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She says it’s lavender perfume. She spritzes it into her soft palm and anoints the crook of your neck until you smell like her on the surface, and now you’re lavender too.
"You said that a rose was a different type of flower on your planet."
You’re the only light in the room – you’re white, setting her into pale contrast. You cast her aglow. You loop your arms around her waist and hope that you’ll never have to let go.
"Yes, and it smells nice too, but I don’t have any on hand at the moment," her lips purse.
"Maybe one of the others captchalogued a rose."
"Perhaps.
" She’s very good at writing, but she’s not a natural artist. She’s impatient, and her rose looks crumpled and simplistic. You say nothing, but you find it secretly endearing, especially when she waves you away. You’ve been breathing down her neck. You’ve never had anything like this before, and you’re not sure how close is too close and how often you’re allowed to indulge in her presence.
When she’s done, she disposes of her artistry in the little wastebin modeled after the head of one of Dave’s celebrities, so when she’s not looking, you fish it out with utmost care and slip it in the pocket of your skirt. You never tell her.
You think that she might find you boring, sometimes. There is nothing to analyze – it puts a furrow between her brows, and you almost consider making something up. I always felt as though there was a distance between my lusus and I. It doesn’t feel right.
She doesn’t kiss you when she’s sober. Rose is soft. Too soft, sometimes. Your talons have a way of catching in her skin and leaving ruddy grooves, and your teeth get in the way of her clumsy tongue. She tastes like foreign meat. You’re disgusted by the thought of hurting her, but she only smiles as she pushes back in and smooths her blood across your soft palate. You hold on tightly, so tightly, and desperately hope that she knows what she wants.
Her breath is sharp and her body exudes a warmth only comparable to the heat of the sun that you left behind. Her cape tangles when you sleep side by side – only, you never sleep anymore, you just lie there and wonder what she sees in you. You never ask.
"It comes naturally to me," you soothe. You’re brushing her white bangs out of her face, she’s curled around the load gaper and her eyes are watery and glossed. Her breath is sour.
"You go out of your way to help me."
"It comes naturally to me," you say again.
"When did you start doing this?"
"Rose," you punctuate with a lingering kiss to her forehead. "Don’t you ever worry about yourself?"
They don’t tell you that life in space is boring. After you’ve exhausted all the party games and what the alchemiter has to offer, and everyone has watched Karkat’s movies at least twice, what’s left? Rose drinks. Dave and Karkat fight over Terezi. Your dead friends stay dead, and though you have more time than ever, there will never be enough time to mourn them all.
You were never destined for space. Had you stayed, you would’ve been tucked into the planet’s core to foster the next generation.
"Could your instincts to nurture be a misplaced instinct left over from your duty to the mother grub?"
Perhaps I just care about you.
You cut Dave’s hair. It’s the same white as hers, but it’s softer. It’s tufted, perpetually ruffled – he talks the whole time, and refuses to take his glasses off even when you wash his hair in the sink and the water runs down into his eyes – red, from what you can see at the strange angle you have him at. They’re both enigmas to you.
He acts like a wounded animal trying to hide a limp and look bigger than it is with the disarming things that he says. You finish with his hair and he thanks you, in his way. He’s always done it himself.
Rose disappears sometiems. There are lots of places for her to hide, so you don’t worry too much, but, just once, you wonder if there’s an airlock somewhere. There must be. You imagine her deserted, suffocating in the freezing black vacuum imperial leagues behind the meteor, and then you pinch yourself and undo a line of botched stitches outside of their margin.
You’re trying to make something new. If nothing else, you have all sorts of fabrics alchemized. The god tiers don’t need new clothes, but Karkat is still stubbornly denying the fact that he’s grown, and Terezi stains her clothes with all sorts of things that you can’t identify by sight.
No one else will do it – and it’s not very difficult to alchemize clothing, but needle and thread is the best way to do things. You’ve always thought so.
You decide that space couldn’t take Rose from you even if it tried, and then promptly prick yourself with the needle.
You don’t think that you’re a very good matesprit, but she’d never answer if you asked her directly. You sew a handkerchief for the scent of her perfume. She just has the one.
You all took little treasures from back home. Yours was probably the matriorb. Perfume is much more easily replaced.
You’re getting better at kissing, but also at identifying the alcohol on her breath. She leaves in the middle of your rest and you pretend that you’re asleep to spare her a confrontation. She squeezes your hand and sighs like she’s more tired than anything else the universe has to offer. Your bloodpusher twinges. You consider a pantomime of waking, but you’re a terrible actor and by the time you could’ve made up your mind, she’s gone.
Her drawing is flattened by your hip. You unfold the page.
You don’t know what a rose should look like.
Something in you aches.