#jade x karkat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fallenasleepyetagain · 11 months

Text

Vivi - Jade/Karkat Fic

Prompt: Pet/Child Acquisition

Prompt from @yearoftheotpevent

Media: Homestuck

Genres: Post-sburb, established relationship, fluff, hurt comfort, quadrants, ship kid

Characters: Jade Harley, Karkat Vantas, Vivian Harley-Vantas (OC), various carapacians

Pairings: Jade <> Karkat

CW/TW - None!

Word Count: 2769

The room was cute, Karkat couldn’t deny that. It was a fairly large room, big enough to supply the kid for their whole life. He and Jade made a compromise on the style of the room, since she wanted a bright and colorful room, while he wanted something more muted. Not completely monochromatic, but not blinding him with neons. The walls were an off-black, almost pastel if black could be pastel. The floor had the same light hardwood floor that the rest of the house had, and there was a striped rainbow carpet draped over the majority of the floor. The rest of the nursery was a mixture of Jade’s rainbow accessories and Karkat’s white and gray furniture pieces. It all came together really nice, much to his surprise. Jade was currently hoving a few feet off of the ground, putting up string lights and rainbow triangle banners.

In the center of the room, there was a crib. It was the centerpiece of the room, really. Karkat walked over to it, and looked down into it, hand resting on the dark wood. He looked down into it, where his new child would sleep. The thought was overwhelming. On the bookshelves were books suited for the next three years of a child’s life. There were toys, most of them designed for sensory play or to keep a baby entertained while the parents tried to get some sleep. His heart began to race and his palms grew sweaty. To see it all, right in front of him, was making his anxiety spike.

“Jade?” He sputtered, his raspy voice breaking the silence. Her white ears twitched and she turned around, floating down and joining him next to the crib.

“What’s up?” She smiled at him, her bright green eyes looking into his red ones. She could tell almost immediately that he was nervous, and she reached a hand to touch his shoulder. “Are…you ok?”

Karkat put a hand to his forehead, eyes drifting back down to the crib. “I don’t know if I can do this Jade.”

“Karkat what are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m fucking talking about!” He shouted, gripping the air around his chest, as if trying to strangle it. “We’re having a baby Jade! A fucking baby!” A sharp inhale comes from him as he drags his hands down his face before crossing his arms. His hands grip onto his upper arms.

Suddenly, he’s face to face, head tilted up to look at Jade. He had to look up to be face to face with most people, but Jade was just so damn tall! “Karkat. Look at me.” She says, putting her hands on his shoulders.

“Looking.” He scoffs and Jade rolls her eyes in response.

“I know you’re nervous, Karkat. But I think everything is going to be just fine. We’ve prepared as much as we can!”

“Yes I know but-” He puts a hand to his forehead, “We can prepare as much as we want but actually raising a baby is different! I mean, I didn’t even really have parents-”

“I didn’t either!”

“Yes yes I know!” Karkat sighs, putting his head against Jade, “I just don’t want to fuck her up. We both know how shitty parents can be. I don’t want to be like that.”

Slowly, Jade puts her arms around him, taking a second to silently check if Karkat wanted to be held or not. He leaned into her, and she squeezed him. “The fact that you are so nervous about it tells me that you won’t. Plus, you’re kind of a goober Karkat!”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!” He sputters, pulling away from Jade, eyes pulled back into a glare.

“It means that you couldn’t hurt her even if you tried.”

“You really think that?” He asks, voice raspy.

“Of course I do! Don’t worry too much, it’s not like we’re picking her up today!” Jade laughs, poking out her tongue.

Then, her phone began to ring. With an audible groan, Karkat shoves his face into his hands. He took barely a glance at her phone before groaning even louder and leaning against the crib. Jade shushed him furiously, shoving his head lightly. On the phone was the number to the ectobiology lab. Both Jade and Karkat knew it wasn’t a call to inform them that something bad had happened to their daughter. They had visited the lab a few weeks ago to check her progress, considering it was the ninth month since the lab used their genetic material to make a child. Assuming nothing catastrophic happened, they would bring her home today. The mere thought of that made sweat drip down from Karkat’s forehead and palms.

With the phone by her ear, Jade speaks. “Hello?”

It was an agonizing couple of minutes. The voice coming from the phone was too quiet for Karkat to hear, and Jade barely said a word. Just nodding along. The call couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes, but Karkat felt like it lasted for a lifetime. Finally, the call was over, and the phone slid back into her pocket. She met his eyes, and they were sparkling.

“We can go pick her up, Karkat!” She shouts, grabbing his hand and pulling him out of the nursery. Only once they were in the hallway did she begin to slow down.

“WAIT!” Karkat yanks his hand away from Jade’s before grabbing her shoulders. “Oh my fucking god, Jade. Holy shit. What do you fucking mean?! We’re going to get her, right now? Like, right now right now? What did they say?!”

“Yes!! Right now right now! They said that she was ready. If we make her wait any longer, bad things could happen to her if we don’t.”

“God damnit.” Karkat sighs, pushing his hair back as he leans against the wall. He takes in a deep breath, “Let’s go fucking get her then.”

“Yes! Let’s!”

“Is the car seat set up? Or whatever is fucking needed to carry a baby in a car.”

“A car?”

Karkat turns around slowly, the most incredulous look Jade had ever seen on his face. “Yes, Jade. A car. What else would we fucking use?!”

There was a beat.

“Do not tell me that you were actually thinking about flying me over, and then flying me, and a NEWBORN FUCKING BABY back?!”

Jade shifts uncomfortably, a soft smile on her face. “Maybe?”

“NO.” Karkat grabs Jade’s hand and drags her through the house before entering the garage and slamming his fist onto the door button. Slowly, the garage opens. Karkat cringes as the lights enter the room, but he shakes it off. Before Jade could get a word in, Karkat grabs the car keys off of the nearby hanger and unlocks it, the car beeping in response. Jade watches intently as Karkat inspects the car seat in the back seat and smiles. Gosh, what a lucky moirail she was!

However, her smile fades as Karkat gets into the driver’s seat. She puts her hands on her hips, giving Karkat a scowl. In response, Karkat sticks his tongue out at her (how dare he!) and makes a dramatic showing of the passenger seat to his left. She sticks her tongue right back at him before sitting down in the passenger seat.

“I could’ve driven us!”

“Absolutely not.”

Jade sighs before dropping it. She wasn’t the worst driver, albeit not the best. If Karkat wanted to drive, then he could drive. Jade could see the anxiety-ridden sweat drip from his forehead and the tensing of his shoulders, and knuckles. He was still petrified. Even so, he drove just as cautiously as ever, paying attention to every pedestrian, every road sign. It was impressive, especially for a guy who had never driven a car in his life before arriving on Earth C. Neither said a word as Karkat drove through the human kingdom to the ectobiology lab. At the final red light, she put a hand on his thigh. Slowly, he stopped hyperventilating. He hadn’t even noticed his breaths beginning to increase.

Their eyes meet.

“It’s going to be ok.”

There was no response, just a subtle nod. Jade takes her hand off of him, putting it back in her lap. As Karkat drove, he made an effort to keep his breathing under control. It helped with his anxiety a little, to focus on something, anything other than the fact that he was going to pick up his kid.

Before Jade and Karkat even went to the lab to submit their genetic material, they had started to look at names. Of course, if their kid ever felt that their name didn’t suit them, Jade and Karkat would be more than supportive! However, they had to pick a name. They decided on Isaiah (or Izzy) as a more masculine name, and the name that they went for after their daughter’s gender was revealed, Vivian. Jade called her Vivi for short.

Vivian Harley-Vantas. A name for the ages, really.

No middle name was also decided, since Karkat felt like two last names was more than enough. Jade was alright with that as well. As the car slowly approached the laboratory, Jade found herself tracing Vivian’s name on the skirt she wore. Over and over again she wrote it into the fabric.

Admittedly, her excitement had begun to run short, and her own anxiety had hit her. She couldn’t exactly pinpoint what exactly. As Karkat pulls into the laboratory parking lot, her heart begins to race. Perhaps she was worried about the health of her kid? It was a big jump, going from a tube to the real world! Yeah, that had to be it!

A long exhale left Karkat as he put the car into park. He turns to Jade, his face strangely neutral, and his candy-red eyes oddly determined. She looks back at him, and cocks her head to the side.

“Are you ready?”

The question surprises her at first.

Jade nods, although she isn’t too confident in her answer. Karkat can tell, but he makes the decision not to say anything. This is already hard enough as it is. Going into parenthood is a terrifying feeling. Maybe it was easier for people who didn’t have science babies? They would be in the hospital right as the baby was born, instead of having to walk in after. Who knows. Karkat takes Jade’s hand and they walk in.

Thank god they had been in this specific wing of the lab before and knew their way around. The panic of not knowing where their baby was might’ve killed Karkat on the spot. They enter the nearby elevator after checking in. Jade squeezes Karkat’s hand, not saying a word. He looks up at her, and he goes to speak, seeing the distant look in her eyes, but the elevator door opening cuts him short. They step out, and Karkat releases his hand from hers, wiping the sweat onto his gray jeans. Carapacians scurry about, talking on phones or getting to where they need to be. None of them seem to pay mind to the two of them. Jade towers over the majority of the carapaces, while Karkat struggles to push through them.

For the first time since that morning, Jade smiles. She puts a hand to her mouth, trying her hardest not to snicker as Karkat shoves his way through the carapaces. Eventually, he meets up with Jade in the waiting room where they had been previously to check up on Vivian’s progress. This particular sector of the lab was used solely for test tube babies and similar things.

“Yeah? You think it’s funny Jade? Does my suffering amuse you?!” There was a pause. Jade was wondering if she’d get a full fledged Karkat rant right there and then. However, he deflated. He just didn’t have it in him. Not at the moment.

“I’m sorry,” Jade whispers, half in a laugh. Karkat puts his head against her shoulder, his horns digging into her arm. But she doesn’t mind. They walk up to the front desk, and a short and stocky prospitian carapacian looks up at them. Their beady eyes widened in shock at the sight of two literal gods. With a shaking hand, they hand a pen to Karkat.

“We got a call about our baby! Would you know anything about that?” Jade asks as Karkat scribbles their names on the sign in sheet. The carapacian shakes their head. Karkat grumbles something under his breath, and almost immediately another carapacian opens the door to their left. This time it’s a tall and lanky dersite, they have on a white lab coat and they seem excited to see the two of them.

With a quick hand gesture, the dersite beckons them to follow. Karkat hands the pen back to the prospitian and they enter a long hallway full of doors. They follow behind the dersite; Karkat is laser focused in, his attention on nothing but getting to their child. Jade, on the other hand, can’t seem to focus on anything. The white fluffy ears on her head twitch and turn at every sound, listening in to every movement of the nearby carapacian workers. Her eyes dart around, peeking into rooms for only a few seconds.

The dersite takes them into a room, and a familiar one at that. It had been the same room that Karkat and Jade had been in before to monitor Vivan’s development. Jade felt her palms go sweaty and her tail tucks in between her legs. Karkat notices, and grabs her wrist. He squeezes it slightly and she takes in a large breath, steading her nerves and heart that is slamming in her chest. The dersite from before hands Jade a clipboard and a pen. On the clipboard is a set of papers, and Jade assumes it’s for some medical records that goes right over her head.

At first, Karkat goes to stay with Jade, waiting patiently. But the dersite lightly touches his shoulder and nods their head. He squints but follows the dersite into an adjacent room. The moment he steps in, he gasps, and his heart begins racing. The dersite bends down over the white crib in the room and scoops up the baby inside. Almost instinctively, Karkat reaches his arms out, and the baby is placed in his arms.

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god-” He barely takes a second to breathe. “Is this…?

It only takes a second for the dersite to confirm Karkat’s thoughts.

“Oh my fucking god.”’

Karkat wants to scream, to yell, to shout. To do something. He doesn’t, however. He can’t. Not with a sleeping baby, his sleeping baby, in his arms. He doesn’t move, he barely breaths, and his eyes don’t move from her. She looks like a human, from the outside. She has Jade’s dark brown skin, and wispy black hair at the top of her head. After the first few months, it had been determined that most of Vivian’s appearance would resemble a human rather than troll, while some of her psychological functions would be similar to trolls. Such as the ability to strongly feel ashen, pitch, and pale feelings.

Part of what Jade was signing for was to keep track of Vivian’s development. Being a human-troll hybrid is new, and of course, science is curious. As well as being related to two of the world's creators was also keeping her on her radar.

“Karkat? Is everything ok?” Jade asks from the other room, and the dersite nods for him. Jade’s voice snaps him from his daze and slowly he walks out. Jade had finished with the paper and was sitting on the teal couch in the corner of the room. Almost immediately, her eyes lit up.

“Is that…?

It’s subtle, but it’s a nod.

There were no words at that moment, and the dersite left the room to give the two some space. Jade walked over to Karkat, her hands gently grabbing his arms. Vivian’s soft, sleeping breaths and the sound of a clock ticking were the only things able to be heard.

“She’s perfect…” Jade whispers, gently touching Vivian’s forehead.

“...You’re worried.”

“Mhm.”

“Spill.”

“I’m just nervous about her, is all.”

Karkat huffs and bumps his head against Jade’s forehead. “Don’t fucking say that. We got this.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah. I do promise Jade.” He huffs, handing Vivian off to Jade who’s eyes only widen. “Let’s just take this one day at a time. We…We got this.”

Jade smiles at him.

“We got this.”