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Entry tags:
Montly Word Count - September
TOTAL: 37 061 WORDS.
holy shiiiit. And so much of it is complete, posted stuff too. holeee sheeeet.
on the other hand no teamwork and barely any battiefleld terra and zero ff7 anything. aaaaa.
NO SELF NO GUILTING THIS WAS A LOT OF WRITING EVEN IF IT WASN'T *PLANNED* WRITING YOU ARE A GOOD GIRL. YES. ;_______;
COMPLETE:
-awake at night sequel: Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts (Karkat pesterlog) (2 635 words)
-Karkat/Equius BDSM pesterlog (2 129 words)
-Sunlightverse: Blessings (John & babygrub, oneshot) (2 678 words)
-Joyride (Western AU, Karkat/Dave/John silliness) (7 140 words)
-30th-Century Night (DaveKat oneshot) (13 062 words)
-Gundam Wing: Lone Wolf and Pilot, chapter 2 part 2 (1 065 words)
WORK IN PROGRESS:
-Sunlightverse: Sollux fic: a Sollux&Karkat&Signless log. (1 496 words)
-Weirdass Jade/Karkat/Dave enemies/captives thing that might not get completed (yes i know i have a pet theme for this fandom, wow.) (3 858 words)
-Battlefield Terra chapter 6 (2 995 words)
--
Sunlightverse Sollux fic (i had to choose a chunk in the middle cause otherwise too spoilery. >>)
--
TA: kk? 2tiill here?
CG: I AM TORN BETWEEN ASKING YOU TO EXPLAIN THE EMPTY PAIL METAPHOR AS IT RELATES TO ACTUAL EVENTS THAT DID ACTUALLY HAPPEN IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE AND DRIVING A SICKLE THROUGH MY AUDITION GAPS.
TA: 2top frontiing, kk, you love heariing about my paiil2, iit'2 the clo2e2t you're gettiing two a paiil of your own.
TA: so many paiil2
TA: all of the paiil2
CG: CAPTOR. I KNOW YOU HAVE TWO HANDS AND TWO CONCUPISCENT QUADRANTS AND THE COINCIDENCE IS SO MAGICAL WE MIGHT ALL JIZZ GLITTER AND UNSHARP STAINED GLASS IN PUREST JOY BUT YOU STILL CANNOT FILL A PAIL WITH EITHER OF THEM. FOR ONE THING FEFERI MIGHT JUST LOP OFF THE OFFENDING FLUSHED HAND AT THE WRIST IF SHE CATCHES YOU WHISPERING TENDER VERMILION ENDEARMENTS TO IT.
TA: diid ii mentiion rx ii2 a total miinx and al2o 2he can actually code at 2omethiing approachiing my level?
CG: I GUESS AT THIS POINT IT MIGHT GUSH ENOUGH TO FILL ANY RECEPTACLE OF YOUR CHOICE DECENTLY FAST, THOUGH. ON SECOND THOUGHT, DON'T LET ME TALK YOU OUT OF THAT GREAT LOVE AFFAIR.
CG: WAIT, ROXY? THE CRAZIER ROSE CLONE? SINCE WHEN ARE YOU QUADRANTED?
TA: okay ii gue22 we're 2tiil ju2t iin the fliirtiing 2tage.
TA: but 2he love2 two wreck my 2hiit, iit'2 liike holy nubfondliing bulge2ac woman we're iin publiic, don't bwahaha 2o loud.
CG: SO IN OTHER WORDS YOU ARE PINING LIKE A TOOL AND SHE HASN'T EVEN NOTICED YET.
CG: I AM *SO* JEALOUS.
CG: MOSTLY OF THAT DISEASED FAPMACHINE YOU CALL AN IMAGINATION GLAND.
TA: 2ay2 the guy who never went any clo2er to a paiil than acce22ory catalogue2.
TA: waiit, ii gue22 boyjn diid bounce one off your bone2tub that one time
TA: 2orry two have two be the one two tell you that but you're actually 2tiill a viirgiin.
CG: OH WOW, WHAT'S THIS RUSHING NOISE? IT'S THE SOUND OF ALL THE FUCKS I DON'T GIVE MIGRATING TO THE NORTH. THEY ARE BLOTTING OUT THE SKY.
CG: MAJESTIC.
CG: CONDESCE. AWAKE. TELL ME HOW HANDLED THAT SHIT IS AGAIN.
CG: IN ACTUAL DETAIL THIS TIME.
-- cardinalGallivant [CG] has transmuted this dialogue into a memo! --
-- cardinalGallivant [CG] has joined the memo! --
TA: HOW THE ACTUAL FUCK
CG: MY APOLOGIES for the interruption, I Felt that things might go faster if I could Posit some Queries of my own, without bothering the esteemed Sir Vantas for Unceasing Narration.
TA: how diid you even do what you ju2t diid
TA: also who the glub2lurpiing nook2tuff hoofbea2tfuck are you even?
CG: THERE, THERE, CAPTOR, YOU WOULDN'T HAPPEN TO ALREADY BE CONSIDERING CHEATING ON THE DESTINED BLACKMATE OF YOUR HEART, WOULD YOU.
CG: TSSK. SHAMELESS. I KNOW MY DEAREST ANCESTOR IS OH SO DELIGHTFULLY LOATHABLE BUT. QUESTIONS. WE HAVE THEM.
CG: MY DEEPEST THANKS for the tireless silver'd vigil you are holding on my behalf, Brother. I am Gratified by your Obvious Care.
CG: DO NOT MAKE ME TRIP YOU DOWN THE CLIFF, CONTRARY TO CAPTOR YOU ARE ACTUALLY IN RANGE.
CG: THAT would, I concede, be somewhat Inconvenient.
CG: BUT LET US CONTINUE THIS SPIRITED DEBATE at a Later date. What has become of Meenah and our other Companions?
TA: who even ii2 meenah
TA: who am ii
TA: what ii2 liife even
CG: MEENAH Peixes.
TA: dot dot chutefuckiing dot.
CG: *WHAT* OTHER COMPANIONS. IN WHICH WORLD IS *HER IMPERIAL CONDESCENSCION* PART OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE WE MIGHT CALL COMPANIONS.
CG: THIS ONE.
CG: SHE IS, WAS, AND WILL BE PART OF US AGAIN.
TA: congrat2 kk, your ance2tor ii2 crazycake2 goathappy.
--
JadeDaveKat AU thing
--
She's been following the troll's progress on her screen for the last fifteen minutes, a little red and yellow dot meandering in the middle of spreads of coldest blues, so when the bushes rustle her rifle is already across her knees. She's only a quick snap away from having the butt on her shoulder and the trigger under her finger, and the trigger is really sensitive. She tweaked it until it fit her reaction time properly. She loves that rifle, and at this distance she doesn't even need the scope.
The thing that saves the troll is that his skull is about four feet down from where she expected it.
It's down there because he's hunkering down between a rock and a bush. His eyes glint orangeish in the firelight. She feels like she's in a Jack London novel, wolves circling her camp in the night just at the edge of the light, waiting for it to die.
They have pretty neat firestarting chemical crap these days. Doesn't even pollute at all.
Gun shouldered, but still pointing down, she stares at the troll. The lone troll, hunkering down under the bushes and staring back at her, at her gun, at her face, at the meat sizzling over the campfire, back at her gun. He's got weird dark smudges on his face and brambles in his hair and he doesn't have gloves or mittens or anything that she can see. The ground doesn't have any snow where he is, but it's damp from the runoff.
He stares. She stares. He's pretty runty for a troll, from the little she can see. His horns are barely visible, and his shoulders are about on par with Dave's for width.
Also he's not wearing anything like a parka.
She gets to see more of that when he -- excruciatingly slowly -- starts creeping closer.
He's not moving in a straight line, sort of circling, toward where the ground is flatter. Maybe he thinks it'll help him pounce. She fingers the trigger guard.
She doesn't even understand why she's not shooting yet. There's no reasoning with a troll. There's no talking with them. Sometimes they'll retreat but it's always to attack again. If they see you they're going to want to kill you. Sometimes when there's time they do other horrible stuff first. Some people are never seen again.
Also when you try to capture one alive usually they freak the hell out and you end up having to put them down anyway, or they kill themselves -- hard to disarm someone with butcher hooks on his fingers and toes, with spears on his heads, knives in his mouth, not unless you're willing to go the horrible gross mutilation way, and after that she doesn't think they're eager to cooperate somehow.
This one has rips in his clothes that look like claw marks and the cloth is stiff and dark, and when he moves, little bits fall out like a bad case of dandruff. Dry blood. Trolls are all kinda insane from a human's point of view, but even if he were the type to self-mutilate, at this angle she doesn't think he could have clawed himself up. Huh.
His fingers curl when they land in a patch of snow; he doesn't even flinch. His eyes are still on her, burning, half-crazy. Sometimes a wild tremble runs through his frame from the shoulders down. He keeps calculating distances with his eyes, am I close enough to jump her yet, how about now?
He looks on the verge of collapse.
He's not wearing shoes.
"Okay, you must be just about the least threatening troll ever in the history of ever. Just saying."
He flinches at the sound of her voice, and then he snarls, a low animal growl, which would be scary if her dog didn't hit deeper notes and if his threat didn't end up in a coughing fit, quickly but painfully smothered.
Good god. Least. Scary. Troll. Ever.
She kinda feels gypped. The ones in the vids at boot camp were obviously selected for hugeness and evil barbed horns but she's seen enough of a selection of more usual fighters to tell he's winning that one by a landslide.
There's no hiding the strain on his face. His fingers look swollen, darker than the rest of his skin, he's stiff with cold, if he had normal eyes she's pretty sure she could see them going in and out of focus, and ... "You've been on the losing end of a pretty epic beat-down, haven't you. No lying, mister; I know two Striders, I know from beat-downs."
It'd be really easy to shoot him through the shoulders at this distance, bam-bam, and then twice more in the knees as he falls back, the articulations aren't built the same way but she'd still achieve something pretty close to kneecapping, for all the mobility he'd have afterwards.
Instead she picks up the stick of delicious grilled meat that she was waiting to crisp to perfection and she throws it in his patch of snow.
The troll reacts like she just lobbed a live grenade at him, but that only makes it more obvious how exhausted he is; he fails to identify the object in mid-air, and then he flinches back at least a half second too late to do any good.
Afterwards she can see it in his face, astonishment -- what, food, seriously? -- and then offended pride, a brief flare of anger.
It doesn't last. He sneaks her a resentful, mortified look and snatches it up, and retreats for a few feet, and then he's gulping it down so fast he even cracks the stick in his teeth and she thinks he might swallow a bit of it. Gross! Also ouch, his poor stomach. He's still stealing glances at her but she notices with interest that he's not meeting her eyes anymore. Ashamed.
She bites her lip in thought, picks up a second stick, her other arm still curled around her rifle, butt tucked in the crook of her elbow, finger on the trigger guard. She can shoot from her lap, at this distance bringing it up to her face to aim is really unnecessary. She lifts the stick a little. There's only a few bits of meat on each, to ensure that they're cooked all the way through and she's not going to pick up any alien parasites from the local game.
The troll stares at it. She moves it from right to left; his head sways with it, hypnotized. She's a troll-charmer. Awesome.
She doesn't throw that one. After a few expectant seconds he looks back up at her face, and she smiles, patient but pitiless. It's her Rose look. She practiced in the mirror.
He doesn't flinch and piss his pants like Jake insists he totally almost did, but it works on him, too. She can see it on his face, that oddly flat devastation, running on empty and it'd be so easy to give up on everything, so easy, and wanting to say fuck you, fuck off but knowing he can't afford it, the sparks that smother before they become rage, the crushed-small, shamed misery.
He crawls closer, head low, shoulders hunched, shuffles through the snow on hands and one foot and one knee, he should be able to move on all fours easy with the way their hip joints and knees work but he can't anymore, all stiff and beaten up; she can see him doing that same old calculation, can I jump her from here?
From the look in his eyes the answer keeps coming up as nope.
She's starting to feel really bad for him.
She's also kinda thinking if he were healthy he'd have killed her already. (Or tried to; she's a sharpshooter, okay, she'd have seen him first, he'd never have seen her at all. Bam.) But...
"I was right, huh." She eyes the old wounds, the lack of clothes, the utter exhaustion -- the refusal to just curl up under the snow and let himself fall asleep, even if the other alternative is to crawl. "You just really, really, really want to live, don't you."
And because she has the proof she wanted, she decides to be generous and throws the stick. She doesn't want him in arm's reach when his hands are free anyway. Seriously, butcher's hooks.
He doesn't even crawl away to eat this time around, he just sits in the snow right on the spot and he gnaws, hands shaking, he almost fumbles the stick and clings to it like he's telling his hands fuck you, even if every single bone in you breaks you are not letting go, are you hearing me.
After that he keeps sitting and he looks up at her.
His eyes are really red, and oddly ... lost. She thinks he'd maybe cry if he wasn't too tired for it. For a moment she kind of wants to cry a bit, too.
He makes a scratchy chirp noise, like a crow with a sore throat. What now?
Well, that's a good question. Only not really. One twist of her wrist and the rifle is aimed straight at him, center of mass. He twitches, stares at it with a bitter lack of surprise. She shrugs, brings up her other hand to steady the barrel. "Sorry."
She can see him hesitating -- for a moment he closes his eyes, okay, fine, whatever, shoot me, and then he catches himself and opens them and he glares, lip curling to bare fangs.
"Hey, babe."
She doesn't take her eyes off the troll, even though he's not looking anymore, has jerked around in fact. "Hey Dave. Yay you, you didn't miss the guest after all."
"Seein' that." Dave rubs the barrel of his handgun with the ball of his thumb, takes another slow step into the clearing, so they won't risk hitting each other and the troll is caught in a triangle made of them and the fire. "Here I was hauling ass and all, thinking I was gonna be late for Revenge of the Bride of Jurassic Park, and instead it was Bambi Nine. I feel underdressed."
"The princess and the animals isn't in Bambi, stupid, it's in like every other Disney movie ever. Except the one with lions."
"Hey, who watched those direct to video masterpieces, you or me?"
She huffs, and tries not to smile. She would keep bantering, but the troll is slowly shifting onto his feet like he's going to try to jump -- and either jumping on one of them or jumping to run away would be unacceptable.
She brings the rifle up to her shoulder, says a "No!" with the same bad dog undertones as for Bec, and makes sure he can see she's aiming at his thigh, not anything vital. She points with her chin; she's not sure how well it indicates "get down," but it's probably obvious from context.
He trembles. He trembles and he glares, and he hisses under his breath, all choked up and wheezy, outraged and lost. He looks like he's about to throw up the meat, which would be a right waste. Hunting that miniature stag-bison thing was a right pain in the butt, and she hasn't gotten to taste any of it.
"So, just checking. Alive?"
"Yup."
"Unpierced?"
"That'd be nice!"
"You sure?"
She looks at Dave, unusually serious right through the pokerface, and then she looks at the troll. The runty, humiliated, half-dressed in the snow troll. "Yup."
Dave sighs. "As you wish, but I better get kissed awake a lot for this. With tongue, I demand tongue, what are the princes of this world coming to that they scrimp on service."
She grins, happy white teeth and all, and she gets up without warning, booted feet planted solidly on the muddy ground.
The troll predictably flinches around to face her, hissing, and then Dave is at his back slipping his arms under the troll's and locking his hands behind his head.
He was trying to get up so the troll's feet would be off the ground -- he's that short, wow -- but the troll manages a surprisingly powerful jackknifing kick; it doesn't hit anything but Dave loses his balance and lands on his ass.
"Holy shit -- like wrestling a sack of wet kittens, only they're -- ngh -- possessed by Satan or something, shit, he's slipping!"
Okay, the threat of her rifle is meaningless so long as he's still stuck to Dave like that, and she's rather help than wait for him to escape and then shoot. She drops the gun, and then she drops her weight on his lap, on his knees, and wow, rodeo.
For about ten seconds, and then it's more like riding a poor old arthritic cow, he can't even lift her weight from the ground. His struggles grow weaker, his snarls, and then he just goes limp all at once in Dave's hold, breathing in big shuddery gasps and eyes scrunched closed.
"Phew."
A couple of seconds later it's obvious why his eyes were closed, because even if he can stop the tears he can't stop the choked-up sobs.
She's probably the only person in the galaxy who's managed to capture a troll with just two people and no injuries and two minutes of fuss. She feels kind of guilty.
--
Battlefield Terra chpt 6
--
In the last week John had started collecting objects he could afford to see brutally destroyed. Not for Karkat's weirdo nest, but to throw over the foot of his bed and wake him up when he was in the middle of a nightmare, before morning-zombie Dave decided to stumble out of bed and wake the alien up his own special way. They did not have enough towels in the whole island to sponge up that much blood.
(John had made the mistake of lobbing his own pillow exactly once. Jake and Dirk were still finding bits and pieces of memory foam in their sheets four days later.)
He heard things rustling brutally, saw a black mop of hair come up fast over the footboard. He waited a couple of seconds, eyes slitted open, caught a glimpse of red eyes, wide open, irises blown wide for barely a second before they started shrinking back. Okay; still shaken but awake enough. John flopped back on his mattress, face down, arms buried underneath his replacement pillow. (It really wasn't as good as the old one. It smelled musty.)
He wasn't going to fall back asleep, not with the alien gasping not-silently-enough for breath at the foot of his bed. But he wasn't getting up either; Dave'd be up soon. John didn't want to cross paths in the bathroom. The heights of awkward reached by brushing teeth at neighboring sinks while not acknowledging each other in any way were reaching unreal altitudes -- like they should be breaching the stratosphere already, but nope, still just enough oxygen to choke on.
A faint beep started, kept going for a minute, annoyingly regular even while muffled to the point John could barely hear it. Wasn't like there was anything else to listen to.
Dave eventually sighed and dragged himself over the guardrail, dropped to the floor. Stood there in silence for a handful of seconds. John kept his breathing regular and his face buried in his pillow. Nope, totally asleep.
Softly padding bare feet, a cupboard being rummaged through, the door opening and closing. John kept pretending to be asleep. Maybe if he pretended long enough it'd become true.
He could feel Karkat's own state of wakefulness without even looking, with something that went deeper than conscious senses. It was just that kind of feeling where everyone in a room was still and quiet and it was too dark to check at a glance but somehow you could just tell they were staring at the ceiling too. Maybe breathing patterns, who the heck knew.
Too many thoughts. That was annoying. He was bored...!
Something landed on his head with a soft plop. "--Hey!"
... Damn it, now he couldn't pretend to be asleep anymore. He pulled the worn-thin sole of an ancient tennis shoe off his head (it was now recently torn almost in two and the cloth top was missing in chunks) and craned his head to glower half-heartedly at Karkat. The alien was sitting in his corner pretending to be interested in whatever random crap there was to see in the opposite corner at the foot of Dirk and Dave's bunk, though John caught him sneaking a quick glance his way. Grumbling, John crawled out of the blankets to sit on the edge of his mattress.
"I'm up, I'm up, princess, you can look, I'm not rubbing my nubile body all over a carnal platform of delights anymore."
Karkat likely didn't catch more than three words in the sentence, but what he muttered under his breath sounded sort of like "stupid." Someone had to tell Jade off about teaching an impressionable young man bad words.
Karkat threw a longer side look at John, eyebrows furrowed -- it was that oh-so-common pinched Karkatian expression that looked like he was calculating the precise amount of headbutts it was going to take to knock some bothersome wall down and how much it was going to hurt and how much it needed to be done anyway, and that was oddly hilarious. So serious.
"Hmm?" John prompted, elbows on his thighs, rounding his back to crack his spine back into place. "What do you want?"
"Nrrr." A sigh.
Karkat pulled himself up on his feet, wandered out of his corner, though he still carefully avoided looking at John straight on. It was weird, some times he was totally in John's face and glaring and demanding things, and some times he was doing that weird careful 'let's not acknowledge each other too much because you might idk frown at me or something' shy dance.
"Bathroom."
... Dave would still be there. Crap. "Can it wait?" John asked, sighing, and stretched his calves, bent over to grab his ankles until he felt the burn in his thighs, the back of his knees. He felt all creaky without his usual level of exercise. (Seriously, people were always surprised at what kind of shape you had to be in to pilot something that pulled so many Gs and demanded so much dexterity for several hours in a row.) He flopped backward on his bed, arms landing limply akimbo on the bunched-up blankets. "I don't want to get up yet."
A soft annoyed huff, silence. When he cracked an eye open Karkat was frowning down at him, hands on his hips. The old t-shirt he was wearing fit his strong shoulders fine but the ends hung low on his thighs, it looked too big anyway. Short torso. (Short legs too, heh. Okay, no, John was just tall.) John only saw the very edge of the shorts Karkat slept in.
"Zhann?"
He picked up his pillow and pressed it to his face. "Aw, nooo, don't wanna."
A quick, incredulous huff. "Zhann."
"Noooooo."
"Zhann bathroom come with me."
"Nope."
The next tirade, John translated in his head as 'I will piss on everything you own so help me John Egbert and it will be your fault.' He reluctantly peeked out from under the pillow, and glowered, knowing full well that he looked childish and sulky and still going ahead with it.
Karkat looked incredulous and yet unsurprised for about three seconds, hands opening like he was considering grabbing him by the ankles and yanking him off his bed and it'd be nothing that wasn't well-deserved when he made a rough butt-landing -- and then the alien sighed, shoulders slumping imperceptibly. Victory! Now John could stay in and... brood into his mattress. Yay.
While the guy he was supposed to babysit died of an exploded bladder.
"I am the worst pet owner, it is me," he mumbled, smothered in blankets, and pushed himself up with a heavy sigh.
When he straightened up, one hand scratching through his hair, he caught a quick glimpse of Karkat. He was standing all hunched and grabbing one elbow with his opposite hand, forearm across the stomach, like maybe if he only did it on one side he'd look less like he was hugging himself. He saw John looking and jerked into a more neutral position. Fuck.
For less than a second John wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder and say he was sorry and also an assbutt and of course they could go.
He reminded himself he only wanted to pet and soothe Karkat so much because of the telepathy thing, anyway, and just went to the cupboard and got two changes of clothes.
When they reached the bathroom, the sinks and toilet stalls were empty of Dave -- good, some respite -- and the shower running. John started brushing his teeth as Karkat disappeared in a stall, bracing himself for the brief awkward of his teammate brushing by on his way to the door without saying a word. Surely the guy'd be done soon.
Karkat came out, washed his hands, and turned to him, head tilted in question. There was a little worried furrow between his eyebrows; he glanced at the shower room and then back at John meaningfully, mouth pursing a little. Of course he'd picked up on the tension, days ago even, it was so thick it choked everything. John ignored him to stare at his own reflection; he was shaving, okay, he needed to pay attention. Alright, so he had nothing much to shave yet at his age, especially not that needed shaving every day, but still.
When he was done shaving Dave was still in the shower, and he was out of excuses. Damn it.
Okay. Okay. It wasn't like they were going to argue or anything. They didn't have much to say to each other. It'd just be... um.
Okay, no, fuck that noise. None of the girls were around! John went to his locker, same as always, and got undressed and towel'd, same as always, and when Karkat started toward the shower room he caught his wrist and started towing him toward the other door.
"Anhg--"
"Shh!" John hissed, leaning in, one finger across his own lips. "Come with me. Quietly."
He was being a wuss -- and a totally transparent one at that -- and he was sure Dave wouldn't figure it out and laugh forever about it. Nooo, totes wouldn't. Did he care?! No. He tiptoed back around the lockers to stay out of sight of the boys' showers, one hand on the towel tied around his waist and one around Karkat's wrist. Karkat followed in silence, but the look on his face could have been subtitled 'I Am Embarrassed To Even Be On The Same Planet As You', it was that blatant. John grimaced at him and slipped into the forbidden territory of the girls' shower room.
The setup was mirrored, with an identical bench running along the wall opposite the showers, only because they'd never gone through a phase of climbing everything and breaking the hell out of it by horsing around and braining themselves on the floor tiles the girls still got to have stalls. Karkat blinked at them, gave his wrist a little shake -- oops, John was still holding on; he let go -- and went to peek inside one.
"... Zhann?"
"Yeah?" John prompted -- quietly -- as he got himself some shampoo (Jade's this time; his luxurious mane was going to be so disentangled, baby) and chose another stall at random down the row.
"Wash here no why?"
Okay, that had come out confusing. Karkat had a crazy-good memory for words, even though he couldn't pronounce most of them quite right and paused in weird places as he hunted for the next piece of vocabulary, but the grammar tended to be a mangled mess. "Hm?" John prompted again.
Karkat grumbled at him, pointed toward the other shower room, then down at this one's floor, eyebrows scrunched in somewhat offended confusion.
"Girls' room, is why."
A vaguely baffled blink. Couldn't he ask questions and expand his knowledge when John wasn't trying to get a shower? Ah, whatever, it was fun some days. John pointed toward the other room, said, "John, Jake, Dirk, Dave, Bro," and then down at the floor of this one, "Jane, Jade, Rose, Roxy."
Still that baffled look.
John cupped sizeable, if sadly invisible boobs on his own bare chest, pointed down at the floor of the room, making a face. "Come on, what's the common point there?"
"... Zhann stupid dumb."
And he was still frowning at John, lips pursed, dissatisfied. Hn. "No, you," John replied intelligently, and disappeared in his stall.
Karkat muttered to himself in growlclicks and little huffs of breath as he locked himself away in his own. "Stupid dumb stupid bad no," he grumbled, barely audible over the noise of John's shower starting.
"No, Karkat is the one who's stupid stupid dumb," John replied, and then cold water was suddenly raining from the sky. "Gyeah!"
Alien chuckling, quiet and rough and self-conscious but still kind of amused. Damn it. John hoped he hadn't been loud enough for Dave to hear him. But still, that Karkat might wait a whole week to pay him back for the cold water thing... heh. It made him chuckle, a little bit.
He'd totally get revenge for Karkat's revenge later on, though, but better to keep it for when Karkat had given up waiting for it. He started lathering himself up.
Scrub, scrub, scrub.
He had to admit it was much easier to concentrate on washing when he didn't have to make really sure he didn't accidentally show Karkat his dangly bits again, without looking like that was what he was doing. Because being embarrassed by an awkward situation was already bad enough, but being openly embarrassed was even more embarrassing.
(Also he couldn't get caught precisely at that wrong moment where his eyes strayed blindly over shit he wasn't even really looking at, seriously, that wasn't awkward at all.)
holy shiiiit. And so much of it is complete, posted stuff too. holeee sheeeet.
on the other hand no teamwork and barely any battiefleld terra and zero ff7 anything. aaaaa.
NO SELF NO GUILTING THIS WAS A LOT OF WRITING EVEN IF IT WASN'T *PLANNED* WRITING YOU ARE A GOOD GIRL. YES. ;_______;
COMPLETE:
-awake at night sequel: Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts (Karkat pesterlog) (2 635 words)
-Karkat/Equius BDSM pesterlog (2 129 words)
-Sunlightverse: Blessings (John & babygrub, oneshot) (2 678 words)
-Joyride (Western AU, Karkat/Dave/John silliness) (7 140 words)
-30th-Century Night (DaveKat oneshot) (13 062 words)
-Gundam Wing: Lone Wolf and Pilot, chapter 2 part 2 (1 065 words)
WORK IN PROGRESS:
-Sunlightverse: Sollux fic: a Sollux&Karkat&Signless log. (1 496 words)
-Weirdass Jade/Karkat/Dave enemies/captives thing that might not get completed (yes i know i have a pet theme for this fandom, wow.) (3 858 words)
-Battlefield Terra chapter 6 (2 995 words)
--
Sunlightverse Sollux fic (i had to choose a chunk in the middle cause otherwise too spoilery. >>)
--
TA: kk? 2tiill here?
CG: I AM TORN BETWEEN ASKING YOU TO EXPLAIN THE EMPTY PAIL METAPHOR AS IT RELATES TO ACTUAL EVENTS THAT DID ACTUALLY HAPPEN IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE AND DRIVING A SICKLE THROUGH MY AUDITION GAPS.
TA: 2top frontiing, kk, you love heariing about my paiil2, iit'2 the clo2e2t you're gettiing two a paiil of your own.
TA: so many paiil2
TA: all of the paiil2
CG: CAPTOR. I KNOW YOU HAVE TWO HANDS AND TWO CONCUPISCENT QUADRANTS AND THE COINCIDENCE IS SO MAGICAL WE MIGHT ALL JIZZ GLITTER AND UNSHARP STAINED GLASS IN PUREST JOY BUT YOU STILL CANNOT FILL A PAIL WITH EITHER OF THEM. FOR ONE THING FEFERI MIGHT JUST LOP OFF THE OFFENDING FLUSHED HAND AT THE WRIST IF SHE CATCHES YOU WHISPERING TENDER VERMILION ENDEARMENTS TO IT.
TA: diid ii mentiion rx ii2 a total miinx and al2o 2he can actually code at 2omethiing approachiing my level?
CG: I GUESS AT THIS POINT IT MIGHT GUSH ENOUGH TO FILL ANY RECEPTACLE OF YOUR CHOICE DECENTLY FAST, THOUGH. ON SECOND THOUGHT, DON'T LET ME TALK YOU OUT OF THAT GREAT LOVE AFFAIR.
CG: WAIT, ROXY? THE CRAZIER ROSE CLONE? SINCE WHEN ARE YOU QUADRANTED?
TA: okay ii gue22 we're 2tiil ju2t iin the fliirtiing 2tage.
TA: but 2he love2 two wreck my 2hiit, iit'2 liike holy nubfondliing bulge2ac woman we're iin publiic, don't bwahaha 2o loud.
CG: SO IN OTHER WORDS YOU ARE PINING LIKE A TOOL AND SHE HASN'T EVEN NOTICED YET.
CG: I AM *SO* JEALOUS.
CG: MOSTLY OF THAT DISEASED FAPMACHINE YOU CALL AN IMAGINATION GLAND.
TA: 2ay2 the guy who never went any clo2er to a paiil than acce22ory catalogue2.
TA: waiit, ii gue22 boyjn diid bounce one off your bone2tub that one time
TA: 2orry two have two be the one two tell you that but you're actually 2tiill a viirgiin.
CG: OH WOW, WHAT'S THIS RUSHING NOISE? IT'S THE SOUND OF ALL THE FUCKS I DON'T GIVE MIGRATING TO THE NORTH. THEY ARE BLOTTING OUT THE SKY.
CG: MAJESTIC.
CG: CONDESCE. AWAKE. TELL ME HOW HANDLED THAT SHIT IS AGAIN.
CG: IN ACTUAL DETAIL THIS TIME.
-- cardinalGallivant [CG] has transmuted this dialogue into a memo! --
-- cardinalGallivant [CG] has joined the memo! --
TA: HOW THE ACTUAL FUCK
CG: MY APOLOGIES for the interruption, I Felt that things might go faster if I could Posit some Queries of my own, without bothering the esteemed Sir Vantas for Unceasing Narration.
TA: how diid you even do what you ju2t diid
TA: also who the glub2lurpiing nook2tuff hoofbea2tfuck are you even?
CG: THERE, THERE, CAPTOR, YOU WOULDN'T HAPPEN TO ALREADY BE CONSIDERING CHEATING ON THE DESTINED BLACKMATE OF YOUR HEART, WOULD YOU.
CG: TSSK. SHAMELESS. I KNOW MY DEAREST ANCESTOR IS OH SO DELIGHTFULLY LOATHABLE BUT. QUESTIONS. WE HAVE THEM.
CG: MY DEEPEST THANKS for the tireless silver'd vigil you are holding on my behalf, Brother. I am Gratified by your Obvious Care.
CG: DO NOT MAKE ME TRIP YOU DOWN THE CLIFF, CONTRARY TO CAPTOR YOU ARE ACTUALLY IN RANGE.
CG: THAT would, I concede, be somewhat Inconvenient.
CG: BUT LET US CONTINUE THIS SPIRITED DEBATE at a Later date. What has become of Meenah and our other Companions?
TA: who even ii2 meenah
TA: who am ii
TA: what ii2 liife even
CG: MEENAH Peixes.
TA: dot dot chutefuckiing dot.
CG: *WHAT* OTHER COMPANIONS. IN WHICH WORLD IS *HER IMPERIAL CONDESCENSCION* PART OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE WE MIGHT CALL COMPANIONS.
CG: THIS ONE.
CG: SHE IS, WAS, AND WILL BE PART OF US AGAIN.
TA: congrat2 kk, your ance2tor ii2 crazycake2 goathappy.
--
JadeDaveKat AU thing
--
She's been following the troll's progress on her screen for the last fifteen minutes, a little red and yellow dot meandering in the middle of spreads of coldest blues, so when the bushes rustle her rifle is already across her knees. She's only a quick snap away from having the butt on her shoulder and the trigger under her finger, and the trigger is really sensitive. She tweaked it until it fit her reaction time properly. She loves that rifle, and at this distance she doesn't even need the scope.
The thing that saves the troll is that his skull is about four feet down from where she expected it.
It's down there because he's hunkering down between a rock and a bush. His eyes glint orangeish in the firelight. She feels like she's in a Jack London novel, wolves circling her camp in the night just at the edge of the light, waiting for it to die.
They have pretty neat firestarting chemical crap these days. Doesn't even pollute at all.
Gun shouldered, but still pointing down, she stares at the troll. The lone troll, hunkering down under the bushes and staring back at her, at her gun, at her face, at the meat sizzling over the campfire, back at her gun. He's got weird dark smudges on his face and brambles in his hair and he doesn't have gloves or mittens or anything that she can see. The ground doesn't have any snow where he is, but it's damp from the runoff.
He stares. She stares. He's pretty runty for a troll, from the little she can see. His horns are barely visible, and his shoulders are about on par with Dave's for width.
Also he's not wearing anything like a parka.
She gets to see more of that when he -- excruciatingly slowly -- starts creeping closer.
He's not moving in a straight line, sort of circling, toward where the ground is flatter. Maybe he thinks it'll help him pounce. She fingers the trigger guard.
She doesn't even understand why she's not shooting yet. There's no reasoning with a troll. There's no talking with them. Sometimes they'll retreat but it's always to attack again. If they see you they're going to want to kill you. Sometimes when there's time they do other horrible stuff first. Some people are never seen again.
Also when you try to capture one alive usually they freak the hell out and you end up having to put them down anyway, or they kill themselves -- hard to disarm someone with butcher hooks on his fingers and toes, with spears on his heads, knives in his mouth, not unless you're willing to go the horrible gross mutilation way, and after that she doesn't think they're eager to cooperate somehow.
This one has rips in his clothes that look like claw marks and the cloth is stiff and dark, and when he moves, little bits fall out like a bad case of dandruff. Dry blood. Trolls are all kinda insane from a human's point of view, but even if he were the type to self-mutilate, at this angle she doesn't think he could have clawed himself up. Huh.
His fingers curl when they land in a patch of snow; he doesn't even flinch. His eyes are still on her, burning, half-crazy. Sometimes a wild tremble runs through his frame from the shoulders down. He keeps calculating distances with his eyes, am I close enough to jump her yet, how about now?
He looks on the verge of collapse.
He's not wearing shoes.
"Okay, you must be just about the least threatening troll ever in the history of ever. Just saying."
He flinches at the sound of her voice, and then he snarls, a low animal growl, which would be scary if her dog didn't hit deeper notes and if his threat didn't end up in a coughing fit, quickly but painfully smothered.
Good god. Least. Scary. Troll. Ever.
She kinda feels gypped. The ones in the vids at boot camp were obviously selected for hugeness and evil barbed horns but she's seen enough of a selection of more usual fighters to tell he's winning that one by a landslide.
There's no hiding the strain on his face. His fingers look swollen, darker than the rest of his skin, he's stiff with cold, if he had normal eyes she's pretty sure she could see them going in and out of focus, and ... "You've been on the losing end of a pretty epic beat-down, haven't you. No lying, mister; I know two Striders, I know from beat-downs."
It'd be really easy to shoot him through the shoulders at this distance, bam-bam, and then twice more in the knees as he falls back, the articulations aren't built the same way but she'd still achieve something pretty close to kneecapping, for all the mobility he'd have afterwards.
Instead she picks up the stick of delicious grilled meat that she was waiting to crisp to perfection and she throws it in his patch of snow.
The troll reacts like she just lobbed a live grenade at him, but that only makes it more obvious how exhausted he is; he fails to identify the object in mid-air, and then he flinches back at least a half second too late to do any good.
Afterwards she can see it in his face, astonishment -- what, food, seriously? -- and then offended pride, a brief flare of anger.
It doesn't last. He sneaks her a resentful, mortified look and snatches it up, and retreats for a few feet, and then he's gulping it down so fast he even cracks the stick in his teeth and she thinks he might swallow a bit of it. Gross! Also ouch, his poor stomach. He's still stealing glances at her but she notices with interest that he's not meeting her eyes anymore. Ashamed.
She bites her lip in thought, picks up a second stick, her other arm still curled around her rifle, butt tucked in the crook of her elbow, finger on the trigger guard. She can shoot from her lap, at this distance bringing it up to her face to aim is really unnecessary. She lifts the stick a little. There's only a few bits of meat on each, to ensure that they're cooked all the way through and she's not going to pick up any alien parasites from the local game.
The troll stares at it. She moves it from right to left; his head sways with it, hypnotized. She's a troll-charmer. Awesome.
She doesn't throw that one. After a few expectant seconds he looks back up at her face, and she smiles, patient but pitiless. It's her Rose look. She practiced in the mirror.
He doesn't flinch and piss his pants like Jake insists he totally almost did, but it works on him, too. She can see it on his face, that oddly flat devastation, running on empty and it'd be so easy to give up on everything, so easy, and wanting to say fuck you, fuck off but knowing he can't afford it, the sparks that smother before they become rage, the crushed-small, shamed misery.
He crawls closer, head low, shoulders hunched, shuffles through the snow on hands and one foot and one knee, he should be able to move on all fours easy with the way their hip joints and knees work but he can't anymore, all stiff and beaten up; she can see him doing that same old calculation, can I jump her from here?
From the look in his eyes the answer keeps coming up as nope.
She's starting to feel really bad for him.
She's also kinda thinking if he were healthy he'd have killed her already. (Or tried to; she's a sharpshooter, okay, she'd have seen him first, he'd never have seen her at all. Bam.) But...
"I was right, huh." She eyes the old wounds, the lack of clothes, the utter exhaustion -- the refusal to just curl up under the snow and let himself fall asleep, even if the other alternative is to crawl. "You just really, really, really want to live, don't you."
And because she has the proof she wanted, she decides to be generous and throws the stick. She doesn't want him in arm's reach when his hands are free anyway. Seriously, butcher's hooks.
He doesn't even crawl away to eat this time around, he just sits in the snow right on the spot and he gnaws, hands shaking, he almost fumbles the stick and clings to it like he's telling his hands fuck you, even if every single bone in you breaks you are not letting go, are you hearing me.
After that he keeps sitting and he looks up at her.
His eyes are really red, and oddly ... lost. She thinks he'd maybe cry if he wasn't too tired for it. For a moment she kind of wants to cry a bit, too.
He makes a scratchy chirp noise, like a crow with a sore throat. What now?
Well, that's a good question. Only not really. One twist of her wrist and the rifle is aimed straight at him, center of mass. He twitches, stares at it with a bitter lack of surprise. She shrugs, brings up her other hand to steady the barrel. "Sorry."
She can see him hesitating -- for a moment he closes his eyes, okay, fine, whatever, shoot me, and then he catches himself and opens them and he glares, lip curling to bare fangs.
"Hey, babe."
She doesn't take her eyes off the troll, even though he's not looking anymore, has jerked around in fact. "Hey Dave. Yay you, you didn't miss the guest after all."
"Seein' that." Dave rubs the barrel of his handgun with the ball of his thumb, takes another slow step into the clearing, so they won't risk hitting each other and the troll is caught in a triangle made of them and the fire. "Here I was hauling ass and all, thinking I was gonna be late for Revenge of the Bride of Jurassic Park, and instead it was Bambi Nine. I feel underdressed."
"The princess and the animals isn't in Bambi, stupid, it's in like every other Disney movie ever. Except the one with lions."
"Hey, who watched those direct to video masterpieces, you or me?"
She huffs, and tries not to smile. She would keep bantering, but the troll is slowly shifting onto his feet like he's going to try to jump -- and either jumping on one of them or jumping to run away would be unacceptable.
She brings the rifle up to her shoulder, says a "No!" with the same bad dog undertones as for Bec, and makes sure he can see she's aiming at his thigh, not anything vital. She points with her chin; she's not sure how well it indicates "get down," but it's probably obvious from context.
He trembles. He trembles and he glares, and he hisses under his breath, all choked up and wheezy, outraged and lost. He looks like he's about to throw up the meat, which would be a right waste. Hunting that miniature stag-bison thing was a right pain in the butt, and she hasn't gotten to taste any of it.
"So, just checking. Alive?"
"Yup."
"Unpierced?"
"That'd be nice!"
"You sure?"
She looks at Dave, unusually serious right through the pokerface, and then she looks at the troll. The runty, humiliated, half-dressed in the snow troll. "Yup."
Dave sighs. "As you wish, but I better get kissed awake a lot for this. With tongue, I demand tongue, what are the princes of this world coming to that they scrimp on service."
She grins, happy white teeth and all, and she gets up without warning, booted feet planted solidly on the muddy ground.
The troll predictably flinches around to face her, hissing, and then Dave is at his back slipping his arms under the troll's and locking his hands behind his head.
He was trying to get up so the troll's feet would be off the ground -- he's that short, wow -- but the troll manages a surprisingly powerful jackknifing kick; it doesn't hit anything but Dave loses his balance and lands on his ass.
"Holy shit -- like wrestling a sack of wet kittens, only they're -- ngh -- possessed by Satan or something, shit, he's slipping!"
Okay, the threat of her rifle is meaningless so long as he's still stuck to Dave like that, and she's rather help than wait for him to escape and then shoot. She drops the gun, and then she drops her weight on his lap, on his knees, and wow, rodeo.
For about ten seconds, and then it's more like riding a poor old arthritic cow, he can't even lift her weight from the ground. His struggles grow weaker, his snarls, and then he just goes limp all at once in Dave's hold, breathing in big shuddery gasps and eyes scrunched closed.
"Phew."
A couple of seconds later it's obvious why his eyes were closed, because even if he can stop the tears he can't stop the choked-up sobs.
She's probably the only person in the galaxy who's managed to capture a troll with just two people and no injuries and two minutes of fuss. She feels kind of guilty.
--
Battlefield Terra chpt 6
--
In the last week John had started collecting objects he could afford to see brutally destroyed. Not for Karkat's weirdo nest, but to throw over the foot of his bed and wake him up when he was in the middle of a nightmare, before morning-zombie Dave decided to stumble out of bed and wake the alien up his own special way. They did not have enough towels in the whole island to sponge up that much blood.
(John had made the mistake of lobbing his own pillow exactly once. Jake and Dirk were still finding bits and pieces of memory foam in their sheets four days later.)
He heard things rustling brutally, saw a black mop of hair come up fast over the footboard. He waited a couple of seconds, eyes slitted open, caught a glimpse of red eyes, wide open, irises blown wide for barely a second before they started shrinking back. Okay; still shaken but awake enough. John flopped back on his mattress, face down, arms buried underneath his replacement pillow. (It really wasn't as good as the old one. It smelled musty.)
He wasn't going to fall back asleep, not with the alien gasping not-silently-enough for breath at the foot of his bed. But he wasn't getting up either; Dave'd be up soon. John didn't want to cross paths in the bathroom. The heights of awkward reached by brushing teeth at neighboring sinks while not acknowledging each other in any way were reaching unreal altitudes -- like they should be breaching the stratosphere already, but nope, still just enough oxygen to choke on.
A faint beep started, kept going for a minute, annoyingly regular even while muffled to the point John could barely hear it. Wasn't like there was anything else to listen to.
Dave eventually sighed and dragged himself over the guardrail, dropped to the floor. Stood there in silence for a handful of seconds. John kept his breathing regular and his face buried in his pillow. Nope, totally asleep.
Softly padding bare feet, a cupboard being rummaged through, the door opening and closing. John kept pretending to be asleep. Maybe if he pretended long enough it'd become true.
He could feel Karkat's own state of wakefulness without even looking, with something that went deeper than conscious senses. It was just that kind of feeling where everyone in a room was still and quiet and it was too dark to check at a glance but somehow you could just tell they were staring at the ceiling too. Maybe breathing patterns, who the heck knew.
Too many thoughts. That was annoying. He was bored...!
Something landed on his head with a soft plop. "--Hey!"
... Damn it, now he couldn't pretend to be asleep anymore. He pulled the worn-thin sole of an ancient tennis shoe off his head (it was now recently torn almost in two and the cloth top was missing in chunks) and craned his head to glower half-heartedly at Karkat. The alien was sitting in his corner pretending to be interested in whatever random crap there was to see in the opposite corner at the foot of Dirk and Dave's bunk, though John caught him sneaking a quick glance his way. Grumbling, John crawled out of the blankets to sit on the edge of his mattress.
"I'm up, I'm up, princess, you can look, I'm not rubbing my nubile body all over a carnal platform of delights anymore."
Karkat likely didn't catch more than three words in the sentence, but what he muttered under his breath sounded sort of like "stupid." Someone had to tell Jade off about teaching an impressionable young man bad words.
Karkat threw a longer side look at John, eyebrows furrowed -- it was that oh-so-common pinched Karkatian expression that looked like he was calculating the precise amount of headbutts it was going to take to knock some bothersome wall down and how much it was going to hurt and how much it needed to be done anyway, and that was oddly hilarious. So serious.
"Hmm?" John prompted, elbows on his thighs, rounding his back to crack his spine back into place. "What do you want?"
"Nrrr." A sigh.
Karkat pulled himself up on his feet, wandered out of his corner, though he still carefully avoided looking at John straight on. It was weird, some times he was totally in John's face and glaring and demanding things, and some times he was doing that weird careful 'let's not acknowledge each other too much because you might idk frown at me or something' shy dance.
"Bathroom."
... Dave would still be there. Crap. "Can it wait?" John asked, sighing, and stretched his calves, bent over to grab his ankles until he felt the burn in his thighs, the back of his knees. He felt all creaky without his usual level of exercise. (Seriously, people were always surprised at what kind of shape you had to be in to pilot something that pulled so many Gs and demanded so much dexterity for several hours in a row.) He flopped backward on his bed, arms landing limply akimbo on the bunched-up blankets. "I don't want to get up yet."
A soft annoyed huff, silence. When he cracked an eye open Karkat was frowning down at him, hands on his hips. The old t-shirt he was wearing fit his strong shoulders fine but the ends hung low on his thighs, it looked too big anyway. Short torso. (Short legs too, heh. Okay, no, John was just tall.) John only saw the very edge of the shorts Karkat slept in.
"Zhann?"
He picked up his pillow and pressed it to his face. "Aw, nooo, don't wanna."
A quick, incredulous huff. "Zhann."
"Noooooo."
"Zhann bathroom come with me."
"Nope."
The next tirade, John translated in his head as 'I will piss on everything you own so help me John Egbert and it will be your fault.' He reluctantly peeked out from under the pillow, and glowered, knowing full well that he looked childish and sulky and still going ahead with it.
Karkat looked incredulous and yet unsurprised for about three seconds, hands opening like he was considering grabbing him by the ankles and yanking him off his bed and it'd be nothing that wasn't well-deserved when he made a rough butt-landing -- and then the alien sighed, shoulders slumping imperceptibly. Victory! Now John could stay in and... brood into his mattress. Yay.
While the guy he was supposed to babysit died of an exploded bladder.
"I am the worst pet owner, it is me," he mumbled, smothered in blankets, and pushed himself up with a heavy sigh.
When he straightened up, one hand scratching through his hair, he caught a quick glimpse of Karkat. He was standing all hunched and grabbing one elbow with his opposite hand, forearm across the stomach, like maybe if he only did it on one side he'd look less like he was hugging himself. He saw John looking and jerked into a more neutral position. Fuck.
For less than a second John wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder and say he was sorry and also an assbutt and of course they could go.
He reminded himself he only wanted to pet and soothe Karkat so much because of the telepathy thing, anyway, and just went to the cupboard and got two changes of clothes.
When they reached the bathroom, the sinks and toilet stalls were empty of Dave -- good, some respite -- and the shower running. John started brushing his teeth as Karkat disappeared in a stall, bracing himself for the brief awkward of his teammate brushing by on his way to the door without saying a word. Surely the guy'd be done soon.
Karkat came out, washed his hands, and turned to him, head tilted in question. There was a little worried furrow between his eyebrows; he glanced at the shower room and then back at John meaningfully, mouth pursing a little. Of course he'd picked up on the tension, days ago even, it was so thick it choked everything. John ignored him to stare at his own reflection; he was shaving, okay, he needed to pay attention. Alright, so he had nothing much to shave yet at his age, especially not that needed shaving every day, but still.
When he was done shaving Dave was still in the shower, and he was out of excuses. Damn it.
Okay. Okay. It wasn't like they were going to argue or anything. They didn't have much to say to each other. It'd just be... um.
Okay, no, fuck that noise. None of the girls were around! John went to his locker, same as always, and got undressed and towel'd, same as always, and when Karkat started toward the shower room he caught his wrist and started towing him toward the other door.
"Anhg--"
"Shh!" John hissed, leaning in, one finger across his own lips. "Come with me. Quietly."
He was being a wuss -- and a totally transparent one at that -- and he was sure Dave wouldn't figure it out and laugh forever about it. Nooo, totes wouldn't. Did he care?! No. He tiptoed back around the lockers to stay out of sight of the boys' showers, one hand on the towel tied around his waist and one around Karkat's wrist. Karkat followed in silence, but the look on his face could have been subtitled 'I Am Embarrassed To Even Be On The Same Planet As You', it was that blatant. John grimaced at him and slipped into the forbidden territory of the girls' shower room.
The setup was mirrored, with an identical bench running along the wall opposite the showers, only because they'd never gone through a phase of climbing everything and breaking the hell out of it by horsing around and braining themselves on the floor tiles the girls still got to have stalls. Karkat blinked at them, gave his wrist a little shake -- oops, John was still holding on; he let go -- and went to peek inside one.
"... Zhann?"
"Yeah?" John prompted -- quietly -- as he got himself some shampoo (Jade's this time; his luxurious mane was going to be so disentangled, baby) and chose another stall at random down the row.
"Wash here no why?"
Okay, that had come out confusing. Karkat had a crazy-good memory for words, even though he couldn't pronounce most of them quite right and paused in weird places as he hunted for the next piece of vocabulary, but the grammar tended to be a mangled mess. "Hm?" John prompted again.
Karkat grumbled at him, pointed toward the other shower room, then down at this one's floor, eyebrows scrunched in somewhat offended confusion.
"Girls' room, is why."
A vaguely baffled blink. Couldn't he ask questions and expand his knowledge when John wasn't trying to get a shower? Ah, whatever, it was fun some days. John pointed toward the other room, said, "John, Jake, Dirk, Dave, Bro," and then down at the floor of this one, "Jane, Jade, Rose, Roxy."
Still that baffled look.
John cupped sizeable, if sadly invisible boobs on his own bare chest, pointed down at the floor of the room, making a face. "Come on, what's the common point there?"
"... Zhann stupid dumb."
And he was still frowning at John, lips pursed, dissatisfied. Hn. "No, you," John replied intelligently, and disappeared in his stall.
Karkat muttered to himself in growlclicks and little huffs of breath as he locked himself away in his own. "Stupid dumb stupid bad no," he grumbled, barely audible over the noise of John's shower starting.
"No, Karkat is the one who's stupid stupid dumb," John replied, and then cold water was suddenly raining from the sky. "Gyeah!"
Alien chuckling, quiet and rough and self-conscious but still kind of amused. Damn it. John hoped he hadn't been loud enough for Dave to hear him. But still, that Karkat might wait a whole week to pay him back for the cold water thing... heh. It made him chuckle, a little bit.
He'd totally get revenge for Karkat's revenge later on, though, but better to keep it for when Karkat had given up waiting for it. He started lathering himself up.
Scrub, scrub, scrub.
He had to admit it was much easier to concentrate on washing when he didn't have to make really sure he didn't accidentally show Karkat his dangly bits again, without looking like that was what he was doing. Because being embarrassed by an awkward situation was already bad enough, but being openly embarrassed was even more embarrassing.
(Also he couldn't get caught precisely at that wrong moment where his eyes strayed blindly over shit he wasn't even really looking at, seriously, that wasn't awkward at all.)
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I have nothing to add that isn't basically "please post" and I refuse to be that person. So, uh, yeah. Yey!
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Also jealous, but easily distracted from that by SNEAK PREVIEWS, YAY!
OhgoshohwowJadeDaveKarkatAU! Seriously, last night I went and read all the legible John/Karkat/Jade on AO3, and was deep in the throes of wanting more good threesome!fic with Jade and Karkat (I certainly like John as the third, but I'm not married to the notion, and it being Dave instead would definitely eliminate some squick potential for me). This is AWESOME and I am a complete
unabashedslightly abashed but nonetheless open fiend for injured Karkats being rescued by humans when they're technically on the enemy side...Speaking of which: Battlefield Terra! Karkat's first sentence, awww! And the demise of John's pillow, and Karkat mirroring the wake-up technique back at him, even daring to insult him but still trying not to show any physical weakness! And there are shenanigans based on avoiding Dave because ~tension~, and sneaking over to the girls' side!
(One quick thing, though: the precise amount of headbutts it was going to take --> either "the precise number of headbutts" or "the precise amount of headbutting". 'Amount' is for things that can't be counted off, 'number' for things that can.)
TA: 2top frontiing, kk, you love heariing about my paiil2, iit'2 the clo2e2t you're gettiing two a paiil of your own.
TA: so many paiil2
TA: all of the paiil2
TA: but 2he love2 two wreck my 2hiit, iit'2 liike holy nubfondliing bulge2ac woman we're iin publiic, don't bwahaha 2o loud.
Hahahahahahaha, I love Sollux SO MUCH, and also this is my new favourite pairing. (HACK YEAH!) I love blackrom that's not physically violent as much as targeted malice, and it's so rare!
OH, I ALMOST FORGOT:
I have been trying for about a week to give coherent feedback on "30th Century Night", and failing. Nnnngh. I've read it probably eleven times, and it is so good, and I want to tell you every single way I love it and hurt and delight in it, but by the end of it I can't muster any words at all.
Re: OH, I ALMOST FORGOT:
I'm glad you liked that fic, it was such crazy amounts of gleefulsexyyay to write i'm always dancing a little when people agree. XD
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i don't know what's going on this is scary hold me plz D: homestuck is doping me, can be nothing else D: D: D: THS FANDOM IS AN ACTUAL DRUG!!1111!
jadekat+third threesomes are AWESOME. Why doesn't everyone write them. ;___; haha i saw you left a comment on a prompt i was eyeing a little bit in the kink meme. i kind of want to try it but at the same time i have no good porn ideas. sadface. i don't like to just dive in with no way to make the plot a little different from what i've written before, and i've written so many ot3 fics... DX
thanks for the edit, will fix! ^^
Sollux' black crush on Roxy is adorably fluffy, really, it's embarrassing. XD socute. the cutest.
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but at the same time I have no good porn ideas
Mmm... Meditate on it? If you want me to fling ideas at you, or at the kinkmeme audience in general, feel free to volunteer me. There cannot ever be enough JadeKat+1 fic. :D
Sollux' black crush on Roxy is adorably fluffy
Yes it is! And it should be! Sollux deserves some fluff! Plus, I feel like Roxy would enjoy it, which is not always the case with humans in blackrom fics; constant aggression is hard to sustain, but one-upsmanship comes naturally to geeks. :D I hope she and Sollux can come to an understanding... *shameless* They can bring the sexy nerd-outs, and I'll bring the popcorn.
hhhhholycrap
(Anonymous) 2012-12-05 06:23 pm (UTC)(link)Thank you for being so magnificent!! I spent something like five or six hours being read Battlefield Terra straight through by my text-to-speech (thank you for not having Terezi's quirk in the fic) because I read too quickly and can't be trusted to enjoy things properly when I look at them with my eyes. It was REALLY GREAT and the whole, entire thing was riveting. I mean like maybe I'm just hideously besotted (spoilers I am) but I didn't catch any pacing issues or anything like that, it was bafflingly note-perfect the whole way through and just pure distilled awesomeness, even with the faces I'd be pulling occasionally trying to puzzle out the nested telepathy stuff by ear. And how it would spell out "P F F T ehehe" for Egbert, wahaha, but Karkat pronouncing John's name was a kick and a half because I didn't even know how you were spelling it, just heard the buzzing hesitant slur of Karkat's attempt and wow there goes my heart exploding that's okay I wasn't using it.
Thank you so much for posting previews! It's so kind and amazing, gosh.
Re: hhhhholycrap
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9__9 it's sollux POV and he's a bit distracted tho. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmm.
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But seriously, Yeah, I can understand being distracted when that goes down. And maybe trying to burrow through a wall.
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Let's see. Jade and Dave are on an alien planet. I don't know if it's the troll's native planet or not. Both cultures presumably know the other to be civilized in the sense of having technology -- Jade is surprised that Karkat isn't wearing shoes or a coat -- but they can't communicate at all... which I guess would be the trolls' fault initially, and now both species are perpetuating the whole "evil monsters, kill on sight!" ethos, though apparently Jade hasn't bought into that completely even if she is justifiably cautious. (Or is some of her desire to tame/catch Karkat scientific interest as well as general empathy?)
I wonder what happened to Karkat to leave him injured and alone in the winter wilderness? I also wonder what Jade and Dave are doing on this alien planet. Hmm, what else. Jade mentions Jake by name instead of calling him Grandpa, so I assume the beta and alpha kids are more or less the same generation in this AU; cool. And I like how Dave trusts Jade and lets her call the shots on capturing Karkat rather than killing him.
In short, very neat and I hope you are inspired to continue it. :-)
(Also, Sollux blackflirting with Roxy continues to be adorable, and I feel bad for BT!John and his awkwardness around both Karkat and his friends, though some of that is his own fault for being all avoidant. Silly boy. *musses his hair*)
Tiny grammar fix! hard to disarm someone with butcher hooks on his fingers and toes, with spears on his heads, knives in his mouth, not unless you're willing to go the horrible gross mutilation way, and after that she doesn't think they're eager to cooperate somehow. You wobble between singular and plural all through this sentence. I'd just go with "they" and plural all the way through, like so: "hard to disarm people with butcher hooks on their fingers and toes, spears on their heads, knives in their mouths, not unless..." If you go singular instead, you need to change "heads" to "head."
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It is not the trolls' native planet either. And Jade wants to catch him instead of kill him because he looks potentially tameable, which is not a characteristic a lot of trolls they usually meet on the battlefield or during ship invasion share. >__>;;; The issue with that fic is that i've got the middle, but the end is yay another "karkat stranded amongst human" plot and, uh, BT is keeping those bunnies tyvm.
(i just like having the alpha and beta kids about the same age okay! XDD;; all my space plots are about the same that way.)
It is totally BT!john's fault. Silly silly boy. :X
welp. Thanks! XD;;; I'll fix on the document, too lazy to fix the teaser.
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THAT ENDING. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. Quirkchanges are a severe indicator that things are FUBAR.
Also, hehehehehe Sollux's reaction to memo voodoo.
BFT: ...I'm going to go out on a limb and say Karkat doesn't know anything about weird humans and their reproductive issues. xD
Also, I was totally thinking of John doing those unsettling gestures (http://r4dgrl-latula.tumblr.com/post/31487685988/ok-look-at-john-here-for-a-second-john-is-being/) during that whole scene. xD
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Karkat doesn't understand gender segregation at ALL. since with trolls it's just as likely you'll pop an inappropriate boner with your gender or with the other gender they don't even bother doing separate boys and girls locker room, they just get taught not to ogle/grope/get pantshappy via fists to the nose if necessary.
ahaha yes XDD
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Other than that, I like. Nothing stands out as spectacular; I think this is all of a style such that it would only really be impressive (at least to me) as part of a larger whole, which since it's still in teaser-fragment form it can't be.
Oh, and congratulations on the wordcount!