It was dark and cold on the meteor at night, echoes of footsteps travelling far through the hallways while everyone slept, but thankfully not waking any of the other members of the team. The young troll walked quickly and as quietly as he could to the human's side of the level of respiteblocks, his bare feet hitting the cold metal as he went, pulling his thin, short-sleeved sleeping shirt further down on his torso, only for it to bounce back up and expose some of his midriff. He rubs his arms as he goes, unsure of why he continues to go back to him every time, like he can't wait for the next round, the next challenge...
Be the young troll.
Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are so, so cold. Your blood runs warm through you but your skin feels like ice. All the time on this meteor, almost two weeks from the new session now, and none of you ever worked out how to turn on the heating at night, or even if night was really night.
You reach his door and knock softly, you don't know what time it is and you don't care, you just need him now. You curl your toes against the cold floor and bite your lip as you wait for him to reply. He never does it straight away, you usually have to wait about-
"I'd ask who it is but that'd be the dumbest question ever." Comes a tired voice through the door as the bolts click and the handle turns, "Come on in."
You growl slightly as you step through the door, all sense of nervousness replaced by unnecessary anger "Have some fucking manners, you know I don't have to be here if you're gonna act like an asshole the whole time."
"And yet here you are again, for the fourth night in a row." He says, closing the door and stepping up way too close to your back. You can feel his breath on the nape of your neck, warm and steady, "What's all that about, Karkitty?"
"Don't call me that." You bite out, hating the fact you ever told him about that nikname, and he chuckles and grips your sides in response; hard enough that you know it would hurt another human, but he knows it doesn't hurt you. He knows how to handle you and how to touch you just right, and that is infuriating and perfect all at once.
"Or what babe, you'll mewl at me?"
You growl, then, ripping yourself out of his grasp and spinning around. You spin him around, barely missing hitting his back on the door handle as you press against him, placing your hands on his shoulders and digging your claws in lightly as you glare up at him with your eyes wide and bright in the darkness. You can see them reflected in his shades, ovals of yellow and grey, flecks of red playing around your pupil. You bare your teeth, appreciating it when his eyebrows raise in surprise. You never do that to him, you're never really this angry with him.
He doesn't use his words from that point onwards, speaking only with his own instinct and body language in response to your own. He runs his hands up your sides and over your shoulders, combing his fingers through the dark tangles of your hair. You feel the pads of his fingers against your scalp and close your eyes, letting your mouth slacken from the growl as he shooshes you quietly, rubbing his hands through your fringe and over the back of your neck, deftly avoiding your horns as he goes. You feel his lips follow his hands over your forehead and you stop growling entirely, pulling back your claws from his shoulder and simply resting your hands on his chest, leaning in to his touch.
You hate that you always come back. You hate it right up until you're here and he's holding you close, closer and more intimately than anyone has before, calming you down and mixing every quadrant together in one huge mess that hurts your head to think about. He antagonises you, calms you down, keeping you under control and then...
He kisses you. Properly and with just as much feeling as the first time he did it all those weeks ago, only without the nervousness and the after-strife blood everywhere. He puts all he's got into it when he kisses you, pulling you close, leaning down to make up for the slight height difference, pressing a hand against your lower back as if he can't bear the thought of any space left between your bodies. You lean up anyway, pressing him further against the wall and kissing him back. Your mouths are closed but they move together perfectly, as if like a dance you've known for years. You've learned how to avoide hitting his shades, that bumping noses is fine and you don't have to laugh every time because it spoils the mood and gets old fast.
His lips are soft, far softer than yours and much less chapped. You hate yourself for thinking anything about his lips but you can't help it. He kisses you like they do in the movies and you're pretty sure he only does it to take the piss, but you don't care, you just lean into it and let him push you backwards, one hand still in your hair as the other supports your hip. Your hands up up on the back of his neck, in his hair, tugging on the thin blonde strands lightly as they flow between your rough fingers. You're careful not to pull any out this time, he always throws up a bitchfit and it spoils the evening. You can feel his breath on your lips as he breaks the kiss, stopping his movement and resting his forehead against yours. You can't help it, you lean in a little more and press one more kiss to his lips, just one more, just to remember in case he tells you to leave. He's done it before, just as you convinced yourself it was okay, this was okay, he put the walls back up and told you to get out. You didn't see him for days.
He laughs then, a breathy little laugh that blows puffs of air against your face as he pulls you forwards for a hug. That's it, just a hug, but it feels like so much more when it's him. His toned, streamlined body pressed snugly against your smaller but more compact form. You wrap your arms over his shoulders, letting him pull you up almost on your tiptoes and bury his head against your hair.
"Why ido/i you keep coming back if I piss you off so much?" He asks quietly, and you can feel him smirking against your neck and you're back to wanting to throttle him.
"Because I'm a dumbass with a thing for douchebags in sunglasses." You reply after a moment's consideration, and then he's turned his head and he's kissing your neck and you gasp a little louder than you usually do because you're not expecting it. You're almost purring when he does things like this, when he's all pressed up against you and kissing you and touching you, you let that reflex slip out because it makes him smile. He doesn't smile often enough, but you'd never tell him you thought that.
He's pushing you backwards again, then, and you realise why he'd stopped. The back of your knees make contact with the bed and you would have fallen back immediately had Dave not caught you, hands on your hips. He lowers you down gently and you shuffle backwards on the covers, propping yourself up on your elbows and looking up at him with wide eyes, reflected in small glows in both sides of his shades as he pulls them off. You're still not used to seeing that much of his face, those eyes as bright as yours will be, but a slightly paler red. He leans down, then, hands landing by your knees before he's crawling up and over you, legs intertwining with yours as he brings a hand to your jaw and kisses you, deeper and warmer than before. You can't move your arms to hold him but you're okay with that, he's there and he's real and he isn't leaving. He's not dead. He's right there pressing up against you in his boxers and the short sleeved knight shirt and thinking about that makes your head spin. He's the one that didn't leave.
He pulls off his shirt first - he always does, just so you're less awkward about letting him take off yours. He lets you sit up and kisses you as he pulls up the hem of your grey top, breaking the kiss only to pull it over your head but leaving it trapping your arms above you as he pushes you back down. You growl a little in protest but then he's biting your neck and you choke and throw your head back, trying to wiggle your hands out of your shirt but being entirely unsuccessful. He pulls back and runs his hands over your chest, raking his eyes down you in a way that makes you uncomfortable in the best way every time he does it. You growl again and he's kissing it right out of your mouth, running his soft tongue against your own rough one in a mix of textures that is definitely not unpleasant. You get one hand out of the shirt and throw it off the bed, bringing your hands back down to his bare shoulders.
Through experience, he's lined up his hips with yours so that when he rolls his hips forwards the friction is perfect, it's so standard to you but you both still gasp each time, the air around you thick with body heat and your own breaths. You think maybe it's a good thing you never worked out the heater settings.
Dave makes short work of your pyjama bottoms, kneeling up to pull them all the way off you and pulling off his boxers soon after. You can't wait for him to come back down, you lean up and kiss him, drawing your knees up slightly either side of his hips as you pull him forwards. You don't need to look at him, you know what he looks like and you know how it feels, and you want it so bad you'll be ashamed of yourself later but you love how it feels and you love it when he touches you, and moirails aren't meant to do this but you guess he doesn't count as your moirail anymore, because this would be so taboo and so wrong and so, so, so- ioh./i
He presses into you, knowing you're pliant enough to just let him in, and your bulge squirms against both of your stomachs, aching for friction, for Dave to just touch you already and oh god that's his hand but your eyes are shut and you can't see his face. You need to see his face, you need to open your eyes but the feeling of him filling you completely, how alien and wrong it is and how he is definitely not the right shape to be in there but that's never stopped him before. Fuck alien biology, Tab A will always fit into Slot B if you push hard enough. You said this to him once and he laughed, saying that's so not how anything should work, but here he is driving into you shamelessly, panting against your face every time you break the kiss to moan his name. You'll hate yourself for this later, as you always do; you hate how he breaks you down to your weakest components and makes you feel so fucking amazing every single time, you hate that you need this to prove he's still there still real, still yours and not... not his.
You bit at his neck and he slows his pace, rolling his hips into yours as you hook your ankles over his elbows, letting him hold you up for a better angle as he leans forward to kiss you again, bending you over doubled as you kiss him like this is the last time you'll ever do this. For all you know it might be. What's to stop this meteor crashing early and killing you all? You could be dead tomorrow.
Maybe that's why you keep coming back to him.
He moans, then, a quiet noise against your throat, but it send shivers down your spine nonetheless. For a guy that barely shows any emotion in normal social interaction he sure is vocal in the respiteblock. He wasn't at first, but you think he's just letting his guard down a bit too much for you. That thought almost makes you smile but then he's biting you and you can feel him inside you, pressing and forcing the walls of your nook to allow for his alien bulge, and he squeezes your own bulge in his hand and you throw your head back and growl, guttural and animalistic, and he's talking, encouraging you, telling you to do that again because holy shit that was hot, so you lean back forwards and growl right in his face. He's looking at you with his scarlet eyes and you're looking back with your own crimson-flecked grey ones, it's so dark and you're so close that you can see your eyes reflected in his blown pupils before he's kissing you and rocking harder into your hips, dragging out the sensation for as long as he can, pulling your legs up over his shoulders and you cry out because he's angled it perfectly, he always does, and you still don't know what makes it feel that good but goddamn you wouldn't change it for the world.
You can feel it building, that inevitable release, remembering the first time you did this and how terrified Dave was that you'd been seriously injured. Red everywhere, literally everywhere. It wouldn't wash out of the sheets and since then Dave has taken to alchemising as many bedcovers as he can while nobody's paying attention.
The heat of his skin against yours and the warmth of his mouth, open lips against your neck, are what sends you over this time; blinding white behind your tightly shut eyes as your throw your head back, the ache in your stomach with the effort of not folding over forwards and screaming all at once. You know he's covered in it and that he felt the warmth from you and that's why he's moaning and you almost come again at just the thought of him still inside of you, and then he's joining you on the other side of tonight's adventure, choking out your name against your neck and shuddering against your skin, and you let him rock a few more times and let go of your legs and collapses, resting his head against your chest and catching his breath for a moment. You've been counting how long it takes for the walls to come back up after this - the first time it was under a minute, but last time it lasted all the way until morning and he almost left his room without his shades on.
He's pressing light kisses to your chest, then, and you fight back the urge to tell him to stop being fake-romantic because it's cruel. You let him silently mock you in his actions and pretend it doesn't make your heart flutter slightly in long-wished feeling. This is the romcom you always wanted, it's just the fact your partner in it is an asshole who is literally just acting the part. You don't mind though, as you run one hand through his hair, the other resting across the back of his shoulders. You don't care because he's acting the part for your sake. Showing his emotions through sarcastic and passive-aggressive gestures as if he knows no other way. You guess you're probably awful at this too, making the whole thing up as you go along.
You'll clean up in a minute, because the bedsheets are wrecked again for the fourth time this week, but for now you just lay there, his warm body pressing you into the mattress and his eyelids fluttering closed for a moment against your chest.
In the morning he'll be back to being an asshole, and you'll play your parts in front of the others as you always do; but if tomorrow ends with night again, you'll be back.
You always come back.