Work Text:
"--and then she says, oh, Rosie, you're getting a little old for me to take you over my knee and spank you, wink wonk! I'm not even exaggerating. She actually uttered the phrase wink wonk."
Rose bit the corner off her sandwich in a distinctly unladylike and rebellious fashion, hooking one arm over the back of her chair. Kanaya, looking down into the dregs of her jasmine tea, raised an eloquent eyebrow. "I thought humans had some sort of taboo against--"
"Oh, I'm sure she didn't mean it like that. In fact, I'll thank you not to mention it again." She sighed and rolled her shoulders back. "But in lieu of a competing claim, she is still technically my Dominant."
Unspoken by either of them was that at eighteen, Rose was awfully old to be getting along without even any kind of temporary claim arrangement; most Subs had taken their first bracelets years ago. But Rose didn't believe in biological determinism.
Of course, Rose also didn't believe in spending her Saturday evenings on the floor with her forehead pressed to her mother's knees, trying to stave off wave after wave of overpowering nausea. Which presented a kind of dilemma.
"I have a proposition for you," Kanaya said, regarding her thoughtfully, and Rose quirked an eyebrow at her.
"If this involves the word 'subhouse,'" she started--
"It doesn't." The corner of Kanaya's mouth twitched downward, a sure sign that she was annoyed. "I recall your feelings on that subject perfectly well, thank you very much. No, I happen to have--a friend of a friend, you might call her, who has been looking for a companion for some time. If you actually want to be rid of your mother this badly--"
Rose's lip curled with disgust. "Not badly enough to become a glorified prostitute, Kanaya, honestly."
"She's blind," Kanaya said.
"--Pardon?"
"Blind. Blinded. There was a military raid on the Beta Sirius rebel compound last month. I hear she led a very daring, heroic, and stupid charge for the," and Kanaya pronounced this last bit with some disdain, "glory of the empire. Karkat was incredibly jealous."
Ah. Rose was beginning to see where this was going. "Your friend's a troll. Ruffannihilator? Hunterrorist? Threshecutioner?"
"Legislacerator, actually. I believe the term judicial activism was employed at some point." Kanaya raised her cup to her lips and sipped delicately.
"You don't like her."
"I neither like nor dislike Terezi Pyrope," Kanaya said, utterly without inflection.
Rose smiled. "My mistake, then," she replied, holding up her hands. "I must be imagining your considerable disdain."
"You're using human sarcasm again."
"I am shocked," and Rose raised the cup to her lips, "that you would accuse me of such a thing. So you think I should go play live-in nanny to a troll Davy Crockett with delusions of grandeur and an unfortunate affection for bad puns? And here I thought you cared about me, Kanaya."
Kanaya closed her eyes. "We've talked," she said quietly, "about sarcasm, Rose."
Rose tipped back in her chair. "What's the operative saying here, again? 'You're not the boss of me?'"
"Rose--"
She let the chair snap forward, landing her elbows heavily against the table. The neat floral-patterned china shifted with a clink. "And you never will be."
Kanaya clasped her hands gently (always gently, delicately) in her lap and said nothing at all.
"But anyway," Rose said, with a perfect smile, "we were talking about Terezi Pyrope."
*
She is--wild, Kanaya had said, with that characteristic purse of the lips, when they had finally taken up the subject again, but scrupulously fair, and ethical in her own way. A consummate dominant who has nevertheless utterly failed to exhibit any interest in making any kind of serious claim. I believe she may be receptive to working out a mutually satisfactory arrangement--
--which is so rare, Rose had cut in, smooth, still smiling. Someone who is neither looking for an orgasm nor a grand romance.
Kanaya's eyes fluttered shut again, and when she lowered her cup back into its saucer, it was slightly off-center. Yes. It is.
In truth, Rose had made up her mind to at least meet with Terezi long before then. She was not stupid, and it had not escaped her notice that time was running out--that she could not stay in that large and empty house much longer, letting her mother's steady hands haul her back from the brink of Sickness again and again. Not even if she had wanted to (which she most assuredly did not). Sooner or later you had to move out.
Her attempts to work out a more age-appropriate arrangement had thus far met with less than resounding success. The strange secrecy of her mother's work had not provided her with many opportunities to meet other girls her age; of the two dommes of her close acquaintance, one had been trekking through the jungles of Borneo for the past three years, and the other--well. Rose was, of course, very grateful for Miss Kanaya Maryam's help, in whatever capacity she chose to give it.
The dominants she had met in chatrooms and at St. Lawrence County's monthly contract clubs, staid affairs where anxious parents hovered anxiously with platters of nervous cookies and everyone competed to see who could slip the most egregious innuendo past them, had ultimately been looking for one thing and one thing only. The ones she would meet in the strobe-lit BDSM clubs of upstate New York--if she could be bothered to drive all that way--would be, she suspected, the same. Rose may have had a cattle tag on the back of her neck, but she was not a piece of meat.
She wondered whether this Terezi Pyrope would treat her like one.
Forty-eight hours and one phone call (by Kanaya, who clearly knew everyone, to the blueblood troll who was currently putting Legislacerator Pyrope up) later, she was stepping into a very cramped, cluttered workshop. The lights were turned down absurdly low, but she could barely make out the silhouettes of two trolls in deep conversation. "Excuse me," she said, and didn't wait for an answer before striding confidently into the room. If Rose Lalonde being Rose Lalonde was going to be a dealbreaker in this arrangement, she'd rather find out now.
Both of them turned to her. The troll on her left, a tall, solidly build blueblood with a broken horn eyed her up and down, eyes trailing from her beat-up sneakers to the smirk on her face. She didn't think he was very impressed. "You must be Miss Lalonde," he said, managing to make the Miss seem like a gross insult.
"That's right," she replied, and let her lips curve up further. He wasn't who she was here to see anyway. "And this," she said, turning her attention to the troll in the overstuffed armchair before her, "must be the famed Legislacerator Pyrope. You'll excuse me if I get a little verklempt; I've never met a troll military hero before."
Terezi Pyrope was all angles, from her prominent elbows to the bony lines of her chin; even her horns narrowed to a fine point. She couldn't have been more than five-foot-two, was maybe a sweep or two older than Rose at the most, but she wore her legislacerator's uniform with more command than most of the officers Rose had ever seen. In her right hand she held an enormous, dragon-headed cane, which she was tapping idly into the opposite palm.
She had a grin like a shark. She had a laugh like cracking glass, and it was this laugh she turned on Rose now. "I'll try to be understanding!" she said. "I am, after all, very intimidating."
Rose slid her thumbs into her jean pockets, willing her knees not to bend, and matched her grin tooth for tooth. That Terezi Pyrope couldn't see was beside the point. "Extremely."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the other troll mopping his brow with a towel. "I was under the impression you were a submissive, Miss Lalonde," he said disdainfully.
She rolled her head back lazily, working out imaginary cricks in her neck, and only then did she turn to look at him through half-lidded eyes. She did enjoy the scandalized look on his face. "I don't believe biology is destiny, mister--?"
"Zahhak," he hissed, through his teeth, the lines around his jaw tightening. His eyes slid over towards the legislacerator. "Miss Pyrope, this is ludicrous. You can't possibly want--"
"Equius, shut up," she replied cheerfully, and to Rose's surprise, he did.
She blinked. "You aren't--" she started, before she had had time to think about it; she didn't bother finishing that sentence, because obviously he was. She smirked at him instead.
He tugged at the collar of his shirt, sullenly. "At least I know my place," he practically spat, and that was it; he was retreating, slinking back out the door.
Well, that had been interesting.
Pyrope laughed again. "That was very expertly played," and her exaggerated grin melted into one that was quite different, thin and pleased: a grin which sent something curling warm low in Rose's stomach. "Nice job."
"Thank you," Rose said, in a lower voice than she had intended--god, she hadn't been this affected by a dominant since--
--not in ages, anyway. She flicked her gaze back up and stepped forward, very deliberately. "I assume Kanaya's filled you in on the details already, mm, Terezi? Can I call you Terezi?"
Just asking would have been a massive breach of etiquette in some circles, but if Pyrope--if Terezi was even aware of this, she didn't show it. "Mm," she said lazily, "if you like." And with that, she stood up, letting the cane in her lap clatter uselessly to the floor.
Rose hooked her thumbs in tighter, keeping her feet rooted to the floor and her legs straight, and it was all she could do to hold herself still as Terezi stepped forward, for all the world as though she wasn't blind, leaning in until her nose was touching Rose's.
Then she took Rose's face into her hands and licked.
Licked.
Her breath--her tongue--was warm against Rose's cheek, and Rose could feel her breathing coming shallower and shallower. "Delicious," Terezi said, her voice a low rumble, and smacked her lips.
Rose didn't move a muscle. "Should I expect that to be an everyday occurrence?" she murmured.
There was a laugh. "No. Not unless you want it to be."
The abrasion of denim against the crooks of her thumbs was actually becoming painful. "Then I suppose it won't be."
Terezi's eyebrows drew together. "Are you telling me no?" she said, in a tone of voice that was--could be, Rose thought--very, very dangerous. Her eyes dropped automatically to Terezi's lapel. Focus, Rose. Breathe.
"And what if I am?"
"If you are," and Terezi's voice was laced with absolute command, "then say it."
Rose squeezed her eyes shut--find your center, find it--squared her shoulders, and, with what felt like a herculean effort, snapped her head up to meet Terezi eye to eye. "No," she hissed, and she just knew--that was it, eighteen years and one-fifty pounds of girl, all her life laced into one single syllable. Take it or leave it, Terezi Pyrope.
She opened her eyes. Terezi had stepped back, her face still tipped up toward Rose's like she could see after all, could see Rose just fine, and she was wearing that same pleased grin from before. "You'll do," she said.