Chapter Text
Karkat’s pair of oculars swept over Ran’s room, taking in the crazy shitheaps of sights. It was like a hybrid between a private nest and a photo studio in “this here joint” as the Bachelors would say.
Ran’s bed was made, with soft blue covers with star patterns draping over the deep purple bed sheet. Karkat put her hand on it, ran a line like a car’s window-shield-sweeper - it was impossibly soft. Her heart fluttered inside her chest at the heavenly texture. She could go on there, forever… letting her honeyed pan lead her, Karkat sat on the respite block. The cushion, unlike her own Rebellion-approved slab, softly couched her tired ass and thighs, sinking deep to comfort her muscles.
Motherfucker, sighed her mind in bliss. If you put your sorry spine on this thing, you’re never gonna get up again.
Good, Karkat shot back. I have lost the ability to give a damn about the garbage heap you produce out of your shit-printer, shitlady .
She shifted so she could lie on her back straight on the bed. The block sank, supportive and loving, like a caress from Prospitian moss at a well-deserved dream-break… or a melty cheddar-mozzarella cheese hybrid with grub pepper whose savory sensation she could almost absorb from the pores of her gray skin. A long exhale marked her pleasures, crawling up from the cavernous depths of her guts. To top it off, she outstretched her hands to make a T-shape with her wiry flesh prison - ahh… a stretch, eyes squeezed shut as a yawn escaped her, coming out as a growly moan. Kinda reminded her of Nepeta a bit…
The yawn left her lips dry, so she licked her lips, enjoying the sensation of moistness between the skin flaps, and her tongue windshield-brushed her nubby fangs, because why not? Her tongue moved up and down between the teeth, curved and a little sharp, curved and a little sharp, and so on and so forth.
She opened her eyes again, and turned her head to see the expanse of bed-covers around her.
The colors had faded a little - Ran must’ve slept a lot, and washed these sheets a lot, and let them bleach in the sun a lot. His pillows were misshapen - had a permanent crater in it - she bet he'd used it to pose for his hundreds of pin-up drag selfies. Karkat could imagine him propping his face on that pillow… or his cameras… or maybe his goddamn tripod even.
She’d seen him take selfies in other rooms in the Bachelor Pad. Karkat liked watching him contort his flesh-vessel into impossibly sexy poses. It wasn’t sexy to her, not really, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him, off the padded curves of his figure. Of the wig cascading down his shoulders, swaying whenever he walked.
Karkat wanted that. Not the sex appeal (not really, unless puberty made her care more how she looked, unless she listened to her desires reacting whenever Sollux and Terezi drew near), not the pan-boggling, weirdly intriguing way he carried himself, like some sort of fuchsia-blood with a computerized voice that could make the Empress quake in her throne. But the seemingly-effortless femininity.
Or maybe in his case it was a performance of femininity, since he was doing drag and she was not. And drag was a lot of effort and Karkat wished she could join Ran in that effort. But not in a drag way. What was drag anyway? Trans women did drag. But Ran was a trans man, and Karkat was a trans girl (would she ever be a woman? Or would she die a martyr before she even molted into maturity?), and there weren’t any drag artists in Alternia. The Other World fed her all this confounding information into her thinkpan’s vacuum-sucking abyss, a sea of disconnected trivia waiting to be used.
Her eyes went misty at that. She just wanted to stop feeling like her body was too manly!
So what was stopping her? What in Mother Grub’s nookstain was stopping her from joining Ran in the “dressing like a feminine woman” thing?
My faithless thinkpan, Karkat thought, hands absently landing on her too-flat chest. I’m a fucking coward.
But she didn’t have to be a coward, did she?
You’ll always regret the decisions you don’t make, one of the Bachelors - Noctis - once said…
= carcinoGeneticist has started imaginarily pestering noctisBachelor =
CG: NOCTIS HOW DO I EVEN MAKE THAT DECISION? I CAN’T JUST INITIATE A RAID ON RAN’S CLOTHING-BLOCK TO STEAL HIS PADDED GIRDLES AND CHESTWEIGHT CARRIERS.
NB: Karkat, pally, just ask him for permission.
CG: BUT THAT’S A DAMN DEEP WELL OF EMBARRASSMENT!
NB: Just think of how proud he’ll be if you ask him.
CG: BUT I CAN’T THINK OF A WAY TO ASK HIM THAT DOESN’T SOUND WEIRD OR MAKE ME LOOK LIKE SOME SORT OF SHITBREATH CREEPER WHO WANTS TO COVET HIS OWN CHESTWEIGHTS BECAUSE HIS PUBERTY IS NOT GIVING HIM ANY.
CG: I FEEL LIKE A PERVERTED CRAPSTAIN ASSHOLE WHO WANTS TO DIDDLE HIMSELF FOR SOME SICK PLEASURE.
NB: Karkat, you ain’t a creep, and we both know damn well - you more than me - that you’re a broad, not a fellow. Her, Karkat. Not his. She and her, it’s you.
CG: I JUST CAN’T FEEL LIKE A GIRL WHEN NO ONE BUT YOU GUYS FROM THIS ALTERNATE UNIVERSE CALL ME A GIRL. I JUST CAN’T FEEL LIKE A GIRL WHEN MY FRIENDS SEE ME AS A GUY AND THE REBELLION SEES ME AS SOME OTHER GUY. WHO IS THE BIGGEST FUCKLORD ASSWAD WHO HAS RUINED MY ENTIRE LIFE.
CG: FUCK YOU SIGNLESS
NB: That’s a suitcase ya gotta unpack, dear.
CG: ALONE?
NB: Golly, no.
NB: I gotta go soon, sorry.
NB: But I can tell ya this: trust your pallies. Trust yourself. You’ll only regret the decisions you don’t make.
= noctisBachelor has logged out. =
“Ran!” Karkat called out on top of her lungs, “Raaaaaaan!”