Collegestuck - Johnkat

7. What You Get

The door slammed behind him as John slid down the cool oak board that gave him a barrier between himself and Karkat. His heart was throbbing inside his chest, face burning hot with embarrassment and shock. It seemed like Karkat's lips were still pressed to his bruises, still licking them numb; like his touch was still expanding over his body. 

John's eyes flickered as he relived the moment in heightened sense. Karkat's hand was sliding down his back and around his stomach nearly in slow motion. The feeling of his skin being lifted by the boy's mouth gave him shivers all over in some places that the shudders didn't belong. H-his tongue, thought the distressed boy momentarily before he collapsed over his knees. 

A shooting feeling of arousal shot up from his hips all the way to his cheeks were the heated blush spread from ear to ear. He let out a soft gasp that only made his face turn an even deeper shade of crimson. Slapping a hand over his mouth, John fell onto his knees in utter confusion. He felt sticky and bewildered by the deepening sensations. "N-nn... n-no..." He trembled, eyes tearing up as his hormones took over. "It's... not true." 


"Kay-kay?" Sollux blinked as Karkat flew out of the door, slamming it behind him. The house shook thunderously, everyone within earshot blinking or jolting in surprise. They'd seen John nearly fly up the stairs just seconds before and he looked scared if anything else, but only Sollux and Kanaya really understood. The Korean turned, eyeing Kanaya as she nodded, a sigh escaping her. "I'll get my coat." 

"Where are you going?" Eridan blinked, beginning to get up when Sollux leaned down and kissed the other's cheek. Eridan's usually dim face lit up with pink as he covered his 
mouth. 

"To get the idiot, obviou'thly," he snickered as he pulled his sneakers on and rushed out the door. 

As soon as it sealed back Kanaya sighed once more, grabbing her phone from her bra and dialing the only permanent number in the contacts list and waited as the ringing tone filled her ears. It seemed like eternity before the voice finally picked up and the norm that anyone else would ask. "Hello?" 

"Rose?" 

"Kanaya," the girl's lips must have curled into a smile upon the sound of her lover's voice echoing from the line because she seemed quite pleased. However, she wouldn't be for long. 

"How fast can you get home?" 

Rose blinked, looking up from the desk phone and around her workplace of the morgue under the internship of Doctor Scratch, the man with a clean shaven head and a mind as organized as his office. Clearly, not a lot can go missing in a morgue except the one time they misplaced a spleen and somehow it had ended up in the... well, that's another story. 

The doctor looked up, a sly smile on his face as he nodded, having heard the speaker phone that was permanently set into the empty and echoing room. 

"What is it?" She asked, hanging up the phone seeing as it was pointless. Kanaya's voice just bounced off the wall as usual. 

"I think John's realizing he's got a human heart," the proper English-Arabic accent said clearly. 

Rose froze in her standing, almost dropping her equipment. "Repeat that, would you?" She asked as she steadied herself before beginning to cut the y-incision in the passed Mr. Noir. "Kanaya?" 

"I... haa," she sighed, rubbing her temples on her end of the line, "I think Karkat may have advanced before it was his turn, if that makes a clear bit of sense." This time Rose nearly did stumble, Doctor Scratch catching her by the elbow and straightening her upright. 

"Be careful, dear. Romance is not something you must bother with in the presence of a deceased man," he smirked in a humorous and yet wry sort of fashion. 

"Where's John?" 

"Barricaded in his room, according to Jade," the voice echoed again, Rose starting the saw and cutting around the rib cage, handing it to her mentor. 

"And Vantas?" Her voice was muffled behind the medical mask as she carefully cut around the left lung that was blackened by years of chain smoking and screaming. It seemed that even his heart stretched by the unhealthy habits of his documented rage. 

"Sollux is looking for him. He ran out shortly after John locked himself in his room." 

Rose sighed, "So then?" 

"I... I need you to talk to John."

"Why? Jade's his sister, right?" 

"True, but..." Kanaya trailed off, having been fed up with the ridiculous amounts of censorship the country of the United States needed. "Doctor Scratch, do you mind if my topic is a bit distasteful?" 

"Not at all, Miss Maryam," he studied the lung, turning the cut open with the bottom of his scalpel. "Freedom of speech, after all." 

"Rose, I need you to tell him it's okay if he's gay." 

The girl froze, beads of sweat filling her brow as her lavender eyes, procured by genetic mutation, shot over to the professor absolutely and intentionally occupied by the lung's contents. She thanked her lucky stars that was a man of science and thus had no arguments against homosexuality. Otherwise her workload might have tripled in spite. "Rose, I cannot do what a platonic relationship buys." 

"We're all like family, Kanaya. And then Gamzee or Tavros.... Even Dave, he's pansexual, after all," she nodded as she counted off just how many obscure sexualities resided in the house. Honestly, the only people that were straight in the house was Jade... and maybe, no, Feferi was dating Aradia, wasn't she? 

"Rose LaLonde, did you, in all competence, just suggest Gamzee or Tavros to talk to John in his mentally fractured state? Did you?" She question, the doctor even letting a muffled fit of laughter escape him. He'd met everyone in the house that Rose lived in and found this profusely hilarious and almost a joke. 

"Not on the ball today, Miss LaLonde?" He tried to muffle his laughter again before letting a handful of laughs slip. 

Rose bit her lip, sighing as she took the phone off the speaker by manual force. "Kanaya... what do you want me to say? John, face it? You've been looking at Karkat weird since you were ten?" 

"No! Well... oh, well, perhaps," she wondered to herself. 

"I can't do that," she shook her head as she pulled her mask down. "And even if I do, then what? You know very well that that every wall in that house is made of paper!" 

The doctor just couldn't hold it any longer. He set his clip board on the tablet near the lung, took off his mask and gloves, coat left on the hanger, and left the room for a hearty laugh. The thought of a house of hormone-driven young men and women in relationships was just a joke, not even adding the barely-there walls into the mix. 

"Yes, well, we all get around that some way or another. The point is that we all know what John does when he's confused by something. He either beats himself up over it or collapses inward, and currently he's on the latter of the choices." 

Rose was rubbing between her eyes, post glove removal, of course. The pain was 
swelling there as she looked at the clock. "Give me an hour, alright?" 

"Can you be here sooner?" 

"It can't be that ba--." 

"Rose." 

"Is it?" 

Silence filled her ears as she sighed and nodded, "Thirty minutes." 


The dry and icy winds blew right through Sollux and his thick hooded jacket. He cursed in Korean as he rubbed his hands together and blew on them futilely. "T'hit," he swore as he came across the old park that they all used to hang around. Narrowing his dimming eyes he could make out but a faint shadow hunched over under the rock wall climb up to the main platform to it all. "You Th'tupid fuck." 

By the time he found Karkat he was looking straight up at Sollux, eyes glowering and teeth bared. "Oh quit it. You look like th'ome rabid dog," the 3D sighted young man nearly spat. "What the fuck did you do now, you dumb fuck!?" This time it was a brotherly and correcting kick to the knees. Nothing hard, but with enough force to make a point. 

"Leave me alone, fuck face!" He snapped up at the brotherly boy. 

"Who you callin' a fuck face, coward!" Sollux nearly picked Karkat up from the mulch-carpeted earth by his collar. "I'm not the one that didn't confess, I'm not the one that can't get any because I'm a spineless fuck!" He continued, their faces inches apart. 

"I'm not fucking spineless, you lisping shit!" 

"Lith'ping.... You little fuck!" Sollux snapped, punching Karkat's face nearly around his neck. From there his violence only escalated on a verbal scale as he shook the startled man back and forth, all by his collar. "Don't you even get th'tarted with me when you're th'uch a freaking failure that you can't even make a move without th'caring th'omeone abth'olutely th'hitless! At lea'tht I can get laid, you little th'it!" He continued on, rage filling his face as he shoved Karkat down against the mulch. "DAMN IT!" 

Vantas only blinked, eyes wide and unfocused as he realized just how big of an impact he'd caused. "You've been back for le'th than a week and you fuck it all up. All, impre'thively, in four day'th!!" 

"Well let me see you go stale for Eridan across a god damn ocean waiting to see him again. Like you wouldn't fuck him in the doorway, come on!" Karkat snapped as he stood upright. 

Sollux stiffened, sighing in utter impatience. He gritted his teeth, "You can't be th'eriou'th, could you?"

"What?!" 

"The differen'th'e between you and John and me and Eridan is that Eridan has had a crush the th'ize of Texa'th th'ince we were ten! Getting him in bed, after foreplaying the pride out of him, wa'thn't that difficult." 

Leaving aside a moment's consideration Karkat sighed, smacking himself in the face. "Now that you've reali'th'ed that huge mi'thtake you made, here," Sollux handed Vantas a pair of sunglasses. "Don't know how you got thi'th far without 'em," he nodded with a smile. 

"Well what the fuck do I do now?" 

"Now? Now you go up to that room and grow some balls!" 

Vantas sighed, putting on the shades nonchalantly, "Captor?" 

"Yes?" 

"How the fuck do you deal?" 

"What do you mean?" The Korean raised a brow, eyes narrowing slightly as they began to walk back to the house. 

"When you go back to Korea to stay with the family?" 

Sollux looked up at the sky for a second and realizing something. 

"Huh... I actually don't," he laughed before Karkat looked at him with a deep scowl pushed against his lips. 

"Exactly my point, shit face."