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Rustblood Summer	By : Worlds_First_Ghost Category: Web Comics > Homestuck Views: 460 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Homestuck, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Rustblood Summer
- 1
Waves of heat rippled across the purple sky like a sheer curtain, smothering the lawnrings below in a blanket of static aridity. The sun was nowhere in sight, yet its torrid rays scorched the land with no regard to the darkened sky and twin moons in plain view. This sort of muggy, unwelcome climate was uncharacteristic of the Alternian dark season. However, it was a common enough phenomenon for trolls to have a variety of names to refer to it specifically. The most popular one was also the most disparaging, often grumbled throughout the higher rungs of society: Rustblood Summer. No weather pattern was more reviled among trolls because it spoiled what was normally the most active time of any given solar sweep. The chance to enjoy an extended reprieve from the dreaded sun had to be spent indoors. While the conditions were not as dangerous as when the sun was in the sky, the heat was such that anyone who wasn’t a rainbow drinker would be sent scampering for shelter after a minute’s exposure. It was never certain how long a Rustblood Summer could last. It could linger for as little as a few days, or it could devour the remainder of the season, all while the planet’s inhabitants stewed in their hives and bemoaned their lost plans for fun and jubilation.
Vriska rolled her shoulders and let her jacket fall off her back. She dragged a hand across her forehead, wiping away a freshly laid layer of sweat. Through the checkered array of windows, she had a full view of the surrounding lawnrings and the shimmering sky overhead. Every door in the suburb was sealed shut to escape the miserable weather. Aside from the lights shining through their windows, there wasn’t a trace of life to be found. The mechanical joints of her middle finger went rigid and she jutted her whole arm out the window. It wouldn’t get rid of the heat, but she needed to show her contempt for it somehow.
“Uuuuuuuugh! What is up with this weather? I think it’s even hotter than it was yesterday. No, yeah, it totally is hotter!” With a snarl, she pivoted toward the only other person in the room. “Turn on the air conditioner, Karkat, I’m roasting like grub loaf over here.”
The computer monitor surrounded Karkat’s hunched form with a glimmering, blue-white halo. His face remained fixed on the screen, making no motion to acknowledge Vriska’s whining. “First off, your majesty, it’s called a gelidity circulator. Secondly, it’s broken right now.”
“Then fix it! This is unbearable!”
“Oh alright. I’ll be sure to do that once they start handing out replacement parts for free.”
“Why are you so stupidly poor? It’s pathetic! If I had known I was going to be wasting away in this oven, I would’ve stayed home.”
“Yeah, I wish you would’ve done just that.” As if he had just noticed the stifling atmosphere of the room, Karkat tugged the collar of his long sleeved shirt. “Why are you here anyway?”
Vriska’s single eye lingered on the boy in front of her for a few silent seconds before she rolled her gaze back toward the window. She wasn’t about to let Karkat know that she was only spending time with him because she was bored. Vriska Serket did not get bored. Boredom implied surrendering to passivity, to leave things up to chance. Everything she did was to be deliberate. She planned all her moves eight steps ahead. Even an outing to Karkat’s hive, unusual as it was for her, was the end result of careful planning.
Nobody played FLARP during a Rustblood Summer. In harsh conditions like these, not even the game’s most insane thrill-seekers were willing to go outside and run a session. Vriska herself might be willing to brave it if she could rope some unlucky victim into playing with her, but in the meantime she was trapped in her furnace of a hive. The only companion she had was her cantankerous, hungry lusus, who was much more interested in food than conversation. Fortunately, the big beast kept stockpiles in her web to subsist on during emergency situations like these, so there was no pressure for Vriska to endure the elements in search of food. This did little to soothe her fraying nerves, though. The lack of company and being confined at home made her stir crazy. Talking on Trollian wouldn’t satisfy her; she needed real, physical contact with another troll. Going to visit one of her friends would do the trick, but the intolerable weather made it so that if she traveled to one of their hives, she would be stuck there until the heat dwindled enough for her to make a safe return home. She had to plan her trip out carefully and choose a target who she wouldn’t want to strangle after only a few hours.
Karkat was an unlikely candidate to fulfill that need, but it made sense when compared to her other options. He was the only one in her friend group who either didn’t have a grudge against her or wasn’t completely insane. The only obstacle would be getting him to agree to hang out with her. It was no secret that he didn’t like her. In every regard except his mysterious blood color, he was transparent. His thoughts were broadcasted openly in his characteristic aggression and arrogance, and while he fancied himself as a hardened chess master and natural leader, it would be easier than anything for her to manipulate him into diving out of the window and leave him as a mess on his own lawnring. There was no challenge in pushing him around, but by the same virtue, there was no other troll she could goad into reacting so explosively. If she was forced to spend a night in any of her friends’ hives, who better to pick than the one who could make her laugh on a dime?
“Well, oooooooobviously it wasn’t to visit you!” The locks of Vriska’s sweat-drenched hair smacked her skin as she tossed them over her shoulder. “I was running a session with some chump out here in the sticks when it started to get insufferably hot. Fortunately, your hive was in the area. So here I am, getting a momentary reprieve from the heat. As soon as it gets a little cooler, I’ll be loooooooong gone.”
A likely story, Karkat reflected. He had found her standing on his porch, her baggy clothes sodden with sweat. She had worn her usual cocky smirk, but the desperation for shelter hiding inside her sneering eye was unmistakable. He would’ve shut the door in her face if it didn’t mean condemning her to burn alive. As much as he’d try to tell her otherwise, he’d never let her roast out there.
“Why would you even try playing your shitty game in this weather anyway?” Karkat asked. “It’s obvious to anyone with a functioning lobe stem and a basic understanding of seasonal climate that this heat isn’t going to fade any time soon.”
“Man, I know! But it was pretty cool around sunset, so I was really hoping things would normalize. Just my luck that this happened to me!”
“Right, your self-described terrible luck that is totally the result of some unseen force and has nothing to do with your monumental stupidity and critical lack of good judgment. Say, doesn’t this guy you said you’re playing with live around here? Why don’t you go give him a headache instead of subjecting me to this sponge-pulverizing inanity?”
“Ugh, no way! He’s the absolute worst. The only time I can ever stand him is when I’m knocking his ass to the ground with my expert FLARPing skills.”
“Oh yeah? What’s his name? I might’ve run into him before if he lives around here.”
“He’s nobody you of all people would know! Can you give it a rest with the prying already? Give me a break!”
Karkat swiveled his chair around so he could face his increasingly unpleasant guest. “I already opened my door for you. You seem to be pushing me to kick your ass out if you keep up the attitude.”
“You’re not really going to send me out on my way, right?” Vriska flapped her hand against her cheek dramatically. “Open your sanguine pump, Karkat! I think I might just melt if I go outside.”
“It’d really suit a witch like you if you just melted away.”
“Fuck off! You have to let me stay. I know that you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself otherwise. Am I riiiiiiiight?”
A twinge shot across Karkat’s eyelid before he turned back to his computer. “Fine, fine. Just until it cools off a little, okay?”
“Sounds great!” Vriska clapped her fingertips together in overwrought enthusiasm. The rapid slapping of flesh on metal banged against Karkat’s eardrums.
“Knock that off!” He stuck a finger in his ear, twisting it until the internal ringing ceased. “Go ahead and find something to keep yourself occupied. Just so long as it doesn’t concern me.”
With victory secured, Vriska hoisted herself to her feet to snoop around Karkat’s respiteblock. Posters of movies that she’d never seen before plastered the walls. They were all romantic comedies, a genre she had zero interest in, and she sneered as her gaze passed over the faces of lowbrow comics like Troll Adam Sandler. She’d make a snide remark about them to Karkat, but she didn’t want to chance setting him off into a rant about how impeccable he believed his taste in movies was. It also wasn’t worth testing his patience again so soon after his overworked nerves finally cooled off.
A tall bookcase stood in the far corner of the block. The top shelves contained mostly texts about coding and programming languages. Their spines were all coated in thick layers of dust, most of them only having been touched on the days he bought them. Scanning down the rows revealed guidebooks for video games, magazines, and a few psychology textbooks. The only casual reading material was a smattering of romance novels. None of them contained adventure or high stakes, things she found crucial to a good story. They were all sappy, clichéd rags trotting out the same array of faceless stock characters and derivative plots. For someone who fancied himself as scholarly, Karkat’s library was dry and shockingly narrow.
It was only after giving up on the shelf that Vriska found a book that caught her interest. A block of white pages about eight inches thick sat on top of a dresser beside Karkat’s recuperaoon. The massive tome took up more than half of the dresser’s width. The symbols for each of the romantic quadrants were printed on its otherwise solid black cover. How lurid, Vriska thought. She would have never guessed that there might be a sensual part of Karkat hidden inside his crusty, ill-mannered carapace.
“What’s this?” she asked, her mechanical index finger pointing at the book.
Karkat’s eyes followed the finger, a self-conscious cough slipping out of his mouth once they reached the book. He had been skimming through some of its contents last night and forgot to put it away. Getting out of his chair and walking towards the dresser, he hefted the leather-bound tome to his chest with a soft grunt.
“It’s the Comprehensive Compendium of Quadratic Courtships and Romantic Convolutions. It’s a bit wordy, but it’s an invaluable supplement for the rest of my collection. I suppose I’d be hard-pressed to define it as anything less than a classic.”
“It’s a little unbecoming of you to leave your erotic reading material out in the open like this, especially when you knew you’d have company over.”
“First off, I planned on spending the day in peaceful solitude. It’s not my fault you barged in on me without any warning. Secondly, you fantastic moron, this isn’t smut. It’s a thought-provoking, purely academic piece. Though, I can see that its subject matter is clearly too sophisticated for your juvenile sponge to process. Maturity is a necessary requirement to be able to form a deep interest in this field.”
“Gee, look how interested I am.” Vriska put a hand to her mouth to muffle a forced yawn. It was yet another textbook broadcasting Karkat’s innate blandness. The provocative symbols simply belied its true nature.
“You should be, because it’s seriously fascinating as all hell.”
Karkat opened the book to a random spot, tilting it toward Vriska in an invitation to read. Vriska relented and stepped closer to view its contents more easily. The text was in such a small font that she had to squint in order to see it properly. Black words ran down off-white pages in unending columns of technical jargon and pseudo-philosophical drivel. As she forced herself down each paragraph, everything would blur further together in a grey haze and constantly keep her trying to reassert her focus. The strain pooled in the back of her good eye’s socket, squeezing it like a yellow grape until the pressure made her jerk her head away from the book.
“This is so booooooooring.” Vriska took off her glasses and rubbed a closed fist against her throbbing eye to relieve some of the strain.
“Typical,” Karkat huffed, pulling the book away from her and hugging it to his chest. “I knew this stuff would go way over your head.”
“It’s not that! The words are so small I can hardly read any of it.”
“I can read them just fine. You’re just making excuses. I bet if I read you a passage from it, the intricacies would still be lost on a clinical retard like you.”
“Oh yeah?” Her spine stiffened as she threw her arms across her chest.” Prove it then. Read me some of it.”
Karkat did a double take between her and the book. “Are you serious? You really want me to read to you?”
“What’s the matter? Afraid to put your money where your festering protein chute is? Maybe you’re just scared to find out that I’m not as dumb as you pretend I am and your paper-thin ego will burst into flames.”
“Oh sure, and I can’t wait for the endless commentary you’ll provide on how fucking bored you are. Look, I already know you don’t give a shit about any of this. I’m not going to waste my time being insulted.”
“Oh my God, Karkat! You’re so sensitive! I promise I won’t make fun of you, okay? I’ll be totally well behaved, like back during schoolfeeding.”
Karkat had doubts that Vriska was anything resembling a model student back during her schoolfeeding days. She was only trying to bait him into another exchange so she could make fun of him like always. However, sincere or not, it was an invitation to share his wisdom, and he’d be remiss if he passed up the opportunity. Even if Vriska was ultimately disinterested, he clung to the foolish strand of hope that there was a slight chance that she was open to learn. Maybe if he was lucky, some of his words could break through her thick skull.
“Okay, but no interrupting, or I swear I will throw you out the window and watch with unbridled glee as you fry to a crisp.” Karkat returned to his seat and opened the book. He was already in the middle of the latest of many rereads, so he would just resume from where he left off from last night. Flipping through the pages until he found his bookmark, he decided to start from the top of the chapter. “Chapter 88: The–”
“Ooooooooh! I’m into it already.” Vriska rolled her shoulders and leaned back against the wall, a grin stretched across her face. Not that she was actually interested. There wasn’t anything else to do other than let Karkat run his mouth until the temperature dropped off. She could at least pluck out some nuggets from the pretentious drivel he’d be dishing out and use it as ammunition for a later time.
Karkat rolled his eyes and resumed. “… The Corporal Realm of the Flushed Quadrant. In this chapter we explore the array of intimate, physical interactions two flushed partners may indulge in…”
Vriska’s eyelid drooped as her muscles decompressed, stretching her limbs out from her body. While the dry and clinical material did nothing to intrigue her, Karkat’s enthusiasm was palpable and it reflected in his reading voice. It was oddly soothing how he trod along the passages. Each sentence was meticulously read, emphasis placed carefully throughout on key terms to ensure that she wouldn’t get lost. Never monotonous or forced, he maintained a relaxing rhythm that allowed the information to reach her naturally and effectively. This wasn’t anything like when he’d rave about this sort of thing over Trollian. His walls of text were easy to ignore and be dismissed as the product of a deranged, out of touch fanatic. Now she could hear his passion. It was the missing component to make all this nonsense comprehendible. It had hooked itself into her and she couldn’t pull away even if she wanted to.
Another page crinkled to the side as Karkat trudged through the chapter. The scorching air from the outside seeped into the room, accumulating into a searing weight that pressed down on the two trolls. Sweat glued Vriska’s t-shirt to her skin, making it impossible to concentrate on Karkat’s droning cadence. “Wait a second. Hold on!”
Karkat’s eyes shot up from the page. Visible annoyance flickered in his glare upon his reading being interrupted. “What?”
“Give me a second. I’m burning up in here and I gotta get more comfortable.”
Peeling the sodden shirt from her torso, Vriska wormed her head and arms out of the holes before throwing it onto the ground with a wet thump. Her bra clung tightly to her modest breasts. Twiggy and awkward she may be, but there was still a natural feminine beauty to her form. It was hard to believe that such a fragile-looking body could belong to a troll as deadly as her. The only distraction was the lumpy mass of scar tissue emerging from her left shoulder. Like a chunk of blue, overcooked grub loaf, it served as a scabrous buffer between her sweat-smeared skin and the glistening metal of her artificial arm. While technically elegant and well-designed, the fusion of steel and flesh was an unfortunate sight that she rarely allowed other trolls to see. There was no reason for her to be guarded around Karkat, though. Judging from the way he fought to avert his gaze, he was more self-conscious in this situation than she was.
“Don’t make a mess in your pants, Karkat,” she said, her tone playful rather than overtly mocking. Her words made him stiffen and jerk his head to the side. She couldn’t help but cackle. “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me this is your first time seeing a half-naked lady?”
“That matter is none of your fucking business,” he snarled. He rubbed his ear, stinging from her laughter.
It was obvious that it was, even without peering into his mind, but Vriska didn’t press the subject. She returned to her seated position, her spine curving back as she stretched her body out to its full length. “Hey, whatever. I don’t really care anyway. Keep reading.”
Once the last of the trembles dissipated off of his body, Karkat threw his gaze back at the pages. Sweat continued to stream over his forehead. He often paused to rub his sleeve across his face, its thick material sucking up the moisture like a woolen sponge. Although Vriska would like to convince herself otherwise, he wasn’t sweating out of embarrassment. The inside of his shirt must be like a sauna.
“Take your shirt off already,” she chirped, interrupting a passage comparing and contrasting the definitions for a caress and a stroke. “I know for a fact that it can’t be comfortable for you.”
“Fuck off. I’m fine.” Karkat buried his face deeper into the pages, hoping to avoid the subject.
“You’re sweating like a hogbeast! Why don’t you wear something more comfortable?”
Karkat pointed to his shorts as if they were the most obvious thing in the room.
Vriska’s eye rolled so far back that it might pop out of its socket. “Those don’t count! Take the damn shirt off.”
“I said I’m fine!”
Vriska lifted herself off the ground, rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms casually before leaping toward Karkat. She seized the hem of his shirt and pulled up. Karkat resisted, thrashing his arms and kicking at his assailant.
“Fuck you, get off of me!” he hollered, his shoes knocking against her shins.
Vriska yelped and renewed her efforts despite the repeated pain stabbing her legs. “You idiot! I’m only trying to help you!”
After a minute of flailing limbs and angry curses, Vriska finally yanked the shirt from off of his head. She chucked it to the far side of the respiteblock, a triumphant smirk stretching across her face. Karkat glowered at her with his arms crossed over his bare chest. His body type could be described as perfectly average. He had the metabolism to keep himself at a comfortable size, but his lack of physical exercise left a thin layer of fat covering whatever muscle he had. The rough carapace he tried so hard to shield himself with was all bluster and words. He was soft, but Vriska had a preference for soft boys.
“There!” Vriska eyed her prize with a victorious sneer. “Does that feel better?”
Karkat huffed, screwing his face to disguise the relief he felt from his damp skin being able to breathe.
“Now that that’s all over with, let’s keep reading.” Rather than returning to her spot, Vriska slunk around behind his chair. Hopefully she could get a better look at the pages from this position.
The book had fallen to the ground during the scuffle. Karkat patted his moist torso before picking up the book and retaking his place. “… Massages are an ideal intimate exercise for flushed partners to engage in. The most common area for massage is the torso. One partner can stimulate the other’s back, ribs, and shoulders.”
Vriska’s hands crept over the back of the chair as he read. Her fingers pressed onto his shoulders, which went rock solid under her feather touch. “Like this?”
Breath hissed through Karkat’s clenched teeth. The contrast between the warmth of her natural hand and the coldness of her mechanical fingers was sensory overload on his bare skin. “What… what do you think you’re doing?” His tone was void of his usual anger. A shroud of confusion and a tinge of unease kept his voice breathy and quiet.
“Call it applied learning. You’ve been talking for a long time now, and I wanted to try putting it into practice.”
Like a roughened slab of granite, Karkat’s overly rigid frame appeared unmalleable. Fortunately for Vriska, she was never one to back down from a challenge. She eased her fingers against his tense flesh, fanning them out to cover as much area as possible. His skin was smooth, even with all the knots and lumps underneath. All the passages and jargon Karkat had been rattling out from before swirled in her mind, and she struggled to recall what to do in this situation. Target the underlying muscles, use deliberate, confident motions… Not everything stuck to her, so most of the time she was relying on gut instinct. As she explored the expanse of his back with as gentle a touch as she could manage, Karkat fidgeted and squirmed like each of her fingers was a razor blade slicing into him.
“Would you just relaaaaaaaax? Man, I’m only trying to make you feel good.”
“Having your twitchy appendages molest my body is a far cry from what I’d call relaxing.”
“Well, if you feel that way…” Vriska started to pull her hands off of him, halting once Karkat’s hand seized her wrist.
“Wait a second. I didn’t say you needed to stop.”
Her lips curled in a wordless smirk. With his permission she resumed, bolder than before. She slid her hands down to his sides, her fingers drumming along his ribcage like a xylophone. The words Karkat tried to form got lost in the sea of moans spilling from his mouth. The book fell out of his lap, the impact creating a shockwave that shook every item in the room. Vriska pressed her nose to one of the vertebrae in his neck, nuzzling her forehead against his mop of scraggly hair. A pungent shock of cologne rose above the faint mist of salty sweat coating him from top to bottom. The cheap, alcohol-heavy odor was almost enough to make her cough, so she pulled her head back a little. “Is that cologne? Why’d you put that on if you weren’t expecting company?”
“I like the way it smells, alright?” An oddly defensive answer.
“It stinks.”
“Screw you.”
There were less of these attempts at conversation as the minutes passed. The heat radiating off the two sweaty bodies only contributed to the room’s increasingly sweltering temperature. It was enough to cook Karkat’s brain inside of his skull. The heat was making him delirious, and combined with the ministrations of Vriska’s fingers and her forceful yet tender strokes, even the act of thinking was a gargantuan task. He allowed himself to get lost in the haze, keeping him blind of everything other than the melting sensation of the pounds of stress sloughing off his shoulders. He hardly registered when Vriska was no longer behind him, instead shifting spots to sit on his lap. Once it became clear that she was expecting him to return the treatment, his trembling hands gripped her shoulders. The wounded one was coarse and wrapped in a layer of scars. A wince rocked Vriska’s body once he touched her there, but she relaxed back into him after a moment’s hesitation. He made sure to be delicate in handling the scabrous tissue, only to caressing it lightly while he treated her other shoulder to a more conventional massage. Nothing he did would be able to pierce that hide, but he was gentle all the same. Unlike her, he had fully comprehended the methods listed in his book over the course of countless rereads. It was a surreal experience to finally put those words into practice, but through the humid fog and Vriska’s barely contained moans, he was able to find his footing.
With the humid fog coalescing around them, they soon grew tired of moving and found it easier to just lay still. Their damp, clammy bodies spooned together atop the chair. Sweat dissipated off their skin as soon as the droplets formed. Puffs of their panting breath rose up in clouds, joining the sultry mist that hung over them. Karkat’s eyes rolled down to the troll on top of him, her svelte form trying to fit onto his lap by curling into as compact a shape as she could manage. He stroked her hair, letting his fingers get stuck in the snags and matted knots.
“So… what does this make us?” Karkat asked. A splinter of pain shot through his horn as Vriska flicked it with her finger.
“You’re the romance expert. You tell me.”
“Ow! Bitch!” Karkat cupped his horn tenderly. “Well, if we’re being honest here, I’ve probably exhausted enough romantic insight on you that even your damaged sponge must have retained at least a fraction of information. So feel free to offer your interpretation, however nescient it might be.”
“Hey, hey!” Vriska tossed her hair over her shoulder, hoping it would distract him from the blush rising in her cheeks. “There’s no need to speed through this whole thing at once, right? Why not space these lessons out a bit?”
“Yeah, that sounds fine.” Karkat nestled back into the chair as he mopped off a layer of sweat off his brow. “We can talk about it another time.”
“Do you think you’ll have your air conditioner fixed by then?”
“I doubt it.”
Vriska huffed and nestled closer to Karkat’s slick chest. Through the salt and musty cologne, she breathed in his scent. Though she may act like she’d never set foot in this oven of a hive, she’d put up with it as long as he was in there with her.
- 1
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Rustblood Summer