Chapter Text
So you're eighteen now and you have fifty dollars of birthday money from your dearly beloved, mostly senile Nana burning a hole in your pocket and you've never been kissed. Never really kissed, that is, because you and Dave Strider, who has been your best friend since he was the coolest kid on the playground and you were still trading jelly doughnuts for knuckle sandwiches-- both of you agreed that that one awful, awkward time with Rose during 'Seven Minutes in Heaven' when you were younger and there was a crowd of sugar-high preteens standing outside giggling didn't count. You're eighteen years old today, legally a man, and you've never felt another hand on your skin, soft and sensual and beckoning, never felt full, warm lips pressed against your own and then your jaw and then your neck, never held a girl close and whispered that you loved her, and meant it fully, implicitly, too guileless and naive to offer her falsehoods. The aforementioned Rose has many theories on this, none of which you are particularly interested in thanks to the low psychobabble-to-sense-making ratio involved. You think the last time she brought it up, she might have implied that you harbored some secret homosexual tendencies, which is just silly.
The aforementioned Strider, on the other hand, just thinks you need to get laid.
You know this because he told you so not nine and a half hours ago when the lunch bell was still ringing in your ears, and the two of you were on what used to be called the 'playground' and was then the 'black top' and is now the 'awful patch of cracked and dirty asphalt choked with weeds and the decaying remnants of a thousand children's dying dreams'. He cupped one hand over his mouth and you heard the metal click, hiss of the lighter, opening and closing and giving air to the hungry flame, which jumped from fuel to the hand-rolled cigarette Dave held between his teeth, and then the gasp of his inhaled breath, sucking up smoke and ash, like lighting bits of paper on fire and sticking them in your mouth was going out of style and he wanted to get in as many as he could before the Irony Police showed up and impounded his stash. Then his lighter and one hand went in a pocket as the other leaned against the rust-red brick of the school's wall, and talking around his cigarette, he said, "You need to get laid, Egbert. Bad. Tonight."
Your face fell and your heart stopped but if you looked like a deer in the headlights he was either ignorant or pretended not to notice because when you whimpered "Please don't say it," he responded with, "We're doing this, bro."
Groaning, you pinched the bridge of your nose between two fingers and finished the meme dutifully, as you always do, knowing that you were hammering a nail into your own coffin with every word; "We're making this happen."
Which is why now it's ten o'clock at night and you're sitting in the passenger seat of Dave's 1978 Ford Pinto, with the window halfway down and the radio tuned to some alt rock screamo station, the dulcet tunes of an emotional teenager much like yourself reverberating against the inside of your skull as you readjust your position in a leather car seat that smells like a poorly taxidermied rat carcass. You went home and did your homework like a good little boy and told your dad you were going out celebrating with a friend (he was proud, as you knew he would be, and did no more than pat you on the back on your way out the door) and then Dave picked you up, and now the car is bouncing and shaking on its axles as you power through potholes deep enough to be portals to hell. There's a siren blaring in the near distance and as you coast to a stop at a red light, the car wheezing like an exhausted marathon runner sucking down cups of water past the finish line and the ticker tape parade, you chance to look out the window, regretting it immediately; this is the bad part of town, the place where the trolls rule, slumlords and gangbangers mixing it up with what could charitably be called "ladies of the night", a gaggle of whom are standing on the nearest street corner, illuminated by the pale neon blue light of a drug store sign in Alternian.
"Dave?" you ask, tentatively, and you get a noncommittal grunt in response as the car shifts gears and shudders into motion again. As you watch, one of the painted Jezebels winks at you, blowing you a kiss with lips as black as midnight, dark as sin. You shiver and sink back down in your seat-- you've never been a speciesist, but it surely seems very cosmopolitan, whores of both breeds standing outside together, all looking for a john. Or a John, even. Swallowing thickly, you press on. "Is there a reason we're in this part of town? Th-there must be, uh, strip clubs in my neighborhood."
Not their neighborhood, no, because this is where Dave lives, and everybody knows him. Before Dave can answer they're jerking to a stop again, this time in the middle of the street, to hoots and hollers from the sidewalk; there's no one else out driving, but Dave wouldn't care if there was, because the troll that skips over to lean against his window is Terezi Pyrope, his second best friend, and she's grinning like a lawyer. Or a shark. "I could smell this piece of trash coming from a mile away, Strider," she croaks, her English good but raspy and hoarse. Trolls are meant to growl like chicken wire raked over gravel, not contort their mouths into the strange patterns that human speech insists on. "Good little boys should be at home in their beds before the coppers come sniffing around."
Dave snorts, reaches back to unlock the backseat door and Terezi climbs in without a word more, having to hold the door shut behind her to keep it from flapping in the breeze. "Before you call them on me, you mean," he says, but lightly, and John feels his equilibrium thrown off as they turn a corner sharply. "Anyway, today's Egderp's birthday. Thought I'd show him some of the high life."
Terezi cackles and slaps her knee with her free hand, teeth glinting in the low light when you turn to nod back at her. "So where are we going, then?" she demands, madly gleeful. "Sully's? Sebastian Sam's Pleasure Paradise? The Cathouse? ...No, wait, Nepeta got us kicked out of there."
"Nah," Dave tells her, shaking his head slightly, and just like that he's pulling into a parking lot that can only be described as 'shady', killing the engine in a way that seems to make that metaphor literal. "Thought we'd try the Seaman's Harpoon. The new place."
"Dave, Dave, Dave," Terezi sighs, pulling a sour face at him and sounding disgusted in a way that only a troll can-- "We talked about this, didn't we? Fish puns, Dave. Eridan, Dave. This is the exact opposite of anywhere a coolkid would go."
"Wrong and wrong again," Dave informs her, getting out, and you do too, scrambling to exit Satan's chariot, unwilling to be left behind. "My brother got a job here, so drinks are free. Anyway, it's not like Eridan's actually going to show up just because he owns the place." Terezi still looks skeptical, but follows them out of the car and threads her arm through Dave's; the two of them take the lead and you follow, slouched down, trying to make yourself as small and unnoticeable as humanly possible. Dave and Terezi are in their own world already, laughing and talking and speaking in a language comprised of injokes and humor that you can only pretend to understand, and you're lost to it, able only to blindly follow the tap, tap, tap of Terezi's cane against the ground and the low murmur of their idle chatter. Being ignored is better than being noticed, because if you draw Dave's attention, he might remember why the two of you are here.
The building you are walking towards is old, four stories, riverfront property long left languishing as time rotted it away to a brick facade and boarded up windows of top offices, a building that once shucked and processed and refined grain, making it fit for a consumer's use. Now it takes the dregs of human and troll society, the small and forgotten people with nowhere else to go, and strips them of their dignity like wheat from the chaff, cold and clinical, leaving nothing but a shell. You cannot help but find it poetic, and also sad, and you determine as you step through the high, once-gilded door, that you will not allow Dave to sell you any sort of illicit activity tonight. Whoever waits for you here deserves better.
There is no bouncer at the door, but the entryway is full of soft light and deep music, the bass lower than the ground in tones that shake your blood in its veins, rattles and curdles your marrow and plays a sensual note that kicks right down to your groin and rests there warmly, especially when Dave grabs you by the elbow and leads you forward into the main room. You come out on a balcony and step down the rickety stairs on shaking legs, into a pit filled with tables lit by candle light. Along one wall is a bar where shadowed figures drown their sorrows, and at the front of the room is a stage, lit in reds and yellows and oranges that flicker and dance-- the color of fire. Dave deposits you in what is easily the least comfortable chair you've ever had the displeasure of experiencing, turning you towards the stage.
Trolls, you notice. It's all trolls, and this room is making you lightheaded, filled with billowing clouds of smoke that could be marijuana or tobacco, take your pick, either is likely-- Dave would have known. Dave would have opened his mouth and breathed it in, tasted it like connoisseurs tasted wine, and declared its origin thusly, but now Dave is busy leaning in close to shout in your ear over the pounding music like a pulsing tumor in your soul. "It's all lowbloods," Dave tells you, and you think, duh, because what high blood would fall to this level? The dancers, sparsely dressed as they are, are garbed in strips of brown or maroon or mustard yellow, sometimes stockings or bindings or skirts or stockings up long, supple legs that you want to caress or maybe that's just this music talking, yes, definitely the music. Your erstwhile companion waves to a man in blue hovering nearby, his long black hair hanging in waves over his shoulders, and shouts something else unintelligible; the man nods and departs, returning a sweat-soaked minute later with a tray of beverages, courtesy of the elder Strider.
"Drink this," Dave mouths, pushing something neon green with a skewer of fruit and a colorful paper umbrella at you, and you take the glass cautiously, steeling yourself. The glass is cold, and the room is hot, stifling, as though the heat were a liquid pouring in over your skin and into your clothes, sticking the cloth to your suffocating body, and you dearly wish not to be here in mind or body so you gulp and drink the hemlock, all of it down in one gulp that leaves your throat burning and your mouth tasting pleasantly of mint-berry-kiwi-razmatazz-rainbows. Unbidden, the man brings you another, and when that's gone there's, poof, another glass before you just like that. Terezi is on her second round of something that looks like pureed blue raspberry fruit gushers if gushers were a color blue whose electricity makes the hairs on your arms stand on end just from being in close proximity, and Dave is slurping something that you are disappointed to find that you can easily identify as whiskey sour, on the rocks. Two drinks, now three, and your head is buzzing and filled with white noise and the music is only getting louder and that's when she comes on stage.
You don't know her name, but you dearly wish to. Hell, maybe she doesn't have one. What she does have is long legs encased in bright red stockings held up by garter belts that you can see beneath her skirt, and horns like two pieces of succulent candy corn that you suddenly want to lick and suck and devour (you're possibly the only person you know who actually likes candy corn, has always thought it was delicious), and intense eyes that smoulder. The other dancers are gone by the time she comes out, to catcalls from the few patrons in the audience tonight, but she shrugs it off and runs a hand through her short-for-a-girl hair, gloved to hide the maneater claws beneath the fabric. As she sidles up to the pole, embraces it like a lover, runs her tongue over the cold metal, you realize that her clothes, from the stockings to the corset strapped tight over her flat-but-attractive chest to the stiletto'd fuck-me pumps holding her half a foot off the ground, her clothes are all red as scarlet, red as human blood.
Her eyes, those powerful eyes, draw you in and watch you for a moment-- not the crowd, but you and it takes your breath away as she watches you, no condemnation there, but pride, battered and weary and hidden but pride nonetheless that burns like the flame of the forgotten soldier, never extinguished, never quenched, always hungry. For a moment there is nothing in the world but you and her and then she begins in earnest, pushing her hips against the pole, raising a leg to hook around it, pulling it to her as though it were a lover, a matesprit or... what was the other one? A kismesis. Still, you cannot look away, enraptured. She is perfection, whispers the voice of the alcohol in the back of your head, tendrils of thought wrapping around the lizard part of your brain, making your pants too tight.
You have never wanted anything more in your life than this.
Dave sees you watching, and gestures towards the steward again; the music is lower now, and you can hear him say, "Hey, Equius. We've got a winner."
Out the corner of your eye, you see but do not notice the man as he inclines his head slightly, cracked sunglasses slipping an inch down his steep nose. "Very good, sir." And then a clawed hand is over your shoulder. "If you would...?" You do not want to, do not wish to go, but the burly troll is easing you up out of your seat and the drink tells you to go, to follow. Your feet are slow and unresponsive, and it's like walking in molasses as you stumble and trip after him, leaning against his side as he brings you back up the one fight of stairs and then another, into a dingy hallway where the music is muffled and all you can smell is failure. The room at the end of the hall is marked '612' in lopsided, tarnished brass numbers and the steward opens it carefully with a ring of keys from his pocket, gently nudging you forward. "Please wait here," is the only instruction you are given, and you are okay with that, moving forward to collapse on the small but well-made bed you find there, taking a moment to turn on the bedside light.
In the intervening time, while you wait for things unknown, you count the water stains like diseased and withered blossoms on the ceiling like stars in the sky, aching for a girl you will never know. Life is hard, and no one understands, but stupid as it may be, you can't help but think that she could have.
The door creaks, badly in need of oil, but you don't look up until a gruff, overtired voice grunts, "Well, let's get on with it, then. Sit up with your legs over the edge and take your pants off, unless you're too drunk to do it." You do as directed, the first two steps at least with a couple of false starts, and blink in surprise-- here is your fantasy, come back to you, the girl in red who up close is a lot more angular, more sharp. You watch as she unthreads her corset, sighing in nearly inaudible relief as it tumbles to the floor in a pool of restricting cotton, and then, enraptured, as she unclasps her skirt and that goes too, revealing a pair of red silk panties and a very obvious bulge. Alright, so, not a girl. Right now, you are just a little bit too drunk to care, and anyway, she's still pretty.
You tell him so and he mutters, "Yeah, definitely too drunk," in hissing English under his breath and bends to his knees before you, sure fingers covering yours over your belt buckle, teasing it out of its loops before unbuttoning and unzipping your pants. The flat of his hand butts up against your hard cock, and even over the material of your underwear it's more than you've done with any living being before; a shameful, small noise escapes you, and you realize again that this is not what you wanted. He's pretty, he's beautiful, attractive and wonderful and those eyes are watching you but this isn't what your first time is supposed to be, because you don't love him. You think you could. You know you could, actually, but now you can't because you don't know a damn thing about him, don't even know what name to scream when he finally gets around to pulling your cock out of your boxers and pressing a wet and careful kiss against the tip, mindful of his teeth as the tip of his tongue digs into the slit there, making you keen.
So you ask. You can't not, not when his hand, still gloved, is wrapped around your shaft and you realize that you want to feel his skin on your skin, hot and rough like living sandpaper, like a cat's tongue. It takes you a moment to find the words, and then you have to gently take hold of his hair and pull him back so that you won't be distracted. "What's your name?" Three little words that sound so stupid in your mouth, echoing off the stained and empty walls.
He scowls, sitting back on his heels to watch you with disdain barely concealed, knowing that you are too drunk to complain or hold back his pay, too drunk to get him fired. "What the fuck do you want that for?" he growls, and it's like music, wonderful music, you could cry because the tone is harsh and you know why and you wish you could wrap him up in blankets and carry him home like the broken baby bird you found in the park when you were six, take him home and nurse him back to health and knit the fractures in his heart back together, but it's not that simple. "To take everything, the last thing? Strip the last pieces of me away? To own me? I've got news for you, fuckass-- someone already does, and he sure as hell isn't you."
There is fire in his eyes and tears pricking at your own and you try to haul him up to your level but with your coordination it results in you falling off the bed, tumbling forward and onto him and bowling him over onto his back on the floor with a whoosh of lost breath, your face buried in the crook of his neck smelling the strange perfume of trolls, the cocktail of differing pheromones that makes you clumsily dig the heel of your hand into his side, clutching him tightly. "N-no, I just..." you stammer, stupidly, wanting to explain, to make him love you or at least not hate you, take away the pain and the indignity. "I just want to know the name of the guy who's gonna take my virginity. 'S all."
"You mean you've never filled pails with anyone before?" he demands, incredulous, his own hands traveling to your shoulders and stopping there, not pushing you off quite yet but not holding you closer, either. "This is your first time?" Then he scoffs and rolls you over, gets to his feet and hauls you up like a sack of potatoes, tossing you back onto the bed. "Well aren't I fucking lucky."
"Sorry," you whisper, because it seems like the right thing to do, and then there is a warm tongue wrapped around the head of your cock and a steadying hand resting on your thigh and all the world is heat and darkness and the throbbing beat of the music below and sadness, sadness heavy like a curtain, like a curse.
Afterward he collapses beside you and you watch his adam's apple bob as he swallows you down, spatters of indecent white on his lips and chin that he doesn't seem to notice, or at least to acknowledge. His eyes close and he turns on his side, and so do you, embracing him from behind; he doesn't fight it, lets you hold him close, his bony back pressed to your chest as your heart beats like a hummingbird's wings. "Do you hate them?" you ask, less slurred now that your arousal is gone, and he stiffens, shocked, taking a moment to think.
"Too much work," he tells you after a beat of not-quite silence, and you can hear his rasping breath when the two of you are quiet, labored and shallow. "They don't deserve it, anyway." You let your eyes slip shut and stroke his chest, his stomach, rewarded with something like a thin purr, and it must be involuntary because he sounds annoyed when he asks, "So what the fuck are you doing here for your first time, anyway? You look pitiful enough to find a matesprit, or whatever damn stupid thing you humans do."
"Didn't want any of them," you hum, your cheek pressed against his shoulder blade. "Wanted you."
Another snort. "You didn't even know me."
"Sure I did," you say without thinking, without knowing why. "Trolls aren't the only ones who believe in fate."
Neither of you speak again for the rest of the night, not until sleep takes you. "It's Karkat," he whispers. "Karkat Vantas." And you fall to the dream with a smile.
---
When you wake up, there is pale sunlight streaming over your face and the comforter that neither of you quite made it under, and your mouth is filled with fur and your head with fuck, fuck, fuck. You remember what happened as a blur of sound and sensation, but the last part is clear, and you remember that you meant it, too. Probably you still do.
Sitting up, your unresisting hands are filled with a steaming cup of something thick and chocolate colored that a rough voice proclaims to be called something with too many s's and z's to be pronounceable at nine thirty in the morning on a Tuesday (you think it's Tuesday, anyway). Taking a sip, you find this one to be berry-pomegranate-tangerine-gravy flavored, which is a better combination than you'd have been inclined to suspect, and the voice further explains that "It's a troll drink, good for hangovers." Physically, you feel better already.
Then you are quiet until the cup is drained. You find that you can't look up at him, afraid to see loathing there. "How much for the night?" you ask, knowing that you will never be able to pay, and slight movement in that direction shows you that he is shrugging, uncertain.
"New customer discount. Call it fifty for the night?"
Amazed at this fortune, you find your pants and dig through the lint-encrusted pockets, coming up with the fifty-spot and passing it over. Still, you cannot meet those eyes that you have wronged just by existing.
"You have anywhere to be?" he asks, and you can't answer, fascinated by the pattern in the wood grain in the floor. "Hey, look at me, I asked you a question. You got anywhere to go, kid?" Now you do look up because he sounds frustrated, and in the light of day, yes, he is older than you, just a year or two but enough to make a difference, to melt some of the extra baby fat off his face and make his arms, covered by a jacket now, long and lean. Gone is the skirt, which you realize was for the benefit of the human customers, trolls having no concept of either sexuality or fashion, replaced by a beaten up pair of blue jeans with one of the knees torn out. He doesn't look angry-- more than slightly angry, at least. Just tired, and you nod.
"Yeah, school."
"Jegus," he groans, slapping a hand over his face and squinching up his eyes, trying to block out the vision of his shitty life. "Kid, fuck, please tell me you're legal, it's not like the boss cares but fuck him some of us have morals and I'm not a grubfucking pervert like some of us around here--"
You get up to your feet hurriedly, eyes wide, shaking your head so hard that your neck cracks. "No! No, don't worry, yesterday was my birthday. It's my last year of high school, that's all."
He cocks his head at you suspiciously, but accepts it, still scowling, and marches over to a previously unnoticed chest of drawers, removing from the top portion his own ring of keys. "You got any way to get there, then?"
"No," you admit sheepishly, hating yourself for it; "I just had enough to cover, um, 'services'. Dave was going to drive me back..."
"Dave? Dave Strider?" You now, and he guffaws, not entirely unkindly. "Yeah, good luck there. The other Strider probably made him leave the second his shift was over-- that or he's passed out in some other room." The man-- Karkat, Karkat from now on, you must remember --had walked halfway to the door, but now glances at you over his shoulder; "Come on, then, I guess I might as well drive you. Not like I have a day job to get to or anything." His eyes travel down your body. "But fuck, make yourself decent first or you'll end up owing me another fifty before we even get out the door."
Sadly, you cannot tell if that is a joke, or if you want it to be.
Pants acquired, you hastily follow in Karkat's wake as he draws you back into the hall, back down the stairs, across the pit floor now empty with the house lights on, a lone janitor mopping up the night's excess as the trolls go back to their rooms to sleep the day away. They exit through a service egress in back, out onto what used to be a loading dock in the golden olden days, down another flight of stairs (cement, cracking, circa 1862) and into the same parking lot, where Dave's car is not. Karkat's car is basically the same, though-- a worn-out, unwanted model, much like him.
He gestures towards the door and you slide in shotgun, buckling yourself in and leaning against the door while the engine turns over twice and stalls. Karkat curses violently and thumps the dash, his cheeks flushing, perhaps embarrassed and wanting to show his dominion over the car; after a moment of verbal and physical violence it roars and sputters to life, and they're off.
"It's across the river," you tell him helpfully. "Greenridge High?"
"Yeah, I know it," he tells you, voice unreadable. "I used to go there."
You would dearly love to say something else, but the words stick in your throat, and after a moment he turns the radio on to a station broadcasting all in troll. Troll singing is often likened to the screeches of dueling wolverines, but today it is slow dirges that you do not have to have translated to know are love ballads, black or red. They do not compliment the noises of the engine, of the tires rolling over loose stone and onto pavement as you exit the parking lot.
The city is dead at mid morning. Empty and still save for the occasional plastic bag caught in the wind like tumbleweed, and it reminds you of pictures you'd seen of the city of Pompeii after mighty Vesuvius blew its top, sans lava-- this moment in time, preserved, unchanging, while somewhere the rest of the world moves around it. Karkat's knuckles are white and bloodless as he grips the steering wheel, his face set, and you wish you could pause him, too, pin him like a butterfly to a piece of cardboard and hold him behind glass, preserve him in amber to keep him safe. At the first red light, you ease his right hand off the wheel and coax it onto the seat between you, slipped effortlessly into yours, and he stares straight ahead but does not resist, holding on to you, too, for dear life.
The car stops. You relinquish your hold and get out, and all of this happens in slow motion, each frame painstakingly captured by the camera of your eye, slowing time itself. You slam the door, walk around to his side of the car and he rolls the window down, leaning out to look at you. "Thanks for the ride," you say, stupidly, and he nods, preparing to push down on the gas, drive right back out of your life. And you know, you know that you will never see him again. No matter how many times you go back to the bordello, no matter how hard you look and search and scour, he will be gone, lost to you. "Wait," you cry, and he does, eyes narrow but expectant, lips tight and thin as you struggle with your pockets to find the pen you remember slipping there.
"Hold out your arm," you command, and he does; you roll up the denim sleeve of his jacket to reveal ashen skin and uncap the pen, hastily but legibly scribbling down digits. "That's... that's my number. You can call me. Um. If you want to. My dad might pick up, but just ignore him, haha." You laugh and then frown, serious. "Wait, that could really happen, it's not all that funny. Uh." You gulp, watch his face go from impassive to merely guarded, and you are drowning in those eyes again, riptide pulling you in deep because what you see there is not hatred or loathing. It's pity. Pity for a boy who has nothing else, who allowed himself to be drugged and have his money taken from him in a dark and dirty room by a man he'd never known before. Pity for a boy who thought he was in love with a man who could give him nothing but moments of fleeting pleasure, and nothing more.
You think you can accept that, for now.
"Shut up," he tells you, but his voice is soft like poisoned satin, his thick accent melting away to almost nothing.
"Okay," you say, dumbly, because what else is there but that, and you turn as the engine turns over, looking towards a school of people who are bright and happy and whole, as you were, as Dave and this man, Karkat, have never been. "I can pay," you add to the wind, to no one in particular. "But I really don't want to have to."
He laughs again, and now the sound is different, high and clear and genuine; he sounds as surprised about that as you are. "Go to class, kid."
"When you call, ask for John!" you shout after the retreating car. "John Egbert, don't forget!" He waves back at you out the window, and the sound of his laughter follows you back to school, where Dave is waiting for you, waiting to laugh and slap you on the back and call you a man. Teasingly ask you what it feels like to be a homosexual. But you will never tell him, no matter how good a friend he is-- these things, these small and sacred things, are yours.
And, perhaps, Karkat's as well.