Companions.

Characters: Jack (the trolls one, before he became Slick), Karkat.
Notes: This one is almost half a year old and I can't remember why I wrote it, but I presume it was around the time I was all over Jack + Karkat interactions so. I have a feeling it might not be one hundred percent canon accurate? It follows on the time Jack and Karkat were exploring and beating foes together, following operation regisurp. Beware the crappy.

---

Quite frankly, this was goddamn uncomfortable and absolutely fucking awful on all possible thinkable ways. Too much awful touching, way too cuddly and horribly mushy for his tastes, and the worst part is that he was unable to escape this hellish torture.

This was almost as bad as watching them fucking kissing each other.

He swore he heard that kid gurgling something in his sleep, before enclosing him more on his hold. Perfect. Just what he needed.

He idly wondered if he did something terribly wrong for the universe to punish him this way, because no fucking way this wasn't some kind of sick punishment, being trapped between small arms and the weight of a horned head on his chest that poked at his shell, lithe body pressed up against his as if looking for warm and comfort.

He wasn't warm. And he sure as hell wasn't comforting, as much as the kid would like to believe he was after being slapped out of his shit by yours truly.

It was just business then, just as it is right now, playing as the child's pillow for pure convenience.

He reminds himself of this for the umpteenth time as he watches Karkat's face contort almost painfully on his sleep.

A pang of genuine curiosity and nothing else (really, nothing else) crosses his mind. He wonders for a second if the kid's dreaming of Derse.

He smirks at that a little. Soon, that huge bitch will get what's coming to her--.

Fingers scratching his chest with force enough to be called almost slightly painful interrupt his thoughts.

What the fuck.

He immediately looks down at Karkat while blunt fingers keep on pressuring against his shell, as if wanting to hurt him. He frowns deeply, both at Karkat's distressed expression and his poor attempts to damage him.

He should just wake up the damn kid and end all this goddamn nonsense.

"Hey kid, wake the fuck up."

His words go unnoticed. What a surprise. He tries again, opting for a more physical approach this time by shaking Karkat as nicely as he can, which is not very much so as it is very unceremoniously and rough.

"Goddamn fucking kid," he curses, as he loses what little patience he has very quickly. This approach is not working either, "WAKE THE FUCK UP ALREADY KARKAT!"

Weren't he the one being punished right now with this whole situation, he'd be slightly impressed at the child for still staying deeply asleep even after being so forcefully mistreated into opening his eyes.

As it is, he loses all his patience all together.

Fuck this whole bullshitery.

Karkat jolts right up, screaming at the jolt of pain abruptly "helping" him come almost wide awake. He feels something cold inside one of his sides, as well as something warm but humid oozing from the same spot. After a few seconds, his mind still somewhat sluggish, he figures what just happened.

And then he yells again when Jack nonchalantly extracts his knife from his body.

"What the fuck was that for, Jack?!" he articulates a moment later, now fully aware of all his senses. Almost too much. He wishes sometimes all these constant stabbings would stop. Hurting, that is. He wasn't about to tell Jack to stop stabbing things, even if that meant he would be at the receiving end of most. Stabs were Jack's thing, and a big part of what made him a complete badass.

And there he goes again, digressing from his current situation completely.

Jack's cleaning the blade of his knife, almost absentminded, and looking for all the world as if he hadn't paid attention to whatever Karkat had asked him.

Karkat painfully clenched his teeth, glaring daggers at the black carapace.

"Answer me damnit!"

Jack glared back at him, proving his chest for something he didn't care what, and finally indulged the troll, "You were having a nightmare. So I woke you up."

Karkat stayed still for a second, "What-- But... Why the fuck would you stab me to wake me up?! Couldn't you have just shaken my pathetic little ass? What the hell?!" pressing his hand against the new wound, he tried to stand up, but felt dizzy. He opted to stay put instead, never breaking his concentration on the hard frown he flashed at his dark companion.

"I tried to, you brat. You wouldn't stop trying to pry open my chest with your bare hands for whatever reason so I had to fucking do something."

Silence.

Karkat remembered how Jack was feeling at his chest just moments ago and suddenly everything clicked.

He inwardly cursed at himself and the highly inconvenient need his race had for sopor slime to have peaceful, uneventful sleep. But mostly at himself.

He was the most horrible, ungrateful piece of shit asshole to ever had the curse of existing.

"Don't give me that look kid. You look so fucking pathetic. It makes me sick."

He tried to stop looking apologetic, changing his expression to a deep scowl directed at himself, though Jack wouldn't know, nor care for. He was too busy trying to ignore the young troll, pocketing his blade back and out of plain sight, and purposefully disregarding the red stains covering the floor he walked past by as he made to act as if nothing happened.

Not really hard to do so, when one was Jack.