[Fic] Enforced Cultural Exchange - Homestuck, John/Karkat - 1/2

[miko_no_da]

Part one of two, because this is so huge I had to break it up to fit it in a post, but it's meant to be read as one long story. Really long. What is this fandom doing to me, idek *facepalms*

Also why am I writing so much John/Karkat for this when my favourite pairing is Sollux/Karkat? *flails*

Title: Enforced Cultural Exchange
Series: Homestuck
Pairing: John/Karkat
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: m/m relationship, swearing
Length: 18,416 (total)

Karkat is all for cultural exchanges and trying to see each others point of view, but there is such a thing as going too damned far.


Since the humans had arrived in the Veil, Karkat had come to have an increased appreciation for how hard the job of a Lusus was. He'd already had a pretty high opinion of them after the hours he'd spent herding ectobiological wrigglers around, so that was saying something. Playing Lusus to the humans in a desperate attempt to keep them out of trouble felt an awful lot like herding wrigglers.

To be fair, Strider and Lalonde annoyed him, but could be trusted not to do anything that had the potential to blow up the asteroid or lead Jack to them or engage in any other life-and-death stupidity. Mostly.

Harley and Egbert were another story.

Especially Egbert.

"Don't touch that," Karkat snapped for at least the third time in the last ten minutes. "Can you not keep your disgustingly soft prehensile appendages to yourself for one gog-damned second? Am I going to have to tie them behind your back?"

"I'm not hurting anything," John protested, pouting. Fucking pouting at him, what the actual fuck. "The equipment is all inactive, anyway."

"For the moment it is, but the whole reason we're down here is that we're trying to find something that is working," Karkat pointed out caustically. "Preferably something that will give us some damned supplies."

"Well, what if we walk right by the machine that might save us because it was in hibernation mode or something, and we didn't poke it to wake it up?" John asked in what he probably thought was a reasonable tone.

"And what if we find the machine that might save us and you fucking break it before we can realize what it is?" Karkat countered. "Shut up and keep looking. And for the last fucking time, don't touch anything!"

With only ten hours or so on the timer until whatever was going to happen to the asteroid, none of the trolls had been worried about the fact that they had no source of food. Now that Dave had taken the eight remaining players far into the asteroid's past, however, they found themselves with pretty much unlimited time on their hands. That was great in that it gave them time to come up with some kind of plan, but not so great in that it meant they were all going to starve to death if they didn't find a solution soon.

Karkat had a sneaking suspicion the trolls would outlive the humans if it came down to that - and it had nothing to do with which species could go longer without food. He'd rather avoid them turning on each other, if at all possible.

"I'm sure we'll find something," John said with a confidence Karkat wished he could share. "After everything we've all survived, I refuse to believe we'll die of something as lame as lack of food. Oh, hey, what's that over there?"

Karkat followed John's pointing finger, and his eyes widened as he saw blinking lights on a computer console in the next room. "Finally," he said, picking his way quickly through the lab to the next doorway. "I was starting to think we'd come back so far in time that nothing was working at all."

As they approached, the rest of the equipment came into view and Karkat identified it as one of the many ectobiology stations scattered throughout the labs. He let out an annoyed breath. "Well, that's helpful," he said, rolling his eyes. "So if we want to create more mouths to feed, we can start experimenting with combining our clones. Of course, we could have done that with the equipment upstairs, without having wasted three hours searching first!"

"At least we know some things down here are still working," John replied, as cheerful as always. He moved closer to the equipment, peering at the console. "Huh. This doesn't look quite the same as the one I used to make our paradox clones."

"No, you're right. This is more like the stuff Kanaya and I used to breed frogs," Karkat agreed, moving closer as well. "Only sized up to be big enough for trolls. Or humans, I guess."

"I wonder what it's supposed to be for?" John said, and before Karkat realized what he intended, he reached out to poke curiously at the controls. With a wordless shout of horror Karkat lunged for him, trying to block his arm. Instead all he accomplished was to knock them both on their asses.

Right onto the central platform.

Green light enveloped them both, and it felt to Karkat like something grabbed his body and started to disassemble it, one cell at a time. If he could have combined every other moment of pain he'd ever experienced in the rest of his life into a single, concentrated sensation, it still would have paled beside what he felt right now. He'd have screamed, if his lungs weren't already busy dissolving.

Then the process seemed to reverse itself, and that was even worse.

After untold eons of agony, the green light finally faded. Karkat found himself lying flat on his back, gasping for air and staring at the ceiling. He could barely see it; the room was much darker than it had been before, and what he could see looked strangely blurry. The sudden brilliant light must have screwed with his eyes.

"WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU ABOUT TOUCHING ANYTHING?" he shouted the moment he had the breath to speak again. The words came out strangely, slurred and indistinct. It felt almost like his tongue was too short and thick, and his teeth too far forward at the front of his mouth. "What the hell?"

Beside him John groaned and stirred. "Ah dinnt meen tu... ow! Wha th he?"

Karkat recognized the last words only because they matched his own. With a growing sense of dread, he forced his head to turn enough to see the human lying sprawled half beneath him.

And found himself looking at a troll.

A very familiar looking troll, with the same features Karkat saw every time he looked in the reflective pane. John was still wearing his glasses, and the frames sat oddly on the troll features, the arms not quite long enough to hook over his now-pointed ears. The look John was giving him was probably a good match for the one Karkat imagined was on his own face. Sheer, utter confusion.

"Please tell me I don't look like a pink, squishy human," Karkat begged, shaping the words as carefully as he could. Unfortunately he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

To his complete disbelief, the confusion in John's expression was rapidly being replaced by what could only be described as glee. Not only was that a completely inappropriate reaction, it was also horribly foreign on Karkat's face. "Oh, wow," John breathed out, speaking as slowly and carefully as Karkat. "Oh, wow! Karkat... Karkat, you're me!"

"Fuck my life," Karkat groaned, and lifted his hands to stare at them. His soft, pudgy hands, with their blunt, useless nails and skin so disgustingly pale he could see the colour of his still-freakish blood. They were less blurry than the ceiling, but still fuzzy around the edges. "This is not happening. This cannot be happening. NOT EVEN MY LUCK IS THIS BAD!"

"Are you kidding? This is awesome," John raved, pushing himself up to a sitting position. "Why's everything so blurry? Oh, wait." He reached up to his face and touched his glasses, and laughed. "I guess you need these, instead of me?"

He pulled them off and offered them to Karkat, who just stared back at him for a long moment. "This is not awesome, Egbert, it's awful." Reluctantly he reached out and accepted the glasses, and slid them onto his nose. It took him two tries to settle them properly, but the world sprang instantly into sharp focus again.

It was still as dark as a double new moon, though. "Your eyes are completely useless," he raged, rubbing at them under the lenses as if he could force them to function better. "Not only are they weak enough to earn you a swift and very painful culling, but everything is totally dark!"

"Now you know why we keep turning the lights up," John told him, unsympathetic. "And now I know why you guys always bitch and moan and turn them back down again! Wow, it's as bright as day!"

He was getting to his feet now, and Karkat hastily pushed himself up as well. Gog only knew what other disasters John might precipitate if Karkat didn't keep him restrained. And Karkat wanted off that platform, just in case the machine decided it wasn't done with them yet.

Thankfully John seemed more interested in examining his new body than in playing with the equipment more. He stared at his claws in wonder, flexing his fingers and fucking giggling like they were the most amazing thing in the world. "How the heck did this happen? Ow. And how the heck do you talk without cutting your tongue open on your teeth all the time?"

"I don't know, we just do," Karkat snapped. "Stop grinning like an idiot with my face, bulgemuncher! And stop laughing." It was disturbing to hear himself laugh like that. Did he normally sound like that when he laughed? So... so bright and, and happy, it was sickening. Actually, he couldn't remember the last time he'd ever laughed, so it was hard to say.

Trying to distract himself - and hopefully find a solution before the situation got any more unnerving - he examined the console in the area where John had touched it. "Oh, fuck," he said when he realized just which button John must have pushed. "Fuck me and forget the pail, we are screwed."

John's answer was a soft, startled moan which... did very strange things to Karkat's lower body. Very strange things. He made a startled noise of his own and squirmed, which only made the sensation worse. John moaned again, deeper this time, and Karkat turned to see what the hell was wrong with him.

To his horror he found the former human with his hands around his horns, exploring the base where they met the skull. His eyes were half closed and a blush spread over his cheeks, dark enough that Karkat could see it despite his now pitiful night vision. "Wha... stop that, what the fuck are you doing?" he exclaimed, slapping John's hands down. "Don't fucking touch your horns in public, you wriggler, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"Uh? Oh, uh..." John sounded a little dazed, which wasn't surprising. The effect wasn't as all-consuming when you did it to yourself, but the rush of subduing endorphins was still pretty strong. "I just wanted to see if they were the same shape as yours, and then, um..."

"Yes, they are, and don't fucking do that again, moron," Karkat snarled. "You know what, the depths of your stupidity never cease to amaze me. Just when I think I've reached the absolute bottom, seen the most idiotic move you could possibly pull out of your ass, you do something else that tops everything else combined, and I am stunned all over again. I would be speechless, except that I would explode with the sheer force of my rage and horror if I didn't vent it somehow."

"Hey, how was I supposed to know they were so sensitive?" John protested, blushing harder. "I mean, they're horns, you wouldn't think they'd be, you know..."

"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT TOUCHING YOUR HORNS, YOU MONSTROUSLY ENOURMOUS NOOKSNIFFER," Karkat shouted, waving his hands as if that would help him drill the words into the idiot's think pan. "I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU FUCKING PUSHING THE BUTTON THAT SCREWED US OVER!" He took a deep breath, and managed to continue at a slightly more conversational volume. "Do you have any idea what you've done to us?"

"Oh, you figured out what happened?" John said, blush fading a little. He still looked excited by the whole thing, and not in the least bit appropriately repentant. Karkat facepalmed, because it was that or punch him. Punching someone who looked like him felt a little too weird.

If they stayed this way much longer, though, he was pretty sure he'd get over the hang-up.

"Yes, I know what happened. There's a function on the machine that lets you scramble the genetic code of however many frogs you put on the platform, randomly reassigning each trait. It's so you can try out different combinations without needing to actually create a million new frogs in the process. AND YOU JUST DID IT TO US!"

"Wow, that's really cool," John said, grinning again. He looked far too much like Terezi for Karkat's peace of mind, the sharp-toothed smile stretching halfway to his ears. He'd had absolutely no idea his face was capable of smiling like that.

"It is not 'cool', it is not 'awesome', and most of all, it is not the fucking 'best thing ever' like you seem to think it is!" Karkat raged at him. "We are stuck in each other's fucking bodies!"

"Yeah, I know," John said, eyes sparkling. "Can you imagine the pranking possibilities of this? My prankster's gambit will be so full it'll overflow and fill the whole asteroid! Oh my god, Karkat, everyone will think I'm you and you're me and we'll completely break their brains!"

Momentarily dumbfounded, Karkat could only stare him. Pranks? They were trapped in each other's bodies through the most unbelievable fuck-up in the history of all fuck-ups, and the little grubfucker was thinking about the pranks he could pull? Pranks which undoubtedly involved him going upstairs and making everyone else think that he, Karkat, was making an idiot of himself?

"Egbert, I will crush my own fucking chitinous windtube before I let you go out there and prank the others wearing my face," he said, his voice low and intense, putting all the outrage and indignation he felt into his expression, volume rising with each word. "No, better yet, I will crush your windtube before I let you do that. In fact, I think I'll do it anyway, just because you are the reason I'm am stuck in this soft, squishy meat-sack of a body, with all the offensive capabilities of a fucking wriggler, and even fewer defences!"

He didn't even realize he was advancing on John with his fists clenched until John ran into the wall and couldn't retreat any further, and Karkat found himself shouting the last words directly into his own face. He reached up and caught John's throat between his hands, digging his fingers into the skin and cursing when the blunt nails barely even left a dent. Troll skin wasn't nearly as hard as the shells of the insects they'd evolved from, but it was tough enough to be able to resist what damage he could do with John's weak, pathetic monkey hands.

"I can't even fucking hurt you, look at this," Karkat snarled, squeezing as hard as he could. John coughed and flailed a little, his air restricted by the tight grip, but his throat was far from being completely destroyed the way it should have been. "Your body is weak and soft and blunt, you don't have a single sharp edge, and now I'm fucking stuck in it!"

"K-karkat," John squeaked, fingers scrabbling at Karkat's hands to try to pry him off. Karkat swore again when the sharp claws raked over his ridiculously fragile skin, opening deep gouges. He couldn't stop himself from reflexively pulling away from the source of pain, leaving John braced against the wall drawing deep, gasping breaths.

"Karkat, stop, okay, I'm sorry, I get it, you're pissed off," John croaked, wincing like each word hurt to get out of his throat. Karkat was able to take a certain amount of vindictive satisfaction from that, though not enough to make up for the way his hands were now aching and dripping blood all over the place. "Oh crap, I hurt you, I didn't mean to! I'm sorry, here, let me help."

"Fuck off and die," Karkat snarled, slumping against the nearest solid surface, which turned out to be one of the ectobiology tubes. "Better yet, fuck off and leave me to die. Why does the universe hate me so gog-damned much?"

"I promise I won't prank anyone as you, all right? See, look, this is me being nice and good and a great friendleader, giving up the most epic chance ever to fill my prankster's gambit, just to make you feel better," John tried to soothe him. "I'll go change us back right now, just get on the platform and..."

"Don't you fucking dare!" Karkat howled, lunging for him and tackling him straight to the floor. At least John was taller and heavier than Karkat - or rather, he had been, which meant Karkat was now the one with the weight advantage. He pinned John to the floor, torn between rage and sheer terror. "Has your think pan gone so soft you're not even capable of rational thought anymore?"

"Well, I'm not really eager to go through that again either, it really hurt a lot," John said, sounding bewildered. "But it'll be worth it to get back in your own body again, won't it?"

"What part of 'randomly assigns traits' did you not understand, fuckwit?" Karkat demanded, shaking him by the shoulders as if he could rattle some sense into the moron. "Do you have any idea how fucking lucky we are that it switched everything? Next time it might leave us with half human organs and half troll organs, and gog knows if they'll be biologically compatible! Next time we might not be us anymore, because it might scramble our fucking brains, too!"

There was a long, drawn-out pause, during which he watched half a dozen emotions flit across John's face - surprise, confusion, horror, and guilt primary among them. "Oh," John said, and the single word contained even more conflicting emotions than his expression did. "Fuck. We're really screwed, aren't we?"

Unable to think of anything to say in the face of such blatantly stupid obviousness, Karkat just leaned down enough to be able to thump his forehead against the floor repeatedly.

---

"Please?"

"I said fuck no!"

"C'mon, pretty please? Since we're stuck like this anyway, we might as well at least take advantage of the opportunity," John wheedled. The pleading whine in his voice was grating on Karkat's nerves.

"Is 'no' just not a word in your miniscule vocabulary? Is that what your problem is?" Karkat said. "I'd be happy to introduce it to you, especially by way of my fist in your cartilage nub."

"I think you might hurt yourself more than you'd hurt me," John said thoughtfully. "Your body is really tough! It's kind of amazing."

The reminder of his current pathetic condition did nothing to improve Karkat's mood. "You are still not pranking them while wearing my face. No means no!" When John continued to look at him imploringly, he had to resist the urge to snarl. He had a sneaking suspicion that the expression was less intimidating and more ridiculous when he used it with these blunt teeth. "I was serious about crushing your windtube first, you know!"

"Okay, okay," John finally capitulated with an exaggerated sigh. Then he perked up. "Well, it's going to be pretty funny to see their reactions anyway. Can we at least not tell them outright until they realize what's going on?"

"Oh, fuck you and may all your pails have giant leaks," Karkat snapped. "Can't you think about anything other than your nookwhiff prankster's gambit?"

John blinked at him for a moment, nonplussed. "Wow, that sounds like a pretty nasty thing to wish on someone, if what I understand about pails is right," he finally said. "You're really mad about this, aren't you?"

"You're just now noticing this?" Karkat said, seething.

"Well no, I mean, I knew you were upset, but... I suppose maybe I should have realized something was up when you tried to choke me," John admitted guilelessly. "Except you weren't trying all that hard, so I figured maybe it was just a sort of concrete example?"

"Oh, I was doing my best to make it a very concrete example," Karkat said. He would have savoured the memory of his hands wrapped around John's throat, except that it was too embarrassing. "Your pathetic squishy meat-sack of a body is just even more useless than I already knew it was."

"Ahahaha, but you wouldn't really have killed me, right?" John asked, laughing nervously. Karkat just narrowed his eyes, and John's laugh turned shriller still.

"Stop fucking laughing, and stop making that hideous expression with my face right fucking now," Karkat demanded. "Fuck, they're going to think I've snapped completely, and cull me before I can go hiveshit on everyone like Gamzee did."

"I'm sure it won't be that bad," John said, but he didn't sound like he was looking forward to the upcoming conversations quite as much as before.

Too bad for him, because they'd finally reached the transportalizer back to the main room. Growling under his breath, Karkat stepped onto the platform, wincing as the momentary sensation of being molecularly scrambled brought back the memory of the pain of being rewritten with John's DNA.

He stepped off the platform to find the other six trolls and humans clustered excitedly around a piece of equipment that hadn't been in the room before. Presumably at least one of the other search parties had been more successful in their endeavour than Karkat and John had been.

They certainly couldn't have been much less successful.

He heard the zap as John came through behind him, and cringed as he waited for the undoubtedly moronic comment that was sure to come. "Hey guys, you won't believe what we've been up to!" John exclaimed as he stepped off the pad.

The others turned to face them, and there was a moment of surprised silence, along with quite a few double-takes. Karkat just glared back at them, especially at the other trolls, daring them to say something about his newly weakened state. Not that glaring would have much effect on Terezi or Sollux, who were the most likely to needle him about it.

Sure enough Terezi started cackling, and he heard Dave snort in amusement. "Damn, you move fast Vantas," the human said. "I take it you're lifting the ban on sloppy interspecies makeouts, then?"

"What," Karkat said, the word comment out flat rather than questioning.

"What do you mean?" John echoed, obviously confused.

"Well, it's only fair," Dave said, smirking. "If you're gonna put the moves on John, you can't be bitching at the rest of us for the same thing."

"What," Karkat repeated, nearly hissing this time.

"Um, I think you guys are kind of getting the wrong idea," John said, and gog help them both he was blushing again. If he kept this up, it wasn't going to take long for the others to finally figure out what colour Karkat's freakish blood really was.

Maybe he could blame it on the genetic mix-up, and claim they both got stuck with John's disgusting human blood? Actually, that might be the one good thing that came out of all this. Not that it really mattered anymore.

"While I would have thought the two of you might take this quest for supplies a bit more seriously, seeing as you are the leaders and therefore responsible for all of us, nobody is upset that you got distracted," Kanaya assured them. "However if you were planning to attempt to hide what you have been up to, you might have wished to take more care when re-dressing yourselves to choose the correct items of apparel. It does make it rather obvious that said items must have been removed at some point during your absence."

Glancing at John, Karkat finally realized just what they were all going on about. Only their bodies had changed; John was still wearing his ridiculous God Tier pyjamas, and Karkat still had his own pants and shirt, though he'd been forced to take John's glasses. So it looked like they'd changed into each other's clothing.

He promptly proved that he was just as capable of blushing as John, much to his dismay.

"No, no, no, that's not what we were doing at all," John exclaimed, horrified and waving his hands as if to shoo away the very concept.

"So you simply decided to exchange outfits?" Rose said, raising an eyebrow at them. She wasn't smirking quite as obviously as Dave, but there were hints of it in her expression. "Was this an attempt to understand each other better by literally walking in each other's shoes? Or perhaps a desire to share the burdens of your recent pasts by sharing such iconic pieces of your identity..."

"We are not wearing each other's fucking clothes, Lalonde," Karkat snarled, unable to stay silent any longer. "Would you all please stop smirking long enough to make an attempt to gather the scattered fragments of your think pans from the far reaches where you seem to have flung them? Maybe if you combine them all, you'll have enough to allow one of you to clue the fuck in to what is actually going on, here!"

Another moment of stunned silence followed his outburst, broken only when Sollux hesitantly asked, "Wait, which one of them said that? It was jn's voice, but that sounded like kk."

Fifteen minutes of somewhat scrambled explanations later - John kept jumping in to defend his actions, which made it difficult for Karkat to eloquently convey the sheer depths of the former human's stupidity - Karkat was pretty sure they'd managed to convince Jade. Actually she seemed to believe them after the first, brief statement that they'd switched bodies, but everyone else remained sceptical.

"Wow, that is so cool," Jade said, bouncing on her toes, as gleeful as John had been when he'd first realized what had happened. "You get to see what it's like from the other side!"

"I know, right?" John agreed, grinning right back at her. Karkat didn't think he'd ever get used to seeing that ridiculous expression on his own face. He didn't want to have to get used to it.

"While I will admit that your impressions of each other are quite impeccable - nearly flawless, I would go so far to say - your story does lack a certain quality that might lend it verisimilitude," Rose said, tapping her lips with one finger. "That is to say, realism."

"Doesn't help that we all know you'll do anything for a prank, Egbert," Dave agreed. "Though I'm impressed you managed to convince Vantas to go along with it. I didn't think he was capable of actually smiling, I figured it would break his face."

"Yeah seriously, Karkat, who knew your acting ability was so good?" Terezi chuckled. "Why can't you be this relaxed and easygoing all the time? Maybe you should take a page from Egbert's book and just stay this way."

"Well, he does kind of need to relax," John agreed, eyeing Karkat who was grinding his teeth hard enough that it was likely audible. "Please don't break your teeth, Karkat, I know you're not impressed by them but you kind of need them and there aren't really any dentists available here."

"The last thing this group needs is two mindless morons of Egbert's calibre," Karkat snapped. "Especially since none of the rest of you bulge-munching wrigglers seem to be up to the task of putting two and two together to get four. That. Is. Not. Me."

"Haha, well obviously I'm not you, that would be impossible, since you're right there," John laughed at him. "I think what you meant to say is that I'm not Karkat."

"I don't know about the rest of you, but this is starting to weird me out," Sollux complained. He'd been listening mostly in silence, frowning every time one of them talked, but now he was rubbing at his forehead like he was developing one of his migraines. "I can't keep track of who's supposed to be who when they talk, they sound too much like each other right now."

"Yeah, it was pretty funny at first, but really you guys can drop it now," Terezi agreed, shrugging. "If you drag it out too long the joke stops being funny, you know."

Desperate, Karkat tried switching to Alternian, hoping that would prove that he was who he said he was. None of the humans spoke the language at all. "Would you all just shut up and start taking this fucking seriously?"

Unfortunately he'd forgotten about John's less flexible tongue and strangely shaped teeth. He'd gotten good enough to work around it while speaking English, but human mouths and throats proved to be simply incapable of making the intricate buzzes, clicks and trills of Alternian speech. The words came out even more mangled than his first attempt to speak English after the switch.

Sollux snorted and clamped a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking as he tried to suppress his laughter. He might as well not have bothered, it was as obvious as a neon sign. Terezi certainly didn't even try, cackling her fool head off, and Kanaya was blushing a brilliant shade of green.

Sighing, Karkat covered his face with his hands. "That came out sounding like something completely embarrassing, didn't it?"

"While I am impressed by your ability to remember such a long string of sounds that presumably make no sense to you, I'm afraid you really would have to work on your accent before it would be a believable attempt to convince us," Kanaya said.

"Why the ever-pitying fuck would I have tried to teach Egbert to say that particular thing?" Karkat demanded, grasping at straws. "How could I have known that would be appropriate?"

"Well, it is sort of the obvious thing Karkat would say when we didn't believe you," Terezi snickered.

"Why, what did he say?" John asked curiously.

"You know perfectly well, and I'm impressed that you were able to stop yourself from laughing," Sollux said, finally recovering from his laughing fit.

"Fine. Fine. His useless human mouth won't let me make the right sounds, so you guys all speak Alternian instead and I'll prove I'm me when I can understand it," Karkat growled, throwing his hands up.

"They're really taking this pretty far, aren't they?" Terezi said, obediently switching to their native tongue.

"Yeah, I'm surprised kk is still going along with this," Sollux agreed, and he at least sounded a little perturbed. "He's usually the one trying to get us to stop kidding around and be serious."

"I am trying to get you to stop kidding around and be serious, nookwhiff," Karkat growled in English. "If you'd fucking pay attention for a gog-damned second, that would be obvious."

There was a brief, shocked pause, as all the trolls turned to stare at him. Well, Kanaya stared. Terezi and Sollux both looked blankly in his direction, but their startled expressions were identical.

"There's... no way kk could have predicted we'd say that, in particular, right?" Sollux ventured after a moment, still in Alternian.

"And no way that Karkat could possibly have taught the John human that much of our language in such a brief period of time," Kanaya agreed, blinking. "Unless he is a linguistic genius of considerable talents..."

"The only thing Egbert is a genius at is being idiotic," Karkat cut in impatiently.

"Hey," John protested. "I'm a genius at lots of things. Like pulling pranks! What are you guys all saying, anyway?"

Kanaya looked at John, then back at Karkat, her eyes huge in her glowing face. "Karkat?" she nearly squeaked, disbelieving.

"Yes, fucking finally, now can we all start taking this fucking seriously?" Karkat exclaimed.

"Wait, you're not saying you actually believe them?" Dave said incredulously. "Look, you just don't know Egbert as well as we do, he's really good at faking it to be convincing..."

"Dave! Come on, do you really think even I would go so far as to learn to speak troll in, like, three hours?" John said. "Anyway, you're all right that this stopped being funny a while ago, and I know better than to drag out a prank until it's so dead it's rotting."

"That is true," Rose said slowly, sounding as if she couldn't believe she was considering believing them. "Though I've certainly seen John get carried away on occasion, I have never witnessed him flagellating the proverbial deceased equine. Certainly not to this extent. And while I'm sure he has many impressive qualities, some of which I am even cognizant of, I do not believe linguistics is one of them. Or he would not have so much difficulty rendering meaning from my own discourses with him."

"Um, thanks? I think," John said, frowning.

"So we're seriously accepting that Egbert is a troll now?" Dave said, staring from John to Karkat and back again. "And this is, like, forever?"

"Maybe Vriska would have been confidant enough of her luck to risk trying that twice, but I have no desire to die because my internal organs don't connect to each other properly anymore," Karkat growled, slumping back in his chair and crossing his arms. "Or become a drooling idiot because I've got half of my brain and half of his. Though that would be an improvement, in his case."

"It was not a problem with the frogs, because of course they all had the same basic genetic code, it was only small differences that were being tweaked by the machine," Kanaya agreed thoughtfully. "It is actually rather amazing that the two of you fared so well, considering how much more complicated the changes would have to be."

"Yeah, though I do feel kinda bad for torturing the little fuckers, if they went through half as much pain as we did," Karkat muttered.

"I guess we'll get used to it eventually?" John said, sounding hopeful. "And in the meantime, we should just think of it as a really great opportunity for cultural exchange! I mean, we've already figured out why the lights are such a big issue, and I'm sure we'll just keep understanding each other better and better as time goes by. Maybe this is actually for the best! Don't you think, Karkat?"

Sadly, Dave and Kanaya managed to grab him by the arms in time to stop him from making a second attempt to tear out John's throat.

---

Despite his best efforts to stop himself from nodding off, with a reasonably full stomach and nobody likely to try to kill him in the next five minutes Karkat found it difficult to fend off sleep. His restriction on sleeping was no longer practical now that they might be here for weeks or even months, but he still resisted it as hard as he could. He had no desire to meet up with the horrorterrors again.

So he was grateful when the thunder of someone pounding on his door jerked him out of a half-doze, even though it made him growl and flail in confusion. It took him a moment to re-orient himself, especially since the room seemed so dim to his new eyes.

"Karkat! Damn it, Karkat, open the fucking door! Oh please be there, please let me in. Karkat!"

It was John's voice, his tone wavering from outraged to terrified and back again. Grumbling, Karkat forced himself up out of his pile to answer the door. "What the hell do you want," he growled as he yanked it open, only to be brought up short as he got a good look at the human-cum-troll.

John was frantic, eyes wide and bloodshot, traces of red on his cheeks where tears had dried, and his teeth bared in a vicious snarl. The last part should have looked normal on Karkat's features, except that it was so out of character on John. His hands were clenched into fists so hard his claws had dug into the skin, and sluggish trails of candy red blood dripped down through his fingers.

"Karkat, thank god," John exclaimed, throwing himself at Karkat and clinging to his shoulders like they were the only thing keeping him upright. "I don't know what's wrong, please tell me this is some fucked-up thing your body is doing to me!"

"Well, if I had any idea what in the name of the mother grub your problem was, maybe I'd be able to tell you," Karkat said, but there wasn't as much of a bite to the words as he'd intended. John was shaking against him, his whole body shivering. Karkat still wasn't sure if it was fear or rage causing it, but it made him look completely pathetic.

"I want to kill someone," John blurted out, shaking his head like he could deny the words even as he spoke them. "I just want to... to hurt someone, rip them apart and stomp all over the bits and dig my teeth into their skin and chew them up and..."

"Fuck," Karkat groaned as he realized what must have happened. "You went to sleep, didn't you?"

It had been hard enough for those of them who'd been born trolls to adjust to sleeping without sopor slime to quell the violent urges that bubbled up in their brains while they slept. It had caused persistent problems throughout the span of the game, frequently setting even the closest of allies at each other's throats right after waking up. They'd all developed various ways of coping; after the first experience, Karkat and Terezi had simply agreed that only one of them was allowed to sleep at a time, so that they never again both woke snarling at the same time.

He could only imagine how much worse it must be for John, who had no previous experience with a troll's diurnal delusions - from the sound of it, he hadn't even known about them, so how could he have braced himself for them? It was a testament to his self-control that he'd come running to Karkat for help rather than turning on the nearest person and tearing them to shreds. For that matter, it was pretty amazing that he was only clinging to Karkat now, not attacking him.

Come to think of it, maybe that was why he was shaking. It was the struggle to rein himself in, stop himself from aggressing Karkat, that made his body tremble with the effort. Karkat found himself reluctantly impressed by John's willpower, even as he felt the first faint stirrings of pity for the pathetic human. Troll. Whatever.

He shoved those thoughts away, and concentrated on the much more urgent matter at hand. "Egbert. Breathe. It's just sleep rage, okay? You'll get over it, you just have to wait it out."

"It's just what?" John said, clearly bewildered.

"Sleep rage," Karkat repeated. "From diurnal delusions, made worse by dealing with the fucking horrorterrors now that our dream selves are dead. We don't have any sopor slime to sleep in, so there's nothing to stop the rage from building up while you're asleep and can't vent it in other ways. We're... I mean, trolls are aggressive by nature, remember?"

He himself was only barely starting to get used to the fact that he wasn't constantly fighting the urge to attack something, anything, anywhere and anytime. It was going to be very, very weird to wake up without an excess of hormones driving him half out of his mind with aggression.

"This is normal?" John exclaimed, trembling harder. "You... you deal with this every time you sleep? You all feel like this?"

"Yeah, and as a note, I should probably warn the rest of the humans not to go near any of us when we first wake up," Karkat realized, muttering half to himself. When he brought his full attention back to John, he had to bite off a curse as he realized he'd been absently rubbing John's back in an instinctive effort to comfort him. Acting like... like a gog-damned matesprit, for crying out loud.

"Sit," he ordered, shoving John away from him abruptly as he attempted to recover his dignity. "Just sit down and fucking breathe, already."

"I can't, I can't stay still, I have to keep moving or I'm going to, I don't know, attack you or something," John insisted, starting to pace, fists flailing in wild gestures. He looked haunted, almost sick, and it pulled at something deep inside Karkat's chest.

If it had been any other troll, Karkat would never have dared to consider what he did next, but John wasn't a normal troll and didn't understand even the most basic rules and taboos of their culture. With a hand that shook slightly from the sheer audacity of his actions, Karkat reached out and grabbed at the base of one of John's horns, pressing his blunt nails hard against the spot where rough horn gave way to soft flesh.

"Oh," John breathed out, a soft, surprised exclamation. Then he went limp, his knees giving way beneath him, and only luck and a quick push by Karkat let him land in the relatively soft pile of movie cases. "Um," he said as he stared up at Karkat, looking dazed.

"Breathe," Karkat reminded him yet again, and this time John obeyed, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out again slowly. "Better. Don't ever, ever do that to another troll, by the way," Karkat warned him, kneeling beside him in the pile. "They'll fucking rip your head off."

"Why? Wow, that felt really good," John mumbled, blushing. "Actually I feel a lot less like taking your head apart and eating your brains for breakfast now, thank you."

The weirdness of being thanked for invoking someone's submission reflex made Karkat pause for a second. Hearing John outright admit that he'd enjoyed it was even stranger. "Just don't," he insisted, struggling not to blush himself. "It's fucking rude. You couldn't be ruder if you just reached out and grabbed someone's bone bulge, all right? Actually, that might be less rude."

"Then why did you do it to me?" John asked, blinking.

"It got you to calm the fuck down, didn't it?" Karkat retorted. "Emergency measures, that's all. Nothing short of that was going to get through the density of your think pan when you were that deep in sleep rage. You're fucking welcome."

"It did help, although..." John squirmed and looked uncomfortable. "It, um, is kind of doing weird things to..."

"Stop," Karkat shouted, clapping his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut for good measure. "Just seal your seedflap shut before the vomiting geyser of your awkward social ineptness can drown us both in spewing shame. I don't want to hear it!"

Especially because he knew exactly what was making John so uncomfortable. Like most young trolls, Karkat had explored the sensations evoked by touching his own horns a few times - in private, with several locked doors between him and the possibility of anyone realizing what he was doing - and he was certainly familiar enough with his own body to know how his bulge was likely reacting to the touch.

And knowing that, imagining John reacting that way, was doing things to his ridiculous human body that made him just as uncomfortable as John had looked. Whatever it was that made John not a homosexual, it either wasn't genetic or else that bit of DNA hadn't transferred over with the rest of it, because Karkat was one hundred percent disgustingly certain that what was happening to his body was supposed to be a symptom of sexual arousal.

"Sorry, it's just, um, there are some parts of your body that really kind of freak me out a little," John said, and unfortunately Karkat was able to hear him just fine despite the fingers plugging his ears. "Like, really. Oh god, I think going to the bathroom earlier was the most embarrassing, horrifying thing I've ever done in my life."

"Tell me about it," Karkat muttered, cautiously opening his eyes and unplugging his ears again. Since it wasn't helping anyway. "I swear to gog it's like your revolting meat-sacks are designed to be as vulnerable as fucking possible. How do you manage to get through life walking around with your most sensitive parts just hanging out there like a giant fucking target?" He'd been horrified when he realized what the dangling bit of flesh between his legs was supposed to be, and how easily someone could hurt him because of it.

It also made the early stages of arousal kind of really fucking obvious, since there was nothing to hide the shift in his anatomy other than the far too insubstantial cover of Karkat's pants. Hopefully John wouldn't look down. On second thought, Karkat shifted from a kneeling position to sit with his knees drawn up to his chin. Much better.

"Well, whose fault is that?" John countered, managing a weak smile. "I mean, you keep reminding me that you created us. I guess you only have yourself to blame, huh?"

"Oh, go fuck yourself," Karkat said. "You would throw that in my face right now. Bulgemuncher."

"Ugh, oh man, suddenly it's so much grosser when you call me that," John said, pulling a face. "Now that I know what a bulge actually is, I mean! And nooksniffer, oh my god, if that's what I think it is, so disgusting, I don't even want to think about it."

"So if you're feeling better, you can feel free to go back to your own damned respite block now," Karkat pointed out, rolling his eyes. Not that he actually had anything better to do than sit there talking to John, but he didn't actually want to get involved in a conversation where they explained the various more personal and less obvious parts of their new anatomies to each other.

"Um." John's slowly returning cheer evaporated immediately, and he hugged his knees to his chest and gave Karkat a forlorn look. "But, what am I going to do? I have to sleep sometimes. I don't know how to handle this! What if next time I run into someone in the hall before I get here?"

"Sollux said he's going to fiddle with the molecular inversion paradox machine..."

"Replicator," John corrected him with a faint smile, insisting on the name he'd dubbed their new supply-creating equipment with earlier. It seemed to be a human in-joke, because Dave had snorted and Jade had laughed, while Rose only rolled her eyes.

"Fine, the replicator, whatever," Karkat repeated, rolling his eyes. "He said he's going to try to make it produce sopor slime next, so you should have some soon enough. I'll tell him to make sure you get the first batch, you're the least equipped to deal with diurnal delusions. Just stay awake until then."

"But, I don't think I can," John protested, shoulders drooping. "I've been awake since before we started our game session, well, unless you count dying, but that was surprisingly not very restful. Oh, and the times Vriska sent me to sleep, but those were pretty short naps. It's been, like, nearly two whole days, I'm really exhausted."

Karkat grimaced. He'd forgotten that the human's session had been so ridiculously short, and so packed with events that of course none of them had been given a chance to rest. From his point of view, scrolling around on the humans' timelines, jumping from important point to important point and skipping all the boring bits, it was easy to miss the fact that there hadn't actually been many boring bits.

He couldn't send John back to sleep alone in his respite block, though. John was right that the next time he woke up, he might not be as lucky, or he might not have such amazing control over his urges the second time. Karkat would feel responsible if John maimed or killed someone while in the throes of a sleep rage.

It had absolutely nothing to do with how pitiful John looked at that moment, huddled in on himself and peering up over his knees at Karkat with bloodshot, woeful eyes.

Heaving a massive sigh that was only slightly exaggerated, Karkat gestured his defeat. "Fine, then just go to sleep here. Bury yourself in the pile, it makes you feel less vulnerable if you're closed in, that's why we made the damned things. I'll make sure you don't hurt anyone when you wake up."

He was fairly certain he could handle John if the troll woke and came after him, since he'd be expecting it. His new human body might be nigh-on useless, but he still had his sickles and still knew how to use them.

Looking somewhat doubtful, John nevertheless began to burrow himself into the pile of movie cases. Karkat helped, scooping up more cases from the sides of the pile and heaping them on top, until only John's head remained in the open. "Huh, that actually does kind of make me feel better," John said, yawning. "Even though it's sort of really uncomfortable, what with all the hard corners."

"Obviously," Karkat said, chucking one last case on top of him with a little more force than was necessary. He stifled a yawn of his own, wondering how long it had actually been since he had last slept. At least a full day and night cycle. Longer? Not since he'd passed out while Kanaya was hacking off Tavros' legs with her chainsaw, and he'd finally woken up as his dream self just in time to see Prospit destroyed. That hadn't exactly been restful, either.

"Karkat?" John said hesitantly, after a long moment. "Um, this is probably going to sound kind of weird, but... do you think you could... maybe touch my horns while I fall asleep?" The last words came out in a rushed mumble, and Karkat was half certain he'd heard wrong. "It really did help earlier, and maybe that way I won't wake up quite so angry next time, since you're going to be right here next to me and I won't have time to cool off a little before I find you. I don't want to hurt you."

"That is completely depraved," Karkat told him flatly. John's expression fell, and Karkat cursed silently to himself. Was it understandable or just messed up that it was harder not to feel pity for the little fucknub when he was wearing Karkat's own face? "Oh, fuck it. Move over, grubtard, you're taking up all the space."

He didn't bother to bury himself quite as completely, since humans apparently didn't need that sort of restraining sensation to help keep their sleep peaceful. John's position in the pile, combined with the need for Karkat to be able to comfortably reach his horns, meant that Karkat wound up half curled up around John's head, so that they were perpendicular with John's head near Karkat's stomach, facing each other.

Swallowing hard, Karkat reached out and found one of John's horns with his fingers, trying not to think about how sick and screwed up this was. John let out a little sigh and tilted his head into Karkat's hand, rubbing his horns gently against the soft flesh of Karkat's fingers. He reached out and caught Karkat's other hand, careful not to re-open the barely healed scratches from earlier, twining their fingers together in a gesture that was entirely too sappy for Karkat's dignity to acknowledge. So he ignored it.

And that was how they both fell asleep, tangled up in each other, both of them with the faintest of smiles on their faces.

---

Dreams with the horrorterrors proved to be not quite as bad when he didn't have to deal with the added build-up of aggression and violence, Karkat discovered. They were still pretty bad, but bearable. Which was good, since he really wasn't going to be able to avoid sleeping again.

As he slowly returned to wakefulness, however, he had another reason entirely to be horrified. That part of his body was hard, the way it had started to do earlier when he'd been reacting to John's squirming arousal. "Oh my gog, humans are sick," Karkat mumbled as he forced his eyes open.

He'd forgotten about the fact that he had company, until John stirred and made a questioning noise. Turning his head, he was startled to find that they two of them had shifted until they were completely curled around each other, heads pillowed against each other's stomachs. They'd released their joined hands at some point, but Karkat still had the fingers of his other hand loosely clasped around John's horn.

That was apparently a good thing, because when John opened his eyes to look back at Karkat there was no sign of the enraged aggression he should have been feeling. Instead he looked a little dazed, with an edge of arousal that made the tightness in Karkat's groin even worse. So the submission reflex worked even better than sopor slime to suppress sleep rage, who knew? Somehow Karkat didn't think he'd be informing the others about the discovery any time soon.

"Why are we sick?" John asked, the world drawn out and sluggish, like he was struggling to remember how to talk. Probably a combination of the effect of Karkat's hand on his horn and the still-unfamiliar configuration of his new mouth.

"Because you apparently get turned on by dreams of horrorterrors," Karkat informed him, hastily withdrawing his hand before he could make things worse. "If that's not sick, I don't know what is!"

"Huh?" That seemed to wake John up a little more, and he stared at Karkat blankly for a long moment before blushing. Hard. "Oh. Oh. No, it's not... it's got nothing to do with dreams, well, unless you're having those kind of dreams, which I guess we can't anymore since we only dream in bubbles? Um, anyway."

"Then why?" Karkat demanded, fighting his own blush.

"Uh, well, you know how you wake up all angry and wanting to kill someone?" John stammered, refusing to meet Karkat's eyes. "Human guys tend to wake up, um, well, it's just a reflex, it's not really the same thing at all. It's not like we're driven to go out and, you know, hump something the way you guys seem to need to go hurt something."

Humans woke up aroused the way trolls woke up angry? Karkat considered that for a long moment. "Okay, that's still unbelievably fucked up, but slightly less sick," he conceded grudgingly. "How do I make it stop?"

"W-well, you can, uh, just wait it out," John said, blushing harder still. "But it's faster to, you know, take care of it oh my god I can't believe I'm having this conversation. A-anyway it can't be that fucked up, my body is, um, kind of, I think I'll just shut up now." He rolled over and buried his face in the movie cases.

Karkat sort of wanted to do the same thing, but he refused to act like a wriggler the way John was doing. "That's because you made me touch your horns, stupid, which is even more fucked up. And if I knew how to 'take care of it' I wouldn't be asking you, would I?"

"Just, just take care of it," John insisted, still not lifting his head. It didn't matter - he was blushing so hard Karkat could actually see his ears turning red, what the fuck. "With your hand." He finally peeked up through his messy black bangs. Karkat just gave him a blank stare in return, and waited impatiently for the grubtard to start making sense. "Trolls must do that too, right? I mean, what do you do when you get... like this?"

"Go find our matesprit or kismesis, obviously," Karkat replied impatiently. "I don't have either of those."

"So what do you usually do, then?" John asked, looking confused. Sort of adorably confused, actually, but Karkat told himself it was just the fucked-up human hormones talking.

"Nothing, stupid," Karkat snapped, realization slowly dawning. "Wait, you mean you... you fill pails by yourself? What the fuck is the point of that?"

"I keep telling you we don't fill pails, and yeah, what's wrong with that?" John asked, hiding his face again. "I mean, it's not something you talk about, and I don't know why we're talking about it right now, but everybody does it. Even girls, I think, though I'm not quite sure how."

"But it's totally useless," Karkat protested, stunned by the thought of the monumental waste. "And you do this every morning? How do you even have any genetic material left by the time you need it?"

"It's not like there's a fixed amount, you just keep producing more," John replied. "Anyway you don't have to if you don't want to, you can just ignore it until it goes away, it's just annoying and takes a while. I guess that's what I'm supposed to do? Do you guys only ever have sex to reproduce, not just for fun?"

"Yeah but you can only produce so much, so fast," Karkat said. He finally lost the battle against his own embarrassment, and buried his face in his hands so he wouldn't have to look at John. "Of course we do it for fun, but you have to restrain yourself for the perigee before the drones come or you won't have enough material to fill the pail, and then you're dead. And you certainly don't ever waste it doing it alone!"

The perigee after the drones visited tended to be rather full of sloppy makeouts as a result of the forced dry spell, which made the waiting pretty worth it, or so Karkat had heard.

"Well, there are no drones coming and nobody needs to fill any buckets, but you can do what you want," John finally said, pushing himself up with a clatter of movie cases. "I'm going to... go back to my room for a while."

"Yeah, fine, whatever," Karkat said, waving him off without looking at him. He waited until he heard the sound of footsteps and the door opening and closing, then let out an explosive breath and curled up in the pile, tugging his knees tight to his chest.

He knew perfectly well what John was going off to do, and he couldn't stop himself from imagining it. Trying to picture it without someone else involved was a little harder, but it wasn't that difficult. Hell, there were probably trolls who did it; there had been times when Karkat's curiosity had gotten the better of him and he'd worked himself up to the point where he'd semi-seriously considered it himself. If you didn't do it very often, you could get away with it, you just had to be careful not to drain yourself so that your future matesprit or kismesis wouldn't think you weren't capable of producing enough genetic material to fill a pail. Fuck, nothing would get you dumped flat on your shame globes faster than that.

But John was right that there weren't going to be any drones coming for them, so it didn't really matter anymore. They could all do it ten times a day and the only result would be that they'd hardly need to worry about buckets, they'd be coming so little each time. Sloppy makeouts ahoy.

Realizing that he was breathing hard, Karkat whined and pulled his legs in tighter. That crushed his still-hard bulge - or whatever the humans called it - between his legs and his stomach, putting pressure on it in a way that made him squirm helplessly. Or maybe that was the thought of John with his hand down his pants, coaxing his sensitive bulge out from behind the bone that shielded it, stroking his fingers over it and oh what the fuck, why not...

Karkat had a hand inside his own pants before he'd even consciously accepted that he intended to give in to the urge. He cried out as his fingers brushed against his bizarre bulge, and promptly clamped his other hand over his mouth to muffle any further sounds.

It was weirdly not as sensitive as he'd expected, but maybe that was natural considering it was always just hanging out and being stimulated all the time. Without the bone shield to protect it, if it had been as sensitive as a troll's bulge the stupid humans would just be orgasming constantly all the fucking time. Or else walking around in eternal agony.

There were places where it felt amazing to touch, though, and actually it was all pretty fucking good. The lack of claws and softer skin of his fingers proved not to be a down side here, since he could handle himself pretty much as roughly as he pleased. The tip especially felt good, and a spot just under the ridge of the widest part of the head. When he slid his hand down further he discovered that the squishy sac hanging beneath the bulge was sensitive too, though the lack of a nook was a little bizarre.

Mentally shrugging, Karkat returned to exploring the bulge, arousal winding tighter and tighter in his groin. That part was familiar enough, though he was rapidly approaching a point that was farther than he'd ever dared to push himself before. It felt good, so good, and yeah, okay, he could maybe see why the humans would do this as often as they could if there was no pressing reason not to, fuck. And the knowledge that John was back in his room doing exactly the same thing made Karkat feel so overheated he almost wondered if he would explode.

The shrill chime of his husktop interrupted him just as his breathing was starting to turn into short, sharp panting. Startled, Karkat jerked his hand away from his bulge in a reflexive attempt to pretend he wasn't doing anything wrong, as if someone had just caught him at it. Well, maybe they had - as far as he knew none of them had figured out how to troll their own timeline as well as the humans', but what if Sollux or someone had finally managed it? Fear and humiliation did a wonderful job of shutting down his arousal.

Groaning, he stretched out one shaking hand and pulled his husktop closer, checking the Trollian status window. He snarled when he realized it was John that was pestering him, and nearly threw the husktop across the room in sheer frustration.

ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]

EB: um, karkat?
EB: this is going to sound like a weird question, and you're probably going to make fun of me a lot, and I don't really blame you.
EB: but, um... how do I get, er, Alternian stains out of fabric?
EB: ...
EB: karkat?
EB: are you there?
CG: ...
CG: YOU FORGOT THE FUCKING BUCKET, DIDN'T YOU

carcinoGeneticist [CG] blocked ectoBiologist [EB]