Work Text:
Virgo:
Look at her.
Reading like that.
In the first several months of spending increasingly long, decreasingly quiet amounts of time with her, I often found myself reflecting that Rose Lalonde was indeed an enigma. A mystery. A riddle-posing troll-headed possibly-winged desert clawbeast. A cunningly-worked container fashioned in a manner to perplex wigglers and adults alike, featuring two hidden catches, an invisible sliding section, and no less than three false chambers. I resolved early on that I must apply my full wit and patience if I was to succeed at the task of unraveling her.
I was wrong.
Rose Lalonde is a robot.
Possibly a poorly-programmed one, showing her true synthetic nature through her ceaseless immunity to the ravages of boredom. The only flaw in this formulation of her nature is that I watched her grow up.
Nevertheless, it is compelling.
I swear she has read that terrible shitty romance novel four times now. She keeps returning to it after each pass through the library, giving it the same critical attention she does to each tome in here, as if it holds the otherwise ineffable secrets to some great game that holds all of our lives in its grips. Meanwhile I believe that I have done every single thing to do on this meteor. At least, every one of those things that is not in fact the domain of pure imagination.
Turn the page. Turn the page. This one holds no new surprises, Rose. Please, please, please turn the page, place yourself that much closer to the chapter end, to a break, to conversation.
And then she shifts her posture; suddenly I am given an exquisite, agonizing, tortuous view of the curve of her neck, down to her collarbone and I.
Oh fuck, I've ruined the upholstery.
This isn't healthy.
Squiddle:
A slow, steady tearing noise diverts my attention from my studies; it appears that Kanaya is making a careful exploration through the fabric of her overstuffed chair, via a claw-based interface.
I mark the experiment down as a success.
I wonder if she knows.
If she realizes that my growing awareness of her reactions, her attentions, the simple fact that I know how she spends the majority of her time -
that is to say, with me
- has driven this recent campaign, the Summer Offensive, as I have taken to classifying it.
A follow up to the War of Fourteen Conversations, also known as our first interactions with each other; a coordinated strategy to determine empirically her reactions to a wide variety of displays of physical presence, of moments where I say little but am undeniably, unavoidably there.
A part of me suggests, persistently, that I should not behave in such a way, that I should be direct, finally, at long last, with one person in my life.
That Kanaya, of all people, deserves a straightforward approach.
And yet, here I stand. I can do no other.
The risk is clearly too much for any other path. I must study, evaluate, test the waters, because if I simply told her how much the mere feeling of existing in her actual company makes my soul fly, my mind drift to realms too sweetly poetic to be expressed in anything but the most purple of prose, and my breath catch -
surely she has noticed the way my breath catches
- when she comes near to me suddenly and I think that this is the time, this is the moment when she will finally brush her skin against mine...
If she knew, and refused me, I would simply be undone.
Sylph:
This is quite enough.
Enough watching, enough distance.
If I am satisfied to sit here glowing like a fool for this girl while she slowly drives my desire all around the quadrants, surely I deserve the fate I receive.
Act. Let your doubts rest in this ridiculous ugly cushioned thing, and rise away from them.
Act. Imagine the best that could happen.
Stand up and go to her.
Oh shit, she's smiling at me.
Now, a familiar feeling: a paralyzing shock, rattling up out of my core and shivering through my neck. Eyes wide, cheeks colorful, fingers trembling and locked.
And then, for the first time I can recall, I am through it. Through and to the other side, my legs cooperating, my movements smooth and untroubled, a matching smile gracing my lips, some words passing them.
Wait.
What did I just say? It sounded good. Great, actually. Did that come from me?
More words I can't hear, coming from myself. Is this some bizarre survival instinct, to be charming and clever as a fight or flight response?
But now everything comes back together, clicks, and I realize what I said and why I said it and I can no longer escape from the fact that it was me who spoke those words.
Take it back, take it back, before she.
What?
She's taken my hand.
Don't flee, don't freeze.
Her skin is soft, supple, like nothing I've felt. She's warm, very warm, and she's a moving living being interacting with me, a touch I've longed for and I am lost in, my palm exploring hers by the simple expedient of pressing tightly against it.
I should say something, and I start to, she hushes me with her free hand and oh. Her fingers brush my lips, touch my shoulder, flit over my waist and then my hip. Each point of contact feels like fire, and I fear I may blind her with my luminescence. That, or set flammable objects in the vicinity alight.
But she bears it. She smiles again and tilts her head and I am suddenly small in my own body, small and unworthy and undeserving of the look she's giving me and I ache for the opportunity to experience to comprehend to understand all of her flesh as well as I pretend to understand her mind.
How could I think such things?
This isn't enough.
Seer:
She's getting bored; she tells me as much.
Don't show fear, don't show the flashes of alarm that are sparking across my mind, registering terror that she like all others has simply tired of my deflective wit and evasions, scan her face -
she's smiling, eager, a little off-balance by her own moves, that was a move, that was calculated and not simply a straightforward complaint, and if it was a move then this is a game, if she were an opponent with that stance would be sent flying, she hasn't got her feet under her, she's not an opponent, don't send her tumbling into embarrassment
- and I know that if we continue this pattern, this path of words exchanged, we will fall into an Ouroboros cycle of wit and eventually our collective snark will eat itself and we'll have nothing, and gods I don't want to have nothing with her.
She's getting bored and I didn't see it because as usual I had my head too far up my own interests to recognize that my careful study of her culture and language has paradoxically -
but is this not, after all, Paradox Space?
- pulled me farther from her than when I first arrived on this depressing rock in which we are the only lights.
So.
No more words.
I watch the shock register when I take her hand, and I, prepared for it, hide my own.
I see her start to make another move, and hear her gasp as I make what by all rules of fair play should be an illegal act, as I commit to the escalation to another game entirely, as my finger finds its space between her fangs and against her lips, the soft skin -
is it the softest on her body? I wonder
- denting ever so slightly at the pressure.
Why can't I simply keep my hand here, forever?
But I can't and so I move on, testing the waters, and with each wandering touch she's brighter and blushing and the look of absolute bafflement on her face is a new one, I want to replicate these results, I want to exceed them.
My cheeks burn as she makes a noise, a quiet little noise that has on it hints of fear and desperation and desire and sadness, notes I can read like sheet music and it might be the most powerful melody I've heard since Bach's Chaconne, it dances out to strike me, tearing at my defenses like a fusillade of arrows at Agincourt.
I was not prepared for this.
Now she reaches to me, presses her hands to my waist firmly -
possessively? Does she wish to make me hers?
- and then her fingers reach up and touch at my neck, my chin, and her fangs catch my eye, I shiver
I squirm
I melt under her touch
and she draws back,
I cry, a needful whimper
thoughts falling apart, running out of me like sand through fingers.
Kanaya:
Not enough.
She is stronger than I imagined, under my hands.
She has tension to her frame, as if the pressure she bears demands such from her body, her poise and presence in the world.
I start doing things, taking charge.
She bends for me, shifts, the tension winds out of her like an unraveling rope
I lose my place. For months I have been responding to her, reacting to her moods, her decisions.
I have followed, and in following I know my role. She has allowed me to enjoy her in safe, static ways that have all led to this. To watch her with slowly degrading patience as she studies the same fictional troll romances.
Lives that aren't ours. Lives that are fake, false, remnants of a world I was never really part of.
Not enough.
The skin of her throat is soft.
Everything about her is soft, underlaid by steel and glass, brittle and strong.
I move around her, get behind her, fingers tracing her, the lines of her body, drawing a slow gentle arc from shoulder to ear with the blunt edge of my claw .
I pray to her light that she enjoys this. She leans into me, and I can feel the motion of her lips parting in the anatomy of her neck. The contact between her back and my chest.
My body wants her, there is an ache to touch her more, explore her, draw out a multitude of those gasps, make her shake with need as I do.
How can I not?
I must restrain myself, she must grant me access to this temple, I am not a leader. This is not my position, yet my daring to try has won me a response that begs me to try more.
She asks me what I desire. I tell her, and with quickness I could not anticipate she has turned, the table is pressing in behind me, book discarded and all but forgotten.
I want a kiss; to feel that intimacy with her and not fear the soporific influence in her blood. I want so much more.
Her lips meet mine for the second time, and my world knows nothing but the touch, the connection, I don't want to lose the lead and I kiss back, oh dear, I am being careless and now she has parted her lips as we kiss and.
Her tongue meets my teeth, parts them.
I can taste her blood. She's injured, but.
She doesn't stop. Doesn't pause, doesn't hesitate, moves again, touches more, pressing her chest against mine.
I am flaming, I am an incendiary device meant to summon aid at a distance, I am a sun of her creation, and I am so small before her, the light that we two joined make so much greater by our pairing than anything either of us could produce alone.
My hands are around her now, one high and one low, the fabric of her clothing slipping over and away as we strive to feel every unexplored inch of this joined unit.
She embraces me, I leave the table, we meet the floor.
Rose:
What happens next?
I can't see it, my focus is obliterated by every moment, the wonderful pain, the amazing feeling as -
oh gods she's slipping her hand down the back of my pants -
just cop a feel why don't you -
it feels so good, so good, does she know? -
I want to touch her, embrace her, make her feel as good as she's -
her tongue is so strange, now that she's allowing me in my explorations to feel it -
flashing from one moment to the next, I stop seeing and feel, allow myself to experience my heart pounding, the deep purr that she emits, the strange hard-soft of her torso against the soft-hard of mine, a corner of my mind singing praises to the efficacy of nerves, the wonders of my body that it lets me feel this -
Oh fuck fuck she's squeezing my ass.
I can't help but laugh, through our kiss, breaking it, encouraging her to continue with a nervous nod -
claws, this pain is exquisite, the noises I make entirely undignified -
Contact.
Lips press against my neck, fangs scraping flesh, my stomach twists with the fear, the hope, that she has taken this as an invitation, my mind.
My mind is gone.
I am undone.
Hands follow instructions memorized from shitty romance novels, brushing through silky black hair, mussing it thoroughly, gracing against the base of her barbed horn. Her head jerks away from my neck in shock, I've done something wrong, no no no no no; relief surges through me as she smiles and clicks an alien noise of relaxed happiness that I can read in every crease and corner of her face and I do it again, draw a touch against her horn -
she dives back in to reach my neck as I continue, my gentle nervousness and her rough enthusiasm, a perfect pairing of sweet and savory, a harmony of bodies playing the finest music with and on each other.
Moments of glorious stasis pass, each of us continuing on our course, and as our bodies turn I see feet.
Terezi. Smiling, seated, legs crossed, grinning. Tongue out, nostrils flared.
For a moment I consider continuing, giving her a show, but then Kanaya sees that I've seen her, sees her, and with a flailing jerk she draws away from me and knocks her head against the leg of the table.
I go to her, hands back in her hair checking for blood, as she whispers hushed curses, elaborate and without emphasis. I learn a few choice phrases, new constructions of mysterious anatomical terms and elaborate references to their structure -
I resolve to ask her what a molting plate is, and why one would kick someone in it
- and she starts laughing, I can't help but follow, the sounds of our exhilarated delight matching and amplifying each other until I'm out of breath in her arms again, relaxed, as she cradles her head and purrs quietly, glowing so bright I bury my face against her dark shirt as the occasional giggle escapes my lips.
She told me once that this shirt was woven from the silk of her lusus.
Next time, we need either privacy, or better preparation for an audience.
I think I'll mention that to Kanaya later. I wonder how much she'll blush.
Tests will continue until I am satisfied with the results.