This wasn't like their normal sex.
That was heady and desperate, frenetic, trembling and sweat-slick, riding the desperate knife-edge of pleasure and pain until orgasm crashed over them in breathless waves. Here, they curled into each other-Karkat's short, compact frame nestled into Sollux's lanky one, buoyed by sopor, heavy and unguarded with sleep.
Gently, Sollux cupped his hand between Karkat's legs-bulge still sheathed, the lips of his nook plump more with sleep than arousal. Karkat let out a tiny, assenting hum and rocked his hips into the touch-just slightly, more for assurance that it was okay than anything. No facades now-whatever this thing they had was, a weird quadrant-bending flush-pale-pitch reacharound, trust featured heavily. Well, most of the time. In the moments when they waxed black and competitive, all bets were off. But moments like this, sleepy early-evening sex where flushed and pale collided in a warm haze of pity and contentment, were sacred.
When Sollux's fingers pressed down against Karkat's bulgeslit, Karkat let out a soft gasp, twitched his hips just a little. Humming, Sollux shifted his grip so that his palm cupped Karkat's bone bulge and the tips of his fingers rested right on the most sensitive part of his slit where the tip of his bulge would emerge from first. He pressed against it, nearly massaging it in quick little movements in time with the pulse he could feel throbbing beneath his fingertips. Karkat mewled softly, squirmed slowly and turned his head to regard Sollux with half-closed eyes hazed with sleepy pleasure.
Humming out a little sigh of his own, Sollux pressed one long, bony thigh between Karkat's, yellow-flushing skin pressing up against Karkat's nook. Karkat squirmed down, little moans catching on every breath, and Sollux mouthed delicately at Karkat's shoulder-right next to the dark bruises he'd sucked into the base of his neck earlier that day; his sounds had been louder and rougher then and tinged with the undirected anger he radiated when fully awake-and reached his other hand to join the first.
The additional rhythmic pressure coaxed a breathy, semicoherent "mmm, Sol," from Karkat, and he pressed harder, faster, Karkat's breath quickening in response.
"Is it good?" Sollux murmured against Karkat's neck, lisp even worse than usual.
Karkat chirred in the back of his throat and whimpered out a soft affirmative. It was amazing how much smaller his voice sounded, how much smaller he was in general-Karkat's presence gave him the impression of the biggest, nastiest motherfucker in the room, but here, like this, he was so much smaller than Sollux, who himself wasn't particularly tall. Not for the first time, Sollux was struck by how precious it was that he was the one who got to know these-the only one who knew what he looked like the perpetual rings beneath Karkat's eyes finally eased, how different he looked without the constant tension thrumming through his entire form, all the intimate hollows of his throat and chest and hips.
Sollux trailed his lips up Karkat's neck, pressed a kiss to the hollow of his jaw, and let one hand slip down to stroke the sensitive membranes of Karkat's nook as he pressed harder, and Karkat tensed, letting out a little cry that almost sounded surprised-surprisingly high-pitched, head flung back, eyes closed so that his thick eyelashes fanned along his cheeks. He came, trembling, in a rush of thin fluid that Sollux knew would be clear except for the faint pink tint of hemochrome, devoid of genetic material-a pointless little orgasm, purely for pleasure.
Karkat let out a long, heavy sigh and sank back against Sollux, a low purr thrumming like a motor in need of tuning deep in his chest. His eyes stayed closed, limbs going slack in the sopor-already half-asleep again.
Sollux shifted to wrap Karkat in a gentle embrace, a purr of his own beginning. Karkat hummed softly and turned his head to press a glancing kiss to Sollux's mouth-he missed, barely catching the corner before settling back down and slipping almost immediately into a deep sleep.
Smiling, Sollux buried his nose in Karkat's thick black hair, between his nubby little horns, and drifted back into slumber.
