Collegestuck - Johnkat

6. Flub

By the time that the group had returned from the emergency room, the entire house but Kanaya and Jade had fallen asleep. The two girls jumped up as Karkat walked in the front door, sling around his left shoulder and arm. Kanaya, her tanned Arabic skin-tone glowing in the kitchen's can lights, was instantly at the boy's side to steady him. Jade took her turn pulling out his chair and working on the pot of tea. 

Equius tottered up the stairs as Dave slid into a chair beside Kar, nearly physically wiped out by the day. The two slid into the chairs, groaning. "God, I swear," Dave nagged as Jade slid him a cup of hot coffee, handing tea to Kar. "The nurse about jumped out of her skin." 

"Thought we were devils," Kar snickered as he sipped his tea. "Woman's never seen an albino?" 

"Not one with their hair dyed," Kanaya flicked Vantas in the back of the head. 

"What's the diagnosis?" The worried green eyes in Jade's head instantly inquired. 

"Bruised the bones, nothing's broken." 

"You could have convinced John otherwise," the sharp eyed girl watched Vantas closely. Kanaya looked mad even thought it was an emotion reserved for people who cheat on their thesis papers and idiots.

The room went stiff, Karkat shifting in his chair uncomfortably. He looked bothered, but acted otherwise. "I told him to stay." 

"You barked at him," Jade glared. 

"Okay, maybe I snapped a little, but, you know, it's been this way since we were kids."

The thought of those two ever being children was almost impossible, but indeed, it had been that way since they teetered around the playground. The two met later than all the rest when the two fathers caught up over lunch. After some short chatting they confessed that a son had been born to both of them. This, seeing how John's and Karkat's fathers were such good friends, led to their semi-awkward meeting. 


On the playground where everyone usually ran around and shouted, holler in excitement of youth, John went looking for the boy with the silver hair and red eyes. "He's probably hiding under the main platform," Karkat's father hinted. 

When John went exploring he was happy, but slowly as the darkness of the underside of the playground structure engulfed the rather short boy with sapphire eyes. The shade was intimidating, but not impossible. "K-kar... Kerket?" 

A voice snapped back, "It's Karkat, you idiot!" It was a small voice, almost pathetic, but angry nonetheless. 

John let his horribly blurry vision focus on the silver hair that wisped around the blood red eyes. At first he jumped, shocked by the appearance, but then adjusted to an unsettling awe. The boy was hidden under a white hoodie with a red and black design that looked similar to two commas following each other's tails. His head was ducked into his knees, clothed in white as well. He looked pure, untouched by the light and the truth of the world in his calm white glow. 

Shifting closer, slowly and cautiously, John came to the boy's carapace of his clothes, closer still to his features until their noses nearly touched. He could see that boy in the clear light of the overcast morning. Lips pursed, he leans in and touches their foreheads together to see if the pleasantly simple boy was real. The white-laden boy jolted, eyes widening as he stared into John's crystal eyes. They reflected each other, a soft lavender shade mixing between the two. 

"Wow," John smiled, finally breathing again, "You're eyes are so pretty." 

With this odd smile the boy shoved John off of him, face red as his eyes. "G-get off!" He gasped, hiding under his hood as he pulled it down over the flushed face. "Y-you're weird. Weird like the others!" 

"O...thers?" John blinked. "What, those guys?" He pointed up to the platform that shook  overhead, a sprinkle of sawdust raining down upon them. "Jade talks like them, not me," he grinned, buck teeth giving him a goofy, yet dorky look. 

"Jade's weird too," he grumbled, biting his lip to bring the blood to the surface. "She called me a ghost." 

"She calls you names too?" He brightened, "She calls me Spongebob, you know, 'cause of my teeth," John flicked them, laughing again. 

The boy looked up, eyes narrowing as he wondered about just how strange he could keep on getting. A bright face, more than enough happiness, and wide bright eyes that reflected everything. "What's your name?" John laughed a bit, crawling back over to the boy. "I said it wrong, right?" 

"Karkat... Vantas," he said the words slowly, watching the boy as he got incredibly close once again. "My dad sent you over here, right?" 

"How'd ya' know?" John smiled. 

"He told me before we came here. I was hiding."

The air became stale with this note, Karkat sighing as he scooted away from a ray of light peering through the spaces in the platform overhead. "Mom used to say it was good not to be found."

"You're mom's wrong," John replied curtly, brow furrowing. "Clearly she's never played hide and seek."

"My mom wasn't around long, so I don't know if she had." 

"Really? My mom either," John smiled brighter still, hands pressing to Karkat's knees so that he could see him better. "Well... I mean, my mom... she... some people took her and we don't know what happened." 

Karkat looked up, interest piqued as he saw the boy's face dull, the light fading away. "John," he began, the boy shaking his head. 

"But it's okay, I get letters from her sometimes," he smiled weakly as Karkat felt 
a pang ring around inside his bleeding heart. That boy was visibly broken by the mention of his mother, but refused to let others pat his back or even condole him. "She... she misses me." 

The boy in white seized the moment and wrapped his arms around John like a brother in times of hardship might or the way a mother could if either's were present. The squeeze from the frail yet warm arms gave John the right amount of pressure to let a few tears slip past his eyes. "It's okay," Karkat whispered into John's soft black hair. "It's okay to cry." 

With that John let a few more tears and a few more stream down his face and drop against Karkat's white pants. They stained, yes, but the boy didn't mind at all. He even allowed a handful of tears to drop in pure empathy.

In that moment, Karkat knew that he, without one doubt in his mind, loved John more than anything in the entire world. 


Creeping up the stairs, slowly pushing back the door, Karkat sighed at the sight of John curled up in the blankets on the bed. His eyes were puffed and slightly sore looking as he wrapped the body pillow around his legs, arms and head, blanket lying over the two. "Body pillow... how I wish to be thee," Karkat glowered. 

A sigh escaped him, shoulders falling as he looked at his bed that was positioned above John's and near impossible to slide into with the bruised bone causing him so much pain. He could barely lift his arm, let alone climb up a shaky ladder and crawl into a space that was barely two feet from the ceiling. 

"John," Kar whispered fondly, sweeping a lock of hair from the young man's sleeping face. "I would do anything for you," the sly boy snuck a peck on John's forehead, staring in disappointment as he rolled over in the bed, still clinging to the body pillow. "And... everything." 


Morning came briskly, sweeping a cool gush of air across John's face as he sat up and stared around the room. The window was cracked, giving sign that Karkat had been in the room since he let himself sleep to the sound of falling tears. He felt sore all over and numb, ironically, from the cold of the morning. "Cold and in pain," his teeth chattered, "Perfect." 

"Morning, John," Rose stepped in the room, her lilac eyes flashing in the light of the rising sun. 

John stared for a long time, nearly glaring as he looked out the window, back to her, the broken digital clock, to Rose, and to the window again. "Rose?" 

"Yes?" She smiled sweetly a white smile through her dark purple lipstick. 

"Rose, why am I hallucinating?" 

"What?" 

"You get up at six," he nodded, "And leave at seven-thirty," another good nod to connect all the points together. "It's too early, Rose, or I'm still dreaming." 

"No, you're awake. Natural to wake in such a manner when one cries themself to sleep the night before," she nodded, her same witty smile resting on her face. "He's fine, you know." 

"I probably shattered his shoulder. I'm fuckin' fat," he patted his firm and fat-less stomach. 

"It's muscle weight, you complicated intellect," she chuckled with a soft lighting of her eyes, "Now come, breakfast is ready." 

"Ah, R-Rose?" 

The two stopped, the girl's heels turning so that her warmly lit visage faced him. "Yes?" 

John swallowed, asserting his thoughts into actions, though unsteady ones. He 
swallowed, "Is Karkat back?" 

A sly smile slid up the side of Rose's cheeks as she let out a faint laugh. "He's been back since one this morning, John," she nodded as she began down the flight of stairs. "He just bruised the bones and had a slight hairline fracture on his elbow. Nothing very serious." 

"F-fracture?" 

"Tiny," she assured him as they began down the winding stairs, though John scaled most of them in seconds as the blonde lingered. She could see his urgency while she had nothing but good graces for patience and being a bit slow. 

John couldn't get down the four flights of stairs fast enough, lungs heaving and face flushed as he entered the kitchen. Vriska and Gamzee were talking as the girl sat with her legs crossed on the kitchen's island, Jade looking through the mail and blinking up at him. She smiled warmly just as Rose had and pointed down the hall. 

The back porch swing, John's memory flickered past his standing as he then slid down the hall and around the short corner to the mud room and back door. It seemed too long to get the three bolt locks undone as he pulled them out, not even bothering to shut the door at first. He sucked in a hard breath as he saw Karkat staring out at the backyard which, to be frank, was a chain link fence into another group's house. 

Time stopped for a grand and lengthy total of five seconds as John's eyes scanned the area around him, the boy's breathe freezing clearly around his pallor cheeks. Karkat's arm was hung in a sling, his eyes dulled and mouth flat. "K-K-K..." He couldn't get the sound out. 

"Oh... morning," Karkat turned slightly, an equally diluted smile appearing on his face as he waved. John only jolted as he saw the gauze bandage on the left side of the tired boy's face. He couldn't even imagine what was under that hiding place. 

"K-Kar... Karkat," John stood in front of the swing as the red-eyed young man looked up at him curiously as if searching for the written answer upon John's paling face. "God." 

"It doesn't hurt so bad, you know," Karkat smiled, patting the other half of the porch swing for John because he looked clearly distressed and dizzied. "It's only bruising and a hairline fracture." 

"It's only broken!" John snapped back. "God, I'm such a freaking klutz! I could have killed you!" 

"You..." 

"Huh?" 

"You could have died, too..." 

John looked over at Karkat and then back at his hands, face warming and because of 
no fault to his running. "Kar?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Next time I trip... don't catch me." 

"Why the fuck wouldn't I?" This notion was like a bite from a seemingly gentle dog, a twist of the knife lodged in the heart. 

"I'm saying you don't have to!" John bit his lip bitterly, looking at his clenched palms. He sounded reluctant and almost forced, but it was what needed to be said. According to John, that is. 

"But I will!" Vantas insisted firmly as the volume of the two rose. 

"Don't!!" 

"Why not?!"

"Because you'll get hurt again, god damn it!!" 

"So?!"

"I don't like it when you get hurt!!" 

The air got stiff, Karkat turning in his skin. 

Are you fucking kidding me?! I'd do anything for you! I'd be tortured and tormented at the stake for you! And aren't you just the king of hypocrisy! What about my bleeding heart, John? Are you going to fix that?! He wanted to snap at the down-turned visage of the blue-eyed boy. Karkat swallowed his urge and sighed, motioning John to look up. If he couldn't confess, he'd do what he'd always done; what had always worked. 

"John?" He sighed, testing his right hand for flexibility. 

"Yeah?" 

WHAP!! 

John's face was slapped to the left, his eyes widened and stunned as Karkat stood 
up. He was enraged as John turned his head down into his lap, fists shaking in anger. "K-K... Kar..." 

"Listen to me, you fucking idiot," Vantas snapped, pointing down at John as he stared down his nose. "Every time you trip I'll catch you! Every time you fall I will pick you up! And every fucking time you say you don't need my help, I'm gonna help more." 

John's heart was throbbing, aching even, inside his chest as he was being snapped at for each thing he excelled best at. Being in the way, being a klutz about it, and being an idiot all the same. "John," Karkat leaned on the balls of his feet as he looked up at John from his eye-level. "Look at me." 

As always John had a red mark on his face and tears were welling, but his pride seemed to force them back into his tear ducts. Kar felt a twinge of pain at the sight of this bitter expression, longing to reach up and kiss the mark until all of its existence and history faded into a semi-passionate kiss. However, John's heartache for his tough-love methods of teaching was feeding a new kind of regretful pain into Vantas's already hole-laden heart. 

"What?" 

"You weren't hurt in the fall were you?" 

John's tears only began to fill his eyes once again, the clear sapphires darting off to the side as he began to pout. "Don't know, just woke up." 

"Well, dip-shit, do you feel pain anywhere?" 

After a moment's thought, John retorted with a, "Just... my back on my shoulder blades, a little." 

"Shirt, off," Karkat sighed as John nodded, peeling the cold-sweat drenched baseball shirt off over his head to reveal a few bruises and scratches on the back of John's neck and shoulders. He cringed, reaching out and touching the bruises only to recoil with a harsh yelp from John's end. "I'm..." All reason was lost at the sight of the smooth milky skin and shaping of John's muscles. "I'm... I'm sorry," he whispered, leaning down and kissing one of the bruises. 

John's eyes widened in shock as Karkat's lips sucked around the bruise, tongue running over it in a way that was incredibly arousing. A gasp of surprise and shock escaped John's mouth as he pulled himself forward, shirt clutched in arms. Karkat was leaning against the far wall with his red eyes wide, face more of an intense ruby color than anything else. 

"K-K-K-K.... K-Ka..." Words couldn't come to John's mouth, his face filling with most of his blood as he scampered to the door. 

As the boy left, Karkat could only smack himself in the face with his fist over and over and over and over again.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, so fucking stupid!!