Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1099183.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Kankri_Vantas/Karkat_Vantas
  Character:
      Karkat_Vantas, Kankri_Vantas
  Additional Tags:
      Fluff_and_Smut
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-12-24 Words: 3005
****** Winter Flames ******
by Ihlamur
Summary
     It's the middle of winter and neither Karkat nor Kankri wants to get
     out of bed.
Notes
     I'm aware that this fic depicts sexual relations between an adult and
     a character who is canonically a minor. It has been several years
     since I published it and it is no longer indicative of my present
     interests. This account as a whole is rather inactive lately, but I'm
     leaving this note here as a reminder that fictional adult/minor
     relationships do have an impact on reality and I encourage those of
     you who found this fic while looking for Karkri material to examine
     your reasons for wanting to read about romantic chemistry between the
     two.
                                 Winter Flames
                                      oOo
The first thing you are aware of is your breath, chilled by the dawn as it
twirls against your face. And his face is still close to yours when you open
your eyes. Once they've adjusted, the half-light tells you he's asleep, but not
how well he's sleeping.
You find yourself wishing it were a little brighter.
The curtains are drawn over the single wide window across the room; a sliver of
light gleams quietly from the crack between the drapes, fizzling into gloomy
nothingness just a few feet beyond. You're too warm to move.
Too warm and too naked, you amend a second later, and memories of the previous
night render you even warmer as the blood rushes to your face. Where are my
pants?
There's no point getting out of bed to search for them; it's cold and he's a
light sleeper—light enough to be awoken by the creak of a bedspring. This you
know from personal experience, but you also know that you'd rather lie beside
him for days than be the first thing he sees when he wakes. Not this morning.
Why are you even awake in the morning?
What time was it when we passed out? Three? Four?
You can't have slept for more than an hour or two. Let him rest a bit
longer, you think resignedly, eyes returning to his motionless figure. Even the
rise and fall of his chest is hard to make out when he's curled up on his side.
You remember how chilly your own breath felt to you on waking, think of how
wildly relieved you were to find him beside you, and a wave of such heady
affection courses through you that it's all you can do not to snuggle closer.
Sleep tight, you fuck.
Though come right down to it, I guess I'm the fuck. You can't help it—you let
out a low laugh. You're going to be shaking off intrusive thoughts of last
night for a long time.
The response is immediate. "Karkat?"
It's too late to slam your eyes shut, but it'll take a while for him to see
anything... You stay silent and as still as you can possibly be with your heart
racing a mile a minute, hoping against hope that he's still well under, he was
just talking in his sleep and now he's drifted off again and you have nothing
to worry about for at least another hour. Two hours. Three. Let him sleep the
day away if he can.
But even through the pounding in your ears, you can sense the change in his
breathing. His face is too close for wishful thinking. Too close for comfort.
You wish it was closer.
"Go to sleep", you whisper back, your throat painfully tight. Part of it is the
fact that both of you decided to sleep butt-naked in midwinter—blankets or no,
it's freezing and you really should have known better, but you had neither the
ability nor the inclination to think about that sort of thing back there, of
course. And of course, part of it is just you.
He's never that loud.
"It's just past dawn, you have plenty of time. Go back to sleep." You turn away
in a great rustle of blankets that seems deafening in the stillness of the
morning. "I'm gonna try sleeping a bit longer myself, so—"
"I've been awake for at least half an hour", he murmurs, and he sounds like it
too. His voice carries no trace of sleep whatsoever. "Didn't want to get up.
Frankly, you don't sound all that drowsy yourself."
It's so much easier to get all soft-eyed over him when he's asleep. "Yeah,
well. You know I'm not much for anything longer than a nap. Actually, I—" I'll
freeze my globes off if I get out now, what am I saying? "I guess I'll just
freshen up now, you know? No point lazing the fuck around if I'm done
sleeping—"
"Karkat..."
His arms take you by surprise, the quick kiss he drops on your neck even more
so. "Don't move yet", he says quietly into your bare back. "It's warm here and
I don't want you to go. Let's... let's just stay like this forever."
"Forever?" you snort.
"Or until one of us gets hungry, whichever comes first", he mumbles. In that
cold room, his breath on your skin feels fever-hot, the live warmth of his body
finding its way into your very bloodstream and infusing it with red fire. He
chuckles, and you can feel it everywhere from your kneecaps to your fingernails
to the pit of your stomach.
It's still too dark to see clearly and your back is turned to him, but you
fight down your stupid, much-too-content smile nonetheless; he might hear it in
your voice. When you give him a noncommittal grunt, you can swear he does
anyway.
Who cares about my voice when he can feel my heart beating?
"Are you feeling alright?" he asks presently. It comes out as a sigh against
the nape of your neck and warm as you are, you have to suppress a not entirely
unpleasant shiver. As for his question, well... you're too comfortable to snap
at him, too aware of what you've done to work up any real mortification. But
it's still convenient to dismiss the new heat on your face as such.
"I'm fine. I wasn't hatched yesterday."
"Indeed you weren't", he says idly, and you are suddenly very conscious of how
far down his hands are. "My apologies. Are you cold right now?"
You are many things right now, including a little too sensitive all over—and
with good reason—but cold is not one of them. "No way in hell." A hair's
breadth of a pause. "Do we have to talk now? My throat's too—" too sore to
speak, you were going to say, but something pulls the words back into your
mouth, like a fishhook on a short line. Why does that embarrass me? Why that of
all things?
"Ah, I'm sorry about that." You know he isn't. Honestly, neither are you.
You remain in silence for some time after, trying not to think of the way his
touch seems to tingle on your skin without moving so much as a muscle, trying
very hard not to think about the searing heat of his body pressed along the
length of yours. Trying not to feel your heartbeat picking up speed with every
breath you take in, every breath he lets out. Trying to relax as much as you
can, to give the impression that you're exhausted and sleepy and completely
spent—no one could blame you after all, not in the wake of recent events, but—
A hand finds yours under the heavy gray blanket and closes over it, the fingers
settling between yours with a familiar ease that you will never find so
completely in anyone else. Two sweeps still separate your bodies, and possibly
two million lie between your minds, but you know your hands already resemble
his as much as your face, right down to the messy tousle of your hair.
You will never know anything or anyone as fully as you know him. This certainty
is as achingly sweet as it is frightening.
"I'm not hungry yet", you say at last, and then you raise your entwined hands
and press his knuckles to your lips. Who cares? It's chilly outside and he's
just so warm. He's also incredibly winsome when taken by surprise.
His arms tighten around you. "I kind of am."
"Really?" There's no keeping the disappointment out of your voice. "Wanna get
something to eat, then?" It's cold and I don't know where my pants are, you
want to add, but manage to hold your tongue. There's a brief lull before he
speaks and a shuffle of some sort behind you, followed by another kiss, on your
earlobe this time.
"I didn't say it was food I needed."
It's more his choice of words than anything else that causes you to groan. "Of
all the ways you could have put it, why the royal wet ass-eating—"
"Admittedly, I was somewhat disarmed at the moment", he murmurs, giving your
hand a brief squeeze. And just like that, he has the advantage again. You give
him an aggrieved sigh because you will not allow yourself to smile.
Kankri.
"Won't you turn this way, Karkat?"
Your hesitation is perfunctory, though it's light enough to see his face now
and you're not quite sure if you want to just yet. The uncertainty only
increases when you see the sparkle in his half-lidded eyes. Even his eyelashes
look familiar.
If you thought you'd come to terms with last night before this...
It's not like it was the first time, you tell yourself, but that somehow makes
it worse. There's something about the reality, the nearness of him on this
wintry grey morning that's almost painful to think of. And it's that very hint
of not-pain that keeps you thinking, keeps your gaze steady on his face until
finally, he closes his eyes and breaks into a grin that's more sheepish than
mischievous.
The hand not tight in yours trails a leisurely path up to your face—casually
setting off a hundred dancing flames beneath your skin—and there it rests,
pulse against pulse, until you mutter some drivel about having the worst
evening breath. But your eyes are fluttering shut already. It's just been a few
hours. I can take evening breath. I can take anything right now. I can take the
fucking end of the world.
His lips brush your forehead, then your nose, then your chin. That's
all. Slowly, gently, they trace every curve of your face until you can feel
nothing but him. That's all. With your vision shuttered into blackness, every
touch becomes the universe, every kiss a newborn star...His arms are the rushes
of a blazing fire; his breaths, smoke.
Against the shell of your reddening ear, he whispers your name like a prayer.
That's all.
It's just my hand he's holding. It's just my name he's saying.
Why is my heart beating so fast?
Just before you can throw what's left of your dignity to the winds and
complain, those lips find yours at last. Your free arm has already snaked its
way around his back, fingers disappearing into his hair; these are parts you
have rehearsed to perfection: slow and rapid, measured and impulsive, your
movements complement each other in unbroken tandem.
You are as different as you are alike, and it is this knowledge that burns in
the space where your bodies meet.
He may let his hands rove over every inch of your skin, his tongue not far
behind, but it is you who slings an impatient leg over his waist. And while he
sighs into the hollow of your neck, you have other places to seek—places that
are still tender from last night, places that you have marked and mapped and
staked your claim over countless times. You know that all you have to do is
lift the edge of the blanket and every single one of these spots will be yours
to see, purpling in the aftermath of your relentless attentions, loud and proud
against the pale grey of his skin like ink on canvas.
But if Kankri's hiss of approval is any indication, you know your way even with
your eyes closed. The shiver that runs up the inside of his thigh is impossible
to miss; or is it just you, you whose well-scarred body mirrors his down to the
last bite mark? You who can read the language of his limbs just as well as your
own?
Fingertips begin to dip southward with new deliberation and when they finally
touch you where the throbbing is most insistent, you can only gasp.
It's hot, even in this icy room with the curtains shutting out most of the
daylight it's hot, his lips and the fervid warmth between his legs setting you
alight under that enormous blanket, pulling sweat into the crook of your elbows
and the bend of your knees. You don't plan to fall open so easily when he rolls
you onto your back, not even when he climbs on top, but it's pointless. Your
legs part almost before he's even laid a hand on them.
There's a whoosh and the black beyond your eyelids seems to grow more solid;
you open your eyes to total darkness. "It's just the blanket", comes his voice,
muffled against your stomach and ticklish enough to make you squirm. "Thought
we'd be better off like this."
You'd agree if you had any words left to agree with. All you can muster up is a
faint hum of satisfaction when you're pulled into a kiss again; further down,
his fingers are trailing aimless patterns around the base of your bulge,
occasionally dipping below as if to remind you of how wet you are. You need no
reminding. With his rhythm still so slow and your heartbeat pooling at your
groin, there is little else you can think of.
Not even though you know this routine by heart. It's your place to flail, his
to watch you with a calm that nobody should be capable of at a time like
this—watch you glare, watch you moan, watch you come completely undone just by
the touch of a hand that might as well be your own. You may teeter on the edge
for as long as he pleases and he will still go slow.
Bent almost in half, your legs slung over his shoulders, your voice half a
wheeze now from your recent exertions, you can twitch and thrash until you're
in tears; but begging, relenting—those things are alien to you both. Your parts
are too smoothly in sync, and the entire point of being in sync with him is
knowing that up till a certain point, he will always go slow.
But as always, he crosses that point eventually. It's right around the time
when he first slides one finger into you and then two, when—if you have
coherence left in your thoughts around the pleasure that's blossoming through
every nerve in your body, every synapse—you can see the calm begin to crack
like a thaw, see it in a way that filters more through the pores in your skin
than your unfocused eyes. You don't need even that to know; you never do. By
the time he repositions himself, the trembling is unmistakeable.
And once he's fully inside you, your breaths in total resonance for one rocky
moment, it's his turn.
Sometimes you wish you could see this clearly, see him curl into you with each
thrust, see him bite into your shoulder or the skin of your throat like he's
the one being fucked hard enough to break in two. See his nails break your skin
and his teeth tear at his swollen blood-red lips; see him struggle with just as
much urgency, just as little pride as you did not so long ago; see him half
unraveled from the start by the simple and not so simple act of joining your
bodies like you so need to. But you have never missed any of this even without
the luxury of being able to keep your eyes open. He mewls and gasps in the
darkness until the world is nothing but him... Kankri and the warm, pulsing
reality of his body and mind melting into yours.
Kankri and the desperation with which he clutches at you now, the ease with
which you hold him while he shudders.
And it's only when both of you are equally undone, equally delirious with need—
differences and similarities forgotten in the burning synchronization of your
heartbeats where he ends and you begin—that he can no longer go slow. Because
when all you can feel is the heat, your rhythm finally gives way, and this you
know by heart too. Surrounded by him, surrounding him, it is all you need to
know.
Only Kankri, Kankri and the knowledge that knowing no longer matters now.
What difference does it make to know when nothing can ever prepare you for
this?
There is no bracing yourself for the last oncoming rush of sensation. Your eyes
may be shut tight, your tongue approaching numbness in your open mouth, but you
reach for him with a final quivering cry that returns to you like an echo and
you know he's every bit as close as you are and it's enough, it's more than
enough, it's everything. With one great spasm, your body tightens up all at
once just as a fresh heat flowers deep within; his arms give way not a moment
sooner or later and he slumps atop you, panting helplessly, the tremble in his
bones a perfect mirror of yours.
After your breathing has slowed, you reach down among the tangle of your limbs
with a shaky hand and grasp one of his. Everything else will come later, you
think, when the rest of your mind has begun to piece itself together, to detach
from his until next time; for now you are content to lie like this, legs still
splayed on either side of him and heart still racing. You can feel his heart
too, and it's in step with yours, like you knew it would be.
Knowing is only half of it. Knowing is everything. And so are you, and so is
he.
But surprises aren't half bad sometimes. "Don't move", you mumble when he stirs
as though to get off you. "It's warm here. Let's... let's just stay like
this..."
"Forever?" he finishes with the merest suggestion of a laugh.
No... we're not completely alike. Which is what makes the pleasure of knowing
him all the more delightful.
"If you'd like that", you whisper, pulling him closer.
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