Karkat was aware he was pacing. He was also aware he'd been bleeding, and should not have been pacing.
The screaming, also, was totally a conscious decision.
He felt like the naked girl who'd just been a white wolf and the half-naked guy who'd just been a mangled corpse dragged into his barn by a wolf completely deserved it.
The ~magical~ turd-licking fence-fuckers masquerading as his classmates had been sneak-flirting with him for weeks.
"Is my life actually a shitty supernatural romance?! Am I going to develop more special than you powers that somehow never matter half as much as who I fuck? Am I supposed to arbitrate your little game of which one of you is the sexiest alpha male by gracing them with my boy cooch?"
He should have known, shouldn't he? He'd been beside himself ever since he allowed himself to realize that he, the awkward asshole with an unfortunate love affair with Tourette, was being flirted with by, not one hot and popular fellow student, but two.
Granted in such a small, isolated town the pickings were slim, and likely enough they'd known everyone else from childhood. But still.
Jade rolled her eyes at Karkat -- he tried to glare, but peripheral vision was a bitch and her boobs remained gloriously unhidden -- and glanced at Dave, who was lounging on a bale of hay, mangled chest healed but skin still porcelain white underneath the dried red streaks. Karkat briefly felt guilty for screaming. Dave had been dying.
Dave had... fed on him.
"Don't be stupid, I'm totally the alpha male," Jade said, brows quirked. "And that really isn't what we had in mind."
Karkat kicked at a rake, sending it careening off toward the donkey's stall. (Why had his dad decided they needed a donkey. Fucking country life experience.) "Oh, do fucking tell me what you had in mind! Come on, I'm listening, there's no way you guys didn't know each other real well for ages, explain how the fuck I'm not completely incidental in your bout of friendly competition!"
Dave sighed and let himself go lax and prettily posed like he thought he was a consumptive poet from the nineteenth century. (Which, for all Karkat knew, he actually was?!) (His mouth was still red, Karkat could still feel Dave's wet mouth on his neck, Jade's fur against his back.)
"Dude, why are you yelling that you don't want to play a game we're not even playing."
The novels weren't lying about vampire bites. Karkat's pants were jizzed to hell and back. He was too angry to be embarrassed yet. "What the fuck were you playing at then?!"
Jade got up, long legs unfolding and girl crotch holy fuck coming his way, oh hell was she herding him back toward Dave, oh lord, she was.
"Actually," she said with her arms crossed just under her breasts, so Karkat's eyes crossed painfully following their bounce, "we were thinking threesome."
... oh.
"... Oh."
"Yeppers," Dave confirmed languidly from his hay divan.
"Oh."
Okay no, he didn't have enough blood left in his body to blush so hard. He really didn't.
Jade caught his elbow when he swayed, guided him back toward the hay. He sat, a bit heavily, right by Dave's knee. Dave didn't move.
His eyes were impossibly red. Jade's were a rare but not totally unlikely green, only he was pretty sure he'd seen them phosphoresce.
"You okay?" she asked, leaning in to touch her palm to his forehead, brows scrunched in worry.
"Yeah. No. Is that a trick question."
Dave snorted almost silently. Jade grinned, white teeth against dark skin, eyes laughing and fond. She ruffled his hair and he blushed all over again.
He'd been dreaming of daring to hold her hand and ask her out to the next dance. Now he was having his head fondled and his eyes filled with nubile nakedness. (And body hair. Wild. Then again a werewolf with a shaved crotch would have just been too weird.)
(As opposed to a werewolf au naturel! Jesus Mary Joseph, his brain was fucked. Why was her bush black if her tail and ears were white, that was almost more unnatural than the metamorph thing.)
"Penny for your thoughts!"
"Haha I will take them to my grave."
He rubbed his hand over his face, hard. His neck stung.
"So. Urrh. Threesome. Are you guys fucking serious."
"Dude, since when were hot twink sandwiches a laughing matter?"
Karkat gave Dave a jaundiced look. "Since they were potentially hundreds of years jailbaity?"
Dave pursed his mouth at him. "Oi, oi. What's with the stereotypes here. I'm actually your age and most certainly not dead yet, and you're triggering me with this callous mention of my coming undeath and preservation as a hot and classy motherfucker, thank you very much."
Okay, that did make Karkat feel better, for some reason. No creepy experience discrepancy to feel awkward and inferior about. "Oh. Huh. Cool. Were you -- what, born like that? How the hell are you born a vampire, that makes no sense."
Jade sat at Karkat's side, by Dave's shoulder. Fuck but they looked nice together. All... contrasty.
"Let's just say my Bro fucked a lady he should not have, as she happens to be a pretty badass necromancer. Usually he's as good as firing blanks, so he didn't think to wrap it before he used it, and tadahh, death baby."
Jade laughed, ruffled Dave's gelled hair mercilessly; Dave twisted his mouth in an expression Karkat hadn't seen on him in class ever, but which made him look so much more normal, human.
"If he died now he would have risen," Jade told Karkat, voice gone a little more sober, "so he wouldn't have been dead-dead, but being stuck at sixteen for the rest of his life and never growing facial hair would have really sucked, so... Thank you."
Karkat's hand rose to touch his neck unbidden. Even the brush of his own fingers on the bite made him shiver.
"Hey, I don't tease you on your own facial hair, you leave my tragic handicap alone."
"Nope! You have a baby butt face, Dave. Your face is a baby butt."
"No problem," Karkat rasped out, and looked away, unable to watch them banter, so gorgeous and easy together, so... "That threesome. One night stand? Got any more specific plans?"
Not that he was saying yes but he was totally open to hearing about their fantasies. Yep. Having people fantasizing about him was entirely unexpected and completely sexy, yes it was. What the hell had attracted them? His not-pretty face, his okay ass? His potential for virgin whimpers? Hah, joke was on them, he'd given his clumsy embarrassment of a first time to someone else before he even moved here.
He'd probably whimper anyway. Shit, for them to offer something like that he bet they were experienced.
Jade kicked him in the knee. Karkat made a wounded-dog noise and stared at her in betrayal, hugging his abused appendage.
"Yes, we have plans! We have nefarious perverted plans like taking you for ice cream and scones at Grandma Jane's, and then there will be movies!" She glared, leaned into him to poke his chest with a pointed finger. He spluttered. "And then we will walk you home and kiss you goodnight and sneak notes in class and go walking in the woods and go shooting--"
"He might not know how to handle a gun, Harley," Dave cautioned. She snorted.
"I'll teach him! Everyone should know how to safely handle a good rifle, if only so you don't shoot your ear off when you club people over the head."
Dave looked at Karkat, shrugged one shoulder as if to say sorry, I tried.
"I, uh. I don't know how to handle a gun. My dad's kind of. You know, a huge peacenik." He wet his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. "I guess I wouldn't mind learning."
Jade beamed at him. Even Dave looked like he was smiling a little, though his mouth was still a flat line so Karkat wasn't too sure where he got that impression.
"Wait, I want to mention that sneaky makeouts and gropes behind the bleachers are also totally on this program. I feel this wholesomeness is not representative of the full experience we offer heremrphh."
Jade rolled her eyes at Karkat, hand still on Dave's mouth. The vampire's red eyes crossed. A laugh burst out of Karkat's throat despite himself.
"Yeah, I'd figured." He let himself grin. Not just something physical, kinky. They liked him.
(Not that a little kink in his life would hurt any. Hey, he was sixteen.)
He reached cautiously with both hands, had to shuffle his ass to turn in his seat -- wow, the suave meter had just hit negative twenty -- took Dave's cool hand and Jade's rough-fingered one. Squeezed, a little, shyly.
They squeezed back. Jade's eyes had gone crinkled up like happy half-moons and he'd be damned if Dave's cheeks weren't going oh so slightly pink. Karkat just sat there holding their hands and developing scoliosis in his lower back from refusing to let go to reposition himself.
"So uh, on a scale of one to herpes, where do you put werewolfism and bloodsuckerism?"
Jade snorfled. "Lycanthropy is hereditary, so you're pretty safe from me! And Dave really would have to be trying to turn you, I mean like deliberately feed you his own blood ten nights in a row kind of trying."
"Yeah, and it might be cool to have a pretty twink at hand for the centuries to come but I kinda think you'd dump me for being a high-handed asshole before I even died my own self. ... Also I'm reasonably sure I can't turn anyone yet, but I'd have to ask Bro."
Karkat nodded. Okay. It might be stupid to take them at their word, but he just... Yeah, no, he totally was taking them at their word. He thought he would know if they lied to him, but they weren't, they hadn't been, ever.
"I'm not going to develop previously unnoticed improbable powers at some point, am I?"
"No worries, you're one hundred percent pure human juice." Dave licked his lips with a bit too much sensuality, dropped his voice half a ridiculous octave. "Delicious human juice."
Jade elbowed Dave in the shoulder. "Yeah, and you smell totally normal to me! Not delicious at all! Okay a little delicious but in a purely lickey-no-bitey way."
"Huh." He let Jade's hand go so he could turn to face her and cross his legs, and then took it again. Dave's thumb was rubbing circles into the side of his thigh. "I'm sort of bummed, actually. I was almost reconciled to bearing insane swag."
Dave pinched his legs, mock-disappointed. "Oh, young Padawan. With great power--"
"Dave Assbutt Strider, if you mangle that quote--"
He watched them bicker for a minute, and then he drew two fistfuls of hay from the bale and threw them in their faces.
(After that they made out a little but Jade's naked Jadeness and Dave's handsiness meant Karkat was almost grateful when the hungry donkey's racket attracted his dad, and his boyfriend and girlfriend had to cut and run in the finest teenage tradition.)