Work Text:
There is a fire in the city.
You know it - you See it.
You wake up tasting ash, fumbling sleepily for the phone and letting the dream wash over you, the acrid smell of smoke and panic, love, sleep, a small house four streets down, not quite straight across.
The air is spring clean and you swing your legs out into it, skin tightening at the chill.
There is a fire in the city. You hit nine and one on your way to the window - you hit nine and one and suddenly, a siren rises.
You’re getting rusty.
But then again, these days you rarely ever See. You can feel things sometimes, though these things are both of dubious certainty and the same things you could feel before the game.
And no, it’s not a stray siren, it’s your siren for your fire, and you breathe in smoke that will never reach this window, let it sink into your tongue and settle in your lungs.
There isn’t even a faint orange glow on the horizon. You really don’t give the fire department in this city enough credit.
You put the phone down and go back to bed, to where your spot has grown cold in your absence and to where Kanaya is beginning to fidget. The springs squeal in protest (you hate your old bed, and so do your neighbors, you know this for certain because they’ve left notes on occasion) and she wakes in a sharp flash, eyes glinting in the dark. Sometimes you forget how the lack of sopor affects your fanged friends, though Kanaya is at least calmly distressed when she wakes; John has come back to bed after a midnight snack to find Karkat claw-deep in the mattress, still completely asleep yet determined to destroy something.
"Sorry," you murmur, sliding down under the covers and pulling them up over your shoulder. You know that you won’t sleep for the rest of tonight - not for fear but by the mere virtue of being awake.
She knows it too, shifts close under the covers; Kanaya’s voice is thick with sleep and worry, always worry, her hands touching your back as her eyes crease at the corners in worry.
"What happened?"
Her hands are warm. You close your eyes, nuzzle in close to her neck. She smells like the exotic perfume Jade sent her as a birthday present last summer and you breathe it in to flush out the smoke.
"Nothing."
Pulse slow, slow for her anyways, against your lips, Kanaya pushes forward and rolls you onto your back. There’s a long moment in which you develop sudden body envy, if only for the fact that she can hold herself above you the way she does, all careful poise, making sure she doesn’t crush you. Like she could. She probably thinks she can, the precious dear.
…She probably could, if she tried.
"It’s late," she whispers, her eyes at your lips, your eyes, your lips and the way your nightshirt is thin and cut low across your chest.
You shift your legs to cradle hers and, practiced and careful in the most excruciatingly perfect of ways, Kanaya lays down on top of you. Her elbows are still dug into the mattress above your head, forearms framing your face because she knows you know that she knows you like that and thus does it at every available opportunity.
Open air tastes like ashes.
“Or early,” you whisper back.
You kiss her.
A shiver runs from her hands (laced above your pillow) down her tensed biceps and you feel the last of it through the chest to toes part of her that is pressed against you. She’s going to comment on the fact that your skin is tense and tight with cold, nipples nudging against her chest through your nightshirts.
Suddenly, you want her - you want her and the innumerable ways in which you want her scroll past conscious thought in a half heartbeat, the involuntary flutter of eyelashes as Kanaya’s tongue bumps against the inside of your lower lip. You raise a hand to both of hers and she welcomes it into the fold, daintily playing with your five fingers between all ten of hers; you think about laughing but you feel unable to, too focused on her tapping on your palm and weaving your hand into hers.
Your other hand is less than lonely, tracing the outlines of her subdermal cartilage plates, under her shirt to her scar; when your palm brushes the waistband of her pajama pants, her hips press down against yours. She’s warm and a relief and if you could sink into her completely, crawl into her skin and take up residence in her rib cage beside her beating heart - you would.
She touches you like you are made of glass and you suppose that, figuratively speaking, you are. Always a sickly child, now a meager adult, your wrists thin as sticks and your collarbones sharp no matter how well you manage to eat in a given week.
You cannot escape the fact that she knows you as well as she knows herself, knows all the patterns of your veins as well as how you think and the rabbit beat of your heart when you See - and the relief when all is well, and all is well now. The panic-love is mixed with happiness, safety, and it makes you sigh, running down the center of your back like so many fingers until you are limp as a cat.
And yet still you need something, need to satisfy that overwhelming group of multitudinous urges, ranging from the mundane to the exotic and whimsical and excluding the violent and deadly.
You want to marry her with a proper ceremony and your mother dabbing drunken tears from the corners of her eyes and John making the worst Best Man speech in the history of marriage and Jade accidentally dropping one of the rings while Dave purposefully drops the bass on “Here Comes the Bride”. You want to feed her grapes on a picnic blanket in the middle of Delaware Park and you want to roll her over and again in the patches of clover back where the trees would hide you, grass stains be damned. This, too, she senses, though she resists a moment before letting you lead her onto her back, letting you straddle her hips so that the hard length of her sheathed bulge presses between your legs.
It’s with a fierce and giddy desperation that you rest your forearms on the pillow around her head and rock forward; her hands are still above her head, and she puts them on your back far too gently. They’re shaking a little and you know she’s holding her breath because it slips out in a long sigh, a questioning Rose? that she gives up on before it’s fully formed. Her palms flatten against you, cradle you and frame you as you move.
Kanaya doesn’t often wake up ready for anything more than kissing, another evolutionary divide that you honestly rarely mourn, but right now you can feel the hard throb of her pulse against your cheek. She’ll come loose too in a minute, just another minute, you’re certain because that is how she is. She is not alone in her level of obsessive intimate knowledge, in filing away notes about every tic and tempo change and idiosyncratic movement.
The blankets slip down off your back as you sit up, and Kanaya chirps loud and sharp as your weight rests more firmly upon her for a moment. before you shift back onto your heels and drop your hands to the ties to her pants. You can’t taste the smoke anymore, there is just the bare aftersmell of sizzling wood lingering somewhere in your sinus cavity. Kanaya spreads her hands out down your hips, thumbs pressed up your pelvis, fingers of one hand sliding up to your waist, your chest, slick against silk and yet still dragging, fastidious.
Her drawstring is knotted; it has taken you a long minute already at the very least to undo it and when you finally do it is with a drawn out sigh of self-satisfaction. The exhalation trails on as you sit forward again. You cannot hold yourself up and fumble your hand down into her pants at the same time.
You know this, and yet still you feel compelled to at least try. Balance has never been your strong point, even less so with Kanaya with palmfuls of you under your nightshirt, with Kanaya craning her neck to meet you as you lean down again. Kanaya with her teeth invasive, accidentally scraping the inside of your lip and running her tongue along the non-wound in the next moment. Her hands grip tight on your ribs when you trace over her nook, and against your wrist you can feel the tip of her bulge twisting, slightly sticky and very warm compared to your poor circulation, your freezing skin.
She breathes in and out sharply as you press your fingertips inside her.
You want to know that feels for her.
==> Rose: Be the other woman.
Rose Lalonde is the most complicated thing that you have ever been able to understand - and yet still you never entirely know what goes on inside her mind. Whether it is by virtue of being a human or just by virtue of being an enigma, the things she does always manage to slip past your meager grasp on the human psyche. You aren’t sure whether you are expected to rein her in, to quiet and calm her in the wake of whatever has happened while you were asleep (though a part of you suspects, a part of you knows, really, that she has Seen again) or whether you ought to just, as they say, go with the flow, to lay back and let her undress you. It’s possible she just wants (needs?) a quick, efficient pailing, and there is really no part of you opposed to that plan.
But you think, in some quiet corner of your think pan, you think that this morning, perhaps, is going to be another thing entirely. The thought scares you a little, excites you, mostly, the prospect of you and Rose and the unnamed concept that has been hovering somewhere beyond the scope of your thoughts since the first night the two of you spent together. You are a mite concerned, however, about Rose’s early waking, her sudden urges - though you know that humans, on occasion, simply wake up in such a state.
And while it is often difficult to suppress your urge to coddle and to worry, you trust that Rose can make her own decisions. And you yours. (Mostly.)
And obviously you are more than simply amenable to having her beneath you, above you, warm from sleep and skin hot in some places even as the weather is barely beginning to lift from its winter sulk. It’s difficult, however, difficult to discern whether or not she really wants what you think she wants, even as she rolls you onto your back and sits astride your lap as though you are one of those mechanical hoofbeasts located outside some supermarkets.
Absently this makes you think of Rose slipping a quarter between your lips, pressing tight with her thighs like you truly are a garishly painted machine designed to delight children with the attention span of goldfish. Sometimes you think that you, too, have the attention span of a goldfish; but you can blame your lack of coherence on Rose’s weight upon you, the dry and soft skin on the insides of her thighs rasping lightly against the fabric of your pants. She is shaking a little, her back loose and languid as she lays down along you, rocks forward.
“Rose, wh-” You lose your words, lose a little of your grip and drop your hands to her back instead. Through her nightshirt and against your palms her muscles contract, thoracolumbar fascia and latissimus dorsi and many others that you lack names for except to know that they are all bare but for a layer of skin. Sometimes when you watch or touch, you think to yourself that it is a wonder that a species could survive for so long with so few defense mechanisms, though you have seen for yourself what an angry and desperate human can do with the right weapons.
(However, most of the time that you are touching you are too busy feeling the spare ridges of Rose’s spine and the tender, exposed notches of her elbows and knees to contemplate the miracle that is human survival.)
Between her legs she is warmer than between her shoulderblades, you know if you touch her lightly she will gasp and press more firmly against you, but you forget that simple force too is something she enjoys. She bites her lip; you ease your mouth onto hers and grip her hips as you bite her lip for her - more gently, of course, for you cannot afford to be as forceful with teeth that are exponentially sharper.
Rose breathes out and then breathes you in, and suddenly she plants her hands in the mattress and sits up. The sudden pressure is exhilarating - you think you unsheathe a little but you can’t be sure - and punctuated by a rather pointed downwards thrust before she sits backwards onto your thighs and puts her hands at your waist, the ties of your pants.
It takes an excruciatingly long time for her to undo them.
It’s the blunt human fingers, you think, but not only that, because it is some odd and unfitting hour of the night and your hands are just as clumsy, stretching to touch her arms. Her arms and the rest of her skin in general feel tight with the cold. The dropped blanket has left her doubly bare and - Rose rubs the heel of her hand down over your bulge, and yes, you are slightly unsheathed and your bulge twists against her wrist even as her hips shift again, half-pinning it and half-pinning her hand where it is, fingers tucked so slightly into your nook.
The lack of cloth between her skin and yours makes a startling amount of difference, one you can never quite become accustomed to. You gasp, accidentally bite your tongue, swear, rinse and repeat except that Rose’s mouth is on yours again, her fingers twisting and slipping a little deeper inside you. Her body rolls down against you, almost painfully hard and your bulge moving against the dry warm cotton of her undergarments is dizzying.
She’s so ridiculous, you think, ridiculously modest, wearing undergarments to bed like that, but it’s one of those things you’ve come to adore.
“Rose?” You whisper. She maneuvers her hand so that her palm covers the space between your bulge and nook, fingers buried to the first knuckle now; she drags them in and out, smooth, and you keen loud in surprise. This is never how it goes, and your hands shake on her abdomen, her breasts, fumbling for something you can’t quite put into words, but you know that you want it terribly and that Rose is the only one from whom you will accept it, the only to whom you would give it.
You don’t even know what you’re thinking about any longer; you’re grasping at the spaces between her ribs, sighing, “Rose,” and “Rose, again,” and she does. Again.
And then her fingers are an absence, sudden negative space that leaves you open and still wanting.
Rose shifts, moving unintentionally down against you as she lifts the hem of her nightshirt up over her head. You blink fast to coerce your eyes into full adjustment, to see her clear as day. Her pulse is racing, you can feel it in her thighs against your hip, a thick artery whose name you would recall easily were you more inclined to care. You never get used to seeing her skin move over bones and muscle, so different to yours and reflecting the moonlight where yours drinks it in, static and unflinching no matter how hard your heart beats.
She rests her weight on one palm pressed into the mattress beside your abdomen; you see the smear of green on the sheets and up to her knuckle and though her eyesight is not nearly as keen, she knows it is there, she can feel the dampness of her fingers and the way they stick to the cotton, you know that she is feeling this and it is as vivid as if you are feeling it.
The tip of your bulge butts up against the place where the crease of her hip and thigh is interrupted by her undergarments, and your hands follow, your mouth slightly dry, fingers definitely bearing more than a mild tremble. Rose puts her hand on your face, shifting down along the line of your neck. Her lips are blind in the dark until they find yours, until they press, warm and a little chapped from the passing winter’s cold, against your mouth.
You slip the tips of your fingers into the thin band, and from there it happens quickly, Rose’s limited disrobing, in a bizarre twisting motion that almost sends her toppling over the edge of the bed; she half-collapses onto your chest, laughing without breath and you the same. Her smile falters as she sits herself astride your hips once more and your bulge traces up the soft inside of one thigh, her lips falling open in a quiet gasp. Her back is stiff now and though you trust her completely, you worry, you do.
“Are you,” you start, stumble over your words, over the warm and heavy feeling of her weight upon you. “You’re certain that… we should do this tonight?’
Her face is careful; you wonder now why you asked, because you knew a question like that would start the endless train of doubt in her think pan. You want to kiss the crease from her forehead.
On the sheets again, her hands curl up, bunching fabric and tension under her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” she says. It is a little too smooth for your liking, and you can feel her retreating in it. “I should’ve asked. We should’ve - waited, or -”
The sentence breaks off and you stroke the backs of her hands, her arms, the anxious curve of her bent shoulders.
“I think we’ve waited long enough.”
You pull her down gently, her hands chilled as they curl around your shoulders. In the past several years you’ve started to understand, or so you think, why this is such an important affair in human relationships. Placed in proximity to Rose, outside the concept of the consummation of quadrants, it has become an important affair in your mind as well. Though by no means the defining factor nor the piece de resistance of your relationship, it is still an idea that consumes. And you know what it means in the most simple sense to her as a biological entity, that her body takes it as reproduction and that a part of her mind, despite logic, will take it as such as well. In the purest sense of the term it is penultimate, and you worry, you do: About Rose and her mind and her body - and, sometimes, whether or not you can give her what she needs.
But even if you cannot, you will give her what she wants, and you believe that she wants it because everything she has done tonight has been a fairly clear expression of wanting this, and you are inclined to believe that Rose normally has a firm grasp on what she wants. You are also inclined to act on what you want.
Which includes this.
Rose’s cheek presses against yours, her thumb tracing your mouth.
“You make a valid point, Miss Maryam,” she murmurs, chasing her thumb with her lips, and you can see her smiling a little and you feel sharp and sweet relief. You haven’t made a calamity of this endeavor yet. “However, you are quite overdressed for the occasion.”
For once, you weren’t thinking about your clothes, mostly enamored instead by the feeling of her skin against your bulge. (She’s probably sticky and slightly green from knee to hip right now; you have no regrets.) Rose slides her hands under your thin pyjama shirt and pushes it up as far as she can. You shiver as the cool air slips in to steal your body heat, and lift your shoulders, your arms, to help her ease it off around your horns.
Your pants take a little more effort; you tug for almost a minute straight before you realize that one of Rose’s knees is pinning them. She laughs again at this and you would be a little offended were it not for the fact that it was her fault. But finally you push them down off each foot with the toes of the other, bringing your legs up to cradle her in your lap as she sits back against them.
“Rose,” you whisper, and it’s loud in the silent and darkened room.
She nods, answers, “Kanaya,” but at the same moment she’s reaching down between your bodies to curl a hand around your bulge and bring it close between her legs. You try to watch but your eyes shut in anticipation and in the unreal sensation of your slick skin rubbing up against hers. It’s not quite as you imagined; her hair is coarse on your thin skin and the entire endeavor is a bit sticky for your liking, but you, you have no complaints, only a trembling anxiety in your chest.
Her legs press in tight to your sides again and she rocks down, pinning your bulge between the two of you - no fabric, only a satisfying heat as Rose slides forward, bracing herself on your arms. Your bulge pushes against her pudendal cleft, she pushes back, and your throat vibrates as a portion of your length slips slightly inside her. It’s teasing, maddeningly so; Rose shivers as your bulge drags back away.
You put a hand between her legs, stroking gently but with an urgency you have rarely felt. Rose’s hands tighten as you slide two fingers inside her, eternally wary of her limits (though, overcautious, you have yet to ever reach them). She moves against them until the first knuckles of your digits just barely disappear and, your heart beating fast inside your chest, you spread her open a little.
Rose moans out loud as the tip of your bulge catches properly against her nook and nudges inside. Her fingers grip your biceps; you bite back a loud throaty noise and bring your other hand between the two of you as well to hold her wide as you can. Faster than you imagined - and you have imagined, more than you would care to admit - your bulge pushes inside her, helped on by your slickness and the shallow movements of her hips.
By the halfway point or so, Rose’s arms are shaking and her breaths come in pants and you are hardly better off. You kiss her face and tremble with her, feeling the tangible intimacy at the place where your body is joined to hers. There is still a way to go, and you’re having a difficult time as it is keeping your thoughts in line.
Experimentally, you relax your back, letting the muscles in your torso go slack and ceding autonomy to instinct. Rewarding heat floods into your abdomen as your bulge twists inside her.
“Oh - god,” Rose jumps, her grip on your arms slipping; she fumbles for balance and drops onto her elbows, tightening around you in surprise. An embarrassingly loud noise trills out your mouth and your nails dig into her thighs as all the muscles in your body tense up once again. Your eyes snap shut; Rose makes a sound quite like a squeak as the weight on the bed changes sharply.
You probably should’ve kept better track on how close the two of you were getting to the edge of the mattress.
⇒ Rose: Regain your balance.
You’re trying,
You really are.
⇒ Kanaya: Help the poor girl out already.
You’re trying, you really are, but all of this shifting around she’s doing is really distracting, and if nothing else you have a very firm grip on her hips.
That’s…
That’s something, right?
⇒ Rose: Scramble back onto the bed sans dignity.
It’s a work in progress.
Thankfully, however, your fistful of sheets kept you from going completely over the edge. You’re just… balancing with one painfully arched foot on the floor with your other leg spread wide over the other side of Kanaya’s hips and your torso is just kind of… dangling.
You’re also having a hard time concentrating in any significant amount on your coordination. But with some inhuman store of strength (probably the part of you still convinced you have dignity) you manage to pull yourself back up onto the bed, taking the weight off your foot (the strain in your muscles becomes a flaring pain and you suck a hard breath in through clenched teeth).
“Are you alright?” Kanaya asks. It comes out tense, and for a hot second you think she’s angry but then you realize her jaw is as tight as yours, just. Probably for a different reason.
“I’m…” You breathe out and try to make yourself relax, flexing your foot; Kanaya’s shoulders drop minutely in what is most likely relief. “Fine.”
She must open her eyes again, size you up as though she’s afraid you’ll go tumbling off again if she looks at you funny. “Maybe we ought to- to adjust.”
“What?”
Kanaya’s teeth dig into her lip; you stare at the minute wet glisten of them in the dark as she props herself up on her elbows.
“Here,” she murmurs, her hand feeling in the dark for your knee. “I think that the human-” Her breath catches as you shift where she attempts to guide you. “The human missionary position might be best this time around.”
Setting aside the fact that your heart is positively hammering in your chest already, the thought of it, of Kanaya above you and cradling you and pressing you into the mattress is more than appealing enough to coerce you.
“For safety’s sake,” she clarifies, as though you aren’t completely prepared to lay yourself out and be ravished.
“The human missionary position,” you repeat, rolling onto your side; she moves you like a doll. “Is there a troll missionary position?”
Kanaya’s bulge twists suddenly inside you again, a quick whip of movement that liquifies the remaining scraps of your resolve to not cling to her.
Kanaya breathes out in a harsh gasp and the fact that she is holding her breath (as you’re acutely aware of how you’re holding yours as well, an attempt not to babble or break or something as you try to get accustomed to this) relieves you.
“Troll missionary position would require some long term preparation,” she says as your shoulderblades hit the mattress. “Yoga, perhaps.”
One of your knees is eased up slightly by Kanaya’s palm so that she can lay more comfortably in between your legs. The curve of her iliac crest pushes into your thigh; you readjust, raise your leg a little higher, and though your hip strains for a moment, it pops quietly and lets you stretch more comfortably.
“It may, perhaps, be impossible for a human to execute,” Kanaya finishes, her sudden little half-smile a dead giveaway. She’s teasing you now - no, goading. You’ll rise to the bait in due time. When it’s convenient.
Or, more likely, when your curiosity gets the better of you.
The mattress creaks and you sink a little lower, taking a deep breath as Kanaya’s bulge slides deeper inside of you. She moves a little, in a slow grind, and you wrap a hand around her shoulder, holding tight and breathing deep to relax.
It’s not exactly what you’d imagined; you’ve watched no small amount of pornographic material, both before and after (and, you confess, during) the Game. A little straight, some gay, mostly lesbian, and - well - some things you would rather keep under wraps. Never let it be said that Rose Lalonde isn’t open to experimentation.
(Even the accidental, opening-a-cryptically-labeled-file-only-to-find-that-you’ve-hit-the-”what-seems-like-alien-porn”-jackpot type of experimentation.)
(You often thank God that nobody ever found out about that.)
Kanaya puts a hand between her hip and the straining muscle in your leg, pressing just hard enough with her thumb to make you squirm a little, a short breath slipping out in frustration; you doubt she notices your fingertips digging into her shoulder, your other hand clenched hard in the sheets as she kisses the crook of your neck and leans forward again, rolling against you more firmly.
Like this, with the quiet and with her hands so focused, you feel her bulge moving inside you, each minute motion more delicately arousing than a simple thrust of fingers. You feel as though you have been talking through tin cans tied together with springs, when a cell phone was sitting right in your pocket. Like you were ignoring your laptop in favor of a piece of chalk and a sidewalk.
The analogies are getting stupid. You are getting stupid. You are losing each and every one of your rational trains of thought and you can’t even care at this point. Tin cans and chalk and stupid technology, it doesn’t matter. The water is leagues over your head and the undertow so pleasant that you’re willing to swim right along with it, to let it take you as deep as it will go.
Kanaya’s mouth opens - you know because you feel her lips drag and the points of her teeth press against your neck. Part of you seizes up on instinct and the other part seizes up in silent yearning, and you feel it all down your spine as she gently bites down, just hard enough for you to feel it and just gently enough so that your skin remains unbroken. Not that you care much; it’s still reasonable weather for scarves.
Her hesitance fascinates you still, because for all the time you spent with that serendipitous troll porn stash, the nuances of quadrantal affection are still lost on you. The vids were miscellaneous - and oftentimes it seemed as though the ad infinitum exposition was most of the movie’s ‘appeal’.
(See: PALES TO PAILS 3: WHORALLEGIANCE REVISITED. Sexploitation is a universal concept, you suppose.)
When it came down to the sex itself, though. Well. Let it be said that you are glad that Kanaya’s feelings towards you are firmly red.
Not that there isn’t an odd, spine-tingling allure to the blackrom pornography. You just happen to value your skin in its current, non-shredded state. Even now the slight tinge of pain that accompanies the touch of Kanaya’s nails teeters in the ever-ambiguous air of culturally appropriateness. You’ve long since given in to the fact that when two worlds collide, most of what’s left outside mainstream culture is murky and gray and of dubious moral constitution.
Kanaya’s mouth closes, her teeth sliding over your neck slow enough that you feel every fraction of an inch as they go, and she presses her lips to the spot she bit, murmuring a low and vibrating “Rose”.
You’re a little too preoccupied with breathing to answer.
⇒Kanaya: Make the beast with two backs.
That’s downright vulgar.
If colloquially and momentarily appropriate.
You resist your own instincts, the urge to tip Rose back onto her shoulderblades, legs spread wide and hauled up over your shoulders as you do between seven and thirteen utterly unspeakable things to her. This is a delicate matter, and you are already sorely lacking in finesse.
You sincerely believe that you make up for it with enthusiasm and the gut-twistlingly good feeling that comes from the slow curl of your bulge inside Rose. She clings fast to you with every shallow forward thrust, until you feel the tip of your bulge brush up against what must be the furthest reach of Rose’s nook, at which point one of her legs jerks out of your palm, knocking against your hip.
It’s hard to see when your eyes have been closed for so long, but you blink fast, breathe fast. Rose’s face comes into focus, and you bring your empty hand to her cheek. The fronts of her teeth are slick, and as you ease them off her lip, the dull bottoms scrape against your fingers. She pants once, twice, deafening in your small room, before her mouth closes around the two fingers on her lips. It stifles a terse whimper, her tongue darting past the pads of your fingers. Reflexively you pull them out, grasping at the sheets on the bed.
“Are you alright?” you whisper, though it’s more like a series of half-coherent phonemes heavily laden with rolling rs and strained vowels.
Her hand slips down your arm, grasps reassuringly at your bicep and then your elbow.
A hoarse and quiet: “Never better.”
The two of you are a real piece of work sometimes. Her frozen knee shifts, and she rests her calf in the small of your back, nudging you gently forwards.
“Keep going, Kanaya,” she answers, without opening her eyes.
She doesn’t leave much room for arguments that you aren’t planning on making, and the dip between her lower lip and chin is slick with sweat that you kiss away. From the corner of her lips to the divot below her ear, her cheeks burn red; your fingers slide over her neck and the damp hair at the nape of her neck.
You let go of her other leg, bringing a cautious hand again to where you’re trying your best, really, to keep your bulge under control until you are under control. Maybe you can just… Rose’s hand tightens hard on your arm as you lean your weight back onto the arm by her shoulder.
It’s a fumbling sort of business for a fumbling sort of matespritship, and you bump fingertips, knuckles, palms, at the juncture of her hip and her lovely white stomach.
Rose nudges the hand you were about to raise, guides it further down so that your thumb sits at her clitoris. You recall with acute embarrassment (though you were thankfully alone with a purloined tome) your initial belief that human female anatomy would react much like yours - and that the internalized root would manifest as something at least vaguely akin to your bulge.
You were glad to have read on, and to have been thoroughly departed from your delusions.
But you suppose that the lack of engorgement and extension only makes it a little harder to find the proper angle, not all that different from her comparatively stiff fingers attempting to trigger your pailing reflex. Just a bit… trickier. And drier.
Mostly drier.
Thankfully, Rose has always been a proponent of hands-on learning. Books don’t quite teach you the precise angle at which to move your fingers, nor the proper pressure, and reading about the slight tremble in Rose’s extremities would likely never compare.
You are occupied; the touch of Rose’s fingers to the outside of your nook is startling, and a thoroughly instinctual noise comes straight from the chest on out. A groan, or a grunt, or a particularly deep chirp - you don’t know, but you cant forward again, pressing hard with a thumb at the juncture of your bodies. Her hand twitches, fingertips slipping slightly inside of you.
And that’s about it for composure.
==> Rose: Get fucked.
Setting aside the entirely passive nature of the sentiment, isn’t that what you’ve been doing?
You think that this is true, and yet when Kanaya’s cheek touches yours, you feel a fierce and telling tension in her jaw, echoed in her forceful hands and the scrape of her teeth against your lips. A nigh inaudible rasp from the motion - or a near silent hiss/click in her throat.
Without decision you swallow, and the bare noise that follows is hideously embarrassing and yet nothing compared to the horrible exposed breath you draw when Kanaya pushes your hand away and pulls at one of your knees again. The languidity in her movements is gone and dead.
There is a final insistent pressure, a swift and sudden and mercifully well lubricated glide, before you feel the acute, hard ridge of her sheath where before there was only cloying air.
"Oh-" you choke, inhaling the entirety of the aspirated h. She lets go; your knee slaps back against her side, the sound and sensation lost in the sudden curl of her bulge inside you.
The pleasant slow wave turns into a fast rhythmic twist, and you grasp at the hard plates of cartilage beneath her skin and above her shoulderblades. If she were human you might have broken skin, but she only murrs approval, rocking against you. Her elbows sink deeper into the bed as she dips her head to mouth at the spot between your breasts; you’re sure she can feel the thudding of your heart vibrating against her lips.
You don’t know where to put your hands - they find an edge to cling to, and the angle shifts and Kanaya’s muscles are a flat plane and you dig in for an ever elusive purchase. Her hair is soft and damp at the roots, your fingers slipping through to the roots of her horns. Your fingernails scratch past them and her lips leave your chest. She presses her head down and you grab on, gripping the rippled length of a horn with one hand and fumbling with the other to stroke the point where scalp leads in to hard keratin.
Her bulge twists inside you, at some points you think around itself, and you grab and stroke and pant until you are hovering at an almost painful edge, close to coming.
Your gasps form a rare and coherent Kanaya and she responds with a harsh clicking that you could swear up and down is a growl. You let go of her horns as she sits back on her heels, pulling you up and open by the pits of your knees.
And in that brief moment, your life becomes an inglorious pornography.
It’s beautiful and hysterical and you just may have to needle her later for it.
You stare upwards and the fuzzy vision of her in the slowly growing morning light is also inglorious and beautiful. She draws her hips back; the blind feeling of being emptied runs quick up your spine and out your fingertips in a shiver. It’s impossible to stay still as she picks up her rhythm again, a swift rolling thrust that lends deceptive solidity to her bulge.
The comforter is flimsy and your hands are antsy and you can feel yourself growing ever closer in the curling soles of your feet and the involuntary shaking in your hands when they are empty.
You close your fingers around open air, stretch forward and hold fast to Kanaya and the tangible strength in her shoulders.
==>Kanaya: Make it happen.
It is already in the process of being made to happen. Rose is hot and clumsy right to the tips of her fingers, and her rich ripe moans certainly aren’t slowing you down.
You let go of her knees, your thumbs sliding down into the insides of her thighs; she pushes up into the motion, and you give her what she wants, holding the the back of one thigh high in one hand and bringing the other back between her legs. Her back arches when you stroke her again, a firm massage where she’s warmest.
The blush under her skin is fiercest on her cheeks, red with dilated veins that mimic the pinkness between her lips and her hips. You try to sync your hands with the rest of you but it’s just not happening. Rose’s grip slides down your arms, fingers fluttery and absent of direction until they grip tight on your forearms. Her legs lock around your waist and her knees dig into your sides, rubbing hard against your grubscars.
She inhales quickly and you hold on tight as she holds on tight to you, a rush of hormones surging under her skin and flushing out to strange pheremones - grown familiar to your nose over sweeps. She reeks of oxytocin and squirms beneath you, hips bumping up hard against yours as she orgasms.
One high and gasping note escapes her throat before her spine slackens. You bend to kiss the vibrating cords between her arteries. She breathes in stilted swallows that devolve quickly into quiet laughs that flutter up out of her diaphragm, sans air.
Rose opens her eyes and you could live the dazed look inside them. Her tongue slides out over her lower lip as the haze clears, her hands running up your shoulders and down over your chest, cartilage plates still shifting with your rhythm. You move slowly, eternally wary of human refractory periods, but her fingers stroke your sides, tracing every bump in the faint green ovals of your grubscars.
"Hold on," she says suddenly, pushing her hands into the bed and scooting backwards. You catch the last half of her gasp as your bulge slips out, a sound echoed in the deep shiver along the bridge of your shoulders. Rose slips off the edge of the bed, intentionally this time, and leaves you kneeling with spread and slightly shaking thighs. You rub one hand between your legs, letting your bulge wrap around your fingers and stroking gently to keep yourself sane.
She returns in what feels like an eon with your bucket. The sight of it makes your bulge tighten, a helpless chirp from your chest cleaving the quiet in two. Rose hears, ducks her head and grins, pushing her hair from her face; her movements are tender and careful. The bed dips as she leans her weight on the bucket, pushes it into the mattress in front of you.
"Keep that there," she murmurs, and the cold edge of the bucket bites into your palm with how hard you grip it as she swings one leg high, faltering before she manages to straddle the rim of the bucket. Your heart almost stops right there; you feel faint when she drops her weight onto the heels of her palms.
Her inhalation is audible, synced with the curve of her spine. Her ass moves a little in what you believe is an involuntary attempt to make her position comfortable. There’s something deliciously debased about it, her pale thighs streaked with green and luminous in the slowly growing light of dawn. You want to push her forward, chest to the mattress, and roll your tongue between her legs until she begs - the thought is a shot of electricity down your spine, and your hands leave your bulge, gravitating to the backs of her thighs.
She sighs, “Good,” and you don’t understand but you like that breathy tone, and you drag your palms upwards over the curve of her ass. She raises her hips into the touch; you lean forward, bulge sliding up between her legs again.
"Go ahead," Rose whispers. Her back arches a little more, spreading her legs wider.
==> Rose: Do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.
How crass, you think, reaching back with one hand to guide your girlfriend’s green-wet bulge back inside you.
And inaccurate. Animals don’t use buckets to reproduce.
At least you don’t think they do. That would be strange.
And Kanaya doesn’t dally this time around - before you can stop thinking about animals, she adjusts her grip on your hips, and before you have time to gasp, the hard curves of her iliac crests are butting up hard against your pelvis. Your mouth drops open, you thank the ancient ones she can’t see your face, eyelids fluttering the way they do in the bogus romance novels the two of you totally don’t read.
(You’ll take Fifty Shades of Jadeblood over the original any day, though.)
The thick length of her bulge stretches you wide again, a slight soreness in the muscles akin to the kind you get after your infrequent workouts - but far more pleasant. Between your legs the feeling of wetness is almost uncomfortable, and you can’t rub them together, but the cold rim of the bucket pressing into your legs helps.
You can’t focus enough to reach back and touch yourself; Kanaya slides a hand up your back, nails scratching lightly but carefully until her fingers drape over your collarbone and in one swift tug she pulls you backwards and thrusts forward. Yours is not the only gasping voice in the room, both of your breaths punctuated occasionally by the popping of your knuckles as you clench your fists in the sheets, the mattress creaking in time.
"Oh my god," you exhale, breathing hard. Kanaya echoes it vaguely, hand tightening and relaxing on your shoulder. Your legs are shaking, and Kanaya’s fingers slide through your hair, leading you down on your elbows where you bury your moans in the sheets.
Her bulge twists quicker inside you, the curling driving you crazy. You shift around, prop yourself on one elbow and reach back with your other hand. Kanaya doesn’t slow and you tuck your face into your arm, feeling along the base of her bulge and your own sensitive flesh. You can’t quite rustle a proper sentence up out of your thoughts, for the blood rushing into your head dizzies you. But you get your answer regardless; Kanaya takes your hand and pulls it back behind her sheath.
You can take a hint, sure - but you can’t really dislocate your shoulder, and you feel the strain as you feel the wet heat of her nook. It takes a great deal of finagling and back-arching, yet you manage to wrest a few inches from your position.
Your finger slides easily in, and Kanaya shudders, leaning forward so her palms press into the mattress and rutting against you. Working backwards is difficult; once again you’re glad that she can’t see the expression on your face. Kanaya’s skin rubs hot and dry against yours, never slick with sweat the way you can feel the small of your back, damp in the chilly air.
It’s apparent that you’ve found your mark, pushing another finger in and wriggling aimlessly, when Kanaya presses her face into your back. A half-swallowed whine slips out and you smother your own in the bedsheets. It takes another moment that feels like eternity, stretching until your shoulders ache, to get her where you need her, where she needs her, at the edge of an undefined precipice and dear god, you’re working hard for this, you’re almost second-guessing your choice of position and contemplating politely requesting a more comfortable, if less intimate, solution -
And the points of Kanaya’s teeth scrape your shoulderblade, her mouth open and a body-long shudder giving you just a second of warning before her bulge writhes hard inside you and you feel the first overwarm pulses of genetic material inside you.
You reclaim your right hand, uncurling and steadying yourself as she grips your hip again, trying to ride out her orgasm against you.
Unfortunately, you’re… rather uncomfortable.
Rather full.
Killing the moment is the last thing you want to do right now, but waiting to (inevitably) reach your maximum capacity is even lower on the list.
"Kanaya," you murmur, gripping one of her hands in yours. "Up, please."
She nods, breathing hard. The shiver is now a deep vibration in her chest. When she leans back, you follow her, trying to make sure that you’re above the bucket when you reach down and gently ease her bulge out from between your legs.
The sudden lack of her floods your mind for a moment, the minute ache of the muscles inside you and a slight dizziness and the chill of evaporating sweat all up and down your body. Her fingers dig into your hips, face pressed hard into your neck; Kanaya’s mouth is open and panting. You wrap your hands around her bulge, squeezing gently. It’s hard to hear the splashing in the pail but you feel the warm drips staining your fingers as the rush begins to slow.
She presses against you still, wraps her arms around your waist and keeps you close as the last of her words slip away against your collarbone and she surfaces, gasping a little for breath.
"Am I’m dead?" Kanaya whispers questioningly, sitting back on her heels.
"Again?"
She mhm’s at you, letting go of your hips with a final kiss to the small of your back.
You grip the bucket and slide it carefully out from under you. There’s less than normal, and your face flushes hot when you realize why. The thought, however attractive, is slowly turning into a cooling, sticky reality, punctuated by Kanaya’s fingers wandering up the tacky insides of your thighs.
"Rose," she says, and you hear her smiling as her fingertips dip inside you - you shiver compulsively - and come out wet and green. "I think we’ve made a bit of a mess."
It’s a vast understatement; despite your best intentions, the sheets are stained far worse than usual. The sun has risen partway above the horizon, and in the hazy light you can see that there are spots and smeared handprints spanning the bed. Your knees stick slightly to the topsheet when you move.
"Bath," you sigh.
"Bath," she echoes.
The bed rises as she steps off and you sit there for a moment, holding the pail, a little afraid to move. When you finally do, you can’t avoid wincing. You feel… soggy. The sheets are wrecked and you feel the strain of the morning in the backs of your legs and in the crick in your neck. You can hear the bathwater running now, and Kanaya returns, her hands on your shoulders. They draw only slightly into your knotted muscles before she takes the bucket from your hands.
Her lips touch the bite marks on your neck, just slight enough to tickle.
Kanaya is still warm in the wake of sleep and sex, and the morning chill returns as she steals away to the bathroom. Rolling your shoulders, you step at long last from the bed.
The drapes are still half open and you slide them aside to check on the sun’s progress. It climbs the sky as slowly as ever, and purple is barely ceding to red when Kanaya touches your waist.
"It’s almost ready," she says, ruffling your hair with her words. She warms your back and you feel flooded with emotion; you are sticky with alien cum and your body is full of bruised veins and creaky bones and you love all six feet and two inches of this sentient being like mad.
Her hand is squeezable, so you squeeze it, turning away from the window.
Unfortunately, all five feet and four inches of you are dead tired. You’d ask her to carry you but you can’t find the words. Instead, you tow her gently towards the hallway. Your steps are ginger; there’s a soreness inside you and outside you and straight through your bones.
==> Kanaya: Coddle.
Of course you will - that’s your job, to rub Rose’s shoulder as you follow her to the bathroom. Sometimes you feel guilty that the two of you can rarely ever make love without needing a bath immediately after, but the ritual of the hot soak in the tub is so relaxing as to almost completely make up for it.
Drawing a bath, adding some of the scented salts from beneath the counter, is routine now, and when you test the water your hand comes away smelling of chamomile. Earth herbs are exquisite, sweet tastes and delicate scents that only serve to remind you how different this new world is from your home. Alternian teas are difficult to come across here, though your troll acquaintances are in touch with some specialty growers who have figured out the secrets of Nitrogen-based agricultural life.
But Earth is sweet as Rose is, underneath the bitter impressions of caffeine and earthy spices, and you are grateful for the tastes of your new home.
Her skin flushes pink as she steps into the bath, arms prickling suddenly with bumps in the cold before she sinks down into the water - which immediately fills with swirls of green between her knees. Rose makes a face, a scrunch-nosed, eyes-squeezed-shut face of disgust that’s so beyond overplayed that you stifle a laugh.
You kneel beside the warming porcelain, dropping one hand inside the rim of the tub. She keeps her eyes shut and her face carefully relaxed and your hands ease her knees apart. Your knowledge of Rose’s anatomy is mostly practical, but you know from idle research that biologically female genitalia is dangerously delicate in some manners , and you have no idea if your genetic material could tip the balance, and if so, how drastically.
Considering the always-unfortunate consequences of a discomfited Rose and the embarrassing hassle of securing a doctor’s appointment, it’s probably best to take as many precautions as you can at this point.
…And in the future, actual precautions. There’s a market for it, if you make the proper contacts. The troll community produces more than Alternian teas.
Rose breathes out slowly as you rub your fingers between her legs, taking care to be gentle. When you slide two inside, her mouth hangs open slightly; you lean forward to close it with your own, slow and without the earlier hunger. Her tongue moves against yours, her hands streaking suddenly down your shoulders, wet and warm and leaving you chilled. One knee knocks against your shoulder, she fidgets, and you slow your fingers.
"I think that will do," she whispers, and you feel her breath between your open lips and teeth. "I’m… I’m a little worn out."
After a dumb moment you nod, fingers sliding free without a thought. The water is tinged a fuller green that clings to Rose’s skin; the level wavers and drops as she leans forward and pulls the plug. There’s a faint ring left at the highest point on the porcelain that comes off when you rub your fingers over it.
Your face heats.
Rose’s hair is slicked tight to the back of her neck, strands surrounded by purple marks, vague and clearer imprints of your teeth. She turns the water back on, running her hands under the stream before replacing the plug.
"Are you coming in?" she asks, chin resting on her knees, pushing her damp bangs out of her face with one hand, and who are you to say no? You stand, lurching a little on fast-asleep feet, and climb into the tub, careful not to slip or step on Rose’s toes. The water relaxes the worn-out muscles in the backs of your legs, though the slight ache in your abdomen remains.
You really must get into better physical shape.
For future reference.
Rose reaches for your feet and you slide your legs flat against the floor of the tub, almost far enough to touch the other edge if you point your toes. She touches them instead with her fingertips, wiggling into the spaces between them and making you squirm before she moves her hands further upwards. You shut your eyes when she reaches your knees, her palms smoothing out over your thighs and thumbs slipping down against the insides. When her fingers land between your legs you can’t help but stiffen.
Oversensitivity peaks immediately after retraction, and soaking in the bath hasn’t done anything to curb it, and your hands clench hard as Rose slides her fingers into the little dip in the insides of your thighs. You bite back a noise, teeth sinking into your lower lip, when she drags her hand right over your sheath, the shut-tight slit of your nook. She doesn’t linger and you count all of your numerous blessings as she rubs up your abdomen and back down your legs again, the sticky mess on your skin dissolving into nothing but a tint in the water.
Rose rests her elbows on your thighs,and you open your eyes to watch her dipping her fingertips into the bathwater and then letting them drip above the surface. She’s watching the ripples as well, head tilted and hair a wet, silvery blonde in the soft light.
"I can’t decide," she says finally, staring hard into the bath, "if we should sleep or stay up."
She lifts her head and you could laugh at how serious she looks - dead serious and worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
"It’s too early to be awake, but the sheets are dirty anyways."
You nudge her fingertips with yours, trace the wrinkling skin that follows long baths like these in familiar patterns. In all honesty, you couldn’t care less what you do next - though that’s not quite true. Once it gets to a reasonable hour you have commissions to chip away at, and if Rose doesn’t write at least a little bit today you know she’ll be beside herself tomorrow, and there are dishes and laundry to do…
"We could go down the street for breakfast," you suggest finally. "It’s been a while since we were up early enough to go out like that."
"Yeah," Rose says, her hands in yours and her smile small and bright. "That’d be nice."
You pass her the shampoo off the shelf next to the tub and the two of you wash your hair as the sun rises higher into the clean spring day that stretches ahead of you. Odysseys have long since lost their charm for you, but the journey of a new day is well within your capabilities.
The bath smells of lavender and vanilla when you’re finished; you’ve rinsed your hair half a dozen times, laid back until the cooling water lapped at your temples, and you feel the weary night and the new day at once.
As you dry off, the tub drains. You wrap a thick white towel around Rose’s waist and against the warm wet planes of her hips and stomach. She shivers when her hair drips, and you do your best to catch the trailing water before it makes it very far down her back, and then you tuck the corner of the towel in snug around her body. Her neck is chilly as it dries, and you kiss it, watching her in the mirror as she smiles and rearranges the stuff on the counter, plugging in the hairdryer and moving the important bottles to the front.
You let her go and wander into the bedroom to the sounds of the hair dryer following you down the hallway.
Rose’s phone is closest on the nightstand, and you fiddle for a moment, forgetting her passcode and then jarred by the unfamiliar layout when you get in. Eventually the little blue square for the weather app informs you that the forecast is chilly with a chance of needing hot tea and a warm scarf.
You open the closet doors, searching for something thick and comfortable before you decide that you can just wear your coat over anything - it’ll be warm in the coffee shop anyways. Rose meanders in as you pull an undershirt over your head, the day’s outfit laid out on the bed. She strokes her fingers down your arm as you pass to take her place before the big mirror.
The person in the mirror doesnt look much like the everyday you at the moment. There are bags beneath your eyes to rival the book-tour luggage on the closet floor; your hair is beginning to dry in coarse little curls; faint marks trail down your neck, disappearing beneath the thin shirt. Human determination is incredible, you think, poking at the pale green spots that in one place form the vague shape of a row of teeth. It would be a scarf day regardless of the weather.
You choose to ignore your face for now, at least until you have the beast that is your hair under control. There’s a reason you keep it short, and it’s only half to do with appearances.
Beneath the sink you fetch all that you need and put Rose’s more gentle products in their place. All of the myriad and precise instruments that prepare you to interact with the outside world lay out around the sink. By the time your hair is neatly coiffed, the sun is shining through the bedroom window.
Rose has taken your spot in front of the closet now, wearing the bra and underwear you thought you threw out months ago. She must have stashed them in the back of the drawer, waiting for a day that she would care so little that they could be worn. You determinedly ignore the exposed millimeters of elastic at Rose’s hip, the fraying band across her back.
"I can’t decide how much of a functional human being I care to be today," she muses.
You stay quiet, watching her warily as you step into your pants, buttoning them snug at your waist.
"I don’t think I want to wear actual clothing."
The train of thought is familiar, and you know exactly where this leads - which wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t going to breakfast. Outside. In public.
She hammers the final nail in the coffin with a final declaration that sounds as though she’s satisfied with a very difficult decision: “It’s a leggings as pants day.”
You feel a piece of your soul wither away. The leggings go on as your shirt does, immune to the dirty looks you’re shooting from your corner of the room. You can only watch in mute acceptance as she produces an oversized cable knit sweater out of absolutely nowhere.
It’s impossible, how these things find their way into your home and stay hidden until they make their appearance as mildly uncomfortable fashion accidents, escaping your attempts to do away with the bulky grey messes of yarn.
The urge to offer a hundred more comfortable, better looking alternatives is present, but Rose smiles at you in the mirror above the dresser, and you know that the battle against secondhand sweaters has been lost for the day.
She does fit in with the predominant coffee shop crowd of twenty somethings in shabby chic, you suppose, and it does cover her neck - the sight of which fills you with equal amounts of guilt and satisfaction. You sigh, unable to communicate the depth of your conflicted feelings about how attractive your girlfriend looks in large sweaters and how deeply you detest deliberately dressing in unflattering clothing in any context other than home.
Instead, you kiss her cheek. Ugly sweaters never hurt anything other than your obstinate fashion sense, but the perennial chill of the city has been known to cause its fair share of shivering and frozen noses. Such serious conditions should be avoided at all costs, you tell yourself, buttoning a cardigan closed over your chest. Lined boots and a well-knotted scarf later, you are stashing your wallet in your pocket and slipping out the front door, shoulders already hunched a little in trepidation of the bright cold.
Surprisingly, it’s not half as bad as you expected outside - you relax, straightening your back and breathing deep in relief. Rose tilts her face to the sun, eyes shut as though the cracked sidewalk is the shifting sand on the beach thirty minutes (and several months, providing for weather) away. You suppose, for her, it may as well be.
Sunday morning streets are empty, even the familiar church paths and morning pilgrimage routes void at this time of the day. Nobody but the bakers and the baristas are up - nobody but the bakers and the baristas and the two of you, meandering along at a pace made normally impossible by pedestrians and circumstance.
The bitter smell of coffee turns up three blocks from the shop and fills your stomach with anticipation, the promise of a hot cup between your hands and a pit of warmth inside of you; Rose lifts her nose to the sky a scant half a block from the door, letting a soft mmmmm roll in her throat, and you know she’s imagining the same thing.
You touch the handle of the door, a shiver lacing up your arm at the difference in temperature, the night’s cold lingering in the metal. When you open it to step inside, a wave of warmth welcomes you, hot shop air and Rose’s hand on your back as she follows you in.
You smile, remembering again that feeling of home.
The coffee is delicious.