Work Text:
You float near
As keeled ice-mountains
Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:
Your dangers are many.
- Full Fathom Five, Silvia Plath.
Rose dumps her valise just inside the door to Vriska’s apartment. She has been six hours on a Greyhound and another forty five minutes navigating the subway in the creative directions Vriska texted to her the night before. She is sticky and aching, and only her manners - and an urgent desire not to sleep on a park bench for the rest of the week - prevent her from pointing out candidly, and in merciless detail quite what a repulsive shit-heap of an apartment it is. The most important thing is that it is a free shit heap. The parlous state of her bank balance prevented her paying $100 for the privilege of staying in a private shit heap else where.
Vriska leans against the damp stained wall, hip jutting out and arms folded beneath her small breasts.
Rose looks around the place. There is a mattress shoved against one wall, with a laptop set up on top of a an ragged cardboard box next to it. The floor is carpeted in discarded clothing, empty food wrappers and take out menus. Taking up one corner there is a sink and a hotplate sitting on top of a microwave. The white-painted walls are beige with grease and dirt, the ceiling sags in the middle. It is also disgustingly hot, as the a/c unit is currently propped against the wall by the door, wires trailing out of the back.
Rose considers the relative merits of outdoor sleeping.
“It… has windows. How charming.”
Vriska pushes herself off the wall and kicks her way through the clothes.
“You’ve got the mattress. I’m in the closet. Do you want pizza? I’ve got pizza.”
She uses her toes to knock open the lid of a half crushed pizza box, to reveal a congealed mess of cheese. Rose shakes her head and makes a mental note to take nothing out of her case. She will find a public toilet to change into her outfit to meet her agent.
“Suit yourself.”
Vriska pulls a set of keys out of her pocket and hands them over.
“Lose them and I take a kidney.”
“I shall guard them with my life,” says Rose, tucking them into a pocket. “With my kidneys, even. I will keep out of your hair as best I can.”
“Cool! Whatever. Just no orgies without telling me first.”
Vriska plops down on the mattress in front of the computer and starts typing. Rose clenches her jaw, and braces herself for a week of quietly hating her life choices.
She has come down to New York City from her upstate home, on the bidding of her agent. It is a summons she has been awaiting for weeks. Her last draft was a month late and desperately under word count. After rummaging though her valise in what she deems to be the cleanest section of floor, she extracts a change of clothes, re-locks the valise and lets herself out.
She has two hours to kill before her meeting with her agent in Tea and Sympathy in Greenwich. She wriggles into her pencil skirt and blouse in the toilets of a department store, and goes over her pile of notes in preparation.
The meeting is fifteen minutes long. Her agent gulps down her lucozade and baked beans while Rose waits for her tea to brew. In between mouthfuls, she is told that her publishers are less than keen on the last thing she turned in. Rose cannot deny that she has not been happy with her recent work, but the news coils itself like a rope heavy with tar around her legs. She drinks about half a cup of her tea before her agent looks at her over a forkful of beans and tells her she is not good enough. Find a new direction, she advises. Something less dry.
She pulls out a few scrunched bills and leaves Rose alone with the check and a half cold pot of lapsang souchong.
The train is delayed and crowded; she spends the interminably long journey out of Manhattan with her nose squished into the armpit of a man wearing eight coats and had never encountered the concept of showering. The key sticks in the door when she gets back to Vriska’s, and she bruises her elbow trying to jam it open.
Vriska is sitting on the window sill, shoveling egg fried rice into her mouth and spitting peas at people on the street below. Rose hesitates, taking in dirt and mess and unpleasant smell, then toes off her shoes and climbs up onto the sill next to her. Vriska passes her the carton of rice and adjusts her bra.
“You look like shit.”
Rose picks out a piece of egg and nibbles it.
“Thank you. You are looking particularly horrible, too. Have you ever washed those clothes?”
Vriska looks down at the juice stains and crunchy dried yoghurt flecks on her tank top.
“Nope. The laundry room’s all the way in the basement and I have far better things to do with my time.”
“Like play online poker against fifteen year olds in Hong Kong.”
Vriska takes the carton back off her.
“Exactly. My schedule is full.”
Vriska spits a pea at a woman passing by whose back-combed hair almost eclipses her head. The pea lands in the centre of the hair nest, and Vriska sends a piece of egg to join it. She snorts with laughter as the woman walks on, oblivious. Rose wrinkles her nose.
As they pass the rice between them, Vriska explains her online empire. Her time is carefully portioned between earning money on online poker, and spending it on World of Warcraft. Her laptop starts chirping during her detailing of her current WoW campaign, and she hops off the sill, trailing off mid sentence. Rose waits for the continuation, but Vriska is gone, settled in front of the computer right hand on the mouse. Rose leans back on the window frame, feeling the late evening sun warm her legs. It is August in New York City, and she has sweat right through her blouse. The temperature only drops fractionally as night falls, but the bricks are still warm against her back. Vriska occasionally chuckles to herself from the mattress.
Rose takes her laptop from the case and returns to the window sill. It is fractionally cooler with her legs hanging out into the night air, but her computer still whirs, fan working desperately against the heat. She opens up a blank document, places her hands over the keys and starts to type. She opens the a minute later, and goes back through the typoed mess. Once she’s cleaned it up, she reads it over. She’s not sure where she’s going with this. She has spent the last several months in front of her laptop in increasing states of despair. She has countless near-empty documents littering a series of folders on her desktop, containing one or two lengthy sentences.
She asks Vriska for the wireless password and gets a one fingered response. Propping the laptop against her knees, she looks back at the document, cursor flashing at the end of the last sentence.
With the wail of a siren cutting through the evening a few blocks away, she begins to write.
Rose sleeps for a few hours in the early morning, curled up at the end of the mattress. When she wakes, Vriska is still cross legged in front of the laptop. Rose unfurls herself, clicking her joints, and squats by the corner that passes for a kitchen. There are several half empty cereal and hot pocket boxes, and a stack of plastic cups. She throws one at Vriska’s head.
“Where’s your coffee?”
The cup smacks Vriska on the temple, and she looks up, pouting ineffectually.
“If this boss kills me it’s your fault.”
“I would be able to bring myself to expend emotional energy over the plight of your digital alter-ego if I had coffee.”
Rose picks the sleep out of one eye. She is not accustomed to company this soon after waking. She feels like an unfinished drawing, all scratchy edges and smudged colouring.
While Vriska deals with her boss, Rose gathers up some fresh clothes from her case and takes them into the bathroom to change. She slept in her smart skirt and blouse; they are now crumpled and sweat stained. The bathroom is no more pleasant than the rest of the apartment. It is little bigger that the shower cubicle. Sitting on the toilet, her knees are wedged under the sink. She washes her face with cold water from a limescale encrusted lap, splashing it up over the back of her neck, trying to scrub off the dried sweat from the day before.
When she comes out of the bathroom, Vriska is waiting, twirling her keys on one finger.
“Took your time, Lalonde,” she leers. “I’m an evening girl myself, but whatever tickles your pickle.”
Rose stops abruptly, hemmed in by Vriska and her angular limbs arranged around the door frame. Her eyebrows joggling suggestively. Rose glowers, trying not to go cross-eyed with Vriska’s face this close.
“I’m afraid you point is lost to me among the mists of your produce based metaphors.” She retrieves her purse, and checks her wallet.
“The pickle is your vagina. Tickling is - “
“I have been enlightened,” she cuts in, looking at Vriska cooly, “say no more. Is that your chosen attire to face the wilds of the grocery store?”
Vriska is in the stained tank top from before, and sawn off shorts. Her breasts roam free, jiggling and bra-less.
“Oh snap, you’re right!”
She bends over, giving Rose a face full of thigh and ass hanging out the bottom of her shorts, and retrieves a pair of flip flops from under a stack of gaming magazines. She slips them on and straightens up. Rose blushes and turns to the window to conceal her face.
“Okay, let’s do this thing,” she grins
The corner of Rose’s mouth curls up, as they make their way out of the apartment.
“We’re making this occur.”
The grocery store is a sketchy place a few blocks away, the windows of which are covered over with layers of posters advertising Top Saver Deals and cheap international sim cards. The a/c is on full blast inside and it prickles goosebumps along Rose’s arms. Vriska heads straight over to the chiller cabinets and hefts out a gallon of orange juice. She leaves her to her inspection of the juice section, locates the coffee. Browsing through the limited selection, she finds a dusty tin of Lavazza instant coffee. When she finds Vriska again, she is in the healthcare aisle, stuffing flattened packets of pills into her pants. Rose stops short, soles of her shoes squeaking on the floor.
“What are you doing,” she hisses, fingers tightening around the coffee.
“Oh awesome, come here.”
She yanks Rose over and puts a bottle of pain killers down her top. The plastic is cold against her breasts. In the few seconds she is frozen in shock Vriska takes her by the arm and wheels her towards the checkouts.
“While I appreciate that you are a wild soul who can neither be shamed nor tamed,” she says, pills rattling in her cleavage, “I am not convinced this is the wisest course of action.”
Vriska squeezes her shoulder. “Don’t worry so much - you’re pretty, you’ll be fine in prison. Wrap everyone around your little finger with those curves. Set up a cartel for your fancy coffee and soft furnishings.”
Rose snorts. She wants to turn tail and run, but Vriska has a firm hand on her elbow. The checkout is looming, and then they are in line behind a short woman with square hair and a cart full of pickles and tuna fish. Vriska laughs and waggles her eyebrows at Rose and pinches her waist. Rose pushes her away, then stills rapidly as the sharp motion makes the pills rattle. They put their things on the conveyer belt, and Vriska threw a few packs of gum on top.
“Calm down, there’s nothing you can of about it now,” she pats Rose on the arm.
Rose watches the girl on the checkout, waiting for her to look up, see the outline of the bottle against her top. Vriska breaks open the pack of gum and pops a stick into her mouth.
“Try to take them out now and they’ll know you tried to steal,” she says around the gum. “I didn’t have you picked for stuck a rule-lover. You were in camp fuck the rules back in the day.” She shrugs.
“I’m not sure being scared has anything to do with it. It merely seems ill advised to risk prosecution for medication I do not require,” quips Rose but her gut is churning.
She riles at the idea of losing face to Vriska, and it is all too easy to pull up the memories of a time, when she wrote the laws of her own universe.
“I require it! Think of it as payment for me letting you stay at my place.”
“I think I would be entitled to a rebate.”
They are at the front of the line now, and the store assistant is ringing up their coffee and orange juice. Vriska puts it on plastic, while Rose bags up their purchases. Her hands shake as she lifts the gallon bottle of juice. As they walk towards the door Vriska slaps her ass.
“Look at you being Little Ms Lawless,” she says into her ear. “My baby’s first felony.”
Rose pushes her away with a sharp elbow to the ribs. She stalks out the store, keeping her chin tilted up. There is no wailing siren as she steps out side, no heavy hand on her shoulder. She makes it to the end of the block, where she stops and takes a careful breath. Vriska catches up to her, hand up to shield her eyes from the morning sun.
“Fuck you,” says Rose.
The sun is too bright, she can feel it burn her arms and face.
“What! I didn’t say anything!”
She pushes the bag on the Vriska, not trusting her hands. She smooths down her skirt for want of something to do, then runs her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her scalp.
“Fuck. I need a cigarette.”
“If I get you cigarettes will you stop being grumpy?”
Vriska has the bag propped on one side, jutting her hip out to make a shelf out of it. Rose thinks for a moment how easily the bag would sit on her wide hips. They are in start contrast to each other; Vriska tall and lanky, all gangly limbs and frothing hair, next to Roses’ curves and lobster complexion. Vriska looks relaxes and somehow sensual in the heat; Rose simply looks boiled alive.
At the apartment block, Vriska leaves her to let herself into the room while she disappears downstairs with some of the packets she had down her pants. Inside, Rose puts a plastic cup of water in the microwave to heat, and fishes the pills from her bra. She has just shoplifted five hundred aspirins and has no idea why. She splashes her face with water again from the sink by the microwave. The heat is dragging down her movements, stilling the air and cloying her lungs. She throws open the windows but all it lets in is the fug of traffic fumes from the street below.
Vriska clatters into the apartment soon after, clutching a massive carton of cigarettes thrust forward in victory. It is a brand she’s never heard of, written in an alphabet she can’t read. Vriska tosses them to her and she catches them in one hand. She explains her deal with Mehmet in the apartment below, where she answers the phone and pretends to be the secretary in his fake business, and he gets her anything she wants through his cousin who Knows People. When she finishes speaking, she unscrews the cap on the orange juice, chugs half the bottle in a smooth undulation of her throat that has Rose hypnotised, then goes to sleep in the recuperacon constructed from breeze blocks in her closet.
Rose peels the cellophane from the carton and removes one of the cigarettes. With it clamped between her lips, she retrieves her water from the microwave and makes the worst cup of coffee she has ever drunk. She sits with her feet hanging out of the window, smoking the harsh cigarettes that make her eyes sting and her throat grow coarse. When she has smoked down to the filter, she opens her document from the night before. She has five thousand words of god knows what. To the sound of a bus rumbling along the road, she places her fingers on the keys and begins to write.
She curls in a heap on the mattress again when dawn begins to break, next to another five thousand words and a plastic cup full of cigarette butts and coffee dregs.
A cacophony or horns splits the air. Rose peels her eyes open, shoulders screaming in protest at the position she has slept in. Slowly, the sounds outside filter through to her, the squawk of a couple fighting, the drone of a low flying plane. She lies awkwardly, shoulder rolling over the edge of the mattress. She can smell garbage from somewhere, she hopes outside. The kinks do not unwind when she rolls her shoulders, and she has a bruise on her hip from a particularly obnoxious spring in the mattress.
The clock on her computer tells her she has fifteen minutes to get to her editor’s building in Manhattan, and her hair is a perspiration soaked mess, matted across her forehead. Rummaging around her case, she realises her smart clothes are still hanging in the bathroom, stiff with dried sweat and covered in a pattern of wrinkles. She has little choice but to pull them on while the microwave heats another cup of water for coffee. The hot liquid prickles along her throat unpleasantly, but on three hours sleep, she’ll take what ever caffeine she can get.
Vriska emerges, woken by her clattering around the small apartment. Though she has slept for nearly eighteen hours, she looks as bad as Rose feels, dark circles like thumb marks beneath her eyes. She moves as though she has not been put together properly, jerky and stumbling towards the kitchen corner. She hunkers down, back against the the grimy wall and retrieves a pack of bacon from the mulch of food detritus. Rose watches in fascinated horror as a raw, unrefrigerated slice of bacon disappears snicker-snack between Vriska’s teeth. She blinks, eyelids fractionally out of synch, and takes in Rose trying to wash her hair with a wet flannel.
“Stylish as ever, Lalonde. Now I see why Kanaya likes you so much,” she slurs.
“I am the pinnacle of grace and elegance,” she says between gritted teeth. “Please get rid of that bacon, or I might have to be sick on your computer.”
“No problem.”
Rose tries not to listen to the sound of the rest of the rancid meat vanishing down Vriska’s gullet, and instead work the knots out of her hair with her fingers. The tar ropes from before are back around her legs, staying her movements though she is late as it is. She is loath to call it dread or any other word that indicates emotional weakness, but it snags around her feet, making her stumble and stub her toe against the skirting board.
“I suppose I must be culturally sensitive if rotting bacon is a Troll delicacy, but I wouldn’t put it past you to eat it out of pig headedness. Does the idea of a refrigerator not appeal to you?” she snaps.
Vriska is distractingly relaxed in this shit hole, surrounded by black mould and illegal wiring. Rose hates her face and her shoulders and her stretched out legs.
“Too expensive,” replies Vriska around a mouthful of fat. “Shit those things are like two hundred bucks. Whats the point when you can just eat it warm.”
“It might have escaped your notice, but human digestive tracts are not suited to the processing and absorption of feted animal products.”
“Your loss,” grins Vriska. “The microbes give it a real fizz.”
“Not my first priority in preparing bacon.”
Rose scrunches the flannel up in frustration. Her hair is disgusting, but she doesn’t have time to shower. Though, as late as she is now, she would have had time if she’d showered as soon as she’d woken, rather than wasting her time trying to comb her hair with her fingers. She is all to aware she stinks of cigarettes. She gulps her coffee, fighting the rising panic in her gut.
She takes one step towards the door, catches her foot in the strap of a bra left trailing across the floor, and trips forward. She does not fall, but there is now a dark splatter of coffee spreading over the front of her blouse. Vriska is snorting with laughter.
Rose glares, then catches herself, and lowers it to a glower, breathing hard through her nose. She slams the door to the bathroom, and strips off her blouse, putting it the sink to soak. The camisole underneath only has a couple of drops marring the fabric. She has nothing else to wear, so she gathers up her bag, resigned to burning her décolletage on her walk to the subway station. Vriska wolf-whistles her, from where she sits, drinking the rest of the orange juice.
“I hope that bacon gives you diarrhoea,” she says, and stalks out of the apartment.
She sits on the A for twenty minutes before realising that she will only arrive at her meeting five minutes before it is scheduled to end, so she gets off at Washington Square. In the park squeezed in between the old buildings, she finds a bench to herself and watches the students stream in and out of the university buildings. They clustering in chattering groups, fanning themselves with folded worksheets and and laugh into the flat air. The bench is sticking to her thighs, woodgrain cutting lines into her skin. She is a little shaded between the trees and the buildings, she cannot feel the sun scorching her skin.
Half an hour later she takes the A back to Vriska’s after an inspection of her coin purse leaves her only a quarter and two nickles richer, and still a dollar or two of a coffee in somewhere air conditioned. Vriska is asleep again when she gets back. After checking the girl is out for the count by slamming the bathroom door a couple of times, Rose settles down in front of Vriska’s computer, and pulls up her gaming account. It is straight forward enough to find the option to sell the contents of her inventory. It takes her a good while to sell all the items, and she makes another cup of awful coffee half way through. She amasses a pile of in game currency, then finds the most pointless thing to buy, and buys as many as her funds will allow. She leaves Vriska’s inventory, now containing nothing but five hundred pet Blood Parrots, and gathers up the laundry. She keeps her dirty things in a separate pile, then takes it all down fifteen flights of stairs to the basement laundry.
It is furnace hot down here, condensation running down the walls. There are several machines free. She dumps Vriska’s things into one machine, colours in with whites and puts it on a visciously hot wash. Her own things she puts in another machine, and uses the last of her coins to add three packets of fabric softener. Sitting on the floor by the machines, she opens her laptop and begins to write again. She transfers the the clothes to the dryer once the machines finish their cycles, then folds them when they are dry. With her laptop balanced on the pile of laundry she makes her way back upstairs, sweat trickling down the backs of her knees. At Vriska’s door, she fumbles and drops the keys. A passing neighbour helps her pick them up; when he asks her why she has the key to Vriska’s with suspicion in his voice she cheerfully informs him that she is Vriska’s Ukranian mail order bride.
She waits on the window sill, laptop open, for Vriska to wake. Of course, when she does, she knocks over the orange juice carton stumbling to the bathroom sending liquid spilling across the floor, then rummages through the freshly laundered clothes, tossing them around the room until she digs out a shrunken pair of boxers and t-shirt. Rose’s mouth turns down at the edges as Vriska only pauses for a moment when the t-shirt stops halfway down her midriff. Her fingers stab the keys as she tries not to look at the line of Vriska’s back bone, half hidden beneath her black curls.
The spend the evening at an impasse, Rose wedged uncomfortably into the window frame, Vriska hunched over her poker game.
And so Rose is caught off guard, when Vriska cackles and says, “Hey, Lalonde, this is you right? Of Peregrine Dusk and Salacious Midnight? 6,784th most popular in crumbly wizard porn.”
Roses’s fingers flex and straighten.
“My publishers are currently engaged in a dispute with Amazon that prevents the sales figured that could otherwise be achieved. My physical sales are quite robust. I am particularly popular in Albania.”
Vriska ignores her, and blows her nose on a sock.
“Are you writing the sequel now? Is that what you’re so busy with over there. Elderly wrinkled dick and magical lube.”
“When your achievements go beyond conning gullible teenagers out of their allowance, then you can mock my literary ventures.”
Tossing her hair back, she glances over her shoulder, fangs bared in a smirk.
“I have plenty of achievements, I’m an Illustrious Combat Rogue.”
Rose’s lip curls. “And also the proud owner of a menagerie of tropical birds.”
“What?” Vriska frowns at her. A few moments later, she is staring at her screen, expression darkening. “Oh fuck you that was not called for. Why are you such a passive aggressive shit weasel. God what am I saying, you clearly just need to get fucked, get rid of that tension. You’ll pop like a cork.”
Rose chews her tongue to hold in her reaction. “It was completely called for,” she snaps. “Have you any idea what it is like to be confined in a small space with you in this insufferable heat?”
“Hey! I’m doing you a favour. What the hell are you doing here anyway. Kanaya has a place with air con and everything, and yet here you are annoying yourself staying with me. You’re like that priest in that shitty film about jegus John showed me, who just cuts up his own back with a rope or some shit I don’t get.”
Rose slams her laptop shut, hands shaking, and marches into the bathroom, face a deadly blank. She runs the tap, intending to wash her face, but instead empties Vriska’s shampoo and conditioner down the drain. It forms gloopy strands, shampoo foaming slightly from the force of the water. She takes all the rolls of toilet papers she can find, and shoves them into the toilet, giving it a flush for good measure.
It is beneath her, but she finds herself breathing a little calmer now, the clenched knot in her stomach relaxing. She smooths her skirt - a futile gesture by now - and lets herself out of the bathroom.
Vriska is waiting outside, leaning against the door frame. Rose jerks back, but Vriska is leaning in and there is nowhere further to back away. Vriska kisses her, and squeezes her breast with one hand. Rose doesn’t lose a second in bringing her heel down to smash into Vriska’s toes. The other girl pulls back, one eyebrow arched.
“Kinky. I can roll with that.”
Rose wedges her hands between them and wriggles out of Vriska’s grasp.
“What the fuck was that?” she spits. “What the hell did I do to make you think that was okay?”
Vriska shrugs. “It’s okay, I know you’re saving yourself for Kanaya, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get a bit of action.”
Rose stares at her, hands clenching and unclenching by her side.
“I’m not saving myself for Kanaya and why the fuck would I want any action with you?”
Vriska rolls her eyes. “Frigid Lalonde, what a surprise.” She gets back on the mattress, settling back on her elbows, and scratching her opposite shin with the nail of her big toe. “I’ll have you know I am a fantastic lay.”
“What the fuck are you even talking about.” Rose has started to shove things in her case, body shaking. “Oh my god why won’t you stop talking.”
“Come on, I saw you sighing over those Twilight posters,” says Vriska. “Either you’re really offended by Meyer’s market share, or someone is pining over the littlest rainbow drinker.”
Slamming her case shut, Rose traps her finger, and rocks back on her heels eyes shutting pain. She puts her throbbing finger in her mouth while Vriska talks.
“I have been totally polite and didn’t ask you before why the hell you’re staying with me, pulling this self flagellating bullshit. Get over yourself. Give her a call and give us all a break form this tragic unrequited bullshit because it is requited as fuck, okay?”
Rose stands, in camisole and bare feet, clenching her fist around her the handle of her case.
“This is absolutely none of your business, so please shut the fuck up about things you do not understand. Whether I do or do not make advances towards our mutual acquaintances is certainly not a matter I care to discuss with you.”
Vriska rolls her eyes and stretches. “Right you are totally that priest, you do hate yourself and want to be alone and miserable to pay for going grimdark - and doing what exactly?” Vriska is looking at her down her nose, taking in Rose standing half dressed and bra strap slipping down her arm, trembling in the middle of her apartment,. “Your playing happy wizards did fuck all in the grand scheme of things. Jegus you’re such a melodramatic, self-involved douche bag. ‘Oh no I had dirty tentacle sex with monstrous gods, my life is over forever’. What even is your dealio? clearly we all like you, we’re still talking to you, I mean I don’t like you but whatever.”
Rose drops her case to the floor, holding back the desire to fling it at Vriska. The rage shimmers in her gut, forces words up out of her throat.
“Fine. If this is what we’re doing, why don’t you let me have a turn.” She sucks in a breath through her nose. “Don’t think that no one notices this little bravado act of yours is eggshell thick. Roll you against a hard surface and you crumple and shatter. If any one is clearly trying to punish themselves, its you. Look at this shit heap you have made your life - you isolate yourself like this when we both know John would live with you in some sort of weird pale shack up in a flash. All this,” she gestures in sharp, jagged movements, “is some terrible attempt of yours to atone. Underneath all that self-aggrandising bullshit, you’re just a stupid little girl who doesn’t know how to communicate with people, and you think you don’t deserve to be loved.”
She finishes, chest rising and falling rapidly. Her throat is tight and stings from the tears swallowed down her throat. There is a dull weight growing in her stomach already, but it is too late to take the words back. Vriska is staring at her, opens her mouth then closes it again. She springs up from the mattress, pushing past Rose and going to the far wall where she places her palms flat against it, then her forehead between them. She takes a shuddering breath, balls one fist and smacks it into the wall. Rose stands her ground, thought she feels as though she will be sick. The oppressive heat is swaddling her mouth, her throat, closing off the air. Vriska spins round, back to the wall and face screwed up.
“I’m not crying,” she snaps.
Rose’s mouth begins to form the words to agree with her. Vriska pushes the heels of her palms into her eyes, then pulls herself up straight. There is a moment where Rose thinks she might run, make a dash for the door, but then Vriska is on her, pushing her back against the wall. Teeth cut into her lip in a viscious kiss. Vriska is all knees and digging fingers, as they rock and shudder together. Rose bits Vriska’s tongue when it slides past her lips, and Vriska winds a hand into her hair and yanks her head back in retaliation. Her other hand is sliding up under Rose’s skirt, alternately stroking and scratching at her skin. Rose slams her head back in pleasure; she comes with her vision hazy, skull throbbing. Vriska is shaking and moaning into her neck with her own climax.
Rose leaves her propped against the wall and busies herself making coffee, paying careful attention to the portioning out of instant grounds and the exact temperature of the water. There is a moments tense stand off, Vriska tear-stained and disheveled watches Rose warily. For all her curves Rose is not soft; she is a collection of spikes and angles and words that wound. Vriska is closing up, expression hardening. Rose holds out a cup, and after a moment, Vriska takes it.
They sit side by side on the mattress as Vriska orders dim sum. When it arrives, she puts on National Treasure, and Rose points out historical inaccuracies while Vriska eats things with chicken feet. At some point they become entwined, limbs pressing against each other and heat prickling through their bodies.
At dawn, Vriska extracts herself from Rose and goes to sleep in the closet. Rose has gone past tiredness; her limbs feel light, reality a second out of synch. She takes her laptop to a nearby media center and prints off a copy of the document she has been working on. Before she can change her mind, she drops it off at her agent’s office.
Vriska is still asleep when she gets back, so Rose opens a text file on Vriska’s computer, and writes a note explaining she is taking a bus back upstate today. Her business is done in the city. Vriska emerges while Rose is writing and deleting and rewriting the final sentence.
She reads the note over Rose’s shoulder and shrugs.
“Suit yourself! Oh, and by the way, I told Kanaya you would meet her for coffee this morning,” she calls from the bathroom. “So you’d better get a wriggle on!”
Rose stares at Vriska’s feet that she can see through the open bathroom door.
“… Thanks.”
“Haha, no problem! Also, I photographed your boobs while you were sleeping and sent her the picture, so don’t worry about trying to sidestep talking about your lady boner for her.”
Rose opens and shuts her mouth, and is glad Vriska cannot see her gaping.
“You have nice tits, Kanaya’s a lucky girl. Call me if you guys ever want a threesome.”
There is the sound of the toilet flushing and then Vriska emerges, scratching her ass.
Rose swallows down several obscene replies.
“I deleted your internet history and all your passwords and uninstalled your virus software,” she says calmly.
Vriska laughs. “You can come back any time.”