Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/496709. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage Category: F/F Fandom: Homestuck Relationship: Aradia_Megido/Aradia_Megido Character: Aradia_Megido Additional Tags: Sex, Mild_Kink, selfcest, Dreambubbles, Prompt_Fic, Xeno, non-fanon- standard_troll_genitalia, Happy_Sex, Sexual_Experimentation Stats: Published: 2012-08-26 Words: 3654 ****** Milk and Honey ****** by Elizabeth_Culmer_(edenfalling) Summary You've met yourself hundreds of times during the game: both alternate future selves coming back to fix your teammates' failures and your own future self from the alpha timeline running through stable loops to prevent even more catastrophes. But that was business, nothing but ghostly fatalism and cold mechanical logic tick-tock-ticking away. Now, though. Now you are alive and time is more than a spare, somber beat of compulsion. Time is music and you are dancing. Every cell in your body, every breath in your lungs, every wisp of will and desire, in every iteration from every timeline. All of you are dancing. And it's no fun to dance alone. Notes This fic is a response to the following kinkmeme_prompt: i do not care about the context or the plot or anonymity or anything - there is only aradiacest now theres plenty of hot dave-on-dave action around and about, but i can find no such aradia-on-aradia action! i feel all time players should be given an equal chance to mack on themselves, and if anyone agrees i would be delighted for any kind of fill See the end of the work for more notes You've met yourself hundreds of times during the game: both alternate future selves coming back to fix your teammates' failures and your own future self from the alpha timeline running through stable loops to prevent even more catastrophes. But that was business, nothing but ghostly fatalism and cold mechanical logic tick-tock-ticking away. Now, though. Now you are alive and time is more than a spare, somber beat of compulsion. Time is music and you are dancing. Every cell in your body, every breath in your lungs, every wisp of will and desire, in every iteration from every timeline. All of you are dancing. And it's no fun to dance alone. You leave Sollux arguing with a pair of dead Karkats and seize your other self's hands. They are warm and thrumming with the pulse of blood -- rust blood, warm blood, living blood, for all that she's a ghost of a dream of a memory -- because when you died and woke and transcended, all of you were freed. You don't have to be a puppet anymore. You can do whatever you want. And oh, you want. Your other self smiles back, as wide and happy-painful-bright as the expression you can feel stretching your own face, even if her eyes are a blank white glow. She leans in, her breath hot against your ear, and whispers, "Do you want to have sex?" "Yes," you say, because you do. A sweep and more of delayed hormones are fizzing through your veins, mingling with the effervescent joy of life, and you want to shout and laugh and celebrate and share -- you want to make more life, as impossible as that is, to hurl a declaration of hope against the beat of despair to which you marched for so long. Who could understand that better than yourself? "Let's go home," your other self says, and you blink your eyes together, thinking of your cozy hive in simpler days. When you open them, you're there. Dreamlight spills through the windows, emerald and amethyst mingling on the floor and walls, and you don't bother switching on the electricity. You tackle your other self to the floor, banging your knees against the cold construction blocks before she imagines a pile of whips and hats underneath you both. "Kinky," you tell yourself, laughing, and she laughs too because you both remember the time you tried to illegally download the whole Troll Indiana Jones movie series and accidentally downloaded the porn versions instead. It turns out you can do a lot of things with whips! You can do some pretty crazy things with hats, too, if you have a little imagination. "Why not?" your other self asks, tugging one whip's handle out of the pile and offering it to you. As you sit back to untangle the length and coil it up, she shimmies out of her blouse and sets a slightly battered fedora on her head, perched precariously between her horns. It looks ridiculous combined with her bra and tattered skirt, but you don't care and neither does she. You like hats, so why not wear one? You're through letting the rest of the universe order you around. Which doesn't mean you can't order yourself around, a little, just for fun. "Take off your bra," you tell yourself, trying to sound stern and commanding. It's a little tricky when you're still on your knees in a pile, but Flarping with Terezi was a good introduction to the basics of freeform roleplay. Your other self grins and tilts her head, sending the fedora sliding to rest against her left horn. "You're gorgeous, honey, I'll give you that, but I don't pail for just anyone. Show me what you've got." "You have no idea the kind of things I've got," you say, barely managing not to giggle. You raise your hand, aim carefully across the room, and crack the whip. Glass panels shatter as the tip draws a vicious line down the center of the window. "Ooh, Ms. Megido, ooh," your other self says. "Was that a threat?" "Just a demonstration," you say. You snap the whip again. This time the tip wraps around a plastic bottle of honey on your computer desk -- a gift from Sollux, who kept regular bees as well as mind bees -- and you catch it neatly as it flies back toward you. "And maybe an offer," you add. "Guess I was right to call you honey," your other self says, and then neither of you can keep up the façade anymore. You both dissolve into giggles and the hat falls off her head to land unnoticed on the floor. "Give me that and let's both get naked," your other self says. You toss her the honey and close your eyes for a moment, imagining your God Tier outfit away and your wings into the nothing where they wait when you don't need them. Suddenly fabric hits you in the face. When you swipe away the bra and open your eyes again, your other self is pouting at you. "I like the wings!" she says, crossing her arms over her naked chest. "They're pretty and sparkly and I want to find out if they're ticklish." "Okay," you say, and shrug them back into place. They spring from your back and shoulders like gauzy drifts of spidersilk, thin and light as imagination but with the tensile strength of steel. Other you leans forward and runs her hand along the top edge of your left wing. Her fingers tangle in your hair, claws catching on a knot for a second, and you shiver at the sensation of flesh on insubstantiality. "It's like you're touching my ghost," you say. "It's like touching a dream," she answers. "Neat!" you say, accidentally in chorus. Then your other self sits back and starts unlacing her shoes. "Can I help?" you ask, and lean forward without waiting for her answer. You know what it will be; she's you, after all. You toss the loosened shoe over your shoulder and run your hands up over the red-and-white striped sock. "Leave these on," you suggest, and your other self nods in agreement. "But not the skirt," she adds. She closes her eyes, face tight with concentration, and the tattered black cloth is gone like a fading dayterror. Dreambubbles are the most fun ever. You bend down to kiss the smooth gray rise of your other self's bulge before she can open her eyes. She gasps when your lips touch skin. Her hands bury themselves in your hair, tense and flex, unsure whether to push you away or pull you closer. You kiss her again, then lick your way down toward the slit where the two halves of her bulge meet, hard cartilage guarding the softness of her nook. "That feels so weird," your other self says, her voice high and fast, but her hands are steady on the back of your head now, her fingers making tiny encouraging twitches near the base of your horns. Good weird, you assume. It makes sense! Tongues are very different from fingers! You brace yourself on your right hand and reach up with your left, fumbling blindly along your other self's side until your fingertips catch on the tiny dip of her grubleg socket. The dimpled skin is smooth and soft and you can feel her pulse thrum close to the surface. You scratch one claw lightly around the rim of the indentation. "Oh," your other self gasps. "Again." You oblige. The lips of her bulge are starting to unfold, and you trace them with your lips and teeth, kissing and coaxing. It's hard to see -- your hair and the angle block most of the light -- but you can feel a gap opening and you slide your tongue inside, licking along the inner edge of the cartilage shield. A frond taps back, tracing a slick line up the bottom of your tongue. You jerk back, eyes nearly crossed, and swallow the familiar-unfamiliar taste of your own arousal, direct from the source without the trace contaminants of your fingers or a pailing aid. "That feels so weird," you say, echoing yourself. "Good weird?" your other self asks, reaching forward to rub your shoulders the way Sollux used to do before you died. "Weird weird," you say, sticking out your tongue. "But I bet it gets better!" "You think we have all the luck?" your other self asks with a wicked smile. "Who cares! We certainly have all the time," you answer. "I might even say we're made of it." You grin at each other. Then you bend back down and bite, ever so gently, at the rim of her bulge. This time when a frond sneaks out to play, tap-tip- tapping over your lips and teeth, you don't pull away. Your other self leans forward, her chest pressing your hair down between your horns, and runs her fingers along your sides, traces slowly decreasing circles until her clawtips brush the rims of your own grubleg sockets. You make an unintelligible noise into her opening nook -- she shivers, a full-body twitch, and her fingers spasm against your sides. One claw breaks your skin and a trickle of blood runs hot and thick down your side, like molten honey. Her hand sweeps up your skin, smearing blood on her fingers. You hear her lick them, swallowing a piece of you that might as well be a piece of her. Same blood, same life, same powers, same dreams. The only differences are a handful of memories, your wings, and the blank white glow in her eyes. You close your lips around a mouthful of fronds and suck. Your other self keens, high and sharp like a vengeful ghost, and a rush of salt-sour-sweet coats the back of your throat, each frond leaking drops of diluted genetic material in preparation for the flood. Her bulge is fully retracted now, her nook flushed bright rust as the fronds swell with blood and fluids, twining hungrily in search of something to grasp and squeeze. They wriggle over your face, tracing damp paths down your cheeks and under your chin. You close your eyes and push your nose into your other self's nook, breathing your own scent. It's hot and wet and somehow musty, like meat and bones and old books all mixed together, with a hint of lightning in the distance. You sniff again, and wonder what colors Terezi would see beyond the basic rust, whether she would say you smell of time, or regret, or joy. Or maybe she'd just smack you on the head with her cane sword and tell you to pay attention to the person you're pailing, not to might-have-beens. A frond is doing its best to slither up your nostril. You wriggle back on your knees and scrub at your nose, trying not to sneeze. You can feel little streaks of fluid seeping down your legs as you own bulge retracts. Your fronds are twitching against the inner creases of your thighs, where your legs meet your torso. You feel empty, aching, as if you were reaching out to Sollux and he turned his back and couldn't see. You're glad you couldn't feel emotions as a ghost. They would have hurt too much. "Your turn now. I have an idea," your other self says, and you look up in curiosity. She holds up the bottle of honey and the handle of a whip. "You get three guesses and the first two don't count." Your breath catches -- you remember this scene as well as she does, and how you could never decide whether you wanted to be Marion and give the orders or be Jonezh and obey -- and your tongue darts out to lick your rust-slick lips as your other self drizzles honey on the hard leather handle until it gathers in pendulous drops and falls onto her upturned wrist. You want to lick it off, want to trace her tendons back up to her elbow and chew until blood mixes with the sweetness. Maybe it shows on your face. Maybe your other self just knows what you're thinking because she's you -- though you never knew you liked blood in your redrom until now, so how could she when she's playing the other role? Either way, she smiles and sets her tongue against the inner bend of her elbow, rough gray muscle against smooth gray skin, and licks a broad trail up to the heel of her palm, weaving back and forth to obliterate every golden drop. Then she grins. "Open wide," she says, and thrusts the whip handle forward to hover in front of your hungry mouth. You don't even think about refusing. "Good girl," your other self says as you bite down, blunt teeth digging into tough leather. Honey pools in your mouth, thickening your saliva and dribbling around the edges of your lips where the handle shoves them open. Your other self licks up from your chin -- left, right, left again -- then plants a ridiculously delicate kiss on the tip of your nose. You snarl wordlessly at her and imagine the honey bottle into your hands. "Oh, right," she says, and squeezes a glob of viscous gold between your breasts. It descends rapidly, its mass enough that the force of gravity overcomes stickiness and friction, slowing only when it reaches the top of your retracted bulge. The convex mound of cartilage is just enough to make it puddle for a second, and another, and a third, before the surface tension breaks and a sticky thread seeps between the retracted halves of your shield into the dampness of your nook. It tickles. But you don't have a chance to concentrate on the sensation because your other self is licking her way down your body, her tongue following the honey trail. She bends nearly double at the waist over her folded knees, the same way you bent over her, then makes a dissatisfied noise and flops down on her stomach to get a better angle. You sink your fingers into the thick tangle of her hair and massage the base of her horns. She hums, and the vibration pulses from her throat to the point of her jaw on your bulge into the waiting, clenching emptiness of your nook. You swallow convulsively around the handle of the whip, but your other self refuses to move lower until she's cleaned every drop of honey from your stomach, with the same patient, thorough attention to detail you used to apply to archaeology, back when Alternia existed outside of half-remembered dreams. You snarl at her. She laughs. The sound quakes through you and your fronds clench helplessly around each other, the touch of self-on-self so far from what you need but still better than nothing. More honey has oozed into your nook, mixing with your own fluids in an uneven jumble of sticky and slick. You squirm when a pair of fronds get trapped up against the underside of your shield, tensing and clenching every muscle around your nook and butt in a helpless attempt to free them. Finally your other self takes pity and moves down from your stomach. Except then she just lies there and breathes on you, little lances of warm air blown through rounded lips, tickling you without even the tangible pressure of water to ease the way you ache. You buck your hips, shoving your nook up into her face. The edge of your bulge mashes your other self's nose and she sneezes, barely managing to duck and muffle it in a handy fedora. "Bad girl," she says when she catches her breath. You dig your claws into the sensitive skin at the base of her horns and tug her back toward your nook. The honey on the whip handle is nearly gone now, swallowed or slipped out of your mouth with the little trails of spit you can't quite manage to stop. The leather tastes old and stale, like meat burned crisp in the midday sun and then oiled with shoe polish, but you bite down harder and refuse to speak. You don't need words now anyway. Your other self kisses her way around the edge of your bulge, pausing when your fronds slip out to tap her lips. "Oh, that is weird," she says. You rub circles around her scalp and hitch yourself a few inches forward on the pile. "So impatient!" your other self says, and continues her work -- open-mouthed now. You can feel the heat and dampness of her tongue with your fronds, so different from the touch of your own fingers or a whip handle, and so much better now than before you died. Your fronds flex and curl, trying to weave around your other self's tongue, but it's too thick and short and moves away instead of twining back. Your other self is laughing almost continuously now, little bursts of breath and twitches of skin as your fronds brush back and forth over her face, and the vibration only makes the empty, aching need grow deeper until you think every nerve in your body is gathered in your nook. You buck your hips again, catching strands of your other self's hair in your questing fronds. They slip and slice, the texture all wrong, but they're something to grip and you can't help pulling. She hisses and tries to raise her head, but you press down and hold her close. If she wants you to let go, she'll have to make you. And she does. She slips her fingers into your nook and begins untangling her hair from your fronds. You twine around her skin and sigh in relief at the touch. Her hands are exactly like yours, down to the funny knob on her thumb, but this is nothing like touching yourself. You can't feel the contact twice over, and the idea that someone else is between your legs, stroking your fronds, seeing the most private part of your body, is almost as tantalizing as the physical contact. You need her to touch more, to press deeper, to stroke along the inner fold of your nook where the glands that hold your genetic fluid are swollen and tender, ready to release. She withdraws her hand. Your jaws spasm around the whip handle and you keen in frustration. "Shhh," your other self says as she props herself up on her elbows despite your best effort to keep her face down where her tongue can do the most good. "I'm not teasing! Not much, anyway. But I need this as much as you do, and you can't touch anything but my horns with me lying down like this." Which is a very good point. You raise your eyebrows, asking what she plans to do about the situation. "Spit that out, kiss me, and let's do this the old-fashioned way," your other self says, wiggling her fingers at the whip handle still clenched in your mouth. It takes you a moment to loosen your jaw muscles, but you slide the leather out from between your aching teeth and work your mouth to moisten the dry bits and swallow the excess spit. Then you flop down beside your other self, press yourself against her -- chest to chest, thigh to thigh, nook to nook -- and do your best to devour her lips. She's already tasted your blood. You want to return the favor. Your fronds tangle with hers, twining and clenching as you grind your hips in a circle against each other, the longest tips reaching deep in and back and up to stroke along the inmost folds of your nooks, coaxing the sensitive glands. You taste blood in your mouth -- yours or hers, no way to tell -- and you breathe desperately through your nose, unwilling to let go. Her hands clutch your shoulders, claws digging furrows over your bones, and you cling to her waist. Your fingers press one of her grubleg sockets -- she gasps into your mouth - - and you shift up to dig your thumbs into the dimples -- press and release, press and release, out of rhythm with your teeth and her tongue and the frantic writhing of your fronds, not the spare beat of predestination but crashing harmonies, everything to do with life -- life which is messy and glorious and raw, a sweeping, swooping, spinning extravagance nothing like the marionette steps you followed for far too long until you woke and rose, and your wings snap open and you meet your other self's white eyes like the promise of eternity and you rise and you rise and you rise and-- The memory of your hive shatters into a thousand moonlight sparkles as you come. Later, you roll onto your back under a banner of stars never seen in Alternian skies and sigh at the stickiness slowly drying on your thighs. The hats and whips are soggy underneath you -- funny that you or your other self remembered to dream of that when you both forgot your hive and everything around it. "I don't think that would fill a whole pail," your other self says idly. "We're only six sweeps," you say. "Adults are a lot bigger." "I'll never know," she says. "That'll be weird -- every time you visit, you'll be older and all the rest of us will still be six sweeps, no matter how long our afterlife lasts." "But we'll all still be Aradia," you assure her. And every one of you is important, every Aradia a link in the chain that stitches the alpha timeline together, sending your friends on into the future. You have at least another hour before Sollux gets tired of arguing with two Karkats at once. You tip your head sideways to rest on your other self's shoulder and lace your fingers between hers. After a second, she squeezes back. You name the alien stars together. End Notes ...I still cannot believe this fandom is actually inspiring me to write porn. So. Freaking. Weird. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!