various blends of mystery coffee, sipping yours a few times and announcing that it tastes like shit. Rose and yourself switch mugs, you like hers better, she likes yours better. “One year left, Dave,” she mentions, as her legs drape over yours on the sofa. “It almost feels like we’re supposed to be stuck in this astronomical limbo forever, it’s strange to think it’s coming to an end… I think I’ll try finishing my book, it seems good a time as any,” Her foot bumps against yours, you bump back in retaliation. “Dumblethulhu?” you ask over the rim of your mug, minding the jostled of her nudges. “I was thinking something more of my own personal creation. While I have a vast appreciation for the semblance of Dumbledore surrendering himself in full to lord Cthulhu, it feels more rewarding to devise my own array of various esoteric literature featuring homoerotic undertone,” Rose purses her lips gently, she looks thoughtful, but you can’t take her seriously in this context, you can almost never take Rose seriously. “You?” “I think Karkat’s got the poetic homoerotic flag sprung up for the both of us,” you mutter into your cup, taking a small drink from it. “I was more so inquiring as to what your plans were to stay afloat in this tepid sea of ever endangering boredom,” Her eyebrows raise slightly, “Though that is good to know,” “Right, yeah, one whole year to keep battening down the hatches and marinate in the anticipation of our impending demises,” She gives you a look at that, you look back as best you can. She’s obviously still waiting for an answer. Your lips thin as you breath out a long sigh, shrugging one shoulder. “I have no idea,”     ***** Elaborate Wood - Naked Kiss ***** Chapter Notes It's almost like you can't tell this is supposed to be smut eventually Humans are a delicate species, with soft edges and squishy bits that feel as though they’re ready to give way under your hands. Kanaya would probably agree with you, and she’s probably had her own fair share of encounters with the notoriety that mammalian flesh has to uphold. Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you have an increasing fascination with how one pointedly be-speckled alien still lacks the capacity to sense when it’s time to lose the shades and pick up the tome titled ‘how to not be an inept matesprit’. Boyfriend. You’re still not too clear on what you’re collectively calling this arrangement, so you suppose boyfriend is the word to presently use. This needy infantile being you’ve resolved to call your significant other, has been trying to awaken you with the power of pure devotion, and bolstered dedication for the past ten minutes. You’re aware that he’s staring at you; you know that’s what he’s been doing for a while now while you rested under the covers of his horizontal sleeping platform. It’s probably creepy. The novels that you found yourself skimming over half-heartedly nowadays depicted this whole exchange to be a lot more whimsical. Frankly, those might have been the half-baked wishes of a pre-pubescent wriggler barely past his second pupation, but still. Maybe there would have been more fireworks if one little detail had been taken into account. The abysmal dunderfuck still had his shades sitting pretty on the bridge of his nose, looking as though he had no intention to remove them any time soon, to stare at you with unrestrained adoration and shit. No, none of that, just the blank stare of gold brimmed metal and the cold surface of reflective glass. Un- fucking-believable, you have to do everything yourself. That’s nothing entirely new of course. Ouh-rah, he’s finally going in for what you think might be a kiss, took him long enough to get around to filling out with some romantic theatrics, that was something you could get behind. You’d be the stricken aghast maiden who had the audacity to spin that thread wheel. Honestly, who did she even think she was? Somehow you doubt that someone of her status would ever even consider the possibility of partaking in something resembling labor. She was royalty for fucks sake. The legitimacy of these tales seem more weaved out of the proverbial hoaxes’ asshole, than anything else. But, Dave assures you that they’re a historical part of Earth’s history when it came to literature. It was with this kiss you would be awakened from your apparent absurdly long nap. Though your credibility on the general nuances these tombs contain, you’re almost completely sure that this needle pricked insolent wasn’t jostled into the waking world with a hand also, as Dave had once so eloquently put it once, making its way downtown. The hand was chilly, probably because out of the two of you, it was you this time around who’d hogged all the covers. It was this chill that spiked some primal instinct and caused you to lash out with your own hand and grab the offending wrist. “What the flighty frolicking feather-beasts are you aiming for here, Strider?” You ask, flipping one eyelid open while freely allowing yourself to glower at him. “If it’s any consolation, I knew you were awake and I wasn’t trying to project any sort of somnophilia onto you,” he has the decency to stage whisper, but not the same decorum to piss off and cease feeling up your chest like it’s a new pelt brought in from the hunt. The action causes your arm to move along with his wrist, seeing as you’ve still got your fingers latched around it. “Glad to hear you were just waiting for this trip to end before speaking up about that. What do you want.” Your own hand tightens around his moving appendage in an attempt to get him to cut it out. Luckily he gets the message, finally shoving off and settling down beside you like a well-meaning fellow. Oh yeah ,what a catch. “Sorry, sorry,” You huff at his half-assed apology, closing your eyes again after allowing him to plant a solid one on you and slide an arm around your waist before you both press closer to each other. For trolls, with thicker skin and a higher affinity for retaining heat, the cold of the meteor was mundane. Yet, for humans, it became a little bit more tricky once they were stripped of their supposedly snuggly god robes. You find yourself  maintaining the role of sentimental romantic in this relationship by not minding all that much, and Dave maintains his title of spontaneous train wreck by explaining to you his elaborate theory behind morning wood.  End Notes You have just witnessed me Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!