Archive of Our Own

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“We’re done,” Anna said, flaxen curls tossed recumbent upon my late Lusii’s paisley chaise. Her chin was emboldened with a proud jut, dull harmless tooth caressing her rosy lower lip. The vile red flush I had found so alluring upon our first meeting — forbidden in caste and utterly, utterly alien — pooled upon her cherubic cheek. “Cristn, we can’t keep doing this. It — it isn’t right.”            My dark, smoldering gaze ghosted over her creamy white shoulders, tracing the bird-light path of fine-boned clavicle and locking onto fragile, delicate white sclerae. Fright — how beautiful it was, an enchanting weakness etched in every pale line of her watery twin irises! How pitiable, and – and, though I rue the very thought — though it is true that I should pity her — though, nay, because I well know my rough dermis and vicious claws can only flaw the endless virgin silk of her skin — how very hateful!            Not for the first time, I perceived in the depths of my bloodpusher that she was not one I could let go. Each vacillation cut my airsacs like knives; stabbed into my bileduct and brought my chagrin tunnel up fist by fist; and yet having felt it — having had her — I could no longer do without.             “Anna,” I purred darkly, “My darling, you must be mistaken. I—”The screen of your huskslab goes unceremoniously dark. God-dammit.You tap at the screen a few times. This, predictably, does nothing at all. Glad you sleuthed that one out for yourself. You move onto your much more sensible Plan B and grope at the crevice beside your bed to find your charger. The sooner you can finagle this thing in the slot at the precise forty-degree angle it needs to be at in order to function, the sooner you can get back to your reading. But, of course, your charger is not there. It remains not there even when you advance to searching with your eyes. Naturally.Storing all of your romance novels in one digital library should be convenient and easy. At least, that’s what you thought when you bought this useless hunk of crap. But you didn’t account for being at the mercy of Crocker-brand tech, the market’s leading enshittifiers, who annually churn out models that are more expensive, less capable, but — oh! Thinner, and smaller too! A couple of things you value as much in your technology as you do in your goddamn toilet paper. You’d probably get just as much mileage out of wiping your ass with the huskslab as you do reading on it.The only consistent upside to the e-reader is that it’s more private — not that you’re embarrassed about your cheesy harlequin romances. Even if you were, it would be really fucking late in the game to start caring; your fanaticism for romance is so wonted that the hacks you call friends have bled all jokes on the matter completely dry. You’re more embarrassed about the books that aren’t of that genre, the… uh, the everything else. There’s... the dumb fun books, or the smart, show-off ones you never got around to finishing, or all the overrated bestsellers — the ones that owning, let alone enjoying, would get you snickers and eye-rolls from too-cool contrarians.Your eyes snap up towards your bedroom door. Then, they narrow. One such contrarian lives under your roof, and he’s been known to both disrespect your space and snatch your things. You’ve lost no less than three phone chargers to Dave in the same amount of months — who better to knick your tablet’s charger, too? Usually, you huff and puff but roll over and buy yourself a new one. But you’ve got to draw a line somewhere. You are not going to lie down and let him spoil the climax. Of your book.Tablet in hand, you trudge down the hallway to Dave’s room. His door is already cracked open when you get there, so in a fit of irritation, you push it open without knocking.Before you even notice his hand in his lap, you notice the porn. It’s impossible to not notice what with his ridiculous double-monitor setup. Dave must see you in the second monitor, reflected in the black screen, and is halfway through spinning in his chair to face you before he remembers his dick is blowing in the breeze. Your hand flies up to shield your eyes from making contact with it.KARKAT: JEGUS!           DAVE: dude!You and Dave have lived together for ten years, give or take. Obviously, you’ve walked in on each other before. You don’t have all that big a hive, and back in the day, it wasn’t all that big a rock neither. You still remember the first time Dave saw you with your bulge out — more like a flash of red as you folded yourself in half and screeched at him, but still — and how he managed about a week’s worth of jabs before he bled that dry for humor, too. But just because it’s not new doesn’t mean you love it any more than you did back then.Sometimes, you yearn for your early days of non-friendship. In those first few years on the meteor, you never actually caught Dave with his pants down in return. Back then, contrary to the cool-guy shtick, he was strung so fucking tight you could’ve used him to perform a dazzling ligatriller recital. You don’t think he ever let himself take a leak in the communal bathroom with anyone else in it, let alone get caught rubbing one out.But the impossible happens in clusters, you guess. After the two of you became bros, you finally got an eyeful of his strange human genitals. And then it happened again. And again. And, eventually, you realized that Dave trusting you means that he worries less about locking the door, double-checking the stalls, or going out of his way to make sure you won’t see whatever repulsive porn he’s smacking his dick around to. Just another perk of being his friend. Lucky fucking you.
DAVE: holy
DAVE: im
DAVE: knock?
DAVE: what the fuck
DAVE: what are you even doing in here oh my god get out man
With one palm still pressed to your face, you brandish your huskslab at him.
KARKAT: I CAN’T.
KARKAT: IT’S IMPORTANT.
DAVE: what
DAVE: how important
DAVE: like can it not wait five minutes jesus fucking christ
Even by Dave standards, he’s speaking louder and faster than he needs to. He yanks his headphones down around his neck, and you can hear the muffled moans and slaps of his still-playing porno. He swats his keyboard to pause it.
KARKAT: FIVE MINUTES?
KARKAT: IS THAT YOUR ALL TIME BEST?
Dave groans at you as he tries to yank his pants back up enough to be reasonably qualified as dressed. You finally let yourself look back over once you hear the decisive zip of his zipper. He sits there, glowering: the marked intellectual who insists on jerking off in his skinny jeans and sunglasses. Nothing about this scenario is age-appropriate.
DAVE: ok what
DAVE: enlighten me
DAVE: is it the fucking rapture outside
DAVE: are you coming to tell me if i dont unhand mine meat posthaste i shant be ascending to the heaven and moreover i will incur the divine wrath of the the holy blessed martyr there to seek
DAVE: am i the only motherfucker at sir arthurs round table who wasnt invested enough in chivalry to keep his hand off his dick
DAVE: because if thats the case i am more than prepared to go eat lunch alone in the privy chamber
DAVE: and maybe rub one out if im feeling a little frisky under the faulds
KARKAT: I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS.
KARKAT: DO YOU HAVE MY HUSKSLAB CHARGER?
DAVE: you interrupted me for your fucking—
KARKAT: YEAH. I NEED IT. I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING.
KARKAT: AND, JUST SO YOU KNOW, I WOULDN’T HAVE TO INTERRUPT ANYTHING IF YOU DIDN’T INSIST ON MISAPPROPRIATING *MY* FUCKING THINGS JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN KEEP UP WITH A GRAND SUM OF JACK AND ALSO SHIT.
KARKAT: YOU WOULD LOSE YOUR HEAD IF IT WASN’T ATTACHED TO YOUR SHOULDERS. HELL, EVEN YOUR—
KARKAT: YOU KNOW WHAT? ON SECOND THOUGHT, I’M SURE YOU WOULD DO YOUR DAMNEDEST TO KEEP TRACK OF OTHER APPENDAGES THAT ARE OF MORE IMPORT TO YOU.
You stalk into his room and start to shuffle through the hoard of bullshit on his desk. Dave wisely rolls out of your warpath, still jumpy. That might have less to do with you and more to do with the exacerbated tightness of his skinny jeans.
DAVE: well i dont know what to tell you because i dont have the thing
KARKAT: I’M SO SURE.
DAVE: why the hell would i take it
DAVE: i know how cranky you get if you arent hopped up on about 500 ccs of romantasy slop that is somehow both completely sexless and feverishly horny
DAVE: you cant get through the day without taking a nice long hit of your repackaged fanfiction about sexed up wizard racists and the demure minorities they stick their wands into or antebellum vampires and their modern huwhite honeys
DAVE: we should check if we built this hive on some sort of burial ground
DAVE: maybe right where we lay our heads there once stood a bath and body works that burned down or a claires where an ear piercing went horribly awry or an eating disorder treatment center
DAVE: because you are sincerely inhabited by the spirit of a teenage girl
DAVE: you would make a killing as one of those to catch a predator decoys
KARKAT: THE ONLY REASON YOU THINK THAT I COULD PASS AS A TEENAGE GIRL IS BECAUSE ALL OF THE ONES YOU TALK TO ON THE INTERNET ARE ALSO ACTUALLY GROWN MEN.
DAVE: not funny
DAVE: and ok more importantly not true
DAVE: actually pretty fucking inflammatory
KARKAT: BOO HOO. I WANT MY CHARGER.
DAVE: ok well better get used to boo hooing because you aint gonna find it in here
KARKAT: REALLY?
You produce one such charger from behind his monitor.
KARKAT: THEN WHAT’S THIS?
DAVE: thats MY charger
KARKAT: AND IT’S CONVENIENTLY THE EXACT SAME CHARGER THAT I OWN?
DAVE: do they or do they not all sort of look the same
KARKAT: IT HAS IDENTICAL FRAYING AND EVERYTHING.
DAVE: a very likely fate for a charger to suffer
KARKAT: I MARKED IT WITH A SHARPIE. RIGHT HERE.
DAVE: looks like a scuff mark to me
KARKAT: IT’S A FUCKING “K.”
DAVE: your handwriting is so bad its impossible to really tell
DAVE: pretty sure that one is for my juul anyways
Pointedly, you stab your e-reader with the charger and set it down in front of him. The lightning bolt insignia flashes across the screen and reflects in his shades.
DAVE: ok
DAVE: well
DAVE: this still doesnt necessarily prove anything
As Dave struggles to dodge blame, you try to trace the path of the cord through the coiled wad of them. When this proves to be nigh impossible, you follow their jumbled path to the far side of his desk and kneel down to try and find where it’s plugged into his overclocked power strip.
DAVE: dude come on
DAVE: are you seriously going to make me sit here full fucking chub as you untangle the web ive weaved
DAVE: what story could possibly be so important that in order to continue reading it you are going to squat directly in the strike zone of my heat seeking pennywhistle
KARKAT: NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
KARKAT: AND I’M LIKE THREE FULL FEET AWAY FROM YOU. FAR FROM YOUR “STRIKE ZONE.” NOT THAT IT MATTERS SINCE I HAVE MY DOUBTS AS TO WHETHER YOU ARE CAPABLE OF STRIKING ANYTHING INSTEAD OF BURNING UP AND IMPLODING IN THE ATMOSPHERE.
KARKAT: NOW STOP FANTASIZING ABOUT ME IN CONJUNCTION WITH YOUR PENIS.
DAVE: you mean in conjunction with my cock
KARKAT: THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I JUST SAID.
DAVE: yeah but mine had more of a flow to it
DAVE: but fine
DAVE: keep basking in the warmth of said heat that im packing and it might wind up giving you a nice sun kissed glow
DAVE: a toasty charcoal
DAVE: or perhaps a smokey taupe
KARKAT: TAUPE?
DAVE: ok maybe youre a little darker than that
DAVE: whatever
DAVE: shades of gray are not exactly my métier
DAVE: unlike you who is well versed in at least fifty of them
KARKAT: UGH.
DAVE: ugh is right
DAVE: now a guy cant even enjoy some alone time without the fucking gadget gestapo busting down his door before he can bust a nut
DAVE: all for a crime he did not commit i mean mein fucking gott
DAVE: what tremendous feats trolls are capable of once they abandon dignity
KARKAT: HOLY HELL. CAN YOU KNOCK IT OFF?
KARKAT: YOUR GRUBBY, LOTIONED-UP HANDS COULD NOT HAVE MORE CLEARLY STOLEN MY CHARGER.
KARKAT: I MEAN, WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE, DAVE? AN IGNORANCE GASH SPLIT OPEN THE COATING AND IT SWALLOWED ITSELF DOWN? DO YOUR BROTHER’S SHITTY CROCKER-TECH VENTURES DREAM OF ELECTRIC OUROBOROS?
KARKAT: MAYBE IT DISAPPEARED ITSELF THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY, SPROUTED A COUPLE OF—
Just as you raise your head to insult him face-to-face, you break off.
KARKAT: WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING?
Dave has to strain in order to look back at the screen you’re blanking up at.
DAVE: uh
DAVE: porn?
KARKAT: WOW.
KARKAT: THANKS FOR CLEARING THAT UP.
DAVE: you asked
If he isn’t going to help you, you’ll help yourself. You reach up and tap his space bar. The obnoxious noises resume blaring through his headphones, loud enough that you can hardly believe he heard you barge in through the noise of some violetblood screeching like a stuck oinkbeast over some—some—
KARKAT: JESUS CHRIST.
Mammalian nudity assaults your eyeballs from just about every angle. Not as much as the woman in the video is getting assaulted whose screeching has now become more of a gurgling. Human hands white-knuckle her horns to ram the appendage of the hour down her gullet, and another set of darker but equally human hands keep her thighs spread to occupy… other orifices of note.Your face goes hot. Abruptly, you do feel all too close to Dave’s groin. His gaze swings between you and his porn as he awkwardly scritches at his scruffy face, but he doesn’t jump to stop you. Evidently, he has some shame, just not nearly enough of it.
DAVE: do
DAVE: you want the link or
KARKAT: NO!
KARKAT: I JUST—
KARKAT: WHAT THE HELL IS EVEN GOING ON HERE? “YOU LIKE THAT, YOU LITTLE GRAY COCKSLEEVE?”
KARKAT: YOU GET OFF ON THIS?
DAVE: no
DAVE: dont be ridiculous
DAVE: i just periodically scope the internet for degenerate filth to remind myself what a good upstanding man i am
DAVE: maybe you didnt see when you thrust yourself into my personal space but i was actually shaking my head and clucking my tongue in disapproval the whole time i was watching it
In a huff, you grab ahold of his desk and haul yourself back up to your feet.
KARKAT: OKAY, SMARTASS, I GET IT, EXCUSE MY DISBELIEF. FOR SOME REASON, KICKING AROUND IN THE DISTANT RECESSES OF MY MIND, THERE MUST HAVE BEEN THE TINIEST MORSEL OF RESPECT LEFT FOR YOU. YOU KNOW, A LINGERING PART OF ME THAT MIGHT DOUBT YOUR DEPRAVITY WOULD EXTEND THIS FAR? MY MISTAKE! IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN.
KARKAT: I CANNOT BELIEVE I LET YOU FREELOAD OFF OF ME AND THIS IS THE SORT OF VILE SHIT YOU’RE SUFFOCATING THE CLUCKBEAST TO. IS THIS JUST A FLAVOR OF THE WEEK, OR DO YOU HAVE AN ENTIRE HARD DRIVE FULL OF THIS XENOPHOBIC BULLSHIT—
DAVE: whoah whoah whoah
DAVE: hold the fucking phone
DAVE: doth my ears deceive me or are you throwing out some pretty hefty accusations here
KARKAT: YEAH, THEY ARE. EVIDENTLY, YOU’VE BEEN BLARING THIS CRAP LOUD ENOUGH TO NOT ONLY DAMAGE YOUR AURICULAR SPONGE CLOTS BUT THE THINKPAN WITHERING BETWEEN THEM.
KARKAT: BECAUSE THIS ISN’T AN ACCUSATION. IT’S A STATEMENT OF FACT.
DAVE: youre crazy
DAVE: i mean thats not a recent development but this particular strain of hysteria is
KARKAT: *I’M* CRAZY?!
KARKAT: ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO THIS SHIT?
KARKAT: YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO LISTEN. THERE’S FUCKING SUBTITLES ON IT. WHY THE HELL DO YOU WATCH SUBTITLED PORNOGRAPHY? AFRAID TO MISS OUT ON SOME OF THE RIVETING DIALOGUE?
DAVE: i dont know dude sometimes shit gets muffled when theyve got a mouth full and i wanna know whats up
DAVE: besides the dialogues apparently good enough to get you going so
KARKAT: NOTHING’S GOT ME “GOING." IN FACT, THE ONLY THING OF MINE THAT IS “““GOING””” ANYWHERE IS ABOUT TO BE MY FIST TOWARD YOUR FACE.
DAVE: ok chill out
DAVE: look i get where youre coming from and yeah ok i have to admit that it would probably be pretty fucking offensive if you unloaded all this shit like
DAVE: “ohhh look how much this slutty little nook loves human dick” or maybe “bet youre never going back to bulge after this” onto an unsuspecting troll
DAVE: it would also probably be more than a little confusing and might get you booked for sexual harassment
DAVE: unless we were in the human supremacist dystopia that you live in and then the comically speciesist cop would chuckle and be like get on out of here you little scamp and dont rob any liquor stores while youre at it
DAVE: in the face of a bigger darker enemy even a pig will turn
KARKAT: OKAY, FIRST OFF, I DON’T LIKE BEING CAST AS THIS REACTIONARY HARPY, TILTING AT HUMANITY, WHO JUMPS DOWN YOUR WINDCHUTE AT EVEN THE SLIGHTEST INFRACTION. YOU ALREADY KNOW I DON’T BELIEVE IN ALL OF THAT DIVISIVE BULLSHIT. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I TAKE ANY PLEASURE WATCHING *YOU* TAKE PLEASURE IN, LIKE…
KARKAT: THE SEXUAL SUBJUGATION OF MY FUCKING SPECIES.
DAVE: alright now youre just being dramatic
You reach over him to pause the video, and then read out the subtitles:
KARKAT: “YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, ALL YOUR INFERIOR SPECIES IS GOOD FOR IS TAKING HUMAN DICK.”
Dave rubs a hand over his face thoughtfully.
DAVE: ok maybe its a little offensive
DAVE: im not going to sit here and tell i dont find it hot or anything i mean you literally caught me with my dick in hand over it so that would be an exercise in futility matched only the conversation we are having now
DAVE: but
DAVE: it aint targeted xenophobia or anything
DAVE: its not like i think any of this shit for real
DAVE: and i have no real opinion vis a vis the superiority of one phallus over another as far as im concerned they both get the job done
DAVE: its just porn
KARKAT: SURE, IT’S *JUST* PORN.
KARKAT: UNTIL TAKING THAT QUICK SHOT OF DOPAMINE EVERY… MID-AFTERNOON, OR WHENEVER THE FUCK YOU USUALLY ELECT TO JERK OFF, ROTS YOUR PAN FROM THE INSIDE OUT. I MEAN, THE SHIT YOU WATCH WHILE YOU’RE TRIPPING ON HAPPY HORMONES ISN’T JUST CONFETTI. THIS GENRE OF DEPRAVITY COULD COLOR YOUR PERCEPTION OF MY ENTIRE SPECIES, TINT YOUR GLASSES WITH RUNOFF GENMAT.
KARKAT: I DON’T LIKE KNOWING THAT MY MOIRAIL LOOKS AT ME AND SEES ONE VAST PORN CATEGORY TO CONSUME, ALRIGHT? IT’S DEGRADING.
DAVE: karkat vantas this is the police
DAVE: weve got your glass house surrounded
DAVE: drop your stones and come out with your hands up
KARKAT: WHAT?
When you blink back down at Dave, you are distantly horrified to realize that your huskslab has charged up enough to have been brought back to life, and he is presently snooping on your current read of choice.
DAVE: “the ivory flesh of her breasts were spotted with scarlet, her human-bright blood rushing to the surface of her pallid skin…”
When he starts to recite it out loud, the horror seizes you completely. You immediately try to snatch it off his desk, but in a flash, he’s got the thing in his hold.
KARKAT: DON’T LOOK AT THAT!
KARKAT: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
DAVE: oh so you can look at my porn but i cant look at yours?
KARKAT: I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR PORN! THE FACT THAT MY GANDERBULBS WERE ASSAULTED WITH IT AT ALL IS COMPLETELY INCIDENTAL!
KARKAT: AND IT'S NOT PORN!
DAVE: are you sure
KARKAT: YES, I’M—YES! I’M SURE!
KARKAT: IT’S A FUCKING NOVEL. IT’S LITERATURE!
DAVE: cool i totally believe that
DAVE: holy shit i cant believe you were reaming me for being a troll fetishist and youre up in here reading about alabaster babes with tawny ringlets of hair and full bushes
DAVE: child rearing hips and bodacious mammary glands
DAVE: oh shit i think i feel MY boner coming back on
KARKAT: OKAY, FUCK OFF. GIVE IT BACK.
DAVE: well hold on now
DAVE: reading your porn has started this stirring in my anthropoid loins and now its gotta finish it
DAVE: lemme get to the end of the chapter
KARKAT: WOULD YOU JUST—!
Dave flashes out of his chair before you can even make use of your higher ground, leaving it spinning in place between the two of you. He raises the tablet high.
DAVE: “with arousal simmering in his digestion bladder he unleashed his throbbing bonebulge and allowed it to smack her face back and forth like one of those inflatable sky dancer tube things they oftentimes have at snow cone stands”
DAVE: “or maybe at car washes”
DAVE: excuse me
DAVE: “scuttlebuggy lavations”
KARKAT: IT DOES NOT SAY ANY OF THAT.
DAVE: quoth the raven haired casanova “where art thou white women at”
You send his desk chair flying against the room where it smacks against his closet door. Getting into slapfights with Dave is even more common than walking in on him, and it has been at every age, so you know a thing or two about neutralizing him. He bats you away one-handed as you try to wrench your tablet away from him, and you watch a self-satisfied smile stretch across his face the longer you fail to do so.
DAVE: damn dude arent you a dirty fuckin dog
DAVE: this yonic imagery is so abstract that im starting to feel queasy
He’s too busy snarking at you to realize this is too damn easy. You grab him by the forearm and yank him down. His hands are still slick enough — which is: gross — that he can’t have much of a grip on the thing, and you can easily slip it out of his grasp once you’ve destabilized him. But then he throws his arm around your neck and puts you into a half-assed chokehold, and you claw aimlessly at his midsection as he bows you over, and he’s trying to get his still-slick, still-gross hand back around the huskslab—You resort to headbutting him down onto his bed, and he drags you down with him.The two of you land in an undignified heap across his hastily made bed. Dave makes a strangled sort of noise, and his feet flail as he tries to kick his way out from under you.
DAVE: oh fuck—
KARKAT: YEAH, FUCK IS RIGHT.
You rise up with a victorious exhale, tablet acquired. It’s only then that you realize you’ve forgotten to give his groin as wide a berth as you’d have liked, and you can presently feel his erection up against your leg. His shades have slid down far enough to reveal a wide-eyed stare that tells you that his outcry might not have been one of surrender.Very slowly, Dave scrambles the rest of the way out until his back is pressed up against the wall. Your face is warm with embarrassment. Seeing Dave’s dick for brief flashes is one thing, but having it jammed up against you is another. Having it jammed up against you to the point where he moans out loud is a whole new third thing, and the most humiliating of all potential things.You tug at your shirt, your pants; somehow feeling like you’re the one with his dick straining against his clothes.
DAVE: uh
DAVE: sorry about that
DAVE: but in fairness youre the one who body slammed me onto my bed
KARKAT: WELL, I—
You didn’t mean to brawl with his dick one layer of fabric away from you, but it’s easy to forget about your conflicting biology when emotions are running high. And, in this instance, human biology is… so, so dumb. It’s always struck you as so revealing, so stupid and vulnerable, to have it all out in the open with no control over it. Then again, a lot of their species-wide idiosyncrasies are just that. Humanity has evolved a million different ways to wear various organs on their sleeves. That’s one of the things about humans you’ve always found sort of…You clear your throat.
KARKAT: YOU SHOULD’VE JUST GIVEN THIS BACK TO ME WHEN I ASKED.
Holding up your tablet, you realize that Dave has smudged the screen with… well, he’s smudged the screen. With a pinched expression, you try to clean it off by scrubbing it against his bed. Dave doesn’t have a comforter, just an assortment of well-worn blankets draped over his sheets like a nesting featherbeast, so you don’t feel bad about dirtying up the outermost layer.
DAVE: yeah well
DAVE: next time you go pointing fingers about xenophobic porn addictions
DAVE: just remember that theres three pointing back at you
KARKAT: IT’S NOT—
DAVE: man come on that is so porn
DAVE: i mean not for a normal guy—
KARKAT: A *NORMAL* GUY?
DAVE: —but for you it definitely is
DAVE: probably why you busted in here all cranky to get your charger back
DAVE: you got cucked by a shitty battery life mid-jerkoff
Your face heats up. If you could just bring yourself to say something, anything, you could put some distance between you and this accusation. Literally any words at all would do. But you blank for too long, and Dave’s eyebrows creep up. Goddammit.
DAVE: holy shit
DAVE: you really were mid-jerkoff
KARKAT: I WASN’T!
KARKAT: I WAS…
KARKAT: I… WAS…
You grope for an excuse. Dave’s eyebrows only raise further.
KARKAT: I WAS PRE–JERKOFF! FUCK!
KARKAT: ARE YOU HAPPY? ARE YOU COMPLETELY CHUFFED TO KNOW THAT THE TWO OF US HAVE SYNCED MASTURBATORY HABITS? DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL ALL OOEY GOOEY IN THE MIDDLE?
DAVE: well its better than when you synced cycles with rose back on the rock
DAVE: matter of fact
DAVE: if youre already pmsing this hard maybe i should buy her some chocolates
He prods you in the stomach with a socked foot. You slap it away.
KARKAT: FUCK YOU.
DAVE: what
DAVE: too close to enemy territory?
KARKAT: NO! GOD.
KARKAT: I WOULDN’T JUST COME IN HERE WITH MY BULGE FLAPPING ABOUT. WE AREN’T THAT CLOSE.
Dave raises his shoulders. Your hands feel clammy and regrettably moist with what you hope is just lotion, and you’re still not particularly thrilled about having that all over your fingers.
DAVE: well hey
DAVE: you seemed plenty close to me just a second ago.
KARKAT: HOLY HELL.
KARKAT: I’M SORRY.
KARKAT: OKAY?
KARKAT: I WASN’T TRYING TO…
You throw your arms out.
KARKAT: DO THAT.
KARKAT: TOUCH YOU.
KARKAT: YOU KNOW.
DAVE: maybe you should try
The silence that follows is broken only by the audible whirring of your brain as it attempts to process this statement. Likewise, Dave seems to be momentarily baffled that he’s managed to say this aloud.
KARKAT: WHAT?
DAVE: i mean
DAVE: its kind of convenient isnt it
DAVE: that youve got such a thing for humans
DAVE: and im kind of getting into all this troll stuff
KARKAT: HOW IS THAT CONVENIENT?
DAVE: well
DAVE: im a human
DAVE: and youre a troll
DAVE: and…
You stare at Dave. Dave stares at you. It is one long, unblinking game of cluckbeast.
KARKAT: AND?
DAVE: and i dont know dude i think the implication is pretty out in the open
DAVE: look you barged in on me smack dab in the middle of watching this video i spent an hour hand selecting from my carefully curated following of twitter porn accounts so obviously im a little worked up
DAVE: and if you were mid flowery deflowering when this thing died then obviously youre not so chaste yourself
DAVE: were here and were horny and weve got appropriately mismatched genera
DAVE: its sort of an auspicious arrangement for some cross cultural exchange
DAVE: am i right or am i right
KARKAT: IF WHAT YOU’RE IMPLYING IS THAT WE SHOULD HAVE SEX WITH EACH OTHER, I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO EXPLAIN HOW NOT RIGHT YOU ARE.
KARKAT: I MEAN, YOU’RE MY MOIRAIL.
Jesus. This is far from the only reason as to why you should not, absolutely not, most definitely not under any circumstances have sex with Dave, but it’s the first thing you think to say. It could not make you sound like more of a shrinking violet from one of your Alternian romance novels. We can’t, we’re pale!
DAVE: so what
DAVE: i mean humans fuck their friends all the time
KARKAT: THAT’S NOT WHAT—
KARKAT: GOD.
KARKAT: THIS IS SO NOT WORTH EXPLAINING TO YOU FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME.
DAVE: so dont
DAVE: maybe a guy doesnt need to get troll culture graysplained to him all the time yknow
DAVE: maybe he just needs to do a bit of field research
DAVE: so
DAVE: what do you say
For a split second longer than you should, you hesitate. It gives you away as doing something far more humiliating than accidentally shoving your knee up against Dave’s boner: you are considering this. God knows why. Although Dave has his chronic struggles with women, you can generally be trusted to juggle your romantic life. At least to the point of not being involuntarily celibate. Dave tends to scare potential partners off immediately, while you historically do it after three dates and an overnight when you start to get too serious.Maybe that’s the problem, though: the attempted seriousness of a real, real relationship. When it comes to humans, and how you think about them, you feel about it the way you feel about your empty bookcases: it’s not something you can display. It’s fine to indulge yourself in the privacy of your own block with your novels, but you can’t even begin to imagine sitting down a prospective human partner and telling them you take an especial interest in their penetrable skin, the soft hair all over their body, and their flat, harmless, omnivorous teeth.That’s probably why you’ve never had a human partner, strictly speaking. You don’t know if you’d be able to resist the overwhelming temptation to be a fucking weirdo about it.But Dave is Dave. He’s human, sure, but he’s… well, he’s not as serious. If there was ever a bonus to sleeping with him, it would be that you are incapable of caring what he thinks of you. And, even if you did care a little, you’re secure in the knowledge that he’s much, much, much worse. Your eyes dart over to his still-bright monitors, and the gaping violet nook on screen as if to prove to yourself that, yep, he’s still a freak.Your eyes flutter shut.
KARKAT: ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE IT WEIRD?
DAVE: nothing to make weird here
DAVE: not like we have to go all the way we can pop our xeno cherries without actually popping any cherries
DAVE: were just a couple of totally pale buds exchanging favors here
DAVE: you ruined my jerkoff sesh and i ruined yours
DAVE: i get you back you get me back
DAVE: its just quid bro quo
DAVE: completely normal happens all the time
DAVE: trust me on this
When you open your eyes again, you’re surprised to see that there’s no anxiety betrayed in Dave’s face. He’s lying, you know that much, because he’s an abysmal fucking liar. His voice always comes out punchy and quick when he does, like he’s a scuttlebuggy salesman. And, even if didn’t have an ass-load of tells, he still doesn’t know the first fucking thing about what pale buddies do. For some irrational reason, your heart beats a little faster at the thought.If Dave can read you as well as you can him, he must see your answer in your face before your pan can even put it into so many words.
DAVE: you want me to go first
DAVE: like
DAVE: whip it out i mean
KARKAT: JEGUS. SAVE SOME OF THE RESPITESQUAB TALK FOR AFTERWARDS.
DAVE: my apologies
DAVE: would you care for me to take the initiative in liberating my engorged cock from my trousers
KARKAT: SHUT UP.
KARKAT: NO.
DAVE: ok well we dont have to but i just thought—
KARKAT: I’LL DO IT.
Without letting yourself think about this for another second, you shove down your sweatpants. Dave’s unusual confidence finally cracks a little, and he blinks at you repeatedly as though he isn’t completely convinced this is happening. But it’s late, you’re worked up, and your pajamas are the ideal pants for an ill-advised jerk-off session. If you, like Dave, had to go through the painstaking labor of peeling off a pair of jeans, all that extra time to think would almost certainly make you change your mind.Your bulge slides out. Unlike Dave’s dick, it is literally heat-seeking, and it coils into your waiting palm. Stress releases in your shoulders at not having to restrain yourself — maybe all that pre-jerkoff got you more worked up than you’d care to admit — only to be replaced by a new, different stress once you remember Dave is watching you.
DAVE: its uh
He licks his lips. For once in his life, Dave appears to be thinking about what he says before he says it.
DAVE: wet
But not thinking that hard, apparently.
KARKAT: WOW.
KARKAT: I THINK HARVARD IS ON THE LINE.
DAVE: shut up dude
DAVE: you dont get to insult me when im about to have your dick in my hand thats just bad manners
KARKAT: WHAT, JUST LIKE IT WAS BAD MANNERS TO TELL THAT VIOLET BLOOD SHE WAS HATCHED JUST TO TAKE HUMAN DICK?
KARKAT: SPEAKING OF YOUR PORN: SHOULDN’T YOU KNOW THE DEAL HERE, ANYWAYS?
KARKAT: YOU’VE EVIDENTLY OGLED PLENTY OF BULGE IN YOUR DAY.
DAVE: and nook
DAVE: come on man full disclosure
DAVE: my eyeballs dont go straight to the phallus
DAVE: and i do know that its just
DAVE: i didnt know it got that wet
DAVE: i mean i did know that but
DAVE: its my first time being confronted with that information
DAVE: in the real real
DAVE: its like dripping almost jesus christ
DAVE: …
DAVE: to hell with ogling
DAVE: can i touch it
You trip over another snide remark. Your bulge writhes needily against your wrist and leaves a faint trail of red in its wake.
KARKAT: UH.
KARKAT: YEAH.
KARKAT: NAME OF THE GAME, I GUESS.
When it comes to taking charge, going and getting, making snap decisions… you’ve only ever known Dave to wibble pathetically around any number of options until someone helps him out. Typically, that someone is you. Now, though, he doesn’t wait for further opinions. He reaches out with a surprising gentleness to run his fingers testily along the length, and you suppress a shiver.Dave’s always been tall, taller than you, but he’s so slight. Put two Daves side-by-side, and they might still not be as broad as you are. His hands are big, though. They, like so many other parts of him, still seem to be mismatched, oversized, waiting for one last growth spurt to be proportional to the rest of him. You drop your hand so that your bulge curls up into his instead — which it does with a desperate enthusiasm that makes him wince.
KARKAT: YOU GOOD?
DAVE: yeah
DAVE: just feels funny i guess
He wraps his hand around you and tries to… well, to jerk you off. As you watch him, it occurs to you that this is probably how he does it to himself. Your pan provides you with helpful imagery of Dave watching his terrible pornography, fucking his hand to the shrill crying of the seadweller on screen, and your face heats up. There are some things you just do not need to know, or imagine, about your moirail.Just because it works for him doesn’t mean it works for you, though. His brow is knit in concentration as he struggles to keep your bulge from slipping out of his loose fist, his entire palm completely slick with translucent red. That makes you even, you guess.
DAVE: its sort of
DAVE: getting away from me here i think
KARKAT: YEAH.
KARKAT: MAYBE YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED AS MUCH PORN AS I THOUGHT.
DAVE: what
DAVE: i totally have
After a beat, his brain catches up with him and he realizes this is not a point of pride.
DAVE: like not that much but yknow
DAVE: enough
DAVE: but uh
DAVE: giving a handie is the boring part so maybe ive skipped over this part one too many times to really get a working knowledge of how to handle a bulge
DAVE: sans sticking it somewhere
DAVE: which aint happening here dont get any big ideas
DAVE: or average sized ideas
KARKAT: NICE TRY, BUT YOU’RE NOT GOADING ME INTO A TANTRUM ABOUT HOW COMPLETELY MASSIVE MY BULGE IS, HOW I’M IN THE NINETY-NINTH PERCENTILE OF GUT-CHURNING GIRTH, AND HOW YOU DON’T KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT ALIEN ENDOWMENT.
KARKAT: SORRY TO DENY YOU THE SATISFACTION BECAUSE THAT IS NOT HAPPENING.
KARKAT: BUT I’M NOT AVERAGE.
KARKAT: SO.
KARKAT: WHATEVER.
DAVE: well its definitely the biggest ive ever had
He meets your eye long enough to deflect your scowl with a stretched, toothless smile. When he turns his attention back to your bulge, his unsure hand develops a death-tight grip around you. All of your jabs are shelved indefinitely as you suck in a breath through gritted teeth.
DAVE: uh
DAVE: bad?
KARKAT: NOT BAD.
KARKAT: UH. GOOD, ACTUALLY.
KARKAT: YOU DON’T NEED TO — *MOVE* AS MUCH. IT’S NOT LIKE A DICK. YOU JUST NEED TO APPLY PRESSURE.
DAVE: like this?
KARKAT: *YES.* FUCK. YES.
KARKAT: LIKE THAT.
You swallow hard. Having a feverishly warm, declawed hand around you is making your stomach tie in knots. Even though Dave’s hands aren’t delicate in the way you always fantasized a human’s might be — they’re knobby, calloused, and his fingernails are well-bitten — they’re still human. You don’t know how to admit to Dave that watching a human learn how to touch you is the stuff of your wildest fucking fantasies. Especially not without implying that he has ever had any part in your fantasies, which would be neither appropriate nor true.
DAVE: here
DAVE: hold on
DAVE: i wanna
He pulls away. Your bulge thrashes, leaving a glossy trail where it wriggles from against your hip to up under your shirt. You take a fistful of your shirt at the hem and tug it forward, both to stop your bulge from rubbing up against the rough fabric and to feel less naked.When you notice that Dave is scrambling to shuck his jeans, you avert your eyes. Yeah, you’re about to see it anyways, and yeah, you can already pretty much see the entire imprint of the damn thing, but it still feels invasive to stare before he has it out. When he tosses his pants across the room, clear in the opposite direction from his hamper, you let yourself look at him again.His hip bones are pronounced and pointy and his thumbs rest just underneath them as he fingers the waistband of his boxers.
DAVE: are you ready
KARKAT: I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU’RE ACTING LIKE I’VE NEVER SEEN YOUR DICK BEFORE.
KARKAT: SEEING YOUR DICK IS THE CATALYST FOR…
KARKAT: ALL OF THIS.
DAVE: but this is the first time youll be able to feast those hungry eyes upon its length at length
DAVE: my ankle spanker swinging free so that you may bask in its glory
DAVE: hang low and behold
He pulls down his underwear, and his dick springs out. It’s almost comical, like it should be accompanied by a slapstick sound bite. You’re not big on porn, but you have watched it, and so as far as you can tell, it’s… standard. Intact. Sort of bowed. In all this time, his erection has apparently not wilted in the least, and it almost makes you cringe to look at it; the whole thing just looks painful, heavy and leaking.Dave wraps his slick hand around his cock, almost defensively.
DAVE: hey
DAVE: my eyes are up here
Right. Eyes. You meet them.
KARKAT: WHAT AN APPENDAGE.
KARKAT: MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE ECTOLAB TECHNICIAN.
DAVE: thanks ill make sure to pass the compliment along
DAVE: im sure john would love hearing youre a big fan of his work on my schlong
DAVE: we can give him a call in the afterglow
KARKAT: FUCK OFF. DON’T TALK ABOUT JOHN.
Dave shoots a glance to every corner of the room.
DAVE: oh sorry i think im hearing things
DAVE: you know this hive might really be built on a burial ground and all the ghosts in training bras are inexplicably acquainted with our mutual friend john
DAVE: shit maybe HES the one who needs an audience with chris hansen
DAVE: that must be whats happening
DAVE: because why would you tell me not to talk about him when youre the one who fucking brought him up
KARKAT: YEAH, AS A SNARKY ASIDE! I WASN’T INVITING YOU TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT JOHN WITH ME!
DAVE: why is it because hes like your formative human crush and if we start talking about him youre never going to stop
DAVE: youve spent sweeps and sweeps fantasizing about his wang and youre bereft that youre stuck with this one instead
DAVE: now this is ego speaking but im of the opinion you gotta the better end of the deal here buddy
KARKAT: NO!
KARKAT: NO.
KARKAT: BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT ANY OF OUR MUTUAL FRIENDS RIGHT NOW. BECAUSE IT’S… WEIRD. AND INAPPROPRIATE.
KARKAT: THIS WHOLE THING IS WEIRD AND INAPPROPRIATE.
KARKAT: …
DAVE: …
KARKAT: …
DAVE: give me your hand?
KARKAT: FINE.
You present it, wrist-up, and let Dave do the work of shuffling forward and tugging it to his lap. But before he does, he hesitates, leans forward, and grabs you by the base of the bulge hard enough to make you stiffen. He drags his hand upward, turning, squeezing, like he’s trying to fucking wring it dry, until genetic material is pooling in his cupped palm. Then, he lathers it over his dick.
KARKAT: JESUS.
DAVE: what
DAVE: is this too barbaric for you karkat
DAVE: sorry that us mammalian menfolk have not evolved to slip and slide all over the place when were whacking off on our lonesome but i would really like not to chafe like a motherfucker
KARKAT: NO, JUST…
The words to describe why you’re so flustered are just out of reach. Dave slides his slick hand over it a few times and you watch him, too transfixed to even be embarrassed. It’s a lot, maybe too much, dribbling from his cock and down onto his bed.
KARKAT: YOU KNOW.
KARKAT: IT’S WET.
DAVE: glad that were doing callbacks while screwing around thats really awesome
DAVE: when boning me kicks off a streak of shameless anthrophilia you better get used to being used as a lube dispenser on legs
DAVE: if youre always this soaking wet then youre just asking for someone to get a nasty case of trench crotch when you actually get around to sticking it in so you might want to lay down a tarp
KARKAT: YOU’RE REALLY HUNG UP ON THIS WETNESS THING.
DAVE: yeah it fucking compels me ok karkat
DAVE: alright you watched in on me watching my gnarly troll porn for a reason
KARKAT: WHICH IS?
DAVE: i like that it gets so messy
DAVE: and gross
DAVE: and that you cum fucking buckets even though i prefer it without the literal buckets being present i just
DAVE: i think its hot ok
DAVE: let a guy have his fetish in peace please and thank you
KARKAT: NO JUDGMENT.
DAVE: thats such a lie
DAVE: you are the judgiest sonofabitch ive ever met in my life
DAVE: fuck i cant believe were doing this
DAVE: that youre doing this
DAVE: i never thought…
He shakes his head instead of finishing his thought.Before you can press him on it, though, he’s guiding your hand to him and closing your fingers around his cock. He keeps his hand on top of yours for a long moment, almost as if to steady himself, and then lets go. He reaches back over into your lap, and your bulge bumps up against him enthusiastically.All the words you’ve heard used to describe a penis swim in your brain, and you try to pluck out the least flowery descriptions from the word cloud: it’s firm, hot, and soft. Maybe you’re more than a little worried about branching out beyond single syllables here. Experimentally, you stroke him in the up-and-down way he did earlier, and he lets out a rattling breath.You understand the process of getting a human off, but you haven’t seen a ton of visuals. When you read, the warm bodies exist as fuzzy figments of your imagination; nondescript shapes with shaking legs and crackling moans. You try to remember how Dave touched you earlier, the harsh rhythm and the twist of his wrist, and try to mimic his motions.It’s not natural, but it’s intuitive. The genmat coating his cock makes a wet noise when you try to speed up, your hand gliding across him with stupid ease. Minding your claws, you tug down his foreskin, rub your thumb across the wet head, and feel his heartbeat thrumming in the vein.
DAVE: fuck
DAVE: what the fuck
DAVE: youre so much better than i was with you
KARKAT: HUMANS AREN’T COMPLICATED.
Even though you’re clumsy, slower and less practiced than he would be doing it himself, his words are strained. Abruptly, you tighten your grip, just to see what it does for him, and he groans. The sound makes your bulge jolt, and you shift forward on the bed, watching the head of his cock poke out of the top of your fist with every stroke.
KARKAT: THEY’RE ACTUALLY INANELY SIMPLE IN ALMOST EVERY WAY, BUT ESPECIALLY THEIR GENITALS.
KARKAT: THEY’RE ALL… BLUNT, AND UNSOPHISTICATED. KNOWING WHAT TO DO WITH THEM IS ALMOST SIMPLER THAN INSTINCT. ALL YOU DO IS SMUSH UP AGAINST EACH OTHER, GRIND THEM INTO ONE ANOTHER, POUND THINGS INTO THE RIGHT HOLES OVER AND OVER…
That’s what you find so fascinating about humans, the dumb simplicity of it all. You’re only good at this because it’s so easy, so straightforward, a simple back-and-forth motion and Dave’s lips are pressed into a flat, white line, the muscles pulled taut in his stick-skinny thighs. He’s too distracted to really touch you anymore. He clutches one of your legs, nails digging into your pajamas, as your bulge tries to flatten itself under his curled fingers.You don’t realize how hard you’re holding him — how hard you’re breathing — until Dave starts swatting at your leg.
DAVE: stop
DAVE: stop stop stop
You sputter to a stop, and when your fingers ease up around him, Dave’s hips still chase your touch. His jaw is clenched. It’s what he does when he gets anxious or overwhelmed, and ordinarily, you’d gripe at him to relax his face before he shatters all his teeth. Now, though, you just watch his throat bob as he grapples for more words.
DAVE: fuck
DAVE: ok
DAVE: this is not fair i cant even concentrate
DAVE: im so not getting you off this isnt mutual masturbation this is just
DAVE: masturbation
DAVE: not even
DAVE: this is just a fucking handjob oh my god
DAVE: how am i getting this worked up over a handjob what am i thirteen years old
DAVE: are we in the—the—
DAVE: middle school bathroom
DAVE: handicapped stall
DAVE: winter formal
DAVE: fucking wobble by vic playing from the gymnasium
KARKAT: DUDE.
KARKAT: ARE YOU OKAY?
When he meets your eye, you notice that his pupils have grown to a much less sober size.
DAVE: so ok
DAVE: maybe better than ok
He wipes both hands off on his shirt and plucks his glasses off, tossing them up into his pillows.
DAVE: cmere
DAVE: brand new winning idea
DAVE: can you
He takes a fistful of your sweatpants and tugs.
DAVE: like
DAVE: get these off off
DAVE: wanna try something
Dave placing himself between your legs and insistently grabbing at your pants has troubling implications. You glance back at his computer monitor, but it’s gone dark. Hesitantly, you slide your attention back to him.
KARKAT: …WHAT KIND OF SOMETHING?
DAVE: just take them off karkat come on
KARKAT: LOOK, I AGREED TO A JERKOFF SESSION—
DAVE: —saw it in a video and it looked real hot but i cant get close enough to you like this i need you to—
KARKAT: —ALL THESE IDEAS YOU GET FROM YOUR PORN, ALL THAT SHIT YOU INSISTED WAS NOT GETTING INTO YOUR HEAD, I DON’T WANT ANY PART—
DAVE: —karkat im so fucking hard my head hurts will you please please please take your pants off—
You take him by both wrists, wrenching them up and away from you. He’s half-leaning over you, and you’re half-leaning back, and it looks rather like the two of you have paused midway to the missionary position.
KARKAT: YOU ARE NOT TOUCHING MY FUCKING NOOK.
KARKAT: YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND IF YOU THINK I’M HAVING THE…
KARKAT: THE FULL SEX WITH YOU.
DAVE: what
DAVE: dude
DAVE: “the full sex”?
You shrug, defensive. He squirms in your hold. Not really trying to break free, just testing to see if he can. Which he can’t.
DAVE: im not trying to
DAVE: fuck you im just trying to
DAVE: do this thing
KARKAT: WHAT THING?
You let go of him. He tucks his arms to his chest, rubbing both wrists together.
DAVE: its like
DAVE: uh
DAVE: you know im sure theres a real neat term for this but i dont actually know what it is
DAVE: guess im not gooning hard enough
DAVE: but its kind of like
He poorly tries to mime the concept to you, swirling his hands around each other like he’s a sorcerer trying to conjure a fucking fireball. It does very little to clarify.
KARKAT: GREAT. THANKS FOR YOUR EXPLANATION.
KARKAT: …
KARKAT: NOTHING IS GOING INSIDE OF ME?
DAVE: no man
DAVE: i promise
You stare at him pointedly. Now it’s his turn to shrug defensively in response.
DAVE: i promise
DAVE: good god almighty do you think im just gonna treat you to an impromptu dicking
DAVE: im pretty sure my wrists are going to bruise and you barely held them for a second
DAVE: rest assured i am not equipped to force myself on you
He pauses. Then, tacks on,
DAVE: nor do i want to
DAVE: sorry probably shouldve led with that
KARKAT: ALRIGHT. FINE.
Satisfied, or at least satiated, you wave him backward so you can kick off your pants.
DAVE: oh whoah
DAVE: maybe it really is your time of the month
Brow furrowed, you glance down only to see wetness staining the insides of your thighs, and the color reflects in your cheeks. To his credit, Dave seems to realize this is a mistake almost immediately after saying it, and looks so pitiful for it that all you can bring yourself to do is roll your eyes.
KARKAT: JUST SHOW ME YOUR PORN THING.
Dave hesitates like he’s expecting this to be an ass-pull of some kind, but you only stare expectantly at him and wait for him to startle into action. He shuffles forward, sliding one of his legs underneath your bent knee and shimmying himself as close to you as he can. One of his hands settles on your shoulder while the other pets your bulge with the back of his knuckles, light and withholding like he’s stroking a woolbeast at the goddamn petting zoo, before herding it against his dick. Not so much like a petting zoo.
KARKAT: OH.
KARKAT: I GET IT.
Your bulge has a lot less finesse than your hand, but you hazard a guess that what Dave is asking for is more or less the same idea as jerking him off. Your attention alternates between his face and the place you’re pressed together as your bulge slithers up one side, following the path of one bulging vein. Dave swears under his breath as the tip wriggles itself into his foreskin, twisting under the crown.When Dave said this was a “porn thing,” you expected the worst. This doesn’t feel like the most obscene thing he could have suggested — hell, it barely even feels like the most obscene thing you’ve done today. But your pumpbiscuit is thumping hard in your chest at the sight of him breathing hard and irregularly while your bulge twists around his cock, a steady pulse.He wets his lips before pulling the lower one into his mouth to gnaw at it. It takes almost no effort from you to do this, but you watch him in amazement as he struggles to form words.
DAVE: oh my god
DAVE: its like the worlds most articulated tongue like
DAVE: like im getting a blowjob from a fucking giant
DAVE: like im inside you karkat i fucking
DAVE: fuck
DAVE: is this
DAVE: for you is it
For you, it’s not much of anything. Your bulge slips up and down his cock because you’re zeroed in on the idea, because it prefers physical contact to flapping around against your stomach, not because it gets you off in so many words. But it’s… nice, incidentally, to watch Dave shake under you, trying to bite down on his tongue when he moans because he’s embarrassed of how good it is for him.And it being good for him is his primary concern, of course. Dave has always been a decidedly selfish moirail, you think without meaning to, and the thought sends a little thrill up your spine that is equal parts horny and horrified. Your moirail. You are bumping bulges with your moirail. As if there was ever any question about how deranged you are, you have to breathe out hard through your nose to keep yourself from groaning at the fucking thought.
KARKAT: YEAH.
Your voice comes out rough, and you clear your throat.
KARKAT: FOR ME IT IS.
Dave tries to lift his head, meet your eyes through the hair swinging in his face, but only manages to for a second. Either it’s too much work to hold it up, or he can’t bring himself to look at you while he rambles.
DAVE: have you
DAVE: have you ever thought
DAVE: like
DAVE: maybe this is something we shouldve already got out of our systems
DAVE: back on the meteor when we were kids—
KARKAT: WH—?
KARKAT: DO NOT TELL ME THIS IS A FANTASY YOU’VE BEEN STEWING ON FOR ALMOST TEN YEARS.
DAVE: no i mean
DAVE: i dont know maybe
DAVE: i guess ive th-thought about it before theoretically
DAVE: i mean i think about all my friends
DAVE: nothing serious you know just to think about it
DAVE: john jade terezi
DAVE: uh
DAVE: others
DAVE: not specifically you its not like its a you thing but
DAVE: i just
His blunt nails bite into your skin, his hips grinding uselessly against nothing as your bulge contracts around him. He’s panting through his sentences, his breath hot against you where his head is bowed.
DAVE: god fuck i
DAVE: i was so much worse when i was younger
DAVE: y-you think im pornsick now karkat i wish you couldve heard what i was thinking back then
DAVE: i was so much worse and i was just with you all the time dude so i—i—
DAVE: i thought about it
DAVE: i coulda got hard from a nippy gust of wind so i was doomed when we wrestled or youd pap me
DAVE: always had my dick in my fucking waistband because i couldnt—handle that—couldnt—
DAVE: fuck
DAVE: woke up in puddles of my own cum just thinking about you bein nice to me
DAVE: mean to me
DAVE: pale
DAVE: not pale
DAVE: whatever
DAVE: i dont know we were teenage boys some part of me always hoped—always thought—
DAVE: something might happen
DAVE: that you were as bad as i am but i dunno i think i was just out of my fucking mind horny ju—just—
DAVE: just the sickest motherfucker
DAVE: now i try not to be a total freak about it
DAVE: you know i try to have some—some decorum
DAVE: class
DAVE: decency
DAVE: i—oh shit—
He bites down on his cheek, and his mouth shuts tight. He could’ve stood to do that about five humiliating confessions ago. Dave overshares at the worst of times, but you’re distantly aggravated that he’s picking now of all the worst times in the world to do it. The thought of Dave, teenaged and tilting, fantasizing about pailing you because of your well-meaning pale solicitations makes you dizzy with something. Disgust, or annoyance, or… just plain pity, maybe, so severely that your bulge throbs.
KARKAT: YOU’RE STILL A TOTAL FREAK.
KARKAT: IF OUR ENTIRE MOIRALLEGIANCE HAS BEEN IN SERVICE OF GETTING YOU OFF…
DAVE: no
DAVE: no its
DAVE: incidental
DAVE: happy coincidence
DAVE: its—
His words don’t reach your ears. It might be because of his dwindling coherency, or it might be because you’re so turned on it’s physically painful, but you can’t bring yourself to listen.Pale buds don’t do this all the time, like he tried to imply earlier. Pale buds don’t do this, period. Humans do this: fuck their friends, their coworkers, families, strangers, anything that moves. It’s a base instinct that spikes at thirteen but never really goes away, an insatiable need to have someone on them, against them, inside of them. Your breath catches with the thought of how unevolved it is, how desperate and pathetic this is.You and Dave are literally smushing yourselves together, his dick rock-hard and unyielding and useless underneath your bulge, and he's gripping you so tight that you might bruise, too, and his hips rocking up into your touch. You wrap your hand around the both of you as best you can, finally give your bulge some pressure, and it wrings a groan from you. Dave twitches under your bulge, your hand, and you watch the muscles in his stomach work.
DAVE: im gonna cum
He says this with such composure, so matter-of-factly, that it startles you back into reality. He clutches your shoulder with increasing urgency.
DAVE: karkat
DAVE: gonna cum im gonna—
And then he does. Cumming is one of those human sex things that never completely gets past uncanny for you; you watch it come out of him in short spurts, barely even enough to coat the back of your hand. You retract your bulge and hand in sync, keeping the later level to sweep your fingers through the jizz on the back of it.It’s thicker than your genetic material — and stickier, you note unpleasantly. A small, insane part of your pan wonders if you shouldn’t taste it before you realize that Dave is staring at you, flushed and out of breath, and you decide instead to wipe your hand clean on his bedspread.
DAVE: fuck
DAVE: wasnt uh
He swallows painfully.
DAVE: wasnt as good for you
KARKAT: NO.
Insanity takes further root in your pan, gripping your whole body with an idea. You’re asking before reason can overtake you again.
KARKAT: CAN I FUCK YOU?
DAVE: what
You don’t repeat yourself. You just let Dave stare at you, bewildered, as his brain tries to process this request.
DAVE: fuh
DAVE: fuck
DAVE: like
DAVE: up my ass
KARKAT: UH. YEAH.
KARKAT: IF I’M NOT MISTAKEN, THAT’S HOW IT HAPPENS FOR MALE HUMANS.
DAVE: b-but
DAVE: like
The wheels spin. Dave scrubs a hand over his face.
DAVE: i thought we werent doing the full sex
DAVE: i thought you said
DAVE: nothing going inside anywhere
DAVE: if id known it was on the table i probably would have pressed a lot harder
KARKAT: I SAID NOTHING IS GOING INSIDE *ME.*
KARKAT: YOU DIDN’T SAY SHIT.
He still doesn’t respond. He doesn’t say anything for a long, long time. Finally, you just try to push him down. He’s rigid under you, but not resistant, and almost lets you get him onto his back before he reacts, his legs kicking out and arm coming up against your chest.
DAVE: dude
DAVE: you just—you cant just—
DAVE: lay me down and take me like one of your sweet human maidens
DAVE: i mean what the fuck
DAVE: this is like the last barrier of our friendship
DAVE: you put your bulge up my ass and then what
DAVE: then weve fucked for real
DAVE: we have had real actual sex
KARKAT: SO WHAT?
KARKAT: YOU ALREADY SAID YOU WANTED TO FUCK ME.
KARKAT: NOT EVEN. YOU SAID YOU’D DO IT IF I LET YOU.
KARKAT: IS THERE REALLY THAT MUCH OF A BARRIER ANYMORE?
DAVE: yeah but
DAVE: you know its MADE for that
DAVE: the nook its like
DAVE: a hole
DAVE: that is supposed to be fucked
DAVE: this is my ass dude
KARKAT: MAYBE I THINK YOUR ASS IS A HOLE THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKED.
Dave stares at you, wide-eyed. You cough.
KARKAT: UH, THAT WASN’T DIRTY TALK.
KARKAT: THAT WAS, LIKE — ME, TRYING TO POINT OUT YOUR DOUBLE STANDARD.
KARKAT: NO PART OF ME WAS *MADE* TO GET FUCKED, ALRIGHT? DON’T BE SUCH A XENOPHOBE.
DAVE: mister pot weve got the kettle on line one
KARKAT: SHUT UP!
KARKAT: GOD.
KARKAT: LOOK, WE DON’T HAVE TO DO IT. I’M NOT ABOUT TO FORCE YOU. BUT IF YOU’RE ONLY REJECTING ME BECAUSE YOU’RE ATTACHING VALUE TO SOME FLIMSY, EARTH-CONCEIVED NOTION OF MASCULINITY, THEN YOU NEED TO GROW UP. SERIOUSLY, WHO GIVES A SHIT?
KARKAT: IT’S NOT LIKE I’M GOING TO GO AROUND BRAGGING THAT I FUCKED YOU. NO OFFENSE, BUT THAT’S THE LAST THING I WANT ANYONE TO KNOW.
DAVE: some taken
KARKAT: I’M JUST SAYING.
KARKAT: YOU’RE MAKING IT INTO A BIG DEAL WHEN IT’S NOT.
KARKAT: …
KARKAT: ALSO, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, YOU OWE ME. YOU SIGNED A SOCIAL CONTRACT HERE.
KARKAT: IF WE DON’T DO THIS, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO REALLY PUT YOUR WRIST INTO IT. DO YOU WANT TO RISK DEVELOPING CARPAL TUNNEL BECAUSE OF ME AND NOT BECAUSE OF JACKING OFF TO YOUR BELOVED INTERNET PORNOGRAPHY?
This is not your finest pale-talk. If you’re being honest, it’s barely even a pale talk at all because your motives are one-hundred percent self involved. If you don’t get off in the next five minutes, you will explode into rage confetti.As he thinks, you watch Dave’s tongue work inside his closed mouth, pushing out his cheeks and licking over his teeth. Finally, miraculously, he pats your back.
DAVE: fine
DAVE: but be
DAVE: you know
DAVE: cool about it
You don’t even bother with any snarky questioning as to how, exactly, you can be cool about sticking it in him. This situation is already fragile enough without giving Dave more reasons to push you off.
KARKAT: FINE.
KARKAT: SO COOL.
Dave keeps his forearm pressed against your chest, as if enforcing a certain level of personal space between the two of you, but he lets you recline him the rest of the way down. You hesitate once you’re hovering over him, and then reach down to pull off your shirt. It feels strange to fuck someone while still half-clothed.
DAVE: should i get mine off too
DAVE: or
KARKAT: IF YOU WANT.
But you don’t wait for an answer, just start tugging his up and away, too. He doesn’t protest, though, raising his arms to help you. Then the two of you are sitting on his bed, completely naked, staring in silence. Dave’s dick is soft against his thigh, still glossy-red, and you wonder if he’ll be able to get it up again. Probably not. That porn addiction probably makes it hard to get, well… hard.You clear your throat to speak, but Dave beats you to it.
DAVE: hey
DAVE: so
DAVE: i dont know how much you know about human sex
DAVE: i mean i assume everything cause youve got such a massive throbbing fetish but i assume this is worth saying anyways
DAVE: but you cant just go in like
DAVE: dry
KARKAT: YOU’RE IN LUCK, BECAUSE I’M NOT DRY. AS PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED.
You let your bulge wriggle into your hand.
DAVE: rule of threes midsex
DAVE: well dont that wit just soothe all my worries
KARKAT: IT’LL BE FINE.
KARKAT: I’VE READ ABOUT THIS SORT OF THING. NOT ONLY IS IT ALREADY LUBRICATED, IT’S TAPERED, SO IT’LL GO A WHOLE LOT SMOOTHER. IT’S NOT THE SAME AS TRYING TO STUFF YOU FULL OF AN ORDINARY HUMAN DICK.
At your wording, Dave shifts uncomfortably. Maybe you should be using terminology more delicate than stuffing him full.
DAVE: so
DAVE: when you say read
DAVE: you mean youve read that like anecdotally right
DAVE: on forums or something where real people talk about real sex
DAVE: somewhere with sources backed by research
DAVE: and not just in your books
DAVE: your fictional books
KARKAT: YEAH, OF COURSE THAT’S WHAT I MEAN.
You mean you read it in your books. But you doubt something would be such a massive staple of the genre if it wasn’t true. That would be ridiculous. 
KARKAT: TRUST ME, OKAY?
DAVE: i do trust you
DAVE: regrettably
DAVE: painfully
DAVE: and i guess i owe you for the best orgasm ive had to date so
DAVE: go forth and conquer
Figuring out the position is a little more complicated than you anticipated. A nook is a lot further up on the body, and your bulge can more or less be trusted to slip inside of one without too much direction. That’s just instinct. Finding out how best to penetrate Dave, though, takes some finagling you weren’t expecting. They don’t really write about the awkward shuffling of the sex in your books — things might get sloppy, sure, but they’re also overwhelmingly coordinated despite being embroiled in the throes of passion.Dave is watching you intensively, radiating insecurity, and nearly jumps off the bed when you grip onto his thin hips. He doesn’t fare much better when your bulge finally catches a clue, sliding along the inside of his thigh and down between his asscheeks. His breathing might be even more rapid now than when you were jerking him off as your bulge rubs against his hole.
KARKAT: STILL OKAY?
DAVE: fi-ine
His voice cracks. You pretend you don’t hear it.
KARKAT: TELL ME IF YOU’RE NOT.
You pause. Then, possibly delirious, you reach up to brush his hair back and deliver a pap to his sweaty forehead. Dave can’t possibly comprehend how wrong that is, how dirty, and thoughtlessly lets his eyes fall shut to relax into your touch. Fuck. Red leaks down your thighs, and the tip of your bulge starts to press harder against Dave, more insistently, slowly wriggling inside—
DAVE: this is so fucking weird
DAVE: oh my god what the fuck
All of your books emphasize the same thing about fucking a human like this: it’s tight. Tighter than a nook, tighter than a pussy — usually, there’s some mention made of a subsequent un-tightening after the sex, of a bulge or a dick or whatever being so big and fucking someone so hard that it ruins them, loosens that hole up forever. That doesn’t strike you as sexy so much as it does a tragedy, though. Dave feels so good around you that you would sincerely grieve if this was the last time that was possible — and you’re so turned on that your brain doesn’t register the implication there that you want to do this again.
KARKAT: FUCK. 
KARKAT: ARE YOU OKAY?
KARKAT: ARE YOU…
DAVE: its uh
DAVE: its fine
DAVE: its…
Dave stays impossibly tense as your bulge presses into him, his hands clinging onto the blankets so tight you can see the veins bulging in his skinny wrists. You hitch his hips up higher, at a better angle, chewing on your cheek as you wait for your bulge to drive down into him until he’s flush against you.Maybe that’s a pipe dream. You’d probably be satisfied getting halfway, especially if Dave keeps clenching around you like he’s trying to pinch you off inside of him.
KARKAT: DAVE.
KARKAT: YOU’RE WORRYING ME.
DAVE: its FINE
DAVE: i said its fine
KARKAT: CAN I KEEP GOING?
DAVE: y—
DAVE: nnn
DAVE: yes
He’s stiff as a board underneath you. Some rational part of you thinks that maybe you should pull out, push back in, make this more of a gradual process, but you can’t bring yourself to do it. You just want to shove it in, to push until you’re fully seated inside of him, to bend him in half and split him open. It’s a startlingly black inclination towards your moirail. Not that your quadrants can be considered especially tidy at this point.Your pity for him wins out, though, and you restrain yourself. You reach down between his legs, fumble to grab ahold of his cock, and he flinches when you do.
DAVE: fuck
DAVE: dude i dont think i can i think
DAVE: this is more of a—a—
DAVE: a one sided endeavor
DAVE: you know
DAVE: public use
DAVE: for the public of one
DAVE: just doing you a favor here im not—i cant—
DAVE: fuck!
His whole body is racked with a sudden tremor, his voice going thin and high, and you feel his soft dick twitch in your hand.
DAVE: oh fuck goddammit fuck
DAVE: fuck fuck
KARKAT: WHAT’S WRONG?
KARKAT: SHOULD I STOP?
As if protesting against the idea, your bulge sinks deeper inside of him. Dave writhes under you when it does, half of his face pressed into his pillow, wriggling down against you with the sort of aimless uncertainty that betrays how embarrassed he is more than his blushing. There’s a growing puddle of genetic material below where your bodies are connecting, but your mouth feels completely dry. With some difficulty, you swallow.
DAVE: barrier broken
DAVE: new heretofore unknown barrier also broken
KARKAT: SO IT’S… GOOD?
DAVE: karkat
DAVE: just
KARKAT: OKAY. OKAY, YEAH.
It would be nice to bore down on Dave, force him to say exactly what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, how much he loves your bulge or whatever other sex-babble you can recall from the page, but you can’t think straight enough to apply that kind of pressure. Instead, you just throw one of his too-long legs over your shoulder, a move which he not-quite-whines in protest about, and start to rock in and out of him in quick, tiny motions like you’re trying to jimmy your way in.
KARKAT: HOW IS IT?
KARKAT: SEEMS LIKE YOU’RE INTO IT.
DAVE: im
DAVE: im just doing this as a favor to you
KARKAT: YOU LET ME PUT MY BULGE UP YOUR ASS ENTIRELY AS A FAVOR TO ME.
DAVE: yeah
DAVE: im a—
DAVE: im a good friend
KARKAT: YOU’RE NOT THAT GOOD OF A FRIEND.
KARKAT: ACTUALLY, YOU’RE A PRETTY SHITTY FR—
Dave jerks against you with a gasp, clenching down around you so hard that you nearly keel over. Right. The chitin chunk, the… prostate, you recall fuzzily, the recipient of a thousand unpleasant nicknames in fiction. Human male pleasant center. Localized up the wastechute, for some reason, as if you needed any further proof of how botched human evolution is. Brain fuzzed, you try your best to concentrate on finding it again, on forcing your bulge back up against it.It’s not hard to tell when you do. Dave seizes up as you rub against it, so you keep your bulge pressed there and watch him react. He’s not very loud, but he must be loud enough that it embarrasses him because you watch him clamp his mouth shut. He squirms underneath you like you’re choking him out, his hands rapidly grab-ungrabbing at his blankets.You swipe your hand through the pool of genmat collecting underneath you two, coating your fingers in it to wrap your hand back around Dave’s dick. He groans when you do, almost pained, bucking up into your hand. He’s not hard, but he’s getting there; you can feel him thickening up in your grasp.
KARKAT: STILL JUST A FAVOR?
DAVE: fuck you
DAVE: fuck you so hard
DAVE: and thats not an invitation to be like “not until im done fucking you” or anything its just
DAVE: fuck
His eyes are closed, but he tosses his head to the other side as if the thought he might see you upon opening them is infuriating to him. You snap your hips forward, disrupting your steady press inside, and it tears a reluctant groan from Dave.You pull your hand back to lean forward against him, and his leg slides from your shoulder. He’s too gangly to really do anything with them, not that you expect he’d want to wrap them around you even if he could, so they shuffle uselessly against the bed. This time, his not-quite-whine is an actual whine, low in his throat as you drive your bulge into him. His dick is pinned to his stomach, wet with genmat and sliding around between the both of you.If you could, you think you’d really shove the whole thing inside of him, fuck him the brutal way that humans do. Human sex is more than alien, it’s… primitive, like the way animals fuck. It isn’t letting someone wriggle around on top of you with a bucket caught between your bellies for easy aiming, it’s intense and heady. The room would be filled with that same smacking sound of the video he’d been watching, wet and obscene just how Dave likes it, and you’d feel the ache in your thighs as you laid into him, stuffed him full of your bulge until he came, touched, across his stomach. A pathetic smattering of human ejaculate that would be drowned out in the red of your orgasm, dripping out of him and staining his skin.Dave is trembling under you, rocking back as your bulge jolts against his prostate. Maybe both. You reach down to grip what won’t fit inside of him, pressing your thumb up against your sheath and circling in the way that makes you shiver. The thought thrills you nonetheless, the idea that you’ve fucked him to tears — it’s so good, and he can’t handle it, and he’ll never have a reason to experiment with an actual human man after this. You squeeze yourself, kneading with your fingers, your nook flutters and clenches around nothing, and your orgasm tears through you.It shoots through Dave, too, as he yelps and tries to scramble away when you start pumping him full of your genetic material, your bulge pulsing inside of him, but there’s not much of anywhere for him to go. You do have the decency to pull out before you give him a full fucking enema — not that jizzing all over his bare thighs is much more comfortable.
KARKAT: GOD.
As soon as you manage to choke out a single word, your voice hoarse, it’s like the spell has broken. The horny fugue has abruptly come to a close. As the embarrassment sets in, you stare down at Dave with startling awareness. You realize that he’s cum, too — again. It really is difficult to tell, all tinged red.He drags a hand over his face, still refusing to look at you. Pity nags at you.
KARKAT: ARE YOU ALRIGHT?
He gives you a wavering thumbs-up.
DAVE: dandy
He sounds like he’s on his deathbed. You’re overcome with a sense of pale responsibility. In lieu of another pap, which would probably do very little to chill him out right now, you swing your mildly jellified legs off the bed and search desperately around the room for some way to clean him up.
KARKAT: UH.
KARKAT: HOPEFULLY THIS SATIATED ALL YOUR NO-BUCKET FANTASIES.
KARKAT: THOUGH, WE MIGHT HAVE TO REPLACE YOUR MATTRESS.
KARKAT: …
KARKAT: DO YOU HAVE A TOWEL?
He rips his hand from over his face to flap it vaguely in no particular direction.
KARKAT: OKAY.
KARKAT: SO.
KARKAT: DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THAT DOESN’T REALLY ANSWER MY QUESTION?
DAVE: theres a towel under that pile of clothes in the corner
DAVE: no the other corner
DAVE: dude there are four corners this is just sad
Your sense of pale responsibility withers, just a bit, and you throw the towel across the room at him instead of gently wiping him down yourself. It lands in a pile over his groin, which strikes you as strangely serendipitous. Almost as bad as human boners are human not-boners, the stubborn refusal of their external genitalia to go anywhere when they’re not being used. The thought of having your bulge tucked down your pants all the damn time is enough to make you cringe, and you run your hand over your navel as if you can feel the phantom dangling of it between your legs.With an exaggerated grunt, Dave grips onto his headboard and pulls himself up into a sitting position. He doesn’t un-scrunch the towel to clean himself up, which puts an irritated tick in your jaw because of how much harder on himself he’s making all of this, but you don’t say anything. As Dave half-assedly mops up copious amounts of interspecies jizz, he starts rambling like the words are forcing their way out of him.
DAVE: you know
DAVE: the reason i didnt want to take it up the ass isnt because its gay
DAVE: i mean it is but we just jerked each other off into that sweet goodnight so obviously im in no place to clutch my pearls
DAVE: so i dont have any issue with clutching another dudes pearls
DAVE: lock me up and throw away the key
DAVE: the whole gay thing considered id probably be very happy behind bars too 
DAVE: but i guess i was always hesitant about sticking anything up there because like
DAVE: what if i didnt hate it
Dave absently hands the sopping towel to you as he speaks. Face wrinkled in distaste, you pinch it by one corner and hold it an arms-length away from you.
DAVE: even worse what if i loved it
DAVE: starting with a finger up there and cumming all over myself because it really did feel as amazing as they said it would
DAVE: letting it progress all the way to finally taking a real dick up the ole prison pocket
KARKAT: A “REAL DICK”?
DAVE: never being able to go back to regular nuts
DAVE: i didnt want to deal with all of that yknow
DAVE: the knowledge that you can jailbreak the fuck out of your orgasms by mashing the a and b buttons at the same time
DAVE: ignorance is bliss dude
KARKAT: LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT.
KARKAT: YOU ARE UPSET BECAUSE IT FELT TOO *GOOD*?
DAVE: well when you say it like that i sound like an idiot dont i
KARKAT: …
KARKAT: WELL, IT’S TRUE, ISN’T IT? THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU.
KARKAT: I MEAN, NOT TO BASTE MY OWN BULGE HERE, BUT IT SEEMED LIKE YOU WERE ENJOYING YOURSELF.
Dave chews on his bottom lip.
DAVE: i guess so
DAVE: well shit
DAVE: im cursed with knowledge now i guess there aint no going back
DAVE: this is my anal rite of assage
DAVE: i am the lamb
DAVE: and you karkat are my shepherd
DAVE: who else is going to plunder my depths with so much oozing passion
He shifts around on the bed, and all the soaked blankets make a wet noise under him. Your nose wrinkles.
KARKAT: STOP MAKING IT WEIRD.
KARKAT: IT’S NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. IT’S LIKE YOU SAID, IT’S… QUID BRO QUO.
KARKAT: NOTHING MOIRAILS HAVEN’T DONE BEFORE.
Try as you might, you don’t know if you can convince yourself of that as readily as Dave can. You drape the used towel over top of his open closet door and, with your foot, start to sweep all of your clothing into a pile.
KARKAT: NOW, I NEED TO GO SHOWER OFF THIS CONGEALING LAYER OF GENETIC MATERIAL BEFORE IT SOLIDIFIES ME INTO A COCOON OF DEPRAVITY. 
KARKAT: AND I’M TAKING MY CHARGER WITH ME.
You bend down to scoop up your clothing and tug your charger from the outlet in one go. This time, by some miracle, you manage to locate the damn thing immediately. Imagine that. You tug it down by the cube until it slides from up and around his desk, and wind the cord around your palm. It stains the bright-white a very light shade of pink, which makes you cringe, but at least there will be no debate that this is yours.Clothing bunched under your arm, charger in tow, all that’s left is to grab your e-reader. You swipe it from where it’s lying precariously at the foot of the bed. Before you can trudge out, or think of some awkward goodbye and then trudge out, Dave clears his throat.
DAVE: wait
KARKAT: YES?
DAVE: we should do this—
He pauses mid-sentence, reconsidering.
DAVE: i left your money by the front door
You slam the door behind you.