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It turns out that there is a sweet spot between "obnoxiously drunk" and "dangerously blacking out drunk" at which a human is still marginally ambulatory and has a high enough blood alcohol content to allow her rainbow drinker girlfriend to get buzzed by feeding on her (presuming that a superhuman tolerance to booze is not one of the questionable ectobiologic boons granted to the Lalonde line, of course), as evidenced by the fact that Rose is currently sitting on the edge of her bed with seriously mussed hair and a positively adorable look of concentration on her face as she fumbles with the paper wrapper on a band-aid. Or maybe Kanaya's own slight inebriation has more to do with the fact that halfway through the experiment Rose had abandoned all pretense at good scientific practice and totally corrupted their results by repeatedly shoving her glass in Kanaya's general direction.
Kanaya perches next to her, narrow hands folded and clasped between her knees. "I could open that for you," she says, her enunciation as careful as ever. She feels a little dizzy and giddy and isn't entirely sure she likes the sensation.
Rose shakes her head, hesitates, and then hands over the little envelope with a sigh. Kanaya peels back the paper and carefully smooths the bandage - plastic, printed with badly scaled jpeg images of scalemates - over the little puncture wounds at Rose's throat.
Rose yawns, kind of flopping over into Kanaya's lap, her arms stretching up over her head in a way that does interesting things to her strangely supple human upper torso anatomy under the thin lilac shirt. She grins up into Kanaya's slightly luminescent and faintly green-tinted face. "Whoa. Hi."
"Hello, Rose," Kanaya replies, not sure if there's a proper response to that. It seems to please her girlfriend, though, because Rose smiles wider, her eyes going half-closed.
The smile lingers for a moment, and then that too-serious I'm-trying-to-think-around-the-alcohol expression is back as Rose reaches up to hook a hand around the back of Kanaya's neck. "I knowww we said we were finally gonna fool around tonight but is it ok if we don't?" she asks. "I don't hardly know where my own bitsh are righ' now."
Honestly, Kanaya has to try not to look a little relieved at this suggestion; she doesn't think she's exactly impaired but she's not best equipped to avoid making a total fool of herself at the moment either. She nods. "Of course."
"Y'wanna stay here t'night anyway?" Rose asks, her fingers tracing idly over the nape of Kanaya's neck. "We can like... cuddle, and stuff."
"Sure."
As a rainbow drinker, Kanaya doesn't sleep much anymore. As a thoroughly drunk human, Rose snores.
When they wander into the common space of the asteroid the next morning - they've all adopted the human metaphors for times of day on their timeless little asteroid, partly because Earth's day-night cycle was more consistent than Alternia's and partly because they'd tried the other way and Dave couldn't or wouldn't figure it out - they're met with a piercing whistle.
"Would you cut that the fuck out?" Karkat demands from behind a book somewhere on the other side of the room.
"But Dave has been coaching me on human traditions for acknowledging when one's friends have successfully consummated a quadrant," Terezi objects, the picture of innocence. "I'm just trying to be culturally sensitive."
Dave does not look in the least sorry for having put her up to this. "For future reference, Tee-zee, a proper wolf-whistle is two tones. Like so." And he demonstrates
"It's a little premature, anyway," Rose informs them, wincing at the noise and making a beeline for the coffee.
"Rose!" Kanaya gasps, turning her best "when I am done with you there won't be enough fluids left for the clown to bottle" glare on Terezi. She's not sure whether it gets across; she's never sure just how nuanced of facial expressions Terezi can even notice.
"Oh come on, who's got supernatural intuition of people's intentions, around here?" Terezi objects.
"Terezi, I am all too aware of your capabilities as a fellow Seer," Rose grumbles, "but I might point out that you are, after all, Seer of Mind, not Seer of Booze."
"Rose!" Kanaya buries her face in her hands as Dave busts up laughing. Maybe she should have gotten the human girl to stay in bed and brought her the coffee. Maybe she ought to just take a page from Gamzee's book and never show her face in the public areas of the meteor again.
Rose makes a small dissatisfied sound. "It is too early and I am too hung over to deal with you two," she informs Dave and Terezi peevishly, and coaxes one of Kanaya's hands away from her face in order to take her arm and steer her back out into the hallway.
Honestly it wouldn't be so upsetting if it were an isolated incident, but they've been through this, or something very like it, twice already in the past few weeks - not counting that first time, because even in her annoyance Kanaya really can't blame Rose for falling down all those stairs. The stairs are starting to look like some kind of bizarre omen now, though, in that in the immortal words of Hella Jeff, it keeps happening.
And a few nights later, the two of them are alone in Kanaya's room, flopped haphazardly across the pile of discarded knitting and abandoned sewing projects. Rose goes to pull a bottle of something from her sylladex, and Kanaya sighs, grits her teeth, and asks.
"Rose, do you not want to..." Both the human and troll euphemisms suddenly seem really stupid, and she goes for direct. "Have sex with me?"
Rose looks up at her, an expression somewhere between concern and total stupefaction on her face. "What?"
"I mean, it's perfectly ok if you don't," Kanaya says quickly. "It's just you said you did but every time we get a chance you drink yourself silly and then beg off because you're too drunk, and after a while I kind of have to wonder..."
"Oh, no," Rose sighs. She looks at the bottle in her hand for a moment as if she's just noticed it, then recapchas it and reaches over to pull Kanaya to sit beside her. She leans her head against Kanaya's shoulder, fine pale hair tickling the side of the troll's face. "I'm sorry. I have no idea what I'm doing."
"It's ok," Kanaya says, although really it's confusing and a little frustrating. "I mean it, we don't have to..."
Rose laughs. "No. I mean I literally don't know what to do and I'm being silly and self-conscious about it," she says, sitting up and pulling her t-shirt up over her head, discarding the garment into the fashion pile.
Kanaya blinks at her.
"I mean," Rose continues, fumbling to unhook her own bra, "I can wax pseudointellectual about how virginity is a social construct all day, but that doesn't make me any less practically inexperienced, and suddenly my thousands upon thousands of words of erotic wizard fiction don't seem to count for nearly as much as I'd previously..."
She squeaks slightly as Kanaya leans over and kisses her, lightly, but full on the mouth.
"Ok," Rose says, when Kanaya pulls away, and reaches for the hem of the troll's shirt. "Let's do this."
Kanaya doesn't wear anything under her shirt, a fact which seems for a moment to vaguely bewilder Rose... who, Kanaya notices, seems to have finally freed herself from her own undergarment. Yes, that... definitely seems to be the case. Kanaya has noted on occasion that human breasts are softer than troll feminine pectoral growths; she hadn't expected the distinct impression that Rose's chest is watching her.
Rose follows Kanaya's gaze, and giggles a little nervously. "I think the traditional line is, 'my eyes are up here,'" she says, slipping her arms around Kanaya's waist.
"You have... dots," Kanaya observes. "On your breasts." She rests her hands against Rose's collar bones, partly because it feels comfortable in the current embrace and partly because that way her forearms are partially obscuring Rose's chest and making it easier not to stare.
Rose smiles lopsidedly "Nipples," she corrects. "I notice you don't."
"No," Kanaya agrees.
"Are they still..." Rose drags her hands lightly up Kanaya's sides, coming to rest with her palms cupped over the troll's chest, eliciting a squeak of surprise. Rose grins, looking pleased with herself. "Sensitive?"
"Your hands are warm," Kanaya informs her, and then leans in to kiss Rose again.
Rose responds, seeming glad of the sudden turn toward action rather than discussion; Kanaya's fangs graze over her lips without breaking skin, and Rose does her best to reciprocate with her delicately blunted human teeth. The human girl's hands aren't the only thing warm about her. They noticed that Rose runs hotter than Kanaya does, ages ago, but it's worlds easier to notice with extensive skin-to-skin contact.
Then Rose's arms are wrapped around Kanaya again, and they're tipping over into the pile of half-finished clothing. They roll over, and it'd be a whole lot easier for Kanaya to keep track of what else was going on except that now Rose's tongue has found its way into her mouth and that's kind of occupying most of her attention.
When they come up for breath, Kanaya is on her back with Rose straddling her hips, the short purple skirt gathered up around her waist. One of Kanaya's hands is on Rose's ass. One of Rose's hands is around one of Kanaya's horns.
"Ok, that... about exhausts my repertoire of actually knowing what the fuck I'm doing," Rose says, her voice one part laugh and two parts nervousness.
Kanaya tries to glare. It's a little hard with an attractive alien girl sitting on top of her, and, she suspects, completely ruined by the way that the combination of the kissing and the warm pressure on her general pelvic area is beginning to make things decidedly squirmy down there. There's no way Rose hasn't noticed that.
"Is that Lalonde-speak for 'I want to stop'?" she asks, a little peevishly despite herself.
Rose shakes her head, hair flopping into her eyes.
"Good. Now help me out of this skirt before I ruin it," Kanaya says, rocking her hips in a way that's meant to shift Rose but mostly manages to achieve a kind of friction that makes Kanaya go cross eyed for a second.
Rose obliges, scooting backward until she's perched more or less over Kanaya's knees and fumbling for a moment with the buttons on the red corduroy. Kanaya levers herself up on her elbows to watch; there's a perverse and not so small part of her mind that suggests that this entire multi-apocolyptic mess is worth it for the sight of Rose's bone-and-ivory coloration stained with a bright flush across her cheeks as her almond-shaped eyes narrow in concentration.
Then the clever pale fingers have unfastened the skirt enough to pull it down over her hips; Rose hooks her fingers through the band of Kanaya's charcoal-colored briefs and pulls off both layers of clothing at the same time.
Kanaya gasps slightly at the sudden freedom and coolness of the air, her bulge already more than half unsheathed, and Rose hesitates. As soon as Kanaya realizes that the human has paused, she sits up a little more, brow starting to furrow with worry.
She doesn't know what exactly is going on with human anatomy; she's somewhat intentionally not sought out that information, as Rose has thus far been a little body shy and Kanaya emphatically has no interest in encouraging Dave long enough to decipher his "ironic" crudity. She has, however, gathered that they aren't as troll-like in the general pants department as their appearance might otherwise indicate. Has the sudden reveal been too off-putting to Rose?
But the hesitation lasts only a short moment, before Rose practically coos, "Ooooh, tentacles," and she's giving Kanaya an inquiring look even as she's reaching toward the lazily writhing jade tendrils. "Can I?"
"Please," Kanaya replies, and she can't help arching into the soft, warm hand that carefully palms at her bulge. She doesn't so much drop back onto the heap of soft fabric as melt, and she's simultaneously vaguely aware of the rattling sigh that escapes from her lips and almost painfully cognizant of every neuron firing in her body.
Rose makes a little pleased noise and repeats the motion, pausing, moving her hands so that the bigger tendrils can twine around her fingers. A long moment later, Kanaya has regained enough control of her senses to sit up properly, bracing herself with one hand while she reaches out to take hold of Rose's shoulder with the other and burying her face in the side of Rose's neck, nuzzling in behind the human girl's ear.
Rose laughs softly in response, and turns her head, kissing Kanaya on the nose and then seeking out her mouth. Her hand stills, as if she can't concentrate on both the kiss and the hand job at the same time, but Kanaya can't find it in herself to really complain. As they kiss, she moves her hand around to Rose's chest, her thumb flicking over the tip. Rose arches her back, pressing the soft flesh more firmly into Kanaya's hand.
They keep at this for a few minutes more - uncertain touches, always coming back to the kisses as if to familiar territory - until Rose, properly in Kanaya's lap again, looks down and frowns.
Kanaya follows her gaze and buries her face in her hands. Rose's stomach is marked with clear, haphazard lines of jade green, the result of Kanaya's bulge twitching and curling between them.
Rose's skirt, still bundled around her waist, is also marked with clear, haphazard lines of jade green.
"Oh my god, I am so sorry," Kanaya groans. "I'm not sure... that might wash out. I don't know."
"It's just a skirt," Rose hastens to reassure her. "I can alchemize another one. Actually I've alchemized like three like it already."
She stands up to shimmy out of the skirt and kick it aside; with Rose's feet bracketing Kanaya's thighs, it puts the strange little umbilical dimple in the middle of her stomach right at the troll's eye level. Kanaya hooks a finger through the side of the purple underpants that are all that remains of Rose's clothing, and looks up at her inquiringly.
Rose takes a deep breath, and nods, and Kanaya slides the undergarment - which seems almost unnecessarily delicate - down over Rose's hips.
She's not sure what she expected, but she's pretty sure fur wasn't it. She blinks at the patch of hair that extends from the base of her stomach to between her legs, as pale as that on Rose's head but coarser, and with more curl. Entirely without thinking about what she's doing, she pets it, gently and with the backs of two fingers.
Rose starts to laugh. It's not the nervous, breathy giggle of earlier, but a full-throated helpless laugh, until she ends up half-doubled over, her hands braced on Kanaya's shoulders for support. Kanaya blushes mint green and she's honestly trying to look put out at the sudden laughter, but she really can't keep from grinning. She hooks her arms around the backs of Rose's knees and neatly deposits the still laughing human back into her lap.
"Ok, Miss Fuzzy," she says once Rose catches her breath, "what do I do?"
Rose wiggles a little, so that she can spread her legs a little more comfortably, revealing parallel folds of pink skin, coated in something clear and slick. "Just be careful, I guess? Everything inside the, well, the 'fuzzy' part is pretty sensitive."
Kanaya nods, and leans her head against Rose's shoulder to look down between their torsos as she reaches for the newly revealed portion of Rose's anatomy. She notes the slight tensing of muscles as her fingers slide between the pink lips, and though she notes an opening there she doesn't test it yet; when Kanaya brushes against the nub of flesh where the folds meet, she's rewarded with a sharp intake of breath and a pair of soft hands clutching her shoulders.
Turning her head a little to try and see Rose's face, she rubs that spot again, more firmly this time; Rose rocks forward a little bit against her hand, her eyes bright and a little vague. "I believe you've found the clit - clitoris," Rose informs her, in a tone that would have been dry if her voice didn't keep catching. "I understand it's supposed to be - ah! - supposed to be somewhat elusive. Ten - ten points to Slytherin."
Kanaya's not sure she gets the reference, but it sounds approving, so she chuckles, and rubs the pad of her thumb against the slippery little bit of flesh again, and again, until Rose is making breathy little nonverbal noises in her ear. One of Rose's arms is thrown around Kanaya's shoulders, the other hand wanders down to tangle in Kanaya's bulge again, and then, quests lower to gently prod at the edges of her nook, at which point Kanaya loses her concentration and skips a few beats in her own attentions to Rose's clitoris.
Well. Turnabout's fair play, right? Kanaya feels out that opening she'd located earlier, carefully slipping a fingertip inside. The wet cavity clenches around the intrusion, and Kanaya hurriedly pulls her hand away.
Rose giggles. "No, it's ok," she mumbles against the side of Kanaya's head. "It's made for things quite a bit bigger than that. Just... be careful of your nails?"
So it is a nook, or some equivalent thereof. Kanaya nods, carefully feeling out the opening again. Maybe Rose is making an effort to relax or something, because this time when she slides a finger inside there's no real resistance, and still isn't when her other knuckles are brushing against the outside of Rose's body. Kanaya gently crooks the finger, and Rose gives a shuddering sigh.
"Oh god, do that again," she pleads, and Kanaya obliges - and then pulls her hand away. In fact, she pulls back entirely, far enough to properly look Rose in the face.
The human girl blinks at her, looking a little put out. "Is something wrong?"
Kanaya swallows; directness has served her well thus far. "Would it be ok if I put my bulge in there?"
"The... tentacles?" Rose asks, her brow furrowing in what looks like uncertainty, and Kanaya nods, chewing her lip. Rose spares a glance downward again, as if reminding herself of what, exactly, the troll is equipped with. "I.. yeah, I think so. Yes. Please."
Kanaya smiles in response, and scoots forward, leaving the increasingly scattered fashion pile behind. Rose tries to open her legs further, and settles for wrapping them around Kanaya's waist.
For all that Kanaya's not sure how this is supposed to work, her body seems to have a pretty good idea; while they're still trying to figure out the position, the tip of her dominant tentacle is already feeling out the territory.
Then Kanaya rocks her hips forward, curling and sliding bit by bit into Rose, who is clutching at her with all four limbs and mumbling something that might be words if Kanaya was adequately able to pay attention to sensory information provided by the vast majority of her body that is not her bulge.
Kanaya pauses to catch her breath, and somewhat before she's regained her composure, Rose hisses, "I swear to god, Kanaya Maryam, if you stop now I am going to -"
Kanaya gives her bulge a slow, leisurely twist, individual tentacles coiling and sliding against each other and against Rose's inner surfaces, and Rose finishes the sentiment with a drawn out, "Ooooh."
Grinning, Kanaya repeats the motion, working up a rhythm; Rose's moans turn to gasps and then quiet almost to whimpers, but every time Kanaya makes to slow, the human responds by rocking her hips more roughly against the troll's. Kanaya is distantly aware that she's glowing brighter than ever, Rose's form throwing sharp shadows against the wall.
Then Rose clenches around her again, her breath coming in soundless pants, and Kanaya is just thinking oh shit, I don't have a pail when she moves her hand and finds a key that she is certain was not there a moment ago. It takes entirely too long a moment of fumbling one-handed with her sylladex, but she manages to unlock the appropriate card and withdraw the appropriate container. Rose is still shuddering and apparently incoherent, wrapped around Kanaya in more ways than one, as Kanaya levers herself up onto her knees, lifting her matesprit with her - they can endlessly analyze their choice of words later, matesprit is most definitely the appropriate term right now.
She barely gets the pail in place before her nook convulses, releasing a stream of deep jade liquid - not that she's entirely cognizant of it, with her face pressed into the juncture where Rose's neck and shoulder meet and fireworks filling her vision. Finally, with a mixture of disappointment and relief, she feels her bulge receding. Rose's grip on her shoulders and hips has already loosened, and the human girl drops to her knees on the floor as well.
They sit there, leaning against each other, for a long moment, and then Rose starts to giggle, and Kanaya can't help joining, though it's doing nothing to help her catch her breath.