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“So where have you been?” Karkat asked, watching the ground. “Did you find a perigee-long nutjob convention? I guess you were held up at the booth were you stare at a pinwheel until your gander bulbs melt.”
“Just all up and fuckin’ around,” Gamzee said. He was close enough that Karkat would have had to look up to see his face, had he any inclination to meet his old friend's eyes. Gamzee had never been great with personal space, and it didn’t stop after he and Karkat broke up. Sometimes Karkat wondered if he even knew they had broken up, but he supposed it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t. He was never around the meteor anyways. Useless fucking murder clown.
“Kind of wish you’d crawl back into whatever damp crack you fell out of.” Karkat said, and Gamzee just chuckled and laid a familiar arm over Karkat’s shoulders.
“Maybe I motherfuckin’ will, then,” he said, and pulled Karkat into a loose, entirely uncalled for hug. Karkat wasn’t sure what to do about that. But it had been a hard couple of days. With his face hidden against Gamzee’s shoulder, he was almost fine. He didn’t want to push Gamzee away.
So he patted Gamzee’s shoulder weakly. “You say that, I hear those words come out of your dumbass fangpit, but here you are, draped over me like your own personal fainting couch.” Gamzee didn’t even reply, just laughed again with a squeaking honk. He stayed, leaning slightly on Karkat.
When it became clear Gamzee wasn’t gong to speak, Karkat said, “I was going to watch a movie later. You can stop by my block if you-”
“Nah, my brother,” Gamzee interrupted, as lightly as if Karkat had already stopped talking. “I ain’t got the mind for that, you feel.”
“What I feel is you drooling on my shirt, nookstain.”
“Ain’t no drip drooling off my fangs, brother,” Gamzee said, and he leaned back from karkat at last. A minute later, Karkat was watching Gamzee lope around the corner of the hallway. Who knew when Karkat would see him again. He could still feel Gamzee’s weight on his shoulders.
“What an asshole,” someone said, and Karkat turned around to trace the voice. It was one of the new aliens, Dave’s hatchmate ancestor clone or whatever. The new handful of humans had only been on the meteor a couple of days, and maybe Karkat hadn’t been around these couple of days, because of reasons that were nobody’s business. And fuck, now Karkat had no idea what his name was. One of them was named Jane—Karkat looked the new human over, yeah, ok, this might be Jane?
“He’s alright,” Karkat said. “Well, he’s not, he’s horrible, but at least he doesn’t have a picture of a hat on a t-shirt.”
“Why do you bother hanging out with him?” Potentially-Jane said, completely bypassing Karkat's perfectly scathing remark on the new human's fashion sense. It was a very nosy kind of question. And a very unwelcome one, Karkat's relationship with Gamzee wasn't something this hideous grease stain of an alien had any say in at all. Frankly, Karkat was starting to suspect that Maybe-Jane here was the asshole instead of Gamzee. Or, okay, maybe as well as Gamzee.
“Does it look like we hang out?" Karkat said. "Did you see hanging out happen? Boy, was I reading that wrong, I guess it’s time to get out my password protected diary journal and write about all the great quality time I spent with a clown today. Thank you ever so fucking much, to think I might have skipped that crucial reflection on all the great hanging out I do with Gamzee.”
“Woah, okay,” Maybe-Jane said, holding up his hands. “I surrender. I just meant, don’t bother with people who don’t bother with you.”
“Wow, thanks,” Karkat said, in mock amazement. “Here is another piece of great advice, to throw into the great advice pot that is apparently stewing on the flame right now. How about I don’t bother with you? Wow, Karkat, incredible, you’ve solved every problem.”
Karkat left before who-cares-if-it’s-Jane could finish saying, “Just my two cents.”
_ _ _
Later, it turned out Karkat had been wrong. The human had been Dirk, not Jane. Yes, he’s sort of weird. Yes, he always wore the sunglasses, that is probably just a thing some humans like to do. Karkat though maybe he should be used to that by now, having spent years cooped up with Dave and all, but Dave at least moved his face around when you spoke to him.
Then Terezi had asked him where he’d been lately, and he had muttered a quick ‘around’ before making an escape.
- - -
Karkat’s eyes were changing color.
It had been bound to happen sooner or later, and rationally, that was fine. It wasn’t like there was a government left to persecute him. Karkat had noticed the scarlet ring around his pupil a week ago, and it was only getting thicker. No need to have a cow. Eye coloring was a normal part of growing up. Less normal, though, were red as a fucking fire truck peepers. He hated it. Every tiny red flash in a mirror sent a dull wave of loathing up his throat.
So he hadn’t exactly been spending a lot of time up and about. Mostly a lot of time watching movies. Sometimes just closing his eyes. Researching contact lenses on the internet that he had no hope of ordering from a destroyed world, and wondering how dangerous it would be to try to alchemize something that wouldn’t make him blind. Crying, sometimes, but he was avoiding that because the strange, washed out tint to his tears only strengthened his horror. No relief was to be found there. So he spent lot of time sleeping. Not much else.
His blood color wasn’t a secret anymore. Hadn’t been for over a sweep. Kind of hard not to spill a little blood here and there when you’re constantly under imp barrage. Kind of stupid to bother hiding a mutant hemochrome when your friends’ endangered lives are your responsibility.
But it’s also hard to forget sweeps of ingrained paranoia. No one had seen his blood in the sweep and a half since the meteor was under active threat. He’s been as minutely, habitually careful around sharp edges and prying eyes as he has always been. Any blade practice is done behind carefully locked doors, and scrapes are washed and bandaged in the blink of an eye. He doesn’t drop dishes. He doesn’t go around barefoot.
He knew it wasn’t his friends he couldn’t face. He knew it was himself. But knowing does fuck all, doesn’t make it a single iota easier to cope. And so Karkat had been outside his room all of three times the whole week. Stockpile on food. Retrieve tissues and sopor patches, bump into the clown in the hallway. And in a brief reprieve from blanketing self-hatred he went on one trip to get a new jar of grubpaste. He’d said hi to Terezi. There, take that, depression.
But ten minutes later he’d been back to hide in his room again. Eventually, Karkat ran out of sopor patches again, and he needed more. He couldn’t handle the nightmares, pushing disgusting wet horror from his eyes, making it hard to breathe. He should have taken more the last time he left the room. His eyes were startlingly red now, and they stood out traitorously against his grey skin. If nobody had noticed them before, they certainly would now. Fuck. Oh, fuck.
It doesn’t matter, Karkat said to himself, training his eyes on his feet as he went down the empty hall. No one cares. You’re nothing special. No one gives a shit, you are the only one who gives a shit. Why would anyone give a shit about you? Oddly enough, this wasn’t helping him.
Muffled footsteps echoed from down the hallway. Karkat’s heart seized up, and it struck him immediately that he did not care if he was being irrational, or stupid, or awful, he could absolutely not handle meeting anyone right now. He took two flying steps backwards and wrenched open the last door he’d passed, threw himself inside it, locked it fast and slid down against it so he could hide his face in his knees. Fuck, this had to stop.
“Karkat, right?”
Fuck.
It was Dirk. Whose name Karkat would never forget, however long he might pray for it, because Dirk liked to stick his nose in Karkat’s fucking business like it belonged there. How funny, Karkat had never taken the time to carve out a nose shaped niche in his business. His business remained untarnished. You’d think this would invite people not to stick their noses in it, but alas!
And now Karkat had to fucking say something, because Dirk was just looking at him expectantly from a workbench. It was in the corner of the room, lit dimly with a lamp. Karkat had chosen the one room on this maze of a meteor that had someone actually in it. God, he must look like a complete mental case. Well, maybe he was. Karkat searched around for something witty or pointed to say, to put this chunk of ass in his place, but everything he thought of sounded too stupid. Even in his head. So he said, “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”
“Clearly,” Dirk said.
“Any chance you could pretend I walked in here normally?” Karkat said, keeping his arms around his knees.
Footsteps passed outside the door, along with some voices. One of them sounded like Rose, but Karkat couldn’t really tell. He closed his eyes. He should have stayed in his room. He could have rewatched Love and Birds, steeled himself for this better. Fuck nightmares. Fuck hemocasteist bullshit. Fuck Karkat Vantas for being unable to function like a normal troll.
“You can stay in here if you want,” Dirk said.
“Yes, I can’t wait to sit here in this tiny room, stewing in embarrassment and my own failure, right in front of you. That was my goal for this evening. Thank you for making my dream a reality.” Karkat didn’t open his eyes, though. He could still hear voices. He didn’t want to go back to his room, it was too far down the hallway. What he would really like, he thought, would be to just dissolve.
“You don’t have to talk to me. I’m here to be alone anyways. You can just be alone over there, and I’ll be alone over here.”
“That doesn’t defeat the point of being alone at ALL,” Karkat said. But Dirk had turned back to a small metal counter, and had begun writing. He didn’t turn around, and Karkat didn’t leave. The footsteps faded, and Dirk’s pencil scratched. Sometimes he would stop and fiddle with something, and then begin to write again.
Some time passed. Karkat stayed on the floor. Was Dirk judging him over there? Or just writing. Probably thought he was so smart, yeah, perfect solution, just pretend Karkat is not being an embarrassing mess in the corner. That will make it like it’s not happening at all!
But, somehow, it was working.
“What are you writing?” Karkat asked, a minute later.
“I’m trying to fix a coffee maker,” Dirk said. “Or something. Whatever this is, it’s broken.”
Karkat couldn’t see it properly from the floor, so he stood up and took a couple steps closer to take a look. It was a pretty standard looking compressed bean beverage apparatus. “We have three of those,” he said. “We can alchemize another if we absolutely fucking need more caffeinated shitwater.”
“I know,” Dirk said. “It’s just a personal project. I mostly want to see how it’s put together. For having a virtually identical output to an average earth coffee maker, it’s an alarmingly different machine.”
“Maybe if humans would get their shit together and stop being so technologically primitive, it wouldn’t be,” Karkat said.
“Ouch, I’ve been told,” Dirk said. His voice stayed exactly the same, and Karkat would wager that had Dirk been looking at him, his face wouldn’t have changed.
“So is this your private engineering hidey-hole?” Karkat asked, and Dirk shrugged.
“You’re awfully talkative all of a sudden, for wanting to be alone.”
“Eat a bulge. Five bulges. In a row, one after the other. Oh here, what is this, in my pocket? Surprise, it is a coupon that I am going to give to you for the bulge buffet, so you can appropriately gorge yourself on as many dripping fuck-knots as will fit in your mouth.”
“How will I ever recover from these sick burns,” Dirk said, monotone again.
“It’ll be a long, hard road for you. Try imagining intensive months of physical therapy and years of PTSD. You’ll never be the same. Don’t worry, though, everyone will support you through your struggle—oh, no, my bad, I mixed you up with someone people care about.”
Dirk turned around for that, and lo and behold, his face was stupidly impassive. “I see now that I messed with the wrong troll,” he said.
“You basically did,” Karkat agreed. “I’m unstoppable, and fuck you.”
“Your eyes are red,” Dirk said, and fuck, FUCK him. Karkat looked away, and swallowed the dread creeping up from his stomach.
“Wow, troll Hellen Keller, you have miraculously learned to see! I will alert the media.” Karkat meant to sound… well, competent would have been a nice place to start, but to his horror it came out quiet and halting. Dirk raised his eyebrows. God, could Karkat be a bigger loser? The most brilliant minds of the age have mulled over this question. The answer is no.
“Here,” Dirk said. He took off his dark glasses and handed them to Karkat. “You can take these.” With his eyes exposed, Dirk looked more… like a person? Less like a robot. (Although admittedly Karkat had known some reasonably personable robots in his time.) But he was handsome, and less… untouchable.
Karkat looked at the glasses that Dirk held out to him. Always wore the glasses, Terezi had told him. Then what the fuck was this gesture supposed to be? Whatever it was, it was fucking up Karkat’s heart a little. He didn’t really need to hide his eyes. He just needed to get over himself somehow. But Dirk didn’t ask or care, just offered to let him. He didn’t even know for sure Karkat had a problem with his eyes. Was this just a fucking guess? It was eerily spot on. Karkat didn’t say anything, because if he couldn’t talk capably before, he certainly couldn’t now.
“Are you, uh, okay?” Dirk asked. Karkat shrugged noncommittally. “You can wear these,” dirk said. “If you, uh…? They’re a little snarky sometimes, it’s an AI, that I built, uh, ok, I can see that maybe that’s not a great thing to give you. You don’t have to. Sorry. Uh.” He looked nervous, kind of bare. It was a little jarring, and comfortably honest at the same time.
“I’m fine without them,” Karkat said, finally. “Uh, thanks, though.” He caught Dirk’s eyes before he put his shades back on. “Really. Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Dirk said, slipping the glasses back on, his nervous eyes disappearing once more.
_ _ _
Karkat eventually got his sopor patches and went back to his room. He passed Rose in the hallway on the way back.
“There you are,” She said. “We’ve been wondering where you slipped off to. I finished the book you lent me, but I have some questions. Are you busy…?”
“Is tomorrow okay?” Karkat said, and Rose agreed. Karkat slept, cleaned and dressed himself and met Rose on a balcony, where they discussed the finer details of erotic alternian literature over lunch. She noticed his eyes, and Karkat did not embarrass himself cripplingly, and conversation moved on.
_ _ _
“I just don’t see red eyes very often,” Dirk explained. “My brother had- uh, Dave, I guess, has them. That’s the only place I’ve seen them before. They’re kind of like yours. It’s unusual for humans.”
“I’ve seen his eyes, mine are nicer,” Karkat said. “His aren’t bright enough to be natural. Yours are sort of red, though, too.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Dirk said. “Orange-y. I guess it’s a skewed sample of humanity for you. But orange isn’t usual either.”
“Oh,” Karkat said. “Okay.”
_ _ _
Terezi turned out to be right. Dirk wore his glasses everywhere. They weren’t always a sentient AI robot, Dirk had a couple pairs and sometimes he’d just wear regular glasses. But they always put up a shield between him and the world.
“You’re a hypocrite,” Karkat told him once. “You hate yourself at least as much as I hate myself. If not more.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Dirk had said, and Karkat rolled his eyes.
“Nothing. Give you some shit, I guess. Be an asshole about it.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll prepare my delicate sensitivities,” Dirk had said, and that had been that.
_ _ _
Karkat wasn’t in love with Dirk until he saw Dirk smile. Or maybe he already was and just didn't realize it. Karkat was shitty at falling in love, on principle. He never seemed to understand who to do it to, or when, or how- really, all of it escaped him. But flush affections are not to be second guessed, because serendipity can’t work for you if you work against it.
So when Karkat cracked the right joke at the right time, catching Dirk with his glasses off and a little laughter in his eyes, he just accepted it. Maybe he’d panic horribly about it later. Right now he’d just take a moment to memorize Dirk’s dimples.
_ _ _
Karkat asked Rose about human sex. Predictably, she teased him immediately. “Why Karkat!” She said. “What a peculiar interest to be taking. Do tell, what brought this on?”
“Nothing, you horrible black witch, I just think I deserve something after so many laborious hours explaining the complicated nuances of proper troll intercourse so fucking excellently. So go on, explain alien junk to me. Then I can tell you exactly why it’s inferior in every way to troll junk.”
Rose accepted the task with enthusiasm, explaining the basics, the anatomy and the taboos in as much detail as Karkat wanted. It was a much more fun conversation than Karkat had originally pegged it as. Later, Rose gave Karkat some erotic human reading material that was frustratingly obtuse about quadrants and refused to acknowledge blackrom where it was clearly implied. Humans, honestly.
_ _ _
Dirk spent a lot of time in his workshop. It was small and cluttered, but Karkat found there was always room for him in there somewhere, if he wanted. Sometimes Dirk was there because he was bored, or too invested in a project to bother socializing. Sometimes he just needed to be on his own. He told Karkat he grew up on his own, without even a lusus. Not a single other person of his species.
“Sounds good to me,” Karkat had said. “Your entire species is comprised of assholes and idiots. Come to think of it, so is mine.”
“It’s kind of nice to have some assholes around, sometimes,” Dirk had said.
Karkat took to bringing his portable gruptop device to the workroom when Dirk was there. He’d watch movies while Dirk took apart the meteor and put it back together. Sometimes, if he couldn’t think of anything good about himself, he’d go into the workroom on his own. Sit down in the corner and do nothing. Most of the time, Dirk would show up eventually.
_ _ _
Dirk kissed him, late at night, sitting next to him on the workroom floor. One of Tavros’ old prosthetic limbs lay half assembled and abandoned on the desk, along with his sunglasses. He moved carefully against Karkat’s lips, until Karkat pulled Dirk into his lap, at which point nothing was done carefully. Dirk kissed him hard and relentlessly, like he would disappear, and Karkat tried to reassure him through his lips, as best he could, that he would not. Neither one of them said anything. Karkat kept his mind shut, because if he questioned this, it was bound to evaporate. When he moved his mouth to Dirk’s jaw, Dirk’s breath hitched.
“Uh,” He gasped. “Uh, fuck, Karkat.” Karkat hummed breathlessly against Dirk’s skin.
“Do you…” Dirk said, pausing to clear his throat. “Do you want to…”
Well, that was it for blissful, unthinking makeouts. “What?” Karkat asked, bringing his face back to look at Dirk’s. He was flushed darker than usual, and his dark orange eyes were bright.
“I meant, do you want to,” He said again, trailing off and swallowing. Oh.
“Oh,” Karkat said. “Now?”
“Um, only if, we don’t have to,” Dirk said, and Karkat put his hand over Dirk’s mouth.
“Sorry, yeah, yes,” Karkat said, and he took his hand back away from Dirk’s lips so that he could reach them with his mouth. It wasn’t long before Dirk had Karkat on the floor beneath him, mouthing at his neck, hands wandering low. Karkat purred when they pressed against his slowly dilating bone sheath, but Dirk hesitated.
“Are you okay?” Karkat asked, and Dirk cleared his throat.
“I just thought you’d, uh, have something down here,” Dirk said.
“Oh, I do,” Karkat said, biting back a laugh. “Maybe we should have talked about this, I guess.”
Dirk made a face. “You guys look so human, sorry. I just assumed you looked human… all over.”
“No, trolls aren’t stupid enough to leave their junk hanging out in the breeze like you human males. We tuck ourselves away properly, thanks. You’ve got your mitts on my sheath, my bulge will join the party presently.”
Dirk looked up at Karkat, surprised. “What do you know about human genetalia, then?”
“Basically everything, smartass, because I did my research.”
“Did you have sex with-”
“No, no one, I haven’t had any practical applications for my plethora of knowledge of things like foreskins and labias. But I know what both of those things are and they are both kind of stupid.”
“Looks like I have some catching up to do, then,” Dirk said. He ran his palm thoughtfully over the front of Karkat’s pants, and Karkat purred appreciatively to spur him on. “So this is good?”
“Yes,” Karkat said, but he disentangled himself from Dirk all the same, and repositioned the two of them so that he was kneeling over Dirk’s lap. “But let’s try this,” he said, before grinding down lightly on Dirk’s lap. He could feel… something, which was hopefully a human erection. Karkat wasn’t sure exactly how aroused humans had to be for that. Dirk seemed to be enjoying himself, at any rate. “Tell me how hard works for you,” He offered, as he rolled his hips down again.
“More, definitely,” Dirk gasped, anchoring his hands on Karkat’s hips to pull him closer. Karkat complied and pushed into him harder, beginning to purr gently once more. “Is this enough for you?” Dirk asked.
Karkat took one of Dirk’s hands from his ass and brought it up to his head. “Here,” he said, by way of explanation, and placed it on one of his horns. Dirk began to massage it immediately, with too much attention to the tip. “The base,” Karkat corrected him. “Mmm, yes. There.” He ground particularly hard into Dirk’s lap, and Dirk moaned, leaning his forehead against Karkat’s shoulders.
It wasn’t long before Karkat unsheathed with a shudder and a sigh, both of Dirk’s hands now deep in his hair, squeezing his horns. “What was that?” Dirk murmured against Karkat’s collarbone. Karkat moaned and pressed himself closer to Dirk, sensitive bulge pulsing and chafing against his jeans.
“I think we need less clothing,” he gasped. “Immediately.” Dirk was quick to comply.
When Karkat’s pants came off, Dirk raised his eyebrow at Karkat’s thick, slowly twisting bulge. “Kinky,” he said appreciatively, and Karkat snorted.
“It’s standard issue, from my point of view. Aside from the slightly treasonous color job, I suppose.” Karkat was a little preoccupied with Dirk’s own equipment. It was long, and the head was thick. He had expected that, he knew penises didn’t taper the way bulges did, but it’s another thing to see it in person. He wondered vaguely if he could fit it in his nook. It was dry and stiff, bobbing in a kind of silly way as Dirk moved.
“Can I?” Dirk asked, trailing his fingers along the top of Karkat’s thigh.
“Yes,” was barely out of Karkat’s mouth before Dirk had his hand around Karkat’s bulge. Oh, fuck, yes.
“It’s so slick,” Dirk said. Karkat’s bulge twisted itself through Dirk’s fingers. “That’s so strange.”
“It’s, mmm, sexy as fuck, is what it is,” Karkat said, moving his hips under Dirk’s hand. The slide of Dirk’s fingers only got better as Karkat’s bulge coated them with lubricant, but Karkat was pretty sure this could get better. “Do you mind, can you, ah. My nook,” Karkat said.
“Your what?” Dirk said, eyebrows jumping.
“Nook, it’s, here.” Karkat brought his own hand down to guide Dirk’s, clumsily, as it was very slick, down behind his bulge, just… there, yes. Mmmmm.
“Holy fuck,” Dirk whispered, as Karkat pushed one of Dirk’s fingers up inside himself. Karkat moaned in agreement.
“Troll anatomy 101,” he said. “Or- ah- how humans are severely worse off.” Karkat rolled his hips against Dirk’s probing fingers, guiding him verbally towards what felt best. He took Dirk’s strange alien cock in his hand as well, giving it a gentle, experimental tug. The look on Dirk’s face sent a shiver through him and straight up his nook. He ran his thumb along the bulging head, which he was certain was supposed to be sensitive. Sure enough, Dirk gasped in response. God, that was hot.
“Here,” Karkat said, shifting the two of them once more. He sat himself in Dirk’s lap, and let his bulge begin to coil around Dirk’s tip. Dirk gave a deep moan, and shortly began rocking into Karkat’s hips, pushing through Karkat’s wriggling bulge and occasionally, with the right angle, pressing against the mouth of his nook. It was delicious. Dirk made small, continuous noises with his breathing, and nestled his head back in next to Karkat’s neck. The head of Dirk's dick felt even bigger against Karkat’s nook than it had against his fingers, and Karkat was quickly realizing that he did not care if it was too big. He wanted something in him.
“Dirk,” he said, sitting up further to better the angle. “Can I try putting it in?”
“Oh my- ah, god, yeah,” Dirk said. “Do it.” Karkat wasted no time in reaching down to hold Dirk steady. He positioned Dirk’s cock right outside his nook, letting his bulge continue to coil around his own fingers, Dirk’s base, anything. And he sank himself down. Yes. He could fit about half of Dirk easily. He didn’t stop until the pressure became pain, at which point he eased himself back up, and began to fuck himself slowly. Dirk was moaning again, breathing hard and hot against Karkat’s neck, and he felt so good, and he wasn’t in deep enough. Karkat pushed himself down harder, pushing further, anything to get more. His bulge wrung itself around and over the length of cock that wouldn’t fit in.
“Karkat,” Dirk was saying. “Ah, oh my god, Karkat, Karkat.” Karkat growled in response, low and rumbly, grinding down so hard that he saw stars. Dirk kept talking, moaning and gasping a quiet, steady stream of “Karkat,”s and “Oh, oh, god,"s.
As Karkat sped up, Dirk’s voice got higher. He came a minute late with a “Karkat, I’m going to- Karkat-”. He shuddered, hard and long still buried inside Karkat, his fingers digging into Karkat’s back. Karkat fucked him through it, sparing little thought for the strange dryness of human orgasm, mind full of Dirk’s heaving shoulders.
Dirk pulled out and pushed Karkat on his back, once he had come down, replacing his dick immediately with fingers, his other hand twisting with Karkat’s bugle. Karkat bucked up against them. “Deeper,” he said. “More, come on.” Dirk took no time teasing, and pushed his hand as far into Karkat’s nook as he could. His fingers reached just farther than his cock, and they brushed against his seed flap. “There!” Karkat gasped, and he growled. “There, go, ahh, aahhh.” The base of his nook was stretched much farther with Dirk’s hand, but his fingers were slim and long and just so good. He came, growling Dirk's name.
“Holy shit,” Dirk whispered, as Karkat’s genetic material spilled over his hands. “It’s Niagara falls, sexy troll version.” Karkat ignored him in favor of riding out the aftershocks.
“Should we have done this on a tarp, or something?” Dirk asked, his one hand still working gently in Karkat’s nook. Coming down, the stretch began to reveal itself as too much, and Karkat pushed Dirk’s wrist away. He wondered how sore he would be tomorrow.
“Probably,” Karkat admitted. “Usually we’d… well, it’s not usually an issue, trolls carry the material of their partner internally immediately after sex, and until they have a chance to drain themselves into a receptacle.”
“Weird,” Dirk said.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t got a nook,” Karkat said. “Now who’s weird. Shut up and come here.”
“Wow, I didn’t peg you for a cuddler,” Dirk said. “Also, you are sitting in a puddle of cherry alien jizz. Take a shower, and then I will cuddle the shit out of you.”
Karkat laid backwards onto the ground, and flipped Dirk off with both hands.
“Come on, let’s clean up, and then we can watch a movie.”
Karkat considered staying on the floor to be obstinate, but watching a movie won out. He and Dirk took a minute to mop up the floor of Dirk’s workshop before going back to Karkat’s room, where they showered together, and, as promised, settled down to watch a movie. Dirk pulled Karkat into his lap, and spent the entire film tracing pointless shapes into Karkat’s sides.
_ _ _
They talked about relationships later, sprawled over each other on Karkat’s couch, Dirk lying on Karkat’s stomach. After embarrassed admittances that neither party wanted their relationship to return to platonic, they tossed around suggestions like ‘boyfriend’, and ‘matesprit’. Neither of them knew what to do about the culture clash, and nervous about taking on roles they knew little about, they settled on ambiguously becoming ‘lovers’. This was with the addendum that Karkat had to discuss all other quadrant interests with Dirk, so that Dirk would know what was going on.
“But you don’t get to tell me who I can and can’t hang out with,” Karkat said. “That’s bullshit.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Dirk said.
“You did before,” Karkat pointed out, and Dirk looked surprised. His shades were off, set on Karkat’s side table. He rarely wore them when he and Karkat were alone.
“When?” He asked, and Karkat rolled his eyes.
“You told me to stop hanging out with Gamzee, nookwipe.” Dirk didn’t seem to be placing the incident, so Karkat said, “The clown? In the hallway? That one time? Think back carefully to the last time you were a shitwad, that’s the time I mean.”
“Oh,” Dirk said. “Right. I remember the clown.” He wrinkled his nose disdainfully.
“I caught that nose wrinkle, buster,” Karkat said. “You’re not allowed to get in the way of my friendships because you don’t like shitty face paint.”
“You can make your own call, there,” Dirk said. “I don’t care about face paint. I just think it’s hard to be friends with people who don’t put in the effort for you.”
“Oh,” Karkat said.
“You just end up making yourself more unhappy than you already are.” Dirk kissed Karkat’s chest, the gesture was sweet and Karkat didn't say so, but he loved it. “You can be friends with an entire clown car. Just put yourself first.”
Karkat didn’t reply. He supposed he hadn’t really listened to what Dirk had been saying, that first time they’d met. All he remembered was a stranger bossing him around. But he hadn’t exactly been in a good place, and he hadn’t known that Dirk was capable of doing things like giving the odd fuck. It suddenly seemed very easy to remember the situation differently. Dirk was just looking out for him. Not even because he had liked Karkat, he’d just spoken up because he thought it might help. Like it mattered what happened to some grumpy lowblooded alien. One who was up against a highblood, at that. Karkat knew that didn’t mean the same thing to humans as it did to him, but it sure did mean something to him.
When Karkat stayed silent, Dirk said, “Anyways, I won’t tell you who to be friends with, and we’ll figure out blackrom when it comes to that.”
“I’ll watch out for that,” Karkat said.
“For what? Blackrom?”
“For… putting time into the wrong people. I’ll work on it.”
_ _ _
There weren’t always good times. Sometimes they argued, or worse, refused to talk to each other when something bothered them. That would always blow up in their faces eventually. But the most comfortable thing about being close to Dirk, Karkat thought, was that Dirk never minded if Karkat stepped in to his workroom and sat on the floor and didn’t talk. If Karkat didn’t respond to Dirk’s ‘hello’s, or his ‘what-is-a-hivestem’s, then Dirk seemed content to let Karkat be as much of a despondent waste of space as he pleased. He didn’t leave, or make comments about Karkat’s mood, he just stayed there working quietly until Karkat came up to his desk and asked what he was taking apart this time.