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Considering how much you teased each other about each other’s taste in movies, it turns out to be the best hobby for the two of you to bond over. And as co-friendleaders (or just co-leaders, as Karkat calls you both) you really should be bonding. Every Wednesday night (or what you’ve been assuming is Wednesday night since there’s no real nighttime/daytime or actual days in the Veil) is movie night for the two of you where you choose two human movies and Karkat chooses two troll movies and you both are surrounded by a sickening amount of sweets and popcorn while you watch all four back to back.
You favourite action movies while Karkat favours romcoms. There’s some variety, but those are your default genres. But since trolls don’t seem to have a single romcom that’s only about flushed romance you have inadvertently being receiving lessons in quadrants. You understand them better than when Karkat initially explained them but your grasp is still pretty terrible.
“What’s with all the close ups on horns?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, just how far up your nook have you crammed your head anyway? It’s blackrom, genius. Like I haven’t explained that to you in five different ways before. Tell me Egbert, every time you float around like some brain damaged flutterbeast does the Windy Thing blow everything out of your cranium because I seriously cannot fathom how else you forget everything I tell you about quadrants.”
“Hey don’t diss the Windy Thing! The Windy Thing is great. It’s not my fault trolls made romance five times more confusing than human romance.”
Karkat rolls his eyes at you and makes a face when you grin back. You think he looks constipated. Five minutes pass until the screen stills and Karkat turns to face you. You know it’s five minutes because it’s always five minutes until he breaks down and re-explains the nuances of troll romance to you.
“Okay, fuck, fine, since this whole damn movie relies on horns to convey its blackrom I’ll explain it to you. Otherwise you’ll just do something unbelievably stupid like think they’re platonic enemies or whatever dumb-as-shit conclusion you come to.”
You would be offended if Karkat wasn’t always like this doing movie nights. He’s actually pretty nice usually, despite being really loud all the time. It makes it kind of infuriating that he’s like this when you’re trying to enjoy movies. Not that you hate him or anything - Karkat is one of your many best bros! He is also talking to you so you should probably start paying attention.
“-but after the caverns no one really uses them for that anymore. Some blue-bloods still hold horn-strifes but it’s really outdated. Its just a stigma left over from the past. Did any of that actually manage to sink into your unbelievably shallow thinkpan?”
Actually you remember this explanation.
“Uh, so it’s a sign of aggression? Grabbing another troll’s horns means you want to fight them?”
“Oh wow, what was that? Hang on a second while I go get my moirail because I think we need an expert to certify the bona fide miracle that just occurred - John Egbert actually learnt something about troll romance, today will surely go down in history. Or it would if there were any days on this shitty fucking meteor.”
“Heheh, shut up.”
“Oh yeah, laugh it up. You know terrible comebacks like that just prove you don’t understand how important these kinds of things are to troll romance.”
“What, does horn grabbing happen in every blackrom?”
“No of course it fucking doesn’t holy shit have seriously none of my lessons gotten through to you? I take back what I said before; no miracle has occurred on this day. John Egbert is still as much of an idiot as he was yesterday.”
The fact that this is the same Karkat that actually complimented his stack of pancakes this morning is unbelievable. Unbelievable and pretty annoying. You think movies bring out the worst in him.
“Then why is it so important to blackrom?”
You do not actually care why and you think you basically understand why. You have only asked this question a bit for your Prankster’s Gambit and mostly to get Karkat back for being such a douche during your movie nights. Predictably your question makes him pull up his knees, grab his hair and pull his head forward until it’s pressed against his knees. He makes a familiar sound of frustration and you laugh. He makes the sound again. The grip on his hair loosens and he mutters in a tone that’s probably louder than he intended;
“This would be so much easier if you knew how good it felt to have your horns grabbed but no; humans get my stupid fucking blood but they don’t even get something as basic as horns.”
Karkat probably meant for the latter part to be the important part of that sentence but your attention got stuck before then.
“You like getting your horns grabbed?”
He stills in his curled up position - you can practically see his spine stiffen. He doesn’t look up when he spits;
“Holy fucking shit you giant bulgemunch of course that was the only thing you got out of that.”
Which is how you know that he’s actually embarrassed about having admitted that. You grin - this is perfect.
“You do! You like having your horns grabbed. Wow you really are into blackrom.”
Karkat uncurls from his position and launches a container of popcorn at your head. And for the rest of the night that’s all there is to say on the matter.
The problem is, you keep thinking about it. It’s just this little thought that keeps cropping up - it’s like a pesterbot set to pester you five times a day at random times. You can never predict it but every once in a while the thought pops back up.
Karkat likes his horns being grabbed.
There’s connotations with it. That it’s not just that the troll likes it - it’s that the troll like-likes it. That its a sexy thing. A black romance sexy thing, but still. And once you consciously have that thought it gets even worse. Contrary to Karkat’s belief, with all the movies you’ve been watching you actually do somewhat understand the quadrants. But you watch romances and romantic-comedies. If they had human ratings they’d barely be rated R and that rating was usually only for ‘implied pailing’ (whatever that meant - it was the only thing Karkat hadn’t been willing to explain). So while you basically get the romance you don’t really understand any of the sexy stuff.
You know about the human sexy stuff. You’re not thirteen any more and your body has made more than a few desires known. In fact you probably know a bit too much about human sexy stuff after you made the mistake of making an offhand comment to Dave and consequently being treated to ’Strider’s Sensual Introduction to Sex’. You do not want to talk about it.
But when the thought lodges in your mind that Karkat finds something as simple as grabby his nubby little horns to be sexy you don’t have much of a frame of reference for what that would look like. How does a troll even look when they’re hate-turned-on? Humans looked kinda happy or tired when they were turned on but that was because they liked it. What did a sexy face look like when the sexy things happening pissed you off? Scowling? Grimacing?
You don’t know and you kinda wish you could quit thinking about it, especially since tomorrow was Wednesday.
Wednesday night arrives without you remembering the day but you find you can’t enjoy the movies. Your movies are Raising Arizona and The Wedding Planner and Karkat hasn’t shut up for ten consecutive minutes during either of them. It is only fifteen minutes into The Wedding Planner and you don’t think you can take it anymore. You’re not sure what’s wrong but you’re doing your trying not to ruin movie night with whatever mood you’re in. There’s a tiny, tiny chance it’s because of the dream you had last night where Karkat willfully grabbed his own horns and happily/hatefully showed you all the different theories you had for what trolls looked like when they were turned-on-in-spades. But it is probably something else. Yeah. In fact you are sure it is something else.
The screen freezes, the pause symbol in the corner, and you shove a handful of popcorn into your mouth before you can say anything about it. Your co-friendleader is silent but you can feel him staring at you. You give him a sidelong look. That is enough for him to launch into his tirade, apparently.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Egbert? You’ve looked like a beached seadweller wriggler all night. Seriously, are you sick or something because what I know about human sickness could fill a digit sewing helmet. You can’t survive SGRUB and then just drop dead of some dumb human illness that is stupid.”
You continue chewing your mouthful of popcorn and, amazingly, Karkat actually stays quiet until you’ve finished it. You must’ve been acting really weird because usually he wouldn’t care this much. Still, once you finish the popcorn all you say is:
“Hahaha! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
He does not accept this perfectly plausible, not at all hysterical sounding answer.
“What? No. Fuck that and fuck you John Egbert. I didn’t question it when your thinkpan was up with the featherbeasts all week like it was much of a goddamn difference with how vague you usually are, at least you weren’t talking as much that way. And I didn’t question it when you were being snarky at everyone and their barkbeast for all of today for no fucking reason at all I mean who else but me knows better that we share this meteor with a bunch of arseholes, your constant state of utter fucking joy had to snap under the strain of everyone else’s incredible nooklicking attitude eventually. But I know these are some of your favourites and you’ve spent the entire time looking like you need to use the load gaper but can’t decide if you need to empty your waste chute or your protein chute.”
Karkat is frowning now and it doesn’t look like his usual default frown. You feel a bit guilty now.
“You haven’t opened your mouth and unleashed your unfathomable stupidity all night no matter how many comments I’ve made about your human Earth movies.”
You no longer feel quite so guilty. A little gesture a gust of wind knocks Karkat to one side and dislodges the remote from his hand. You grab it and press play.
Despite is position, half-sprawled on the floor, Karkat does not take this laying down. In fact he gives an odd sort of growl and launches himself at you like some goddamn tiger. You are pinned to your back and it does not improve your mood. In fact it does just the opposite and you push right back. The pair of you wrestle, your God Tier pajamas getting covered with sugar and salt and his mundane pajamas getting the same treatment as you roll each other over what remains of that night’s snacks.
The pair of you are actually pretty evenly matched and neither of you can get much of an upper hand. Not until you really start using the Windy Thing, that is. But one gust from the Breeze later and Karkat is flat on his stomach, pinned by your weight and one arm across the back of his shoulders. He struggles but you push him down, backed up once more by the Breeze. You both take a second to catch your breath: you’re trying to anticipate his next move while Karkat is probably trying to plan some way to get the upperhand again.
Right in front of you, telescoped slightly by your glasses sliding down your nose, are his horns.
All at once your dream comes back full force and you just have to know. You adjust your arm and reach out with both hands. The troll is biding his time or something because he doesn’t even take this moment to try squirm out from under you. You hesitate with your hands hovering just over his nubs, your palms tingling with anticipation of clenching around them.
Karkat makes his move and jerks his head backwards. Maybe he’d hoped to headbutt you in the face or even just that the movement would catch you off guard. What actually happens is that he jerks his horns right into your hands which then automatically clenches around them. And his entire body shudders before going stock still. You test this revelation a second time, giving them a significantly less accidental squeeze.
His
entire
body
shudders.
You can feel it from your chest right down to your thighs which is about as much of you that is laid out on top of him, keeping him pinned. You think you hear buzzy sort of growl again, as well. You find this all completely fascinating and you give them a third squeeze. Either you accidentally shifted your grip or his gotten used to the feeling but either way he doesn’t shudder this time. You grip them tight (no shudder) and then sharply pull them towards you. This does elicit a third shudder and something that is definitely a buzzing-growl. So it’s not the feeling on the horns but the movement. You guess that makes sense - horns aren’t traditionally the most sensitive of appendages on any Earth species and it would be a bit silly if they were sensitive for trolls since they used to use them to strife with.
You tug some more backwards and to the sides, sometimes tugging them in opposite directions, sometimes pressing your hands down directly on top of Karkat’s horns and pressing the tips of your fingers into his scalp. He’s not so much shuddering now as he is squirming in earnest. A few tugs of his horns ago his hips started moving a bit more frantically and you can hear him panting underneath you. It’s kind of intoxicating, doing this to him. It’s not just intoxicating in fact and you’re not entirely sure you can wholly blame hormones and the thrusting of his own ass for wants going on down your pants.
But if this is what blackrom sexiness looks like, then you think you’re starting to see the appeal.
Karkat bucks up with sudden force and you’re forced to reevaluate your position, lest he wriggle out from under you. He doesn’t even try to, however, but just seems to settle for propping his hindquarters up onto his knees and raising his front a little so that he’s resting on his forearms. As a final adjustment, he tips his head back towards you and nudges his horns back into your hands. You have to take a second to get comfortable in your new position and as you press forward to yank his horns back for the Nth time that night, you realise what this new position does.
It presses your crotch to the underside of his arse and presses your erection into his groin.
Karkat cuts off a buzz-growl when you do it by accident the first time but lets out a more elongated version of the sound the second time you do it. In between the buzzy sound he is definitely groaning but neither of you have really talked the entire time. You, in fact, are trying pretty hard not to think at all. You have to just keep going with the flow because if you stop to think about this your brain is going to give you a big flashing ERROR screen about doing something like this with one of your best bros and with a very-male best bro.
So instead of thinking about it you just press your hips forward harder and more purposefully and jerk his head around by his horns like he’s an errant bull you are trying to steer. You have a feeling this is not the best troll for you to use that simile on.
You fall forward a few inches, flinging one of your hands out to catch yourself, as Karkat adjusts himself into a steeper angle and shifts all his weight onto on arm. His now free hand reaches under himself to fumble at something and a few moments later you hear a pretty distinctive zipping (or rather unzipping) sound. Without much input from you your hips pull back a little and give Karkat some room to pull his pants down. The bagginess of his jeans doesn’t actually let him keep his legs too far apart and you compensate by bracketing his shins with your knees. He props himself back up on two arms and you resume what your thrusting and horn yanking.
The flannel of your God Tier costume soon informs you that it was not just his jeans but also his underwear that he pulled down. The material is half soaked and clings to the head of your cock that you just inadvertently rubbed into Karkat’s crotch. Judging by the position and how wet it seems down their you guess it must be his nook or seedflap or something. You didn’t realise guy trolls even had those parts. Forgetting the horns for a second, you go slower as you press into that feeling again. There’s a bit of suction this time but not as if it was trying to pull you in. It feels more like a suction cap stuck around the head of your dick. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just very alien. Which makes sense since it was coming from alien private parts.
For the first time since this wrestle turned… wrestle started, one of you talks.
“Fuck I hate you so much Egbert, just go ahead and stick your creepy fucking alien bulge in already would you.”
Admittedly the words have a buzzing undertone to them but it still kind of breaks your stride. It gives your brain enough time to process some oxygen and quietly yell at your body: What the hell are you doing?!?!
You stop, not thrusting and not pulling on his horns and you don’t really hear the frustrated sound that the troll all but whimpers under you. What are you doing exactly? You wouldn’t say you’re exactly having sex yet but this is more than just a sloppy makeout. This isn’t even in redrom, humans only form of romance. He just said that he hated you and you’ve been grabbing his horns this whole time. This is definitely the black quadrant. Both those facts he could probably take in stride except he was doing this with Karkat ’I Am Your God’ Vantas. With his co-friendleader. With another male as alien as this male may be and despite the fact that male and female probably doesn’t mean what it means to humans.
That was a lot of cons to have against this whole thing.
But on the other hand. This was hot. There was no denying it. You find this seriously hot - LOHAC levels of hot. This was your buddy Karkat but that didn’t make the troll’s awkward backward thrusts any less sexy. And it felt good. Really, really good. Better than flying, even. You felt like all your tension had drained away or maybe you’d just spent it all up wrestling and then pseudo-hatefucking Karkat into the ground.
It hadn’t even hurt to hear him say that he hated you. You’d been happy way back when you where about to start the scratch and Karkat had come back from trolling you backwards and had admitted that you were probably friends now. You thought it would probably hurt if he ever told you he hated you again even if the first time it was more awkward than hurtful. But now that he had said it you found that instead of being offended you just felt…
You felt satisfied. You felt smug. Good. He should hate you. Because on movie nights more often than not you really fucking hated him. So at least the feeling was mutual now.
The muscles under your weight shifted, tensing and relaxing in different places than before and you felt his thighs tense and his legs lift a little as Karkat flexed his toes for traction. Clear signs that he has about to try and flip the pair of you over. Crisis of sexuality, quadrants and friendship dealt with for now, you use your grip in his nubs to slam his head into the ground (the blow missing the metal of the ground thanks to a spongy layer of smooshed gummie worms). With the troll temporarily dazed you feel safe enough in removing a hand to reach for your pants and shoving everything bit of clothes on your legs down and almost entirely off. You kick one leg out of the garments so that you can keep straddling his backside but you haven’t the patience or time to untangle your other ankle.
Karkat’s nook or seedflap or whatever exactly trolls call this part isn’t as wet as you were expecting when you thrust at it this time and unfortunately your God Tier pants soaked up most of the liquid that had previous been lubricating the area. After a few tentative thrusts forward you realise you’re not just going to slip in and that you’re either going to have to find some other way to get everything slippery again or you’re going to have to go for a different method. Deciding on the latter, you shift your weight forward and rest it mostly on his upper back, the rest going towards pressing his head firmly down with your hands. Your legs thus free of responsibilities are now able to concentrate on doing as Karkat had asked and getting inside the troll already. You reach one hand back to grab your cock and release a small moan into the troll’s hair as you slide your hand from the base to your tip. You wiggle your fingers, keeping the head of your cock on your palm, and clumsily try and find his nook. The ends of your fingers are assaulted with soft suckers and you think you’ve found it. The entrance feels quite circular and there seems to be a lot of wrinkled skin. It reminds you of a just barely blooming flower for some reason and you suddenly wish you were in a better position to look at it.
Instead you guide your penis forward until you’re moaning from the suckers doing their thing around the head of your cock. You replace your arm, brace your self, and push forward despite any resistance. Belatedly you remember Karkat’s horns and steadily push them forward to a steady beat and you stubbornly go further and further inside his nook. There’s a steady stream of buzzing coming from underneath you and you wonder if you should ask if this is hurting or not. Black romance is all about hate and somewhat about strifing but you’re not sure if it’s about pain, exactly. It doesn’t matter in the end because when you feel about halfway in Karkat slams his head back into your chin and snidely asks;
“Is that all you’ve got, Egbert? What is this some fucking flush pailing I’m not going to break like some goddamn-”
And that’s as far as he gets because around that moment you decide that no, that is not all you fucking have and you use his horns to yank his head right back as you use that leverage to forcibly push yourself the rest of the way inside of him. Karkat breaks off what would have been an overly articulate insult for partway through sex to make a very loud version of his growly-buzzy noise. You should ask about that noise later, when you’re not cock-deep in him.
His sounds are getting louder or maybe it’s just the contrast between before and now since before The Wedding Planner was still playing and now even the credits have stopped rolling and the screen has gone pitch black. You can actually barely she him but that just heightens every other way you can sense him. Touching him is like holding embers and hearing him with his worn and breathless voice is like an electric shock. You can smell him more than you think you’ve probably smelled anything before and while it’s not a pleasant smell it does further fuel your libido and pulses even more blood into your hard cock. He smells as warm as he feels and he smells like sweat. But he’s no warmer than you yourself feel and you know you’re perspiring too so those are less qualities-of-Karkat and more qualities-of-sex.
You start to pull out, after resting inside him for a few moments and just concentrating on stretching his neck back. You stop, loosing your grip on his horns and barely catch yourself with a hand either side of his shoulders as you slump forward. While you’d rested the suckers nestled in the many folds around his entrance had gotten a grip on you and tugging out of their grip had elicited an unexpected sensation on your dick. You hear a dark sort of chuckle from down below and you realise you have made the Ultimate Sucker’s Mistake. Literally, in this case. Karkat scoots his hips forward and his nook-suction-cap-thingies yank off of the soft skin of your dick. You give a choked gasp and slump forward onto him. This move has the helpful side effect of not allowing him to move off of you anymore and you give his nook no time to regain a grip by thrusting yourself back in. It is he who gives a choked sound this time and you take the opportunity to grab his head again. He lifts himself into his hands and you tug him back onto your cock by his horns and pull out just with your hips. You keep a speedy pace, wary of the peculiar suckering sensation, and Karkat seems to appreciate the tempo.
Minutes pass, you think, and it gets easier to push in and out of his nook. For no apparently reason he begins shuddering under you again and stuttering between a near-violent buzzing sound. You’re panting pretty heavily yourself and must have started moaning at some point because you can hear yourself doing so now. You give a particularly hard thrust and the stutters fall in line long enough to become a few fragmented words;
“Pail- now- pailpail- oh fuck- tell you you- fuck- please pai-pailing-”
The word gets muddled in your rather occupied mind and it takes a particularly desperate sound from the troll before your brain translates ’pale = pail = bucket’ for you. As every proper prankster should, you already have a plastic bucket captchalogued and you waste no time in pulling it out and dropping it next to one of his hands. He grabs the bucket and shoves it roughing underneath your combined crotches, his legs spreading just enough to press against either side of the pail. You don’t understand exactly why he had a sudden fetish for cleaning utensils until his head comes back with no resistance when you tug it and he practically shouts a buzz-groan to the roof. Not a second later there is the sound of liquid hitting plastic and it echoes slightly in the theatre room.
You keep thrusting, though not as deep as before, and listen to the sound. The troll hasn’t stopped cumming (or the liquid sound has yet to cease, anyway) by the time that you feel your own orgasm coming to a head. You pull out, half-memories of your dodgy sex education coming to mind and a strong feeling that you should not come inside someone when you weren’t wearing a condom prevailing, and thrust half-heartedly against the outside of Karkat’s crotch. Scant seconds later you’re joining him in coming, your dick pointed down between both your crotches and aimed at the bucket more by accident than design.
After some undefinable time which in reality was probably no more than a minute, Karkat pushes the pail out from beneath the two on you and you both slump to the ground, legs making tanglebuddies with each other thanks to your tired lack of communication on how to lay down post-coital. You both are facing the roof, not quite flat on your backs. After a few quiet moments where the air was just filled with the soothing sound of the two of you panting, you hear Karkat opening and closing his mouth like a demented goldfish. He could be about to ask you any manner of question and you have exactly zero energy to deal with any question he might ask right now.
Instead he tells you: “I really fucking hate you, John.”
Your face hurts when you grin and you simply laugh a little “Heheheh.” back at him.
You can hear Karkat about to launch into some fancy retort and lazily cut him off by raising your hands up to the roof and making the best spade symbol you can make with two hands. There’s silence and then a pair of grey hands join yours and point a second spade symbol up to the roof.