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Karkat will admit, the outside of the joint is humbler than he's grown to expect from highblood extravagance, but it's still fancy as hell. Lush greenery and colorful lanterns contrast the gloom of the night. They're on the edge from the main hubbub of town, an awkward corner where the access to the coast, the blueblood neighborhoods and the very beginning of mid blood neighborhoods meet in a misshapen three way junction. It's that access to the ocean proximity that Karkat assumes makes seadwellers even consider this place. They wouldn't go too out of their way for something so simple. It has to be an appealing joint to even get them this far.
Feferi insisted he wear his fuschia cloak. It was safer, she said. So of course he wore his gray one. He does bare an array of sparkling gold accessories though, one embedded with fuschia because while he does love pissing her off, he’s dealt with the danger of his blood color a lot longer than she has and he’s not going to risk his neck just to get at her.
They don't expect him to be able to walk in easily on his own, not without hassle in the best case, so she waits for him at the entrance, decked out in full evening-out attire. She looks fantastic, but he wouldn’t tell her that. He just sneers as he looks her up and down. She pouts at his cloak in return. The keepers at the door part for them without a word, though Karkat keeps an eye on them as he passes.
Inside is another world. The light is low and more lanterns are burning warm, gathered in clusters on the ceilings, covered in glass of different hues. It’s only a few steps brighter in here than the night outside. Color bounces off the walls, paints of many hues greeting Karkat’s eyes with a splash, taking them in and enveloping them in a cradle of mesmerizing comfort. Between the rafters and collecting at every clump of lights are draperies that pull and fold and arch, fractals of light glittering across each ripple of fabric.
Curtains separate each area, more drapery pulled elegantly into arching doorways with the tease of privacy from one room to the next. There’s conversation and low, thrumming music, but Karkat thinks he feels it more than hears it. Plush chairs and couches circle low tables in small clusters. On each table an ornate, shiny hookah sits, the body a colorful glass and brassy embellishments and mechanisms coming off of it. Connected to it, are long tubes with mouthpieces that extend to the many hands of the trolls who hold them.
Smoke hangs heavy in the air, sweet smelling and thick. It's distracting and makes each breath feel heavy, but Feferi assured their table wouldn't have anything soporific. She couldn’t say for any tables around them though. It makes Karkat feel like he could easily get lost in the fog, swallowed by the colors and the heat and the sway of the bodies around them. His heart races.
Patrons thrum to a beat that Karkat isn’t so convinced isn’t partially in his head. Like the place itself has a heartbeat, a pulse of energy, a thrum of life, everything heard as if from under the surface of water, muddled and felt through his bones. Trolls of so many colors dot the furniture, partaking in food and recreation of many forms in this evening. Numerous states of undress, articles of clothing hang over tables, backs of chairs, and litter the floor.
Karkat sucks in a breath as a couple, one straddling the other, make eye contact with him, with only two articles of clothing max shared between the two of them. There is something powerful standing among them, but there is also something unexplainable, inexplicable about their power. Their lack of shame and fear of everyone who lays eyes on their intimacy. Karkat lets his gaze pass over them quickly, he doesn’t even catch their color, but there are pairings and groupings with much more obvious dichotomies throughout the room.
He knew this before he walked in. He had been here briefly a few times in the past. Its secretive nature and respect of, 'what happens here, stays here,' attracts many customers. It doesn’t stop the highblood power from really holding control over the room, but it’s often easier to allow those singular bubbles to exist only within the table of your choosing, and leave other bubbles to theirs.
Eyes immediately find them when they step inside. Feferi’s horns, her color—which she wears openly—everything about her is not hard to identify. Many still and wait for Feferi to make her next move.
The empress to be is upon them.
She could have any of them culled and get away with it. As far as they know anyway. Culling some higher bloods willy-nilly would definitely bring the empress' eye down on her, even if it didn't bring punishment or scorn. And Feferi doesn't need that.
Would this new heiress find crime in their companions? Their recreational substances of choice? Their salacious conduct in near-public? None of which are explicitly forbidden by the empire, but social mixing of colors always holds risks, and the unknown and unpredictable behavior of an up and coming, not-well-known-enough-yet empress understandably put them on edge.
It's almost like they're holding their breath. After so long under the Condesce, not many of them know this young new heiress. How cruel? How impulsive? Trizza was not too long ago for many of them. Feferi hasn't had quite so long to stake her claim, for people to learn what she's like yet. Letting your guard down around unpredictability can cost a life.
But Feferi glides, regal and powerful, towards a single reserved table with four cushioned benches settled around it in a square, smiling and unconcerned with those staring her down.
Eridan is already inside, seated comfortably. One of the pipe pieces in his hand where he takes a long puff before releasing a cloud into the air. Eridan has Sollux next him, their way to get the lower half of the team into the lounge. Sollux prefers to accompany Feferi to such events usually, but he and Eridan can hold off on their pitch slinging at each other enough that when Karkat needs to appear out, it's safer he do so with Feferi.
There's suppressors on his horns, like young adult psionics are often made to wear out in spaces like these. Can't risk the pets misbehaving. Sollux's suppressors were only for show though. Gutted completely, they couldn't keep a grub from throwing its first sparks let alone a whole ass Sollux Captor from zapping the shit out of someone.
Recently Sollux had been suffering burnout with the Empress pushing his energy stores more and more. He's not old enough quite yet to helm, working more as a local battery of and on until he's molted a few more times, but the empress has definitely realized his energy capacity recently and has been tapping into it inconveniently. He wears the wear on his face near imperceptible, but Karkat knows him.
Seated just adjacent, is a seadweller that Karkat hasn’t seen before. He’s broad shouldered and sleek, with short, but flowing waves of hair cradling his face, a streak of white streaming through it.
Upon spotting Feferi approaching, Eridan stands, his greeting is familiar and casual, but still respectful as his position in her entourage and close ambassador precariously allows him socially. In privacy he wouldn’t bother, but solidifying Feferi’s position and power comes with validating the respect owed her in public.
The stranger however, stands quickly, gracefully, greeting Feferi boldly but politely. He hits all the careful important social queues that should be required of meeting with The heiress before sitting back down. He’s tall, Karkat notices. His suit expertly stitched and regal, just as every seadweller he’s ever seen has, but there’s an unassuming practicality to it. His earrings and rings are all simple–if shimmering gold can be considered so, with an imbed stone here and there reflecting his violet status, but nothing so extravagant as Feferi or plentiful as Eridan.
Eridan and Sollux linger a glance on Karkat longer than necessary, their greetings, before Eridan turns a charming smile back on and rejoining the conversation and Sollux pretends he’s paying attention.
What really catches the eye though as Feferi takes her seat across from Eridan, adjacent to their stranger, is the buzzing, lightning scars marring the right side of his face, centered over the eye. It creeps over his cheek, but from his left, Karkat can’t see how far down it goes. He looks like a man who fucked around with a psionic and found out. Suddenly he wonders if the white streak is from his fried hair follicles.
This is the man they've set their sights on. Pro-empire, he's taken multiple opportunities to sabotage rebel movements. His enforcement of the hemospectrum has left little desirable about him as an ally at best and his repeated threat towards rebellion adjacent participants makes him a dangerous liability at worst.
He's intelligent and that makes him dangerous. His involvement with the upper militant crowd leaves his nose too close to affairs they'd prefer to keep private.
For their plans to move forward he must be removed.
So they will play the part, he and Sollux, the obedient, trained pets of seadweller royalty until they serve their usefulness. Feferi and Eridan, the pampered, spoiled figures to a kingdom they might not live to partake in. Until they can find an opportunity, they will bide their time, wait for an opening, a slip-up, and take his life.
Good thing he's very interested in getting on the heiress' good side.
Karkat stands at the arm of the couch until gestured to sit by Feferi, a dismissive gesture without looking at him. Karkat slowly unclasps and removes his cloak, letting it drop over the arm of his seat. His shoulders and chest are bare, showing off golden bands on his biceps and around his neck. His pants are loose, comfortable and silky. Across his forehead is a fine circlet with a shining pink gemstone in the center. Everything about him indicative that he is owned, and he is owned by someone with wealth.
Karkat settles next to her, one knee drawn up under him and him angled into Feferi's body, head resting close to hers as she takes a hand and mindlessly scratches him under the chin like a purrbeast
Feferi sets up and takes one of the unclaimed hose handles to the hookah, drawing a large breath of smoke before exhaling a cloud into the already spiraling haze above their heads.
They talk business. All bullshit, as seadwellers often do, garbage that Karkat should have been listening to, but isn't. He didn't even manage to catch the seafucker's name. That's fine, Karkat had already started calling him 'Fishfuck' in his head. Feferi has been carding her hand through his hair and it has him very distracted.
The target cuts in at one point, apologizing for the forwardness, but apparently he'd heard of a mutantblood making its way into the royal grasp. And he wanted to know if it was true. The low, colored light undoubtedly construes Karkat's eye color in an indiscernible way. Or at least enough to cast doubt.
Feferi lets a sly smile slide over her face, devious and a little fetching if one was into fear, and confirms this story.
The target seems thrilled, taken by the news.
“Wherever did you find him?”
Feferi rises, water cascading from her shoulders as she steps from the depths of the corridor. There’s business matters to attend to in the drier parts of the ship, as an empress-to-be always has. Her jewelry tinkles quietly on her wrists, her neck, her fins. The heiress’ tiara fits perfectly to her head, all the shimmering gold polished to perfection. Her clothes, specially tailored, dry quicker than her hair does, nearly completely without water by the time she reaches the massive doors. Guards open them without a word upon your approach, bowing their heads in reverence–or at least in a politeness that is least likely to get them culled by their superiors–superiors in position, not blood status of course!
The throne room is a spectacle to behold, as always. Some patchwork mix of militant and regal that Feferi still hasn't managed to get completely used to. Feferi knows the Condesce would prefer it underwater of course, and there is such a room for Her aquatic business advisors and meetings, but most matters need to be handled with the involvement of air breathers. Such is the necessity for the head of the Peixes crest.
Feferi’s position at Her side is secured, open and waiting. As heir apparent, all proceedings shall be attended by her, for both the experience and to make her presence known as the capable and powerful heir to all those to lay eyes on her.
General proceedings to address things integral to running an empire are the norm. With as many pots as the Alternian empire as their hands in, it wouldn’t be possible without touching base often with those overseeing their assigned branches.
The tension is immediately tangible, palpable, something stirring in the waters. There’s a sour taste in the air like the brine before a storm. Feferi does not acknowledge the discord. She fluffs her hair with a quick flourish and settles in her spot. The empress does nothing to enlighten her. It is often this way. Feferi must fight and grab for any semblance of education or knowledge. It will make her stronger is the claim. To always be aware. To always be listening. To know how to gather intel and know what goes on in her kingdom.
Her Imperious Condescension has no interest in investing into the easy passing of Her throne. She will allow Feferi to take a place next to her for however long suits her. She will raise her as best she can to take her place, should just an emergency ever call for the need. A true tyrian leader would never handicap her line in such a way to just leave it heirless. And once Feferi is ready to take on duties for her own, powerful and molted to full fuschia strength…
The Condesce will decide to keep her.
Or kill her.
Feferi knew the heiress before her. But once Feferi reached adult age, the Condesce made her decision.
But that’s not important right now.
Feferi carefully eyes the visiting parties as they file in and make their reports. Prospective colonies here. New recruits there. Population fluctuations, technology advancements, insubordinate recruits. Feferi’s opinion is not asked, she does not speak, she is not acknowledged as part of the royal entourage. Instead, she wades through the tension, pristine and perfect, poised.
It’s the subjuggulators that bring in the prisoner.
Feferi has seen the Grand Highblood before. Once. His massive size rivaling that of the Condesce herself and his hair just as big. His steps are heavy, thumping across the floor with the tight sinewy muscles rippling under his hulking hide. A cluster of laughsassins follow, not so many, but enough that Feferi is set on edge. This is much more than when he visited last, with only a single follower and his young scion in tow.
The Grand Highblood likes to visit with a sweeping show of chucklevoodoos. It’s unimpressive to the empress, but Feferi suspects he likes to watch the lower colors cower. Even seadwellers have trouble with his power, as developed as it is. For the rest of his followers, it’s less of a sweeping, intentional gesture as it seems like they don’t care to keep it from overflowing into the crowd. It’s almost like it oozes from them, like a pot bubbling over with too much ingredients.
Feferi feels the weight and does brace herself, but it doesn’t render her any more visually affected than the ancestor beside her.
What could have happened to bring so many of them to the empress’ doorstep?
Feferi scans the cluster. There seems to be something in the middle of them, but their bulk keeps her from seeing. Words are passed from the Grand Highblood and the empress, words that concern Feferi, that have her sitting just a bit more attentively as the crowd parts, dragging forward a young troll. ‘Young’ only as young as Feferi. He looked about her age, perhaps even the same brooding sweep.
Bruises color his exposed arms and he’s struggling to stay on his feet. Shackles keep his hands together and tethered to the lead they have him tied to.
Feferi stares in stunned silence as the highest jester presents the prisoner to the Condesce.
A mutant blood, with shocking, blazing red in his veins. Teeth bared and hatred bearing down on all who set eyes on him. Their gazes lock and he doesn’t let her go.
Something in her pusher, an ache at how many she’s had to watch suffer at the hand of her ancestor, of her empire, surges painfully. This man. This mutant blood who has committed a crime just for existing. His eyes lock on her and she can feel his disdain, his hopelessness, his accusation.
He is special. Feferi already knows it, but now she feels it. There is something and she will not let it slip between her fingers. She cannot.
The proceedings devolve into uproar. Confusion and anger and fear swimming all together in a noxious mix.
A gift for the Condesce the Grand Highblood says, a smirk that Feferi can’t place etched across his worn, painted face as he stares up at her. Feferi watches her ancestor.
She calls for his head.
The clowns break into gleeful cheers, pulses of chucklevoodoo hitting the prisoner who grimaces under their weight. Then, with all the gigantic grace and elegance of an eternal queen, the Condesce stands from her seat, trident in hand.
“Wait!” The entire gathering falls to silence as they lay their eyes on the heiress who dares speak in Her court. Feferi stands, nowhere near the statue of her blood sake, but her voice echoing stark and clear, “I want him.”
She smiles sweetly, looking at him over a shoulder, “The clowns picked him up for me."
Eridan had been there that day too, attending the proceedings as he often did and corroborates her story with a friendly jibe.
It's a trainwreck to watch the seafucker try and covertly play both sides of the field as he both expresses disdain and praise for the Big Top. And by trainwreck, Karkat means he pulls it off well enough, but Karkat's keen eye picks up his wishy-washy answers from a mile away.
"The clowns are an absolute mess," Karkat snaps, causing the seadweller to look at him.
Feferi glances over, "Oh, yes, you were up close and personal with them for a while," She touches his face with the back of her fingers.
The prisoner is escorted off. Feferi tries not to bounce anxiously in her seat while she wants for the meeting to conclude. She wants to rush off immediately afterwards as she smiles and watches the others leave, and tries to regain a show of elegance after her outburst during the proceedings, but the Condesce summons her afterwards. Not a comforting sign.
The scolding is cold, displeased, but thankfully she looks more annoyed than anything else. The empress is often tired and very, very done after the meetings and Feferi has that to thank for her quick dismissal, but her pettiness is not to be underestimated. Feferi is forbidden from seeing the prisoner tonight and must wait until tomorrow.
She wants to argue, but is afraid what repercussions pushing further will do. She accepts these terms, and retires to her chambers.
It takes her a while to fall asleep, but when she does the darkness welcomes her, like usual…
There is a twinge of what might be fear in the back of the darkness of her mind. She feels the water around her. She paddles effortlessly. There is no up. There is no down. But still she knows she must go deeper.
There is uncertainty surrounding this new presence. Often she dreams very lucidly, used to being aware and in control, aware of what’s in her mind while she sleeps. This is not the familiar coils of darkness. This is something new. Someone new. She doesn’t know what to make of it. It doesn’t have the weight of her usual visitors. It’s something smaller. She feels the press of it on the outer rim of her fortified bubble, a force heavy and dark, trying to get in. Without fear, but with all curiosity, she opens the perimeter. She has long left fear of the darkness behind.
At first, she thinks she hears a voice, submerged in an unnatural way that it shouldn’t be. Beneath her is a tumultuous sea, inky black as the waves that surround her. From beneath this second layer of water, bursts forth the presence. She feels more than sees its gasps for breath, a tension in its shoulders as it drags itself out and hunches its shoulders and it leans on the water as if it were a solid surface. The breach brings forth another wave of fear, a heavy layer of dread that she can’t quite pinpoint curling in her stomach as she focuses in on this intruder. Because ‘intruder’ is who she has decided this is.
A troll? She often dreams of other trolls, that is not strange. But this is not just some other troll. She's not sure how she knows that, but she does. Something feels different. They shake the water from their hair, finally managing to pull themself the rest out the rest of the way out of the pool of darkness beneath them. They stand on it.
There’s something heavy to its presence, something not wholly unfamiliar, but nothing so familiar that she can place what it is. It presses on her, the grasping of its mind on hers, clawing its way, searching for something.
Finally, they raise their head to meet her eyes and she realizes they're a deep, deep purple.
She finally recognizes this force–chucklevoodoos–wielded to fasten onto the fear in one’s dreams in order to dreamwalk. The familiar brush of a power so closely tied to the purple caste and the church of jesters.
While her mind sees them, she cannot see them. either consciously or unconsciously, they keep themselves from her, but there’s only so much they can hide. When one enters one’s mind, one must put in parts of themself.
There’s a franticness. Searching. Something heightends the dread rolling off him in waves. They are calling out but she can’t quite understand them yet.
“Karkat!”
The name or the voice aren’’t recognizable, but she can hear them calling the name more and more clearly. It doesn’t emanate from the focal point of the presence, but from all around her, echoing with desperation.
"Hey!" She answers him, reaching her consciousness out to his. She feels a shift, like a sudden current rushing and churning the cloud of fear. He's… searching for her. She can feel his grasp inching towards hers, searching the darkness.
"Karkat?"
"Over here!" She calls to him again.
It's with a sudden touch that he becomes tangible before her and they find themselves face to face. Her hair flows around her and her feet don't touch the ground, as if the inky blackness is just another ocean, but his person is soaked, dripping and hair weighed down by water, unsteady on his feet as if he's struggling to stay on top of the surface without sinking.
His just-starting-to-spiral horns and wild hair scratch at the recollection from the back of her memory, but it’s the face paint that really lets her place him as a subjuggulator in training under the care of the Big Top. His sign isn’t in sight. The idea that he’s keeping it intentionally hidden strikes her.
"You're not…" The troll sighs, shoulders drooping. The disappointment is so obviously displayed on his face. "I thought…"
“You seem lost,” she says kindly, “Can I help you?”
“Can’t help any more than be the brother I’m looking for,” he said dejectedly.
"You're looking for Karkat, right?"
The emotion that crossed this troll's face was hard to place, but he did lunge forward, an arm on hers, "You got your knowin' on where he is?”
“Tough to say! That’s my first time hearing that name.”
"GHB took a prisoner to the empress. Real low, low color brother. You got any intel on whether he's still up and breathin'?"
"GH—? Oh! Grand Highblood?"
"One and the motherfucking same," his voice hitches with a bit of urgency.
"Why wouldn't he tell you?"
"He don't tell me much."
"Glub, if that isn't the truth," Feferi concedes, with a knowing tone, “The Condesce is the exact same.”
He immediately is on edge over realizing whose dream he was in, but his need to find this ‘Karkat’ is obviously driving him to take risks. It was an interesting interaction between the two of them. Neither wanting them to give ground or compromise themselves. With this troll as someone who commands fear and Feferi with her beings made of it.
Beings of fear respect fear. There are legends that horrorterrors bleed purple.
Feferi wakes that evening knowing two new names and a conviction that the both of them might just make very valuable allies.
"So much Faygo, I thought I was going to puke," Karkat says with disdain.
The stranger stares at Karkat as Feferi flags someone down to bring them food. She does it blithely, airily, and without concern, barely even looking at the server. She orders enough to fill their small table without hesitation, giving the impression of little concern for the tastes of those she’s sitting with, but he knows she orders things they all like. If their guest has qualms about her lack of acknowledgement to his taste, he doesn't voice it. But he does compliment one of her choices, something Karkat knows she doesn't actually like, but he knows Sollux does. But she accepts his praise graciously.
If Karkat had to guess, it was because he was allowed to speak so openly between them. He had probably expected silence.
Something falls over the seadweller then, a kind of razor edged stillness, like he was studying Karkat for something. He hid it well, but when all Karkat really had to do was sit and watch the others socialize, it was hard to not have an excess amount of time to just stare and notice.
The group of them–the top colors, that is–laugh and make merry over their social date. Feferi mentions Fishfuck's name at some point, but Karkat resolves that at this point he doesn’t really care. He’s sticking with Fishfuck. Eridan cozies up quite comfortably to the seadweller, offering praise and acting as if he’s won some kind of favor with the Ampora. Eridan leans in and hits home with comments and tidbits of gossip, as if Fishfuck has earned some kind of trust.
Feferi takes another hit, puffing the smoke into the already cloudy air, cradling the mouthpiece so elegantly between her fingers. She captains the conversation expertly. She pries gently, testing the edges of a clam that doesn't quite want to open before she picks the best place to leverage. The man is guarded, but not any more than what is natural. The attention of the empress and flanked by her gorgeous right-hand violet on his other side has him loosening up. He's not a fool and doesn't go spilling secrets, but he has no reason to suspect either.
Feferi takes a moment to apologize that she hadn’t mentioned they were bringing companions. She hadn’t meant to make him feel like the odd one out of the situation. And Fishfuck politely waves her off, saying he’s not even sure he would have had he known. He takes a puff and releases the smoke out of his gills this time. Okay, weird fucking flex, but okay.
Of course, the real reason is they don't need him to have more witnesses. Or backup.
It’s as the food comes—faster than the table next to them Karkat notices—that Fishfuck seems settled enough to turn the conversation serious. He cites misdeeds at the hands of some rebel movement recently in his branch. A tension falls over Feferi–he can feel it in her body–but she doesn’t let it show on top.
The way this guy talks about the people under him, it makes Karkat seethe in his seat.
There’s something about a blueblood that makes Karkat tune in. An engineer that recently started doing work in his sector. As he picks up details, Karkat realizes he’s talking about Equius. The blueblood is one of their main informants. It makes Karkat’s stomach turn over the thought of Equius doing his work under this guy. He glances at Feferi and she is composed, serious.
Feferi stands in front of a cell, dark and inelegant. The light from behind her pours through the bars and breaks across the body sitting against the far wall.
She had called out to him, but he’s yet to respond, head down, eyes curtained by his bangs, short round horns pointed directly at her. They have his wrists still clasped in irons. Around his horns are poorly fitted psionic suppressors; the pair is small, but obviously made without the intent of fitting horns so small.
She tries again.
"What do you want?" His voice is rough, throaty and full of growl. His head perks up just a bit and Feferi catches a gleam in his eyes reflected back at her.
"I'm sorry you're here," She says.
He cuts in, sharp, "Fuck you."
"Wow! Now that's a reel way to address the person who stood up for you!"
"I'll address anyone any way I want. I couldn't give less of a shit."
A strange one indeed. Resigned to death? Unconvinced of his safety?
"Hey, stupid," She calls, grinning, his head jerks up at that, "You really are safe. For now at least."
"Who are you calling stupid, stupid?" He snaps back, a bit more life to his voice.
"You! Stupid!" Feferi giggles.
The prisoner gets to his feet, mouth turned down in a snarl. His clothes are torn and Feferi can see cuts on his hands along with the bruises. With a few heavy stomps, he comes closer, but still far from the bars. Far from where she could get her hands on him.
"Whatever depraved bullshit you have planned, I'll fucking rip you in half. You ever seen fuchsia on the teeth of a mutant? Well, you better get ready."
"Sheesh, that's a bit extreme." Feferi rests her hands on her hips. "Claiming you as mine was the only way I could save your life."
"And what use, pray tell, do you get for saving me?" He hisses back, dripping with sharp skepticism.
Feferi blinks. "Then you wouldn't die,” she says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
There’s a silent moment where raw confusion and wide-eyed simplicity have a stare down between the bars of a cell.
Feferi holds steady, a smile still on her face. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? The differences between people? There’s so much the world cares about that we can’t control.”
There's a miniscule drop in his shoulders, a smallest widening of his eyes. He searches her, eyes skittering across her person.
“There’s more important things to care about than blood color, I think.”
She unlocks the door.
“But I can’t let Her know that.”
The prisoner waits a good handful of moments before approaching the open gate. She steps back, giving him the space to take a few cautious paces out. The only time he takes his eyes off her is to glance furtively around the corners of the room. Wow, his eyes. This is the first close up look she’s gotten and the sharpness of his red iris is thrilling to look at. She offers a hand to him, and his eyes jump from it to her face. She rolls her eyes with a laugh.
“You’re cuffs.”
She waits for him, and with tense, calculating eyes, he slowly sets his hands in hers, but he still flinches defensively when she goes to unlock them.
To be fair, he does make a break for it the second he’s free, but Feferi matches his speed and blocks the door from him.
"Wait, stop! If anyone sees you running through these halls, you'll be culled immediately. Especially anyone who was at that meeting. These are some of the deepest chambers; you’d never get out of here alive.”
He growls and attempts to push her aside, but she stands firm and resists his advances, pushing him back until he goes sprawling on the ground. It takes a flourish of her trident and one more plea about the dangers of attempting to escape to get him to finally fall silent. She offers a hand to help him up, but he gives it no glance as he gets to his feet. The glare he levels at her is murderous, but she's quite comfortable with her upper hand and his lack of arms.
"You can take the suppressors off too," she says kindly, and probably against what others would think is better judgment, but she's not too worried about whatever influence he may have. Why? Can’t say, she just is!
"I don't even have any stupid mind shit anyway," he growls as he tears them off his head, "The fuckin' clowns could have told you that."
They're at a stalemate now, for all intents and purposes ready to move, facing each other.
Feferi turns towards the door.
"Come on, we're having a room prepped for you."
The heiress introduces herself as Feferi as if he doesn’t know her name already, as if everyone doesn't know her name already, but he will admit the fact that she introduced herself at all, threw him.
She asks for his name in return and he sneers at her, all teeth and sarcasm, “Bulgereek Nookstain.”
“Nice to meet you, Bulgereek!” She cheers all too happily and Karkat realizes he may have just made a huge mistake.
Their trek from the bowls of the palace to where Feferi claims to be leading him is a long one. He watches the extravagance of the halls and decor change and the realization that these home decor pieces alone are worth more than he’s probably ever had in his life. When they reach a far corridor, there's a massive guard standing in front of a door, blue obnoxiously stitched throughout his uniform. He looks up when they approach, his positioning much less like he's guarding it, and more like he's… waiting for them? The heiress greets the guard, that same fake ass sweet way she's been using with him.
“You’re here. Perfect,” Feferi says as they approach, too conversationally. “How is it going?”
“The room is fully prepared, Heiress,” the guard answers, his tone subservient and obnoxious, like Karkat predicted, but much softer spoken than he was expecting. Karkat’s eyebrows rise as the guard leans in close to Feferi’s ear, still a respectable distance, but much more intimate than Karkat would have expected. He says something to her in the moments Karkat wasn’t paying attention and something like perplexity or concern plays on her face. Feferi’s brows draw together in concentration. She glances at Karkat, scanning him silently before turning back to the guard.
“Is he in danger?” She asks the guard.
"While the risk does not seem high, there has been discontent among the crowds present to witness the exchange. His mutant status has left some… cross."
“Enough that you’d think they’d move on a royaly sanctioned chamber? A possession of the heiress?”
“I could not say, Heiress,” he bows apologetically, voice soft, “All I know is there are those who are unhappy with the current results of that meeting.” He reiterates before pausing for a moment. “Your position is… less established.”
Feferi holds her hand up. “That’s enough,” she commands, stern but without malice. “I understand. Please bring some medical supplies to dress up our friend Bulgereek here. He’ll be coming with me.”
The guard chokes and stumbles into a coughing fit.
"You're going to make me regret that until the day I die, aren't you?” Karkat glowers.
"Or until you tell me your name!"
"Fuck you."
The guard cringes slightly at the expletive, looking distressed as piss over Karkat directing it at the heiress, looking back and forth between the two, but says nothing. Feferi says a few parting things to him that Karkat fails to catch, too busy eyeing him up and down. This guy is built like a brick shithive but, fuck, does he cower pathetically when talking to Feferi. His posture slumps inward and is a stuttering mess when she thanks him.
Karkat notices one of his horns are… broken? And he’s blue, huh?
Feferi tells him to come along, and Karkat is too distracted looking at the retreating guard to argue.
Karkat had never met him in real life, but…
They round another corner and the loss of line of sight on the guard snaps Karkat back to. "Yo, princess, what's the deal?" The exchange starts to sink in. She had said he'd have a room—unlikely—but that already seems to have gone down the shitter. His hackles begin to rise. Things were feeling off as they weaved themselves through the halls and the decor started to become even more extravagant. The frequency of flooded pathways was also starting to increase.
"With there being a concern for your safety being alone tonight, we're going to just not leave you alone!" She says, way too chipper.
"Excuse me?" Karkat asks in a scathing tone. With a few quick steps, he gets in front of Feferi. She backs up reflexively, defensive. "I'm not known for having much patience, heiress, and I don't do well with being fucked around with. What's going on?"
Fuck, he decided to put the slightest ounce of trust in this stupid fucked up situation and look, it's already going shithive sideways.
Feferi straightens, expression softening.
"I apologize for the sudden change of plans. I know it's not what I promised, but it’s okay! This’ll be fun! Today you'll be staying in my room."
Her room? Her room? How the hell was he supposed to have her walk away and leave him with that? He rushes to catch up with her.
"There's no way that's allowed. I'm fucking 'mutant rebel scum,'” He drawls with air quotes, “There's no way I'm allowed to just be in the heiress' room while she sleeps."
She smiles over her shoulder, "As far as anyone is concerned. You're my toy. I can do whatever with you that I please."
It isn’t until they reach Feferi’s room and the prisoner is patching himself up—which he had refused to have Feferi help with—that Feferi spares him a glance.
“Your name wouldn’t happen to be Karkat, would it?”
He freezes, looking up at her with a stunned, suspicious face. She smiles with a shrug.
“I met Gamzee.”
The food is good, if their fluffed up fancy way of complimenting it is anything to go by. None is offered to Karkat and he and Sollux are not so presumptuous to think they could get away with taking any.
As if Feferi read his mind, she takes a tiny baked tart and rests the edge of it in her mouth. She turns her head towards him, lazy and sensual, and he takes it from her, without his hands. Their lips brush and she takes the chance to flick her tongue up the outside of them as Karkat retreats, leaning back into his spot.
Eridan is entertaining Fishfuck by playing up a good ol' 'kill all landdwellers spiel to cosmismirate over the sentiment, something Fishfuck clicks his glass with him over. The militant part of Eridan meshes well with the stranger, both of them having ‘similar ways’ of seeing the progression of Alternian imperialism.
Eridan holds out the snack of Sollux to eat straight off his fingers, but catches Sollux's jaw first and kisses him roughly before pulling back and setting the treat back in his mouth.
They apparently also have similar taste in lowbloods. Fishfuck compliments Eridan's companion. Something something about the allure of psionics. G'lb, Karkat wanted to barf.
"Is that where the scars came from?"
Karkat doesn't know what possesses him to say it. It was probably against some social decorum or some shit. He just manages to keep the accusation out of his voice. Neutral curiosity. Nothing too crazy. Yup.
A beat passes and the stranger just stares at Karkat, once again that processing stare.
Feferi subtly pinches Karkat's side.
But Fishfuck just laughs quietly. A soft hand tracing just tips of his fingers down the side of his face. "I like playing with lightning," he says, low and rumbling.
Karkat has to hold back a sneer. He chances a glance at Sollux who is hiding a blanch, holding himself steadily, as poised as ever.
Eridan speaks with a stroke of Sollux's suppressors, "I think I have an idea of what you mean," he offers conspiratorially, a slight smirk playing at his face.
"Though I will admit," the seafucker chimes in, "I am finding myself uncharacteristically drawn to your companion though, Heiress."
“So you feel the draw too,” Feferi coos flirtatiously, as if Fuckface–ah, Fishface–had discovered something subtle and hidden, that she was impressed that he had.
She hooks a finger in Karkat's collar and yanks him a few inches forward without looking at him and he hurks.
"That wasn't very polite, Karkat," she hums, laced with threat.
"A bit of a rebellious one, isn't he? Seems the type who's prone to misbehaving," Fishfuck has the gall to say.
"Letting them have a bit more wiggle room makes things much more interesting," Feferi offers without missing a beat, "Otherwise, they're just another mouth to feed and who wants that?"
"How has the empress taken to him?" Fuckface asks, smoke wafting from his gills as he smiles around his piece.
Karkat stands with his arms out, sour as he lets some tailor measure parts of his body he never thought would need to be measured. Feferi flits around him excitedly until another assistant comes in and whispers something in Feferi’s ear. She stills for a moment and Karkat can see the cogs turning in her head. She meets his gaze.
“Do you trust me?”
“Fuck no.”
“Well, you’re going to have to.” Feferi suddenly isn’t looking at him, but at the door. “She’s coming.”
Karkat only has a single millisecond of confusion before the door to their room opens.
"Posture," Feferi whispers in his ear.
There through the doors, steps the Condesce.
Seeing her in such a mundane setting is no less intimidating than seeing her on her throne, but it's so much more intimate. To see the details on her suit, the sparkle of her jewelry, the sound of her footsteps coming toward him.
Blood rises in his chest, rushing in his ears, and he has to fight every single instinct of fight, run, fight, run, run, run!
"What do you think you're getting up to in here, fry?"
Feferi doesn't look up from where she holds jewelry up against Karkat, dodging the tailor as she sets pieces down and up again, deciding on her favorites. "Getting him fitted for some much cuter clothes. I want to show him off looking all spiffy and adorabubble."
"Tailor ain't here anymore," the empress points out. There's a tone to her voice, something that makes the hair on Karkat's next stand on end. Immediately the tailor sets about gathering herself and removing herself from the room without a word. "We need to talk."
She looms over the two of them and Karkat clenches his jaw so tight he waits to hear his teeth crack. His chest rises unnaturally fast, breaths panicked and stolen, as if she'd cull him for breathing the same air as her.
"Feferi, darling, you know I'm a big proprietor of, 'No one gets to tell us no,'" she laughs, an ominous sound, "Except me." She circles the two of them, slow and heart stopping. "Which brings me to your pet."
A ripple passes through them and Karkat can't tell if it was him or Feferi. Feferi rests a hand on his arm behind his back. A sure, steady touch.
"You can't keep him, fry." The Condesce continues, "His blood shouldn't even exist. And having that around my kingdom is…" Feferi's grip tightens. "... Unsavory."
Feferi's calming gesture transforms as she snakes her arms around him to grope at his torso, a loose, lazy hold, pressing up against him from behind. She hums a pout in his ear.
"That's not fair! You said I could keep him," Feferi says with a pointed tone, staring straight up at her ancestor.
"In front of the chum biters, shore. Because like shell if those fuckers are gonna dictate how my cutesy little fry is gonna spend her time." She gently flicks a massive finger up Karkat's chest and Feferi gives a spoiled whine while she hugs him closer.
They say something more to each other, but Karkat doesn't hear it. Feferi's tinkling giggle mixes in somewhere with something rougher, —smoother?—languid and hot. The Condesce's own voice wrapping him up in leathery constriction and making him unable to breathe. He can't focus beyond Feferi's hands. His own fear. The glint of the empress' teeth.
Feferi demanded his trust from him, but he doesn't—he doesn't trust her. But what choice did he have?
Those hands on him. Karkat clenches his eyes shut. His back taught and arms clasped behind him in what he hopes is a respectable posture, he lets her drape herself on him as she wants as she gushes over him to the Condesce. The empress herself was here, witnessing him in a state of undress, watching her descendant fawn over him in much too sensual ways.
Or what should have been too sensual. A feeling that Karkat is not ready to give name curls up in his stomach like a ball of flame. Feferi's hands trace over him and can only half suppress a shudder. It's when a sturdy touch pushes up his chin that Karkat opens his eyes.
Apprehension—anticipation—throbs in his pusher as he looks directly into the true tyrian gaze of Her Imperious Condescension. She's everything Feferi is and more. Everything Karkat has wondered she would be and more. Fear rakes down his spine and he is terrified to find he likes it. Heat rises to his face, coloring him more with his damning warm reds, he's sure, as if his stark scarlet iris aren't enough already.
She studies him as if she can't decide if she wants to snap his neck or eat him and frankly Karkat has an alarming thought that he wouldn't mind either—as long as he has her attention. Stupid fucking brain! He's going to hate himself for that one later
"Ooh," She coos, smooth and deep, "I think I am starting to see the appeal, fry. He's got a guppy kind of cuteness to him, don't he?"
Something in Karkat's stomach twists and he hates the torrid mix of pleased flourish under the praise and the sick rush of patronizing he gets from her voice.
"He does!" Feferi chimes, her head nudging into the crook of his shoulder, arms under his, fingers slowly stroking his grub scars. "Please! I promise he'll be good! I'll make him be good! Look how well behaved he is already!" Her hands drop further and drag up his thighs as if to punctuate her point. This time Karkat can't hold back the shudder. His breath wavers, fighting to keep it steady. "He's all mine."
The empress. The empress of the entirety of the Alternian empire looks down on them and sucks her teeth. She clicks her nails in thought, looking positively unconvinced at Feferi's pleas before she rolls her with a click of her tongue.
"'Kay, but his nasty ass slurry is not ending up in any buckets to the mother grub," She relents with a flourished point at Karkat, "So before next drone season, he's chum. And if you let him get away? That goes for both of you.”
There isn't much to their banter after that, not that Karkat can focus on. He hates himself for that. Anything they say can be helpful for him to know. This was his fucking life in the balance! That aside, every little bit is evidence, is information, is a potential weakness. But he's too busy trying to stay on his feet while his body fights the instinct that he is going to die.
He hates this. He hates that Feferi is right. He hates that standing here and letting her touch him as the gap in their spectrum so dictates is the right call. He hates how the Condesce looks down at him. He hates that Feferi so effortlessly knows what to do while he panics.
He hates the fire Feferi's fingers light on his skin.
He hates that he doesn't want her to stop.
The empress left them soon after that. Feferi dropped her hands and parts the space between them and Karkat suddenly feels like gasping for air.
He's uncharacteristically silent as Feferi quickly summons the tailor to finish her measurements. There was a new franticness to her movements that led Karkat to believe she wanted to cut the chances of her ancestor coming back as he did.
When it came time to part, Karkat doesn't respond to her words much. She must have noticed something because her face fell and with sympathy. Karkat offered a noncommittal, "Sure," when she asks if he wanted to take dinner in his room.
When the food arrives, with it also arrives Feferi. She takes the tray from the servant carrying it and dismisses them before stepping into the room.
Her posture is bizarrely reserved and submissive when she sets the tray down. Hands clasped in front of her.
"I understand if you don't want to see me right now," she says, "I just wanted to apologize." Her eyes lower as she takes a moment. Karkat glances at her from where he lounges on his bed, arms behind his head. "That must have been… a lot for you."
"You were the only thing keeping her from culling me on the spot."
“Still…” She pauses another moment before coming to stand at the bed. “May I sit?”
“Go ahead.”
Quietly, she takes a seat closer to the foot of his bed.
"I used to admire the Empress so much,” Karkat finally says quietly,” I used to dream about if I could just get her to notice me…Maybe she'd see something worthwhile, something that would let her look past the blood color."
There's silence that reigns over the room for a few ticks. Feferi with her hands clasped between her knees, but her shoulders seem to relax. She looks up, staring off to the wall straight ahead of her.
"Maybe…" Her voice is soft, "Maybe you were just one empress too early. Because I see something worthwhile."
… But they wouldn't let him know that.
Feferi takes another hit, this time smoke easing from her gills.
"The empress," The true empress, "has taken to him just fine," she says lightly.
Karkat acting out of turn, showing too much autonomy, willingness to challenge, reflects bad on her. He knows that.
Now he must pay the price.
"Keeping them silent just makes them, what? A shadow? There's so much more fun to be had than that."
She gestures him to his feet and he obeys without question. She towers over him, but not enough as she commands, "Kneel." There's lights glittering in her eyes, eyes hardened into a crusted outer shell, where only he can see the soft pit of them behind the lights.
"They can be quite interesting conversation if you let them." Her tone drip with poisoned honey and somehow don't at all match her words. Karkat feels his face flush, the blood rushing under his skin. Feferi grabs his face, chin locked in her hands, as she, near silent, low and commanding, says, "Open."
Karkat does as he's told, opening his mouth. She takes another breath off the mouthpiece and he sits patiently her smoke as she blows it into him, sealing it all up with a kiss. She holds him there, pushing the last of the heat into his lungs. It burns. Not so much with pain, but he can feel the dry heat on his insides. The need to cough surmounts. His pusher races, submitting to her pressure on him, he gives in and waits, until she finally releases. With one hand over Karkat's mouth and the other, she beckons Sollux over, a perfectly manicured nail weaving salaciously through the air.
Sollux untucks himself from his spot on the couch, and makes his way over. He kneels, one knee on the cushions, over Karkat. He knows what to do and opens his mouth as she lets Karkat blow the smoke out into his mouth. Feferi strokes Sollux's face, tracing a finger over his cheek in an unholy unity of seduction and threat. She dismisses Sollux and he retreats to his spot on the other side.
Karkat coughs. He tried to resist the urge, but the itch in his lungs wouldn't let him. He lets himself look pathetic, winded and taken, submitting to her after knowing he misbehaved.
Feferi reclaims her seat, settling each of her legs on either side of Karkat. She drags a finger on the side of his face and he knows he's supposed to stay there. He remains, kneeling quietly at her feet.
They've done the kneeling bit before. It does wonders to those who meet with her and gleam at the subservient warmblood at her heels, proceeding with business as if it weren't anything out of the ordinary. Which, for someone as high as her, it's really not. But the gesture still holds power.
Her fucking cool head in the face of everything this asshole says drives Karkat up a wall. He begrudgingly admits that it’s good she’s the one doing most of the talking. Karkat just wants to bite this guy's face.
Two leaders of two opposite ends of the same movement are bound to butt heads. Once raised at the top, and one raised at the bottom. One overly cautious, one overly confident.
Karkat seizes the front of her top around the neck, pulling her in and flashing his fangs.
"Fuck, you are so fucking frustrating, I don't know what to fucking do about it."
"You sound extra worked up Karkles. That was three 'fuck's."
Karkat screeches.
"Why don't you ever take me seriously? You fucking just talk to me like some baby piece of shit! I'm here with my hands almost around your NECK and you still don't think I'm a threat!"
Her eyebrows raise. "I don't think you're a threat because I trust you, Karkat… I'm not afraid because I don't believe you'd hurt me."
Karkat stills, his breath hitching silent. His eyes widen.
"I…It's not that I think you can't hurt me…" Feferi glances him up and down, her brows knitting together, "It's just l don't—didn't think you would."
Karkat's grip on her collar loosens, a stunned expression still painted across his face, until his hands drop. He backs up a step, putting space between them.
"I..." his voice is rough, "I wouldn't hurt you. I don't want to hurt you." He clenches his eyes shut with a disgruntled noise, resting his head in his hand. "Fuck, Feferi. Fuck. I—"
The hot red anger radiating off of him cools to a steaming purple, the flames dying down.
"Fuck you! It's not fair." He clenches his fists. "Why after all that, are you still level headed and in control? What does it take to rattle you?"
"Oh, you rattle me," she says, easy and obvious. Her usual pep is subdued, but the casualness of her quip is jarring. She took a step towards him after a second of hesitation. There's a different look on her face, something taught and serious, but with a hesitation he's never seen on her before.
She steps into his bubble and his pusher clenches. Fuck! Suddenly they were nearly chest to chest and Karkat finds himself taking a step back in retreat, rearing up and breath catching in his throat.
Concern—fear?—knots her brows further together. Her eyes scan his face, a bit too quick and it gives him anxiety, but when he swallows it's with a spike of something sweet in his veins that sets his stomach into twists. She's so close, her lips trembling just an inch from his. For one of the few times in his life, he found his words caught in his throat and himself in silence.
The counter meets his back, and she places her hands on the surface behind him, catching him between her arms, boxed in by her body. Fuck, they still aren't touching, but Karkat feels his skin catching on fire at the thought of her, like a charge metal connection with a blue hot spark arching between them.
He dares to meet her eyes.
With a flick of movement, her hair whirls around her and she's pulling away.
Icy cool air rushes into his lungs and she doesn't look back.
A single moment passes by and she's gone.
Because like hell Karkat is letting her get away with pulling that and running away, he immediately sets after her–he did not stand there for an ample ten minutes waiting for his blood to calm down and for his breathing to return to normal. Nope. No siree.
The guards at her door part for him without a word and that is enough to put him on edge. It should have been a good sign, what with how worried he was at having to try and talk his way through them, but instead the ease of it unsettled him. The doors to her room are stupidly heavy. He knows this, but damn it takes him by surprise every now and again. She’s usually the one to open them.
He doesn't spot her immediately. Scanning across the wide expanse of her room. If she ran off into her pool… But the thought is disrupted by a splash.
Instinctively, Karkat swings to look.
Emerging from the bathing pool, teeth exposed as she gasps as she transitions from gills to lungs, Feferi emerges fully without any clothing.
Karkat sputters, turning his gaze quickly away. She opens her eyes and spots him immediately, gasping and dunking back under the water to her nose.
"Karkat!" She bubbles in alarm.
He hears a rush of water splattering around the pool, along with the wet slap of feet on stone.
“Did—Did you plan that? For me to come in while you were all nude and wet and ‘oh, you caught me in the middle of bathing, Karkat what a surprise!’”
From behind a changing screen he hears her voice, “I didn’t think you’d…”
“Bullshit, your guards basically opened the doors for me, so like fuck I’m believing that you didn’t see me coming.”
She steps out in a flattering daygown, her face an alarming shape of pink. Karkat doesn’t think he’s ever seen her out of sorts like this before. For so long he wished for a way to rattle her and now that it seems like he’s doing it, it’s got him caught out without knowing where to go from here.
When she speaks, her voice is alarmingly small. “I didn’t think… but maybe I did hope.”
Perhaps with anyone else, Karkat would have been taken aback, but with her…with her he clenched his teeth. So she did predict him following her.
“I am so sick of being one step behind you.” He stomps over to the edge of her pool. "What's your game? Because if it's 'fuck with Karkat,' I'm not playing."
Wait, that didn't come out right.
"I mean—!" He growls and buries a hand into his hair. "Am I reading these signs right? Or am I just imagining shit that's fake?"
"You're not imagining it."
"Then what the fuck?"
"Karkat. For all intents and porpoises, you are effectively my prisoner." Feferi lets her gaze drop and Karkat finds himself almost irritated at seeing her down. What? No, she's supposed to be strong and in control. Get your shit together! "I can't… I can't take advantage of you like that."
Karkat wrinkles his nose, "The fuck?"
Frustration crosses her brow, a bit of fire sparks behind them and somehow it soothes him a bit.
"If we were involved… you're in a position where you can't escape. What's there to protect you if you want to say no? Your livelihood is in my hands right now. With a single whim, I could destroy everything you have." There's something unnerving about how easily she says it, but it's not like he didn't already know that.
"So… what? Are you? If I say I don't want to gag on your pompous royal bulge, you going to call them in to cull me?" Heat rushes to his cheeks at the open explicitness of his words, but he shoves the feeling down. There are more important things going on and he had to make his point.
"No," She insists, "No, you know I'd never—I hope you know I'd never do that."
"So what you're saying is… I can trust you? Because I do. I trust you."
There's a beat of silence and Karkat can see the realization blooming on her face. She looks put out as her own words are basically thrown back in her face, fins flaring and indignantly.
"I feel like these are different situations. Before it was about something where we can be on an even playing ground. This isn't that. We're not even, not at all."
"So I don't get a say at all?" Karkat snaps. It's not cruel, but the exasperation is clear. "This involves more than just you, you know."
"But I signed up to take care of you."
"You're not taking care of me. I'm not a grub. You're protecting me—which I am grateful for every day. Genuinely. Deeply in love with the idea I don't end up on the business end of a trident. Which is both ends, by the way."
"If something were to go wrong… I'd risk nothing. You'd risk everything."
He closes the distance between them, his breath mingling with hers and he scowls at her.
"I risk everything every day by being alive. Let me choose what risks to take."
Karkat kisses her then, and it's just as jagged and sharp edged as Karkat himself. Her fingers slide up into his hair, running her hands through it, mussing it up, and gripping where it so pleases her. Karkat growls, aggressive and frustrated. He shoves her back against one of the pillars and she gasps into his mouth, hungry.
She grabs his vest, trailing kisses up the straining muscles of his tendons of his neck.
He parts the part of her daygown, hand dragging up the gorgeous length of thigh. Pushing a thigh in between her legs, she grinds against him.
He drags his fingers up to the junction of heat between her legs, pushing up the hem of the light daygown. Feeling the ache in his own nook, he strokes the entrance of hers, stretching his own itches on her body. She croons, and he nearly does too, feeling her slick on his fingers, wet and welcoming.
"Admit it princess, you just didn't want anyone to catch you with a rebel. A mutant shitblood. Where would your throne be then?" He pulls in close, arching over the shell of her fluttering fins of her ear, "I wonder if your guards will hear you?"
Feferi claws for breath as he curls his fingers, slotting up in her so nicely. A guttural moan tears its way from her chest, so cute and pitiful and hot. She rolls onto his fingers, eyes fluttering shut.
Only for them to snap open with a gasp and shoves him off of her. Unprepared, he stumbles back, pulling his hands free. There’s a moment where the two of them just stand, heaving for breath.
"Oh no, Feferi, I'm so sorry—"
"No,” Feferi cuts him off, not looking at him, “No, it's okay. it's not you. You didn't do anything wrong, reely." When he tries to say anything more, further his apology, she rushes at him, grabbing his arm and moving towards the door. “I need you to go.”
She shoves him out of the room, slamming the doors as he goes tumbling to the floor, landing squarely on his bottom. Stunned, wide eyed, he stares up at the doors, until he notices the guards staring down at him. Scrambling to his feet, he quickly clears his throat and vacates the area to retreat to his room as quickly as possible. It won't be until he looks in the mirror when he gets there that he'll realize the smears of black lipstick trailing over his face and neck.
Feferi, in the meantime, leans her forehead against the heavy door. With a few steadying breaths she clenches her eyes shut, willing the rush of her blood to calm down. Karkat. Karkat. The only thing she can hear over the beat of her down heart is Karkat's voice, gravel soft, in her ear. His hands on her. His hands in her. Oh, g'lb.
She turns, leaning on the door and cupping her own hand over her mouth, desperately trying to forget the feel of him inside her. The heat of him, the heat he stoked in her. She'd been– She almost– Fuck, she wanted to.
She retreats to her bed, dimming the lights as she goes, sitting on the edge of it, legs clenched tight. She traces the path of Karkat's hand up her thigh. So slow. With a frustrated sigh she lets herself fall backwards onto the surface. She arches her back as she imagines Karkat on top of her, snarls and rough edges. She parts her legs for him, just the most hesitant amount. Her hand slips between her day gown, finding her skin under the layers, finding slickness and heat. Her mouth falls open as she spreads herself, familiar to her own touch.
She feels the wakening pulses of her bulge emerging. But it's her nook that aches. All her body remembers is fullness. The sheer canopy around the bed falls closed as she pulls herself fully onto the bed.
She touches herself to the ghost image of him, all his bulk on top of her and him digging his teeth into her as she tries to push him off. She'd snarl and he'd dig his nails into the soft parts of her body.
She sinks her fingers in as she wishes he would again, trying to show her up by how easily he can make her come, taunting her about how wet she is, how she's not even trying to stop him. All that big talk and she's just letting him take her.
He'd turn her head and get so dangerously close to the softness of her gills. Inching closer with filthy words, his tongue reaches out and slips under one. Her breath seizes in panic, her nails draw blood where she grabs him, there's a sensation so closely on the edge of pain that it frightens her. Heat searing and consuming, swells in the base of her stomach, vicious slick noises as he brutalizes her nook without rest.
She manages to keep her sheets clean just barely when the fantasy snaps with her orgasm and she grabs the bucket at her bedside. Her own fingers buried in her nook and the other hand wrapped mercilessly around her bulge.
It was quick. She didn't have it in her to draw it out. She buries her face awkwardly in her arms, keeping her slurry sodden hands away from it.
She replays the fantasies in her head, especially that gill one. G'lb. What the fuck?
Feferi doesn't call on him for a couple of nights, even if he does try to call on her. Every time he visits, even though the guards open the door for him, Feferi is nowhere to be seen. She's quite explicitly avoiding the dry half of her room and sticking to the underwater entrances that undoubtedly exist.
Time passes slowly. Probably because he spent so much of his time counting the minutes. There wasn't much he could do without her as an escort. She’d been hoping some clothes insignia to mark him would protect him on the occasion he may get out alone, but it was dodgy at best on their effectiveness.
Another day where he finds himself in her room, waiting for her. Guilt burns at his fingertips when he remembers their last meeting. Her sudden appearance from the surface of the water makes him jump. It's hard for him to judge when she's coming up if he's not actively looking for her.
She hefts herself out of the water, the droplets roll down her body, her powerful arms and thighs. Karkat knew his guard was starting to lower when he caught himself thinking how fucking hot she was. Fuck! He scrubbed his hands through his hair in a frustrated attempt to scatter the thoughts like dust. The glow of the lights reflecting off of her jewelry, catching the translucent skin of her fins. While her accessories are in place, she doesn’t appear dressed for the day, an extravagant daygown clinging to her skin as she emerges. The length and extra folds would twirl and flow stupidly pretty in the water. Karkat forces himself to look away.
The moment between them was tense, a silent staredown of, “What now?”
Before Karkat can say anything, Feferi asks him, “Would you like to take a bath with me?”
Karkat remembers a lot of things from that night. The flutter of Feferi’s fins as he touched her was one, the strength of her hands as she held him is another, but he’ll never forget her pressing her freshly naked body pressing against his as she murmurs to him.
"I've always been so in control, so on top of things. You're one of the few things that makes me feel like I'm losing that control."
Like clockwork, Karkat feels the stranger's eyes drag across him, which meets and levels at with uninterested, lazy eyes.
Karkat presses his face into her knee, taking in the scent of her, wrapping his arm underneath her leg and hugging it close. Is it the smoke in the air? What's in that shit? Feferi told him it's nothing more than smoke, but he feels a haze settling over him. Through the cloud he watches the other bodies, lack of clothing and moving languidly under the soft colored lights. It's hypnotic, this atmosphere.
Under heavy lids he watches the seadweller speaking to Feferi, only to find he's being watched as well. Eridan has a hand on their guest's thigh, murmuring something into his ear when Karkat notices the seadweller's attention. There's a swell in the seadweller's fins that flex and flutter with his breath.
In this dark room, Karkat can't tell if it's the lack of light or whatever crazy thoughts that are in this guy's head that has his pupils blown so wide. Dragging his eyes away, intentionally lingering on the violet, Karkat kisses the inside of Feferi's knee, trailing a few upwards into the beginning of the sensitive skin of her thigh. She places a hand in his hair, petting sweetly, distractedly, as if he isn't really worth her attention.
He directs a few more inquiries at Karkat, the little mutant blood at the heiress' feet, a reasonable concern at what his allowed existence means for the rebellion. He’s good at asking the right questions, which is annoying. Feferi laughs, always like golden bells, tying a bit of that empress cackle in with it. She assures he's tame, fully so, she giggles, giving Karkat a smack on the face which he tactfully doesn't respond to, keeping his eyes down.
When he finally does look back up, the visitor is staring down at him running a tongue over his teeth.
Hopefully, the trap is set to snap shut.
And it seems out of the four of them, Karkat is the selected bait.
Karkat knows what he wants. And maybe they'll offer it to him, but for now he'll play the good little toy to the heiress. Feferi strokes the side of his cheek, playing the part of patronizing owner, but he knows there's real apology behind it. He'll just get her back later.
Eridan makes the first bold advancement, leaning close again, his mouth closer to Fishfuck's neck than ear. Feferi shifts in her seat, displaying her gorgeous thighs in a much more flattering position. Karkat takes this opportunity to rest his head against them, feeling her hand trailing down to his side. Carefully, she fingers one of his exposed grubscars. Real heat gathers under her fingertips and coils down in his gut.
Sollux massages at Eridan's chest, dragging his hand down to massage at his inner thigh. Eridan doesn't pay him mind beyond an idle hand threading through Sollux's hair.
Their guest takes the opportunity to run a hand down his own thigh, clenching as he chuckles breathily over something Eridan says.
The moans of the couples at the tables around them, some already caught up in their own dances, trap Karkat's mind. He feels his attention slip as Feferi plays with him, the touches pulling threads from his carefully woven focus.
Her hands.
Her hands travel and once again Karkat sees the visitor's eyes on him. Karkat lets his contact hold, rolling slightly into Feferi's hands and gasping so quietly over her touch.
If all goes well, this may be easier than predicted.
Feferi leans on one arm of the lounge, chin propped up and grinning salaciously over at the two other seadwellers. She drags her fingers so achingly slow up Karkat’s front, parting his jaws and slipping them in his mouth. Her words are business, but her tone is laced with taunting, laden with the implication of intent, of knowing. He answers her questions easily.
Eridan in return sits with Sollux buried in his neck. He unclasps his cloak and unbuttons his high collar to let Sollux leave marks on sensitive areas below or above his gills. His posture is open and inviting. The visitor reaffirms his praises for 'Eridan's yellow,' but once again his eyes fall on Karkat. It's for him that the visitor really lays on the praise. A covetable toy, a rarity, an unbelievable find. How blessed, how fortunate, how lucky the heiress is to have found such a thing.
Does he want to see him in action? Feferi asks, so smooth and dangerous.
And does he.
One could almost argue that his agreement was eager, posture slipping behind that carefully constructed mask.
Feferi beckons Karkat up and he stands. She directs him to sit in front of her. He leans against her chest, legs spread over her thighs. She puts her fingers to his mouth once again and he lathers them, breath making his chest start to heave. Karkat can’t see of course, but her eyes are trained on their guest. Karkat knows just as she does, that this is a show for him. Give in, trust the dance, go and take. She slips her slick fingers down Karkat’s pants, tracing the outer entrance of his nook as the seadweller pulls on the leg of his own trousers, readjusting in his seat.
For some reason, Karkat isn't ready for when Feferi slips a finger inside him. It takes him by surprise and his body shivers. He manages to bite down on his voice. She's learned her way around his nook, and he's come to love how she moves inside him.
The thought brings up the memory of when she last ate him out. Karkat shivers again.
Anyway…
Eridan and Sollux's own interactions have increased in the surface of skin. Eridan has moved to drag his tongue over Sollux's neck and has a hand inside of his shirt.
"You look a little tense," Feferi bubbles at him, working faster, finger rotating in a tense, firm circle, perching her chin on Karkat's shoulder as Karkat rests his head back on her opposite one. "What's glubbing you?" Innocent as ever.
"Heiress," Fishfuck's voice is strained. He fully knows she's teasing him, "I do not wish you to think me indecent. May I…?" He's started palming himself through his pants.
Feferi pinches one of Karkat's grubscars, eliciting a surprised mewl from him, "You're not seriously considering letting this moment go to waste, are you?" She asks, silky smooth and full of teeth.
That seems to be all the go-ahead Fishfuck needs because he unbuttons his pants, focused and not taking eyes off Feferi working Karkat stupider and stupider. Sollux is pulling out Eridan's bulge and stroking it, the two of them casually sitting slotted together, hookah piece in Eridan's hand.
The haze is thickening, everything getting lost in the smoke and color. Karkat makes eye contact with the olive in the seating arrangement next to theirs, who's kneeling on the lounge and hugging the back of the seat, getting fucked from behind by a
rough, unidentifiable color.
Karkat's taken for a brief moment by the thought that once their color coded signifiers are unseen, there is so little difference between them.
Fishfuck pulls out his own slimy violet bulge from the part in his fly and begins pumping. Languid, composed movements, when Karkat senses he actually wants to let go and really jerk it. Trying to keep his poise as ever.
He loses grip of his attention on Fishfuck as Feferi switches to slow, long, dragging movements in and out of his nook.
"You can't take your eyes off him," Feferi finally acknowledges, a melodic smirk in her voice.
"I… I would never covet what's yours, Heiress," he pants without stopping stroking.
"Show me," She commands, "Show me what you'd do to him. Do to your hand what you'd do to him."
The words make the seadweller's eyes blow huge, and he's silent for a moment, like the reality of it is really just setting in. He gives a few hard, deep pumps to his bulge and Feferi mimics in kind, plunging her fingers into his nook at the same pace. They keep like that, with the two of them touching in tandem. Feferi mimics, changing the tune just enough to what she knows will make Karkat come.
That's a thought that terrifies him. She's trying to get him to come. In front of all these eyes. Heat pools lower in his stomach, a quivering molten jolt in the core of him.
Karkat's hips roll forward, his back arching and he sees Fishfuck pick up his pace. How long has Karkat's voice been leaking out of him? He moans, subdued, but filthy needy. His legs go to clench, but Feferi's knees keep him pried open.
Some part of him gets lousy with arrogant possession. This fucker wants him so bad, but he's Feferi's. Feferi is holding him, working him. It's her arms that wrap around him, that hold him down. He's hers. And this man can covet, covet, covet until he's sick with it. Desperately fuck himself with the need for it. What a chump.
It's not all true of course.
What would be the point of their plot if they didn't let him get a taste? But the fantasy in the moment was driving Karkat fucking nuts.
"P-please, I—” Karkat rasps, breath hitching, squirming in his seat, but Feferi holds him steady. "I'm going to pail—"
Her pace slows, only the slightest. The insistent building of heat plateaus as she whispers in his ear, "I should let you pail all over yourself. Soak your pants and make you sit in it. How does that sound, huh?"
Karkat swallows, "M-Mercy," he begs, voice weak.
And that's her signal. Not to stop, but to ease up, to not take it further. His rejection of her play.
It only makes sense that a place like this would have buckets on hand. But Karkat is still surprised—and relieved—through his half-lidded cloud when she pulls a bucket in front of him, tugs his pants down with ease, and finishes him off into the bucket, lightning shooting down his limbs as his body seizes and he cries out, desperate and lewd, with his orgasm.
There's no part of Karkat that's supporting himself as he comes down. He has melted into Feferi's hold, fighting for breath. She chuckles darkly as she licks up the exposed part of his back.
"Just because you've been so good, guppy," she croons.
Karkat finally has it in him to look up. The look over their guest's face is indescribable. Completely overwhelmed, fighting to hold on to his professional mask.
The need.
The fucking hunger.
Now was their time to snap the trap.
The hook was in, all they had to do was pull.
She addresses their guest, watching him stroke for a moment before lazily dragging a hand in circles over Karkat's chest. “You wouldn’t have any desire to… partake? Would you?” Feferi asks.
“Heiress, I would never begin to assume such a desire. I couldn’t.” G'lb, this guy was starting to sound like such a broken record.
“Oh, well that’s boring."
Karkat slams the door behind them.
"What the fuck was that?" He shouts at Feferi's retreating back. "You have any idea how dangerous that was?" She turns to face him and he closes the distance.
"It was fine! Everything was fine. I knew it would be!" Feferi retorts.
"You put my people in danger without even asking me!"
"They were all up for it. All of them signed up. It was a very low risk plan!"
"Risk. Is different for you than it is for me. For us. Our gauge for risk is very different. You seem to forget that we get one chance. One!" He aggressively brandishes a single finger in her face. "Vriska? Sure, Vriska, she's up there enough that maybe she could squeak by with a little bit of luck and good grace from you, but Nepeta? Something this big? If they got their hands on her, she'd be dead. No questions asked. Throw her body in the dirt and say that’s where she belongs.”
"You said to respect that you can make decisions for yourself. Then you get upset when I let them make decisions for themselves. What do you want from me?"
"How much I want to suck your bulge is a lot different than putting our people in the line of fire. That is between YOU and ME. THIS…" He pauses, the anger on this fast cracking and she can see the fear underneath, "...is so much bigger than that."
It doesn't take much to ease him into the idea. Feferi expresses her disappointment, asserts that fun is what they do and he sure is being a killjoy right now will all this stuffy business. If he wants it, he should take it! All that bullshit.
A few well placed compliments and pouts, some teasing and reassurances and he was standing with them, everyone tucking their respective bulges away, and following them to the second floor of the lounge. There's private rooms up here and of course there's always one for Feferi.
It's a small space, the walls of it lined with a connected, plush U-shaped couch with broad seats. Luxurious cushions lining it to every end. An ornate, patterned rug covers the floor beneath them. The doorway is curtained shielding them from outside eyes for the first time that night. More warm lanterns burn overhead, turning the entire space golden.
It looks like it's a space for sex. What a fucking room of depravity.
They file in after being escorted by one of the workers.
Fishfuck is willing to go into a secluded room with them. Karkat wants to be impressed by this guy's lack of self-preservation, but really he has no reason not to trust the heiress. The top of the spectrum. Why would she have any reason to shake the status quo?
Everyone takes a place on the couch. Eridan and Sollux settle next to each other again, Sollux sitting on the floor in front of Eridan while he pulls off Sollux's shirts. They go through their motions, but both have carefully cornered eye trained directly on their intruder seadweller. In a perfect world, they position across from each other, covering both sides of the room, but they can't leave their target feeling as if something is amiss. Feferi sits closer to the head of the room, in one corner, the last corner for Karkat and their guest.
Karkat stands in the center of the room. Fishfuck approaches him on Feferi's go-ahead, who's making a show of caressing the shape of her nook through her skirts. He wastes no time. His hands are shaking, his touches are much lighter than Karkat would have expected. But when Karkat looks up, he realizes it's not with any hesitation. Anticipation shadows the seadweller's expression, so overwhelmed and stunned.
To touch something of the empress to be. Her personal toy. The honor, the honor… He lays Karkat down and falls on top of him. The density of seadwellers still catches him by surprise sometimes. The two of them are still clothed, but Fishfuck ruts up against him, dragging his mouth against Karkat's neck, biting just a bit too hard as he travels. There's little sound in the room beyond the muffled rumble of the din outside the door and the sharp unignorable rhythmic ruffle of fabric against fabric. The seadweller breathes and Karkat is close enough to see the flex of his gills, unused, but still responsive to the intense work of his respiratory system.
He's making this too easy.
Karkat decides to move this along and grabs his head and quickly pulls him into a kiss before the fucker has time to panic over the sudden movement. Thankfully, he responds well, delighting in the aggressive play for Karkat's mouth. With any luck he'll let Karkat lead him… His fingers skirt just an inch away from his neck, only sensual in movement.
"You do get like to get a little high in your station," Karkat hears in his ear before his wrists are locked in an unshakeable grip, pinned above his head and suddenly he's staring into the swirling eyes of the violet.
Karkat's gaze flicks to Feferi and he can see her watching him carefully. She won't move without a cue, but she's tense and ready to spring.
It's a balance, how much strain to put against him. Enough for there to be that hint of resistance, but not so much to make a show of actually resisting. He is the Heiress' willing pet. Given to submit. But enough resistance to please and tantalize, to stroke this enemy's ego.
It's easy for the seadweller to switch to holding Karkat's wrists with one hand, the other snaking its way down Karkat's body. It worms its way into his pants, the breech confusingly sending bolts of heat down Karkat's spine. There's little hesitation as his fingers sink into his still embarrassingly wet nook. Karkat croons, arching his back against the feeling, only to press right against the heft of this stranger.
The shape of his fingers are different than Feferi's, length and grace and thickness. They are unfamiliar with Karkat's body in a way hers aren't. The movement makes him ache for hers while also shuddering in reverence of these new feelings, new touches.
He's rough though. These movements are for him. Not for Karkat.
A weight at his head snaps his eyes open as Feferi takes his cheek in one hand. Her smirk is dangerously reminiscent of the Condesce.
He knows their guest can feel him clench around his fingers.
"Looking like you're having a hard time there, guppy," She teases in a thick, syrupy voice. She's checking on him, he knows. As far as they've gotten, there's no reason to keep up the charade. She'd never expect to make him go this far. If he needs out, she'll make it work.
He can't tell her directly that the blood is surging in his veins at the hands of this fucker. That something in his body has betrayed him and he wants more. But he meets her eyes and doesn't give their safe word. One signal and he knows Feferi will drop everything.
"You going to try and get out of this one?" She snarks, "Or are you going to admit how good it feels to be filled up by a highblood? How much of a slut you are for your betters?" She's digging for reassurance.
Karkat pants, breath hitching as the digits inside him curl, "It—It feels so good, Heiress." Fuck, was that his voice? If he were in a more sane state of mind right now, he'd be embarrassed.
Feferi had once commented that hearing him say 'heiress' without sarcasm was weird, but it was their signal to each other that everything was okay. The charade is intact, he's ready to follow the script, he can keep going.
There's a single second of pause, her eyes scan him, and she sits back, but not before patting his cheek, "That's a good boy," with a satisfied smirk, razor sharp and framed with black.
The fingers slide out and leave him empty, pulling out from his pants and letting Karkat's hands go, instead taking a painful fist full of hair and shoving his slick coated fingers into Karkat's mouth when he gasps.
This fucker has a lot of trust if he thinks Karkat's above biting his fucking fingers off.
But Karkat doesn't. He sucks the taste of himself off of his hand in silence, groaning when the guy grinds his bulge against him so that he can feel through his pants.
Fuck. Is it fucked up that he—? That he wants—?
Without warning, the seadweller eases off of him. Karkat glances again at Feferi, who's still massaging her groin gently through her clothes, bulge starting to show itself under the fabric, eyeing the two of them.
"Do I," he starts, "Have your permission to use him, Heiress?"
Feferi, still watching Karkat, notices the slight nod he gives her when Fishfuck isn't watching. And she flicks a wave at him. "What are we here for?"
Their guest turns his attention to Karkat, commanding him to get to his knees. Karkat obeys, easing off the lounge and directly before him.
He unbuckles his belt, unbuttons the front of his trousers, parting them. From inside falls a writhing violet bulge, dripping with slick. Karkat idly wonders if he's warmer or cooler than Eridan. His impatience is permeable as the tentacle jabs insistently at his face, before Karkat's hair is grabbed with both hands.
He bends down, whispering near silent in Karkat's ear, "If I feel any teeth," the threat is hot on his breath, lacing the words with barbs he'd been hiding all night, "You won't have to worry about me breaking them, do you understand? Because I'll take your entire jaw."
Karkat doesn't get a chance to see if Feferi heard him before he shoves his bulge in Karkat's waiting mouth. Jaw stretched wide, the appendage works its way in, thrusting quick and rough. Karkat's eyes clench shut, feeling the constant plug of his airway, free, then closes again. He focuses on keeping his teeth out of the way.
His hands are still on Karkat's head, moving him more than letting Karkat move, using his mouth like a bulge sleeve. There's a moment of stillness as the seadweller readjusts. One of his knees comes to rest on the lounge behind Karkat. He shoves Karkat's head against the seat of the cushions, as he once again pushes deep inside, pushes everything he has into Karkat, the tip of his bulge going past and down Karkat's throat. Karkat can only claw for breath in the split half seconds the seadweller thrusts out, getting closer and closer to gagging the whole thing up. His stomach turns. Spit pools, dribbling down his jaw. Tears bead in his eyes. His nose starts to run.
What a good little toy he is…
Fuck.
Once again there's a presence at his head. Feferi comes to sit just behind him, her hands running down his face. Her expression is unreadable, lashes low. Her grasp settles on his neck where the visible mass of their guest's bulge makes his throat swell. Cradling it, holding it, feeling it slither inside him.
The heat that pools in Karkat’s gut is undeniable. As much as he’d like to. This highblood’s hands on him, the fear turning in the pit of him, the idea of being forced to serve. A slimy hot kind of rightness that Karkat was tempted not to stop. How long could he let it go? How long could he get away with it? An ache in his nook has him wet with need and it scares him a little bit, but not more than it feels so fucking good.
It’s when Karkat finally chokes, heaving over the seadweller’s bulge in a desperate attempt to pull away, that Feferi steps in. Food threatens to come up—fuck, do not let him barf all over this Fishfuck’s bulge, do not—but against his resistance, the fucker just grabs his hair with a growl, forcing his bulge back down his throat.
She gives him his much needed mercy.
Feferi stops him, stern and threatening, under the guise of Fishfuck getting too comfortable. She urges him to remember who he is in the presence of and not to lose himself. If he breaks her toy… Karkat doesn’t often hear Feferi growl, but the deep, guttural sound that bubbles up from her core is primal, deep and echoing. He apologizes profusely, earnestly, but Karkat can still see him dazed with his own desire, shocked at being taken from it so suddenly and scrambling to adjust.
Karkat could have just killed him there, but…
He looks up at Feferi, he's sure his eyes are glazed in a way of their own.
He sees a bit of her control slip. The pit of arousal in her eyes. The way her breath hitches so slightly.
She parts her skirts, revealing her emerging bulge. Their guest's eyes go wide at the sight. Stunned and silent. Her bulge is massive, writhing and textured, sopping wet and squishy and taut. The gorgeous pink of her fluids decorating her thighs. Karkat turns and leans in to lick the side of it, letting it grope at the side of his face, curling around one horn. His attentions are small, puny and pitiful. Almost like he's a little grub running to a lusus for safety or comfort, but as he warms up and her body to him, his lashes with his tongue turn languid and eager.
Feferi finally acknowledges their guest with a stern flick of her eyes.
"How much interest do you have in his nook, trout?" He hadn't heard her call him that before. He vaguely wondered what kind of seadweller dynamics were at play at the moment. She leans forward, hands sliding under Karkat's pants and pushing them down over his rear, which was up and on display from him kneeling to suck her off.
Pants around his knees, Karkat's nook and everything around it was on full display. He parted his knees just a bit more to open the view. He feels both of her hands on either side of his rear, spreading him, revealing the heated red of his soaked nook and awakening bulge. Karkat can't see him, but he feels and hears the impact of him falling to his knees behind him.
"You can have it," Feferi murmurs, something dangerous in her voice, velvet and hiding a dagger, "but you need to show you can behave first."
"Anything, Heiress."
Feferi, with her heart stopping strength, picks Karkat up and shuffles him into her lap again, back to her chest, but this time, she holds the back of his knees and opens his legs, baring all of him to the seadweller now on his knees before him.
"I bet you want a taste of that nook. Look at that bright color," Feferi says, "The only one like it in all of Alternia." She spares a hand to pinch Karkat's cheeks between her thumb and forefinger, "Little Karkat here and I are similar in that way, if you think about it. Both rarities. Only thing, is both nooks belong to me."
The fucker looks like he didn't give a shit if he wanted to or not, he looked so ready to do anything she asked.
"It doesn't really matter if you want to or not. You're going to eat him out. Get him all nice and prepped for your bulge. And if you can do that with manners, you can have him in any way you want."
There is no negotiation in her voice.
Seeing this seadweller's nose buried in Karkat's nook as his tongue buried into him is mind numbing. Everything was so different, so quickly. It's not long before Fishfuck's fingers find their way in, spreading and working him open so fucking aggressively, but Karkat can't help the bitch noises that squeak out of him as he does. The room is fading from his focus. He can feel this guy's stupid jewelry. He wishes he'd take off his fucking rings. But the thought is far away.
Karkat has no doubt he could already take all of his bulge. He's dripping on the floor under him, saliva and pre-slurry both. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Feferi is saying things in his ear. Some kind of filthy words of encouragement that he's not sure are for him or their fuckface guest. Her teeth skirt his shoulders, her bulge pressing against his back.
It's when every muscle in Karkat's body goes taut on the very brink that Feferi tells them to stop. One of her hands cradles the fucker's chin when he pulls away. His promised gift. His reward.
Fishfuck stands—Karkat can't even remember his name at this point—and his bulge lashes as the seadweller wipes the red tinted slick from his face. His eyes are wild, burning with something dangerous in them.
The burning need to do harm, to own, to show Karkat that he is truly owned, truly below them.
This man wants nothing more than to destroy him.
Feferi leans close and kisses the base of Karkat's horn, murmuring, "How does that sound, guppy?"
Karkat stares back, all the fear and hiding that calcified into anger as sweeps passed, the fury of a scorned prophet long dead, the defiance of a leader so soon in the beginning of his story.
He mutters the word that will end it all, the stunned whisper of blood too unholy to allow life, the warmth so low to the ground it's beneath dirt, the color they rally behind while they watch an empire fall. The color Karkat has uncomfortably noticed is close to fuschia as it is burgundy.
"Red."
No one ever expects the royal pet to have a strife specibus.
A sickle wound, quick and deep.
Feferi releases his legs and it's one simple movement to hook it into a neck and pull. They can't allow for sound. A straight blade sitting at a right angle on a wooden handle. There's no time to respond, no time to react. The thrum of music should hide his hisses and gurgles, sliced through enough that his voice isn't an option anymore.
A spin, a dodge of his seadweller strength in the height of panic, and the second one embeds in the skull.
The body falls. Sollux catches it. Suspended. Minimal blood spill.
Eridan catches Karkat, eases him down and assures him of the kill.
Feferi takes her trident and stabs each wound through, disguising each one as a tri forked infliction. No one needs to look too hard at injuries that don't match the heiress' strife specibus.
Clean up of a whole ass murder is a lot easier than it should be. A fuschia can get away with a lot.
Karkat sits on the floor while they take care of everything. He's grateful. He doesn't think he could handle much right now. He knows there's things going on around him, but everything feels distant and far away.
He sees a cerulean maybe twice their age, with an impressive amount of horn branches, that meets them at the entrance to their room and quietly arranges movement for the body. Karkat just remembers that her voice was deep and rough. An undefined amount of time later, a purple comes to collect it. He's small, weirdly so for his age, face and horns painted extraordinarily, with far too many knives strapped to his belt. He has a nasally, annoying voice that Karkat finds reminiscent of a bike horn. He doesn't say much, but Eridan seems to be able to arrange with him easily enough.
The way Feferi blocks anyone from directly interacting with him reminds Karkats of a lusus scaring away a threat while a wiggler hides inside the hive. It's comforting.
Eridan and Sollux don't join them in the room afterwards. Whether they left to grab their own or return to the palace, Karkat doesn't know. Their relationship with each other is… complicated, but so is his and Feferi's.
When the bustle calms down, all that's left in the room is Feferi, standing at the doorway and Karkat, still on the floor. There's a silence as she turns, taking a breath, a sigh of relief. Karkat wishes he could too, but there's a worm hopping around in his guts, a bolt buzzing down to his fingertips. He doesn't watch her, staring at the wall without really seeing. Shoulders sagged and hands resting on the ground without feeling.
His heart is racing. His body is a pile, but his blood is embers burning underneath the ash.
Feferi approaches him. He feels she's looking at him. He's acting strange, he knows that, but he can't… he can't get himself to…
"Karkat?"
Her voice is soft. Something snaps at the sound and he takes a breath. He hears her approach, sees her feet enter his field of vision.
"Karkat, are you—?"
"Can we… keep going?" He asks, almost breathless. His hair is mussed, his clothing askew.
His bulge is straining against his pants and he knows Feferi sees it.
She hesitates for a moment and he looks up at her. He can see the worry in her eyes. She crouches down, the two of them level, joining him on the floor. She reaches out and gently traces a thumb over his cheek.
"You want to? Are you shore?"
He drops his gaze to the ground, "Please."
Her eyes scan him. After a moment, she stands, reaches out, and tilts his chin up. Fuschia to red, they stare in silence.
"You want to keep being my good little pail slut?"
"Please, Heiress," he begs.
Feferi parts her skirts, slowly, with deliberate movements. Her bulge is pushing against the fabric, subtle, just coming back alive. He puts his hands on her, up her thighs in reverence. Slow, slow, slow he drags his fingertips to her nook, gently tracing the outer shape of it. Moisture, pinkish slick, still coats the center of her. He feels a hot pulse through his body, and maybe a bit less perverse, at the idea of their session earlier getting to her too.
Her fingers threat through his hair, thumbing the base of his horn. He glances up at her, her eyes half-lidded in finally being able to show her arousal on her face. Her cheeks are flushed, her chest moving with her breath. He drags his eyes to her emerging bulge, wanting for affection, so lonely after only having minimal attention all night. All of her has had minimal attention.
A thrum of something that doesn't quite match the submission coursing through Karkat's veins beats once, twice through his pusher at the thought, but he ignores it in favor of the spark that jolts to his groin when Feferi hooks a finger in his collar and pulls him to her bulge.
He opens his mouth, cradles her tip, one hand braced on her, another rubbing sensual lines back and forth through the soaked lips of her nook, toying just across the entrance.
"You really got off on letting that slimy cod use you," Her voice caresses him from above. "You knew his eyes were on you from the very beginning."
He thinks about her watching them, sitting on the side, watching him submit, taken for nothing.
"Were you that eager to get another bulge in you?" She hisses, deep and low, so unlike her usual chirps and glubs. "Mine not good enough? The bulge of the empress somehow not good enough for you?" Her bulge, enticed by the warm caress of his mouth, pushes out further, his tongue massaging against the grooves of her.
G'lb, he could gag on her bulge all day.
Fuck, he's going to be embarrassed about that one too later.
He's not sure whether to pull off to grovel for her, or to focus on working her, but she makes his decision for him. She sits back, throwing her arms over the back of the couch. Lashing, her bulge sits exposed and slick. He licks the last taste of her off his mouth.
"Come here," she says.
He does so without a sound, coming to stand between her legs as she braces her hands on him, placing an uncharacteristically soft lick and kiss up his belly before slipping her hands down his rear, once again taking his pants with them. He steps out of them as she returns to her lounging position. He crawls over her lap to straddle her and her fins flare, pleased.
The jewelry on her wrists tinkle as she runs her hands down his body, over his grubscars which she knows he loves so much. One strange thing about the palace, as he hates admitting anything positive about it, is that being in Feferi's 'care' means he has his own private room, or he's in hers, and in either place, he can freely show his scarlet grub scars. Anyone else who may see him knows he's in her care already, so his blood is no secret. It's awful, being kept where everyone who looks at you sees you as less than nothing, but this one little glimmer of freedom he'll keep clutched to his chest. For himself to enjoy quietly.
They're so sensitive. Every time he's intimate with someone, he's stunned by this ability he'd never thought he'd have. He never thought growing up that he'd be able to show them to anyone.
Her bulge wraps around his, squeezes and lathering around it. She groans slightly and he takes a steadying breath.
"I hope he got you all stretched out enough," she says, taking her hands to squeeze his rear, nails digging in and spreading him. "Want to make shore you don't break."
She lifts him, and fuck does it do things to him when she does that. The bulge of hers laps one, two, three times before she sinks him down onto it. Karkat cries out, finally, finally, finally being filled. Everyone had their fingers in him tonight, but no one has been kind enough to fill him with bulge and finally the ache inside him is being touched.
Fuck, he's not all the way down yet. She lifts him again, only slightly off, and pulls him down deeper. Again. He croons every time she does it, his voice clawing from his chest as her bulge fills him more, stretching his nook more, more, more.
If there was one thing to be said about Feferi, it was that after seeing her bulge, he had no doubts that she has the capability to one day grow as large as the Condesce.
He holds himself up slightly, the other half of his weight supported by Feferi, she starts to thrust upwards into him, no hesitation in her speed as she immediately sets a brutal pace.
"Is this what you wanted?" She asks, "Wanted it so bad you practically begged for it on your hands and knees?"
He pants, moans pouring from his throat. He doesn't have the mind to answer. Inside all he can think is yes, yes, yes.
His bulge curls and flexes with her movements, free and unattended in between them. It rubs pre-slurry on her clothing, but she doesn't acknowledge it. He buries his face in her neck, trembling. The bands on his arms strain against his biceps as he holds on to the back of the couch for dear life.
On one particularly vicious outward thrust, Feferi's bulge squirms too hard and slips from inside him. They both gasp at the sudden mistake and as their bulges bump and the appendages immediately set to choking each other.
They pant, chests heaving and Feferi drags Karkat into a vicious kiss. He pushes back, fighting her tongue and teeth with his own. Her voice rumbles in the back of her throat and he matches it with his own aggressive thrall and catches her lip in his fangs.
She jolts away with an offended noise, looking at him like he'd just done something to insult her. She grabs his jaw in her fingers, fins flaring dangerously, a wet hiss escaping her. She stands, taking him with her. The movement is sudden and rough, pressing him face down into the cushions, his rear hanging off as his knees are once again on the carpet.
Nails bite into his skull as one of her hands buries him into the plush. Karkat groans as her bulge burrows its way back into him, her whole body slamming against him, to the very hilt of her.
Slick drips down his thighs, the junction where they meet, an echoing slap. Karkat imagines he really is a prisoner here, that Feferi is his one purpose. He can have a long easy life as long as he's a silent, open hole for her. Draped in fuschia, everyone seeing him at her feet and knowing what his role is. How he gets to be in her chambers at night and they hate that, but it doesn't matter beyond how well he can serve her.
There's scratches on his body where she's gripped him. He can feel the pricks and stings across his skin and it lights a fire in his veins. Electricity bolts down his nerves as she plows into him, rocking him with her movements.
With each thrust the muscles in his groin tighten. He clenches around her, desperate to hold her there, to feel her more. The edges of his mind go fuzzy, all there is is the pulse after pules of tighter and tighter coiling at his core. Fuck. Fuck.
"I'm—Fuck, I'm going to—”
"You think someone like you gets a pail?" She sneers, "You think we want your filthy slurry?"
There's no time for a bucket. He's not even sure if Feferi reached for one. Her pace doesn't stop. Genetic material splashes over the floor and front of the couch, Karkat's jaw open in a shattering, silent scream.
His nerves are rubbed raw as she pumps his beaten nook. Tremors rattle his bones and his body convulses with wave after unstoppable wave.
"F-Feferi, mercy," He manages to say after finding his voice.
Her thrusts slow, pushing deep and holding it there for a moment. Hands run over the flushed skin of Karkat's back and rear. He can hear her breathing, heavy like his. Languid and lazy, she drags movements in and out of him. He still shakes, but it's bearable and delightfully hot. Her lips bush over the meat of his rear, trailing kisses and bites that make him buck as he comes down.
Fuck. He's got to come twice tonight before she's even had one.
That same thrum is back and now that he's pailed, some of the haze is clearer. He turns, sitting up and letting Feferi fall out of him some. There's a trail of blood still down her lip from where he bit and he captures her mouth in another round of kisses. He slowly pulls her down on the couch with him.
The impulse to take care of her, to lavish her like she has lavished him.
And here they are again, him over her lap. He takes her face in his hands, cradling it as he kisses her, more tender than he's ever been with her.
"Fuck, Feferi, you—you were just… so amazing. He couldn't shake you. Everything that fucker threw at you, you were one step ahead," He says rutting up against her, sinking down onto her and rolling his way back up, constricting her bulge with his, and the pressure almost drives him mad on the spot. An awed, gentle edge tempers his voice. Genuine replacing where he'd once had his keyed up act.
"When he had you like…like that…" Feferi grits through her teeth, "I couldn't help myself, I felt so guilty, but… I liked it. Him using you and you just taking it." She groans, "It was so hot, I—I felt so awful about how much I wanted it."
"You?" Karkat huffs a laugh, "Try being the asshole who was taking it and getting turned on by it. That one fucked with my head." She laughs a bit in response and he hopes it eases her a little bit. "You're not allowed to feel bad about it, because that means I need to feel worse," he half jokes.
"Agree to be a couple of deviant fucks?"
"Oh, the worst."
They laugh again and Karkat takes the chance to surprise her by squeezing her bulge again. Her giggles turn to a gasp and she bucks her hips up.
"Karkat, please," Feferi begs in a soft voice that he fucking loves. It's so needy and put out. Her bulge is so swollen with slurry ready to burst, her already impressive girth swelling with the strain.
"You're so fucking good to me," Karkat whispers back into her ear, "Always in that control of yours. Give it to me. I want to make you come so hard. No more control, let it all go."
Her eyes are lousy with want, desire making the pits of her eyes swell.
"Do you trust me?" He asks.
"Y-yes…"
In one well-practiced motion, Karkat pulls out a sickle, small and easy to maneuver. He surges forward on her, nearly touching the blade close to her neck.
"You fucked up big time, Princess," he hisses.
He pauses to scan her face, wary of her reaction. There isn't much of one, just her swollen lips, where a blood and lipstick smear over her bottom lip.
"You really think you could lead me here and I'd let you do whatever you want?" He continues, the low, low beginnings of a growl in the back of his throat. "How could you be so stupid to let your guard down like that? All you highbloods are exactly the same." There's disdain dripping from his voice, thick and laden. "So sure that no one can hurt you.”
Her eyes dance from the blade back to his face. "So what are you going to do? Kill me? Ding dong, congratulations, you hate this empress so much? There goes your chance at a new one for the next ten sweeps."
"No. I'm going to show you what it's like. I'm going to make sure you never forget so I am. I'll own you after this. Resist, and we'll revisit the killing idea."
She slaps the sickle from his hand, his grip unprepared for resistance, and there's a scramble for dominance before he seizes her throat in a solid, but relenting, grip. She grabs his offending wrist in kind, but makes no real attempt to pull him away. It was a risk, he's never touched her gills like this before. He's always been incredibly delicate with them.
"It's not going to be that easy, Heiress," he threatens, but he tilts a brow in an unkind smile, "But you could always beg for mercy."
He didn't check the gill thing with her first. It's him offering her the chance to make him ease up, let her know he's listening. She doesn't get many opportunities to use their word system. It's a little bit of a wonky set up. It's mostly constructed with the idea that they can use it in front of compromising company without tipping them off and most of the time it's Karkat who needs to use it.
One of his fingers strokes along the edge of her gills and suddenly she bucks up into him, a gasp in her voice as she moans, "Yes."
It's a different tone than he was expecting, something real and needy.
"You like this?" He asks, stroking again. She gasps again and a shudder tenses her body under him.
"Oh shit," he cackles quietly, "You like having your gills fucked with?"
Feferi's legs clench together under him, rubbing together.
"The empire run by a freak, Imagine," He taunts. "You ever finger Eridan's gills, huh? You and him have a little circle jerk. Is that what underwater choking is?"
He takes another risk, figuring his tongue is softer than fingers, he laps up the side of her neck. The motion on the outside is callous, but Karkat seizes with fear and need to be so, so gentle. Fuck, he doesn't want to tear anything.
"Karkat! Karkat, please," she says again, the desperate peaking in her voice.
"Ah, ah, ah, you don't get to ask me for anything. Be grateful for what you get, isn't that what you chum buckets always tell us?"
Feferi pulls a face, her nose wrinkling, "Eww," she laughs through her blanch. "That's such nasty imagery."
Karkat snorts with laughter, but elects to abandon the phrase. "Now stop fucking talking," he constricts his bulges again, "I'm trying to threaten your life here."
He helps maneuver her into one of the couch corners, where she can lay back just the slightest bit more. He pulls her shirt over her head and pulls her in to kiss her, working her bottoms off next. And finally she stands as bare as he.
He fists a hand of hair, pulling her head to the side, as he trails his mouth down, licking down her jaw and across her gills, frotting their bulges together, and listening to her mewl the whole way.
"Taken advantage of by a rebel in her own quarters. How the fuck is she going to live this one down? Some security measures you've got here, Heiress. What's going to stop me from marking you all up?"
He gets to the bare expanse of her shoulder and bites.
Her voice pierces the air and he feels her squirm beneath him, grabbing his hair in retaliation with a snarl.
He'd threatened. He'd asked.
"You ever see fuschia on the teeth of a mutant?"
And Gl'b, now has she. He can taste her color on his tongue. She snarls and licks into his mouth, more teeth than kiss and he rises up and growls in turn. She grabs the meat of his hips, nails in, and pulls him down against her hips, grinding him on her bulge.
He groans, gritting his teeth, pulling away from her and hooking his hands under her knees. With a lurch, he pins her legs down by her ears, spreading her completely open for him.
And this time, only he was here to see it.
She gasps and he stares down at her glistening nook, the sheen of slick over the whole of her. He drags a tongue over it, dipping the tip of it in as he passes. Her sounds do unspeakable things to him and he thinks he really wants to take his time with her later. Later. But now, she's waited long enough. His bulge coils, greedy for another chance to pail. The scent, the sight of her. All for him in this moment.
He drags his bulge over her entrance.
"You ever had lowblood bulge before?" She has. "Or is that too unsavory for your refined taste?" It's not.
"You wouldn't."
"Oh, but Princess, I would." And Karkat does. He slides all of him in in one slick motion and she moans so fucking good. The feel of her takes complete hold of his mind. Her fingers dig into the material of the lounge, holding on desperately as he bounces against her.
The entirety of the spectrum under one roof, all unknowing that their empress to be is crying out in desperate pleasure as her 'pet' takes her within the safety of these very walls. The music is perfect for telling secrets. It's perfect for taking them as well.
He pulls out a bit, angling his hips to let his bulge curl against her insides in a specific way. Her own bulge is grabbing for purchase, sliding against her belly, her thighs, trying to wrap around Karkat as well. It's frantic, and he knows that means she feels so as well, desperate for release, the clench of her body underneath him, growing hotter and tighter.
He pulls out the rest of the way and she almost sobs. With slow thrusts, he rubs against her entrance again before pulling away completely. He stands and watches her.
"No, I—" she whines.
"You what?" He snaps, "Don't tell me you like it?" He says with mock shock. "You want this mutant bulge in you?" He barks a laugh. He strokes his hand up her crying nook. "Fuck, if everyone could see you now, their sweet, beloved princess, filled up with red and fucking begging for more. I wonder if anyone would panic at how similar the colors are," he brings his fingers up, dripping with both of their slick, a gooey string between them, color almost blended in the soft light.
"Open up the doors for me if you want it so bad," He says, cruel smirk on his face, dropping his hand to let his own bulge curl around it, "Spread yourself."
Feferi is shaking, keeping her legs up, her hands slowly reach for her own rear and spreads her dripping nook wide open for him, too on edge with need to fight him.
"I told you I'd own you by the end of this," Karkat says lowly, sliding back in. He doesn't move and Feferi pathetically tries to hump against him with tiny, pitiful, frustrated sounds. Holding deep, Karkat picks up her bulge, it happily welcoming his hand. With slow, shallow outs and sudden, deep ins, he ruts into her, barely pulling out. He massages her bulge, feeling her writhe and curl just as he does inside her. He basks in the stretch of her over his bulge.
Her nooks clenches, her thighs tightening like a vice on either side of him. He leans in close.
"I wonder what the heir to the throne would look like painted in her own color?" Bent over as she is, her bulge is dangerously angled towards her face.
The power of Feferi's bulge around his hand almost makes him selfishly drop everything and ride her instead. He wants more of it inside him, but she's so painfully on the brink, he couldn't bear stopping now. He wants to see her pail, chasing her orgasm as if it's his own.
She arches into him, head thrown back as she sings, so desperate.
With his free hand, he reaches out for her neck, "You're so fucking beautiful," and with a run of his fingers through the slits of her gills she comes undone.
The rooms have a time limit, one that's paid for by the hour, but no one dares tells the heiress she has to leave.
She does pay extra to have the communal bathing area privately for themselves though. Karkat gets a little hung up on displays of wealth like that, being able to take things from others just because you have enough cash or clout, because he was so often on the losing side of those deals, but Feferi convinces him to let himself be spoiled every once in a while. It's not like he's taking food or water, and they'll be quick, because she has a much better bath at home, but they need to get the blood and slurry off of her.
Fushcia runs down her shoulder from his bites—he's gotten a couple more in at some point apparently. Thin, shiny pink splatters her chest with splashes of it over her face.
She was a fucking mess and looks way too happy about it.
Thankfully, the worker Karkat talks to takes his word as hers, and doesn't fight him on his request, especially after he flashes the money.
It's in the mirror of the shower area that Karkat sees the black lipstick kiss marks smeared on his butt. Damn, she keeps getting him with that one.
When they do finally make their way back to the palace, they consider the logistics of having Feferi wear Karkat's gray cloak versus having her walk out with bite marks all over her shoulders. They're not likely to fade soon, Karkat having broken the skin in many places.
Cloak is better, even if it is gray. Damn, maybe he should have worn the fuschia one today.