Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/719439.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Gamzee_Makara/Karkat_Vantas, One-sided_Karkat_Vantas/Terezi_Pyrope
  Character:
      Karkat_Vantas, Gamzee_Makara
  Additional Tags:
      Humanstuck, Shower_Sex, mentions_of_domestic_abuse, mentions_of_drug
      abuse
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-03-13 Words: 3324
****** Tight-Rope Act ******
by krazieLeylines
Summary
     You don’t want to walk down the aisle with Gamzee, don’t want to read
     fucking handwritten vows and build a house up from the ground with
     him and border it with a white picket fence. When you think about
     forevers and happily ever afters, you think of Terezi, not this guy.
     But when he looks at you just the right way, with those blue eyes
     that are almost purple and that lop-sided smile, like a puppy in the
     rain (even when it’s his fucking fault he’s out there in the first
     place), you don’t think you’d turn him down if he asked you to just,
     like, stay with him in a fort of blankets and pillows for the rest of
     your lives. Even if it meant never getting to raise those two point
     five kids.
You shouldn’t be so surprised every time, but here you are.
It’s only four in the morning, and everyone in the household is still snoozing
in their beds like they should. The only reason you’re awake is because your
traitorous fucking insomniac body decided that it didn’t need the recommended
nine hours of sleep.
You had tossed back and forth in what you call the most comfortable mattress in
existence (for sarcasm purposes only, that fucker is as hard as a rock and
keeps growing suspicious lumps in it that you’re honestly a little too
frightened to investigate) for about half an hour before you realized that you
weren’t going to be getting any more rest.
The kitchen had seemed like the next best bet. If sleep continued to elude you
like the teasing bounding buck it was, then you’d just drown your sorrows in
caffeine and hope to God that you can avoid falling asleep in class again.
As you’re pouring the sweet poison into that ridiculous squatting crab mug
Terezi had made you back in like, sixth grade (it should be illegal for absurd
color junkie partially blind girls to attend art class), some weird impulse
takes over you, and you glance over at the back door.
You fill the last half of the mug up with cream and add your customary seven
spoonfuls of sugar into the coffee first because, duh, you have fucking
priorities, and then you go to kick the door open.
He doesn’t even startle, just goes on sleeping, and all you can see of him is
all that ridiculous hair spilling out from under the low branches of Kankri’s
favorite red bleeding heart bush (what a lame name for a flower, sure it
describes it well enough but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). It seems
like everyone you know could sleep through a hurricane and then there’s you,
crouched in the corner of your house with a cross screaming to yourself
“there’s no place like home”.
“Gamzee,” you hiss, and only then does he awaken, slow and fluid like he was
waking up all on his own.
There is some more movement, and then his dirty face peeks out at you, his
clown face paint streaked with tear lines.
Whatever had hurt him (and you know very well who) is the last thing on his
mind right now. When he recognizes you (which takes a little longer than what
you think is normal), his whole expression lights up, changing from a groggy
half-wit look to a sleepy smile.
“Hey, best friend,” he says, his voice even more gravelly in the ungodly hours
of the day, and just hearing that underlining growl sends your heart in a
painful twist.
If someone asked you to characterize your relationship to this brainrot
lowlife, you’d have absolutely no idea where to even start. Well, you’d
probably just make up a convenient and flattering lie about how you put up with
him out of all the charity of your heart. “Friends with benefits” would just
fall flat of any sort of truth. Honestly, most of the time you feel like he
uses you, putting you into the role of the caretaker he’s never had. So
whatever sort of weird Oedipus complex he has is just part of the package deal,
and you’ve never once tried to deny him of it. You’ve never denied him
anything.
“I gave you a key for a fucking reason, you soggy ass,” you snarl back, your
words biting. They have to be. Otherwise your concern would shine through so
transparently that you’d have to stare apathetically at a wall for the next
twenty-four hours to feel anything close to okay again. “Do I have to show you
how to use keys again? Tip one: they go into locks.”
He chuckles, dragging himself up onto his feet. “It don’t feel right just
barging into your house like I’m a member of the Brady Bunch,” he explains.
Gamzee needs you, needs you in a way that is all-encompassing and has middle
school health teachers screaming “wolf” and waving their flow charts of the
stages of domestic abuse like huge red flags. If Gamzee even knew how much you
needed him in return, it would throw your entire tight-rope balancing act over
the edge, over off into dangerous commitment waters.
You don’t want to walk down the aisle with Gamzee, don’t want to read fucking
handwritten vows and build a house up from the ground with him and border it
with a white picket fence. When you think about forevers and happily ever
afters, you think of Terezi, not this guy.
But when he looks at you just the right way, with those blue eyes that are
almost purple and that lop-sided smile, like a puppy in the rain (even when
it’s his fucking fault he’s out there in the first place), you don’t think
you’d turn him down if he asked you to just, like, stay with him in a fort of
blankets and pillows for the rest of your lives. Even if it meant never getting
to raise those two point five kids.
“Yeah, yeah, well, let’s just get you cleaned up,” you say once he’s done
wiping a fair amount of the dirt off of his knees and thighs. He’s covered in
the stuff, and you can’t stand how he slept out here in the mud with all the
worms that have probably made Kankri’s garden into their own personal squishy
slimy insect duplex, how he’s probably more than aware of this fact and doesn’t
even care because he’s still partially stoned.
If anyone in your family knew what Gamzee really was, what he went out and did,
which is more or less everything your parents have warned you against since you
hit puberty, then they’d hate him. You hate him, too, but lucky for him, you
love him more.
The two of you slink off to the shower, after you give him a dirty look and he
almost forgets to take off his ratty shoes before trekking into the kitchen
again.
As soon as the door clicks locked behind you, the clothes fly off. You hate the
rags he wears, the nasty fabrics with their holes and tears and fringed edges,
not even trying to make a fashion statement, just out of necessity, and your
heart hurts, hurts, hurts…
There is nothing sexy about Gamzee’s naked body. He has too many bones and not
enough skin to cover it, and absolutely no muscles or fat or anything to act as
a barrier between the two. The darkness of his skin does little to hide the
telltale signs of bruising: on his shoulders, and sides, and all down the
hunched curve of his spine. All of it in places where they think no one would
ever see, but you see, and you hate them, you hate them with a white pain in
your head that only your lack of a gun can keep from blowing them away, the
both of them.
You know you’re not a looker, either. Too much sweets and not enough exercise
leave you kind of plump, like the Pilsbury Doughboy but with an uglier face,
covered in dark ugly spots and a round ogre nose, but when Gamzee looks at you,
when his eyes roam your misshapen figure and he beams like a kid at a fireworks
show, you feel like you belong on Men’s Health weekly.
There is nothing rushed about being with Gamzee, he moves so lazily all the
time, like he’s caught in some slow motion action movie scene, and everyone
around him can’t help but tick down to his tentative pace.
It really shouldn’t, but it makes sex damn near mind-blowing.
At the beginning, anyone watching wouldn’t even describe it as sexual. You
maneuver Gamzee into the shower as he begins kissing the side of your neck,
having to bend over nearly into a V to do so, but he never complains.
You shouldn’t be doing this, you shouldn’t be doing this with him, here, under
your parent’s roof, with your celibate brother right down the hall. But you
know you only think these things because it makes it hotter, you couldn’t stop
the first time he got his hands on you, and you’re not going to stop now.
Gamzee is an addiction, the first one you’ve ever had, and you have no idea how
to cope.
When he places his hand on your spine and slowly strokes down towards your ass
with the most happy-go-lucky look on his face, like your butt is his pot of
gold, you don’t want to cope. You want to drown in these feelings, these
desires to smother this guy with as much love as he can stomach, until it’s
pouring out of his every orifice, as if you could actually override all the
damage that’s already been done, giving one kiss for every one he’s missed, one
more for every tear he’s shed.
“Gamzee,” you say, arching your body as his lips press to the hallow of your
neck, and again, “Gamzee,” when he does it again, lingering so that you can
feel the puff, puff, of his hot breath.
“Karkat,” he murmurs back, your name muffled against the skin of your throat
before he pulls away.
It’s pathetic that you can tell the old bruises from the new ones, not even by
color or anything, just from memory. You find them all, this one here under his
ribs, and that one, to the left of his belly button, and you squat down so that
you can get your mouth on them all. You kiss a few, suck softly at others, and
you know it kind of hurts as much as it feels good, and you silently apologize
for the pain as you sneak a hand down over his hipbone, and he sighs more than
he gasps.
You stand back up, and now that the formalities are out of the way, it’s time
to get a little work done. Grabbing a bar of soap, you roll it between your
palms until your hands are a mess of suds. The bar you discard for the moment,
and you use your palms to rub the soap into Gamzee’s skin.
It takes forever to get him clean like this, it would be much easier to use a
cloth, or to have him do it himself, but every time you get your bare hands on
him he makes this sound, this wheezing inhale like he’s having a religious
experience, and once again you are unable to deny him. You are his savior, his
lord, his temple, and he comes almost every morning at four am to pray.
Besides, having a rich as fuck dad means that you have an endless hot water
supply, and when Gamzee actually mewls with joy when you turn the temperature
up, it’s worth every last penny.
This time you barely even ghost over his wounds, and if that means leaving some
grime on him, then so be it. The cleanliness never lasts with Gamzee, and it’s
been a long time since you’ve cared about keeping him hygienic. This moment
will be more than enough.
When your hands find their way to his dick, saving that part for last, he’s
half-hard, and so are you, and it’s not about hunger so much as it’s a
readiness, and wow, you are getting way too poetic about this, but you can’t
help it, not when you reach a cautious finger to the base as if this is the
first time you’ve touched him like this, and he actually sucks in a breath that
lasts long after you’ve pulled away.
You open your mouth to ask him if he would like to continue this in your
bedroom, in a more horizontal way, but then you swallow your words because you
know his answer already, that would be too rushed for Gamzee’s liking. He
always pulls away like a wounded animal if you take things too quickly.
Not because he actually is afraid of you doing anything, of course. It’s just a
reflex, one that helps him to survive, and you’re not going to be the one to
train it out of him.
You clean his genitals, because there is no way you’re going to let him fuck
you with a dirty cock. You do it as slowly as everything else, coating your
hands with soap and rubbing up and around the shaft, down to his balls, back
further towards his ass. The whole time you watch his hips for the tremble you
know is coming, and it hitches your breath anyway when it happens.
“Best friend,” he says, soft and low, that velvety dark voice like those Jazz
musicians from the 20’s, and it never fails to make you feel a little more than
just platonic for him. You almost ask him to stop, because you can’t do this,
you can’t fall in lust with this broken man the same way you’ve fallen in love
with him, that’s the last straw and soon you’ll be ass deep in muddy waters.
But when he talks to you like this, like the two of you are sharing the world’s
most prized secret, the blood pours down to the core of you, and you’re left
with hardly any to think with.
“Shoosh,” you return, and you press flush up against him and he bends down a
bit until his erection is pressing to your inner thigh and yours to his.
“Shoosh,” he echoes, as if it was a joke that was funny and maybe a little sad,
too. The hunger fades.
His mouth finds your neck again as you rock against one another, and again,
it’s so slow, it’s so devoid of any urgency, you might as well be dancing. All
you want to do is make him feel good, and he feels the same way. Why he feels
like you need it is beyond you, you have a loving, supportive family, great
friends, a girl who might someday be your girlfriend, and then after that your
everything, but nevertheless he pities you as much as you pity him. Maybe he
can see the hole (the hole that shouldn’t be there because honestly, you’re a
spoiled brat) and he knows in the omniscient way he has that he’s the only one
who can fill it.
Arms wrapped around him, holding him close, you touch him all over, deftly
avoiding any spot that’s too sore to feel pleasure, as you feel the friction
building up in your own body.
Gamzee, in turn, plants his hands right on either side of your ass cheeks,
pulls your hips up so that they’re welded to his, straddling his waist, and
that you have to move at the same time. His warm thighs feel like the warm
melty butter on the toasted bread of heaven, and you stifle any sounds you
can’t hold back into his shoulder.
Time stretches out infinitely, as you ride the waves of pleasure together,
touching and exploring and kissing each other in a way that is almost playful
and shy. You can feel the muscles of his thighs twitch and contract with the
double strain of keeping himself upright and holding back his pleasure, and
every vibrating movement of it against the length of you sends you off into a
new stretch of ecstasy, and it feels so good that it’s nearly painful.
Again, you open your mouth to suggest a change of scenery, and you know he’d be
more than willing to go along with you this time. But perhaps you’ve let it
drag on too long, because you’re loathe to pull away from the heat of his inner
legs for a single second.
His finger creeps as you ponder, prodding you right against your asshole, and
you scream hollowly into his chest. Just the memory of him inside you, of
stretching you out until you were positive that he was a part of you, is enough
to haze your vision for a moment. The tip nudges past the first ring of muscle,
and then just teases at the sensitive flesh there, not daring any further. He
knows that he doesn’t have to, that the imprint of the flashback he’s provided
for you is stuck in your head. Your imagination does all the rest for you.
As the pressure builds, you have to try even harder to muffle yourself, nearly
gnawing at the skin of his neck, but he just moans breathily into your ear, so
unashamed that you envy him a little.
Every once in a while, you’ll feel your lungs clench and your throat close up,
and you’re deathly afraid that he’ll pull away, or slow down, that the rocking
will stop before either of you has had your release, and you don’t know why you
always feel this way, every time the two of you do this together, but he always
senses it.
“Shoosh,” he murmurs again into your ear, his voice not so much laced but
drowning in that sensual growl, and then, “Breathe.”
Closing your eyes, you focus on the feeling of the air moving through your
nose, forcing it to slow.
“That’s it, that’s my Karkat,” he says proudly, and you have the perfect witty
response but his finger wiggles inside of you, and you forget how to think.
You’ve long mastered the art of coming together, your bodies just synchronize
to the point that each thrust moves the both of you with equal intensity in
pleasure, until you reach the peak as one, the world blurring white behind the
safety of your eyelids as you allow Gamzee his privacy.
He can’t hold back the moan, though, and you feel the vibrations of it in your
entire body, and you swear that the aftereffects it creates are even sweeter
than the main course.
Your legs decide that they are unable to hold up your girth any longer, and
Gamzee helps you down to sit on the floor of the tub, folding his long legs
underneath him as he finds a comfortable enough position to join you.
Allowing the water to wash away the mess and slight soreness in your muscles,
you rest against Gamzee, half crawling onto his lap.
“I love you,” you tell him.
“I know, brother,” is his response, “Never was able to wrap my brain around
that little gold nugget, but I guess there are some miracles left in this
world, huh?”
With all the exhaustion taking over in your body, you’re unable to correctly
swat him, but you try anyway. How ironic it is that now you feel like you could
fall into a coma easily, how ironic and how cruel. “You could just say ditto,
or something,” you complain.
“Didn’t think I’d have to state the obvious,” Gamzee jokes, and then, “Love
you, Karkat. Love you more than you can fathom.”
You snort. You’re becoming less and less sure of that second part with each
day.
(And maybe, in a few years, when you find Terezi under the bleachers with her
hands halfway down Dave Strider’s pants and you tell Gamzee, you aren’t really
in your right mind, so you can’t be blamed when she ends up with a black eye
and he ends up with a six month sentence.)
(And maybe you truly meant it when you promised your parents and brother and
friends that you would have nothing more to do with the guy.)
(And maybe, just maybe, you didn’t know that you would have a moment of
weakness, and end up being the first person he saw when he got out. But you do,
and you are, and the look in his eyes when he recognizes you absolves you of
any guilt you felt. And that only worries you a little.)
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