This isn't a thing Equius does; surrendering to impulses is for other people. He has always been one to measure, to strategize, to rein himself in as best he can. It was a necessity. Even his liaisons to satisfy the drones were more matters of negotiation and restraint than unbridled passion, adequate but not exceptional. But as Strider follows him out of the hangar and down the corridor, it's all Equius can do not to turn on him, not to attack him right there, not to pin him to the wall with hands around his throat and knee between his thighs.

"You've got no fucking clue which end is up about this kind of thing, do you?" Karkat asks, almost gently. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gone off on you. You're such a huge bitch it's easy to forget you weren't hatched like this."

Dave and Karkat have a little fight over who pushed the buttons that swapped their species, and it turns into extensive scientific experimentation of a different kind altogether.

You push yourself up to a sitting position. "Bro," you say. "Long time no see." You manage to keep your voice almost totally steady, even. He's sitting cross-legged in the sand, his elbows on his knees, his katana planted point-down next to him. His horns echo the shape of his shades, jagged outward-facing points. You wonder what yours look like, but you think you'd lose points for reaching up to cop a feel of your own headgear. "Come on. We don't exactly have the high ground out here."

So, seadweller!Bro sees lowblood!Dave and it's pity at first sight. Maybe he's using weird seadweller rituals or maybe he's just being his strange self to court Dave. Unfortunately, Dave has no idea why this finface is constantly in his business. Show me how they become moirails, please. ♦

So, yeah. This is longer than 500 words. I started writing and immediately got sucked into (super basic) world-building and (minimal) scene-setting, which is exactly what this exercise is supposed to prevent. When I realized what I was doing I said well shit and skipped straight to the porn, which, unsurprisingly, also didn’t limit itself to 500 words. And then that little scene-setting bit was up there just looking accusingly at me, so I finished it off to some extent, and that’s what you have here: a little chunk of set-up and a little chunk of smut, extremely sloppily stuck together. Maybe I’ll make this less sloppy some day. It was terrific fun to write. This is a post-Sburb universe reset where the game made a little mistake and accidentally swapped the players’ species on the way out. Whoopsies! There’s possibly some body-dysphoria business going on if you’re sensitive to that, but nothing too extreme.