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Right after the bell rang Karkat yelled across the classroom:
“Sollux! What the fuck did you have on the last two questions!”
He didn’t have to yell of course. His voice was loud and incisive enough as it was.
Sollux’ back tensed for a moment- he sat very still while the other students pushed their notebooks into their satchels and twaddled on. He had only reached out for his pencil case, as if to make sure that it was still there. Karkat watched him as he gave himself a start and sweeped his other possessions into his bag, avoiding the benevolent smile of their math teacher, the doughy dips of the corners of his mouth.
Sollux passed Karkat at the door and pushed the exam papers at him.
“See for yourself.”
They had P.E next, so Karkat sat down in the locker room and bit on his fountain pen, while eyeing Sollux’ writing and the many marks of the teacher.
“I know you got them right! Just spit it out, do you have to use a matrix there?”
“Oh god, KK, really? Cancel and use the bionial theorem, it’s mostly correct transfering.” Sollux said ploddingly.
Karkat turnt to look at him and gaped. “What the sacriligous fuck are you wearing?”
The others laughed and Sollux rolled his eyes weakly. Karkat threw up his hands, clearly disgusted.
“I thought we said the school sport uniforms are for shit head and pedophiles! They’re voluntary, where’s your freaking dignity!!”
Sollux straightened out his shorts in defiance.
The shirt was alright, although somewhat stiff and in a weird shade of green, but the shorts were definitely short, short and black. The two of them had had some fun belittling them. They made you look like a freshmen or worse, a primary school pupil.
“Why don’t you wear stars and stripes trunks like Spitz while you’re at it!”
“Shut it, first of all ‘s none of your business. Secondly I know for a fact that you have the hots for Spitz.”
Karkat snarled and punched his shoulder- even a playful accusation of being gay was too much in this locker room.
If Sollux now saw the need to suck up to stupid, implied school etiquettes to fit in, then. Karkat didn’t know for sure what would happen then, but it didn’t feel right.
And damn Mark Spitz, damn him for his attractive moustache.
---
Summer meant long distance running this year, so the PE teacher made them run rounds over the campus and through the surrounding area to a nameless hill- compassing the street leading to their school, the parking lot, the fields, the old bridge and the way back school.
Like always, Karkat pushed forward. No, he wasn’t a good runner. He had stamina, but he lacked a steady pace. The moment he deemed somebody in front of him not worthy he picked up speed and shot ahead. Sooner or later though, round after round, the others would overtake Karkat again - who would sweat and mutter curses under his breath and just get more scant of breath, until he could barely breath at the end.
However today would be different. He passed the bulk of his class mates, he outpaced John and Dave, Daniel and Erik. For the rest of the first round he managed to jog steadily, but not without looking over his shoulder a few times. He reached the dusty road between the corn fields a second time. And there he saw Sollux, more strolling than jogging really, shoulders hunched.
It was wrong. It was too soon. Karkat could do that math perfectly.
Sollux was a bundle of sticks who prefered sitting at a desk to fresh air; he might cough and wheeze afterwards, but Karkat was never twice as fast as Sollux. Not even right at the start.
Karkat gave him a kick at the left shin while overtaking him. Sollux yelped, but Karkat didn’t look back. After a few hundred meters he reached the shade of the small wood. The Sollux he had run past in the corn field, punched against green and dusty yellow, might as well have been a ghost.
It made Karkat mad. The black shorts also drove him mad, but in different ways.
---
The teacher had stood before Sollux, handing out the written exam papers individually.
“You did well, but you should give more thought to the shape and not only the strict content. Really, it’s a shame.” Sollux had looked down on his mark, which gave him a score of 7 points less than perfect. Fourth best overall.
He spread the sheets to look through his mistakes, but he knew that in the eyes of his teachers, they were already written across Sollux’ face - its shape and also the shape and colour of his eyes, the texture of his hair, the tone of his skin. His name. His parents and their parents before them. They all couldn’t possibly bring forth somebody who did better in algebra than a class of perfectly American children. And so the teacher had corrected Sollux’ exam, nagged here and there until it was seven points less than perfect.
---
Karkat ran around the tree-lined hill and crossed under the bridge. He got slower but steadier in pace, not really admitting the reason to himself. It took another two rounds like that before seeing Sollux’ back again. Karkat’s face and the hollow of his skull felt hot and dry. He stretched his hand out. He wanted to smack Sollux’ goddamn shorts cladded butt. Instead he raised his palm and let it smack against the back of Sollux’ head. It nearly sent his glasses flying.
“What the fuck is wrong with you!?” Sollux cried out.
He raised a fist. He was ready to totally karate chop Karkat or whatever kind of material art move he must have mastered behind the dark desk of his father’s shop. Then he kicked Karkat’s knee and shoved him into the bush.
“Augh- BLI- nnnwhy you enormous-“
“You-“
“Shoved me into the fucking vegetation-“
“Why you shit squirting asshole, my glasses-“
“Sorry! I’m sorry about your glasses, okay! I missed- I wanted to- ugh, fuck the sentence I’m saying.”
Sollux gave him another frustrated shove when Karkat tried to stand up.
“It’s time out for the asshole. Asshole time out.”
Karkat stayed put, catching his breath. They waited until a group of their class mates had passed them. “
"You weren’t running properly, you were dragging your sorry ass on the road like a sausage dog with an infected asshole! You can’t- pull a fish out of the pond like that, wallowing in self-pity.”
Sollux groaned.
“Did you just make that up, that’s not even a real saying, not even in Ireland.”
Karkat flushed. People thought he was Irish because he got sun burns easily.
That and because it said so in his fake pass port. He stood up, testing his leg. “Now I can’t jog anymore.” Sollux regarded it before turning away.
“Oh, fucking eat me. You kicked me in the shins first!” Karkat gave him another little kick, aiming for the bruise. Sollux flinched before letting him nudge it with the tip of his shoe. Karkat wasn’t sure what the other thought about it. Probably not the same as Karkat. Everything he wanted was to press the bruise lovingly with his thumb.
“Wanna ditch these miserable low lifes and take a short cut over the hill?”
Sollux looked into the distance. “…Eh, sure. I’ve pretty much had it.”
They squeezed themselves through the bushes and the trees. Sollux sheepishly held back a branch to let Karkat through, who went ahead and trampled down a way through the stinging nettles for him. They didn’t say anything, like they had revealt too much.
They reached the meadowy slope of the hill. A cooling breeze came up, drying the sweat on their foreheads. The trees all around them swayed and rustled. Sollux let out a shakey sigh and sank down to the grass. Somebody must have mowed it not too long ago.
Karkat thought it would be time to address at least one of the two pressing topics.
“I know you had every answer right. I could see that much! The numbers just fell into place on your paper.”
Sollux considered that for a moment, before snorting bitterly.
“Congratulations! Get in line with the people who know I’m a fucking genuis and don’t give more than a condescending shit drop.”
He corrected himself. “Well, okay, you’re not the same, I guess. You’re your own special brand of idiot who should get their own commercial with Mar-“
“SHUT UUUUP!”, Karkat cried out. Really, could he be any less subtle, reminding him of that guy again?
“Which mark did you manage anyway?”, Sollux asked while crossing his legs.
“B, which stands for brilliant people who actually have a life… and fifth.” Sollux made an acknowledging noise. Maybe it was just a sign that he had heard him, because it was too hot to talk too much. Karkat felt giddy anyway.
They swapped Sollux' water bottle, drinking by turns and deliberately spitting into it to gross the other out.
“We might as well kiss if we exchange so much fucking spit.”, Sollux grunted and Karkat laughed sarcastically as if he had made a very funny quip.
There was a pause before Karkat took a heart and actually leant over to kiss Sollux.
It wasn’t the first time they had kissed and they had jerked each other off even before that. They both liked other people, girls, as well.
Which was, of course, easier when you wanted to go to the cinema with someone, hold their hand and bring them back home at ten thirty.
They hadn’t taken the growing intimacy between them very seriously. Or at least tried to keep it as casually as a strictly secret affair could be. With time it was easier to kiss and fumble around occasionally when they were alone to work some intensity off.
They proceeded to swap spit before Karkat moved to stand up. Sollux nibbled back on his lips before letting go. It made Karkat sentimental so he patted Sollux' shoulder like a good sport.
“Don’t let him tell you anything, that miserable asshole rots here in this shitty high school, while you’ll go on to bigger, fatter things. Tell him to eat your horrible shorts!”
“And which part of me should somebody eat who kicks my shin?”, Sollux was grinning way too wide.
“ …oh for god sake Soo.” Karkat gnawed his teeth and rubbed his face. They would have to explain their absence later, but fuck it. This was something they both wanted now. Even when the banter beforehand was embarassing as fuck.
“I’ll eat your fucking shorts! See it as cosmical justice.“
Sollux laughed again before going quiet when Karkat actually kneeled in front of him.
After a minute or two the hay pricked his bare knees and it got tidious to envelop and suck on Sollux’ crotch through his shorts- forming a wet patch, which made Karkat’s gut coil and his mouth dry.
Sollux made a strong, altbeit rather flustered case for “impaired cock bumping frottage”.
“This is - fuck!”, Karkat moaned. “Oh yes!”, answered Sollux hoarsly, or maybe he wasn’t really directly answering.
Maybe he was just approving of the general situation, the blue sky, the grass against his back (which should have pricked him into some sensible parts as well), the added friction between his ball sacks and Karkat’s. They kept at it, humping each other like stupid rabbits in the hot and scented fields, while their unwitting class mates were careeing about in a big circle around the hill, under the old bridge and back to school.