Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/733131. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: F/F Fandom: Homestuck Relationship: Rose_Lalonde/Kanaya_Maryam Character: Rose_Lalonde, Kanaya_Maryam Additional Tags: Xeno, Overcoming_domestic_ennui, Overenthusiastic_game_mechanics, Botched roleplaying_scenarios Stats: Published: 2013-03-24 Chapters: 1/? Words: 2121 ****** The Path to Success Will Become Clear ****** by meatsuit Summary Go to her room, you think,and the path to success will become clear. In this instance you’re certain you understand how the game is defining “success.” Your abilities are at their most convenient when they reflect what you want back to you. Notes See the end of the work for notes Kanaya will be washing the dishes. You see this, lying in the common room, running your fingertips up and down your thighs. Your eyes are strained from decoding cryptic mythology all afternoon and you’re thinking of Kanaya without prompting. Go to her room, you think, and the path to success will become clear. In this instance you’re certain you understand how the game is defining “success.” Your abilities are at their most convenient when they reflect what you want back to you. You hear the clatter of porcelain behind the steel door as you punch in Kanaya’s password (“CaveatsAndCondolences”- flattering, the way she blushed when she revealed it). Kanaya, sleeves pushed up to her elbows, kneels in front of her bucket as you enter. You regard the scene with some irritation. This isn’t the first time she’s used a reproductive tool for a makeshift sink, but it’s her only reproductive tool. You had plans! Your prudent Kanaya is the only troll who thought ahead enough to captchalogue “nutrition plateaus” at all. You had left every domestic tool on LOLAR, and neither you nor your brother bothered to take any food with you on your suicide mission. Worse, out of some kind of hubris you had forgotten to eat anything that day. You learned the meaning of regret when Kanaya handed you a plate of freshly alchemized slime the next morning. The grubs in grubsauce taste not unlike blue cheese. You’ve always hated blue cheese. At least your girlfriend always does the dishes for you. “Would you like some help?” The door closes behind you and she turns her head, smiling. Radiant, you think, but you don’t voice the compliment. However factual Kanaya’s literal and figurative radiance may be, you have called her that many times before and she has likely tired of it. “Hello, Rose. And no, thank you. Actually, I enjoy the productivity of simple cleaning.” “Oh?” you say, advancing. You want to hear her talk; you haven’t seen her since breakfast. “Yes. It feels nice to accomplish something, even if it is mundane.” You’re thinking, Give her something else to accomplish and the path to success will become clear, and wow, you’re working on it. Sometimes you wish your sight wasn’t so supportive of your sex life. Kanaya’s still going. As she speaks, you watch her towel the water off each dish before placing them on an adjacent table. “…otherwise I would wither away with restlessness. You would find my emaciated corpse rotting in the core’s stagnant bowels. And when we next would meet I’d shed a single tear, delicately obscuring my face to hide the grotesque white orbs peeking from beneath my eyelids.” You say, “That was very good. You could write tragic romances as well as you read them.” She hums happily at the praise, standing, and you come behind her to rest your hands on her hips. You’re on tip-toes to kiss her on the jaw. “Guess what I saw today.” “Oh no,” she says, in her special Rose I Am Telling A Joke Now tone, “it wasn’tImbibe copious amounts of your human alcohol and the path to success will become clear again, was it?” Embarrassed, you wind your arms around her waist and rest your forehead on her back. The plates disappear into Kanaya’s sylladex one by one, each with a satisfying pop. “No. But I did see the most efficient way into my girlfriend’s skirt.” There’s a pause. You can practically hear her rolling her eyes and you press your nose into her spine, chuckling. You’re still a little embarrassed of yourself. That was a terrible line. “Um,” she says, and her inflection is different. Softer. Good. Now she turns, bending down to meet you, framing your cheeks with her hands and placing her lips on yours. It’s a deeper kiss than you expected. You suspect idleness has made her restless in all things. “Suddenly I feel very foolish for speaking of chores. I should have mentioned that you are my most pleasant distraction.” Her lips brush your chin, and you tilt your head back to meet them. “I am an object to be used, then,” you murmur as you press her waist against you. “And keeping me satisfied is a mere duty, cataloged alongside such menial tasks as ‘washing the dishes’ and ‘cleaning the rugs.’ You wound me.” Instead of responding, Kanaya opens her lips against your neck, and her tongue is cool on your pulse. The sharp edges of her teeth chase its soft wetness, and though the fangs don’t draw blood your breath catches as if the threat is very real. You choose to interpret this gesture as a passive-aggressive reminder: sometimes, Kanaya intentionally wounds you. If she were hungry she would ask you directly, sitting on the far side of her pile and wringing her hands. Now, however, Kanaya is playing The Dominant Rainbow Drinker Teasing Her Prey. You like to play along. Her Alternian power fantasies are almost innocent in their tameness, compared to the books she hides in one of the chests lining Eridan’s abandoned block (of all places), all of which you have read (and enjoyed). Kanaya is more likely to underline paragraphs that feature the voracious, reckless sex-goddesses, but she is much too fussy to emulate them. The bucket is still full of suds, useless at your feet. She lifts an arm weakly in its direction, like she’s trying to separate from you but isn’t sure how to accomplish this politely. If she regrets her own practicality it’s much too late; you’re too eager now to let her take care of it. You catch her in another kiss, tipping her off balance by pulling her forward so abruptly. “Rose,” she whispers. You can’t help giggling at how transparent her panic is. Just fuck her, bucket be damned, and the path to success will become clear. What the hell? You don’t think the game would suggest that; it never gets that detailed. If you’re being entirely honest with yourself, lately you’ve had trouble distinguishing between non-native prescience and your own inner monologue. You ask, “Do we even need that thing?” She looks at you like you’re crazy, and for a second you wonder whether you’ve scandalized her. Bucketless sex must have been some deviant kink on Alternia, likely due to trolls’ inability to reproduce without a way to collect the genetic fluid. You consider pointing out that making love to a human doesn’t contribute to the slurry regardless, but Kanaya’s utter confusion has already melted into sheepishness. It looks like she’s made up her mind. “No,” she says, opting to look over your head. Her ashen skin is flushing a very dark green. “We don’t need it. I would, um-” now she rests her fingers on your chest; your heartbeat thuds against them- “like that. If you wouldn’t mind the mess.” You’re a little shocked. You say, “Okay.” Kanaya lets her eyes meet yours and smiles, but her frame is still a little stiff. You kiss her to relax her. She sighs into it, then laughs when you rake your teeth over her lower lip. She starts pushing her body against yours, wrapping her hand around your wrist as she tells you where she’s guiding you. “My pile,” she says, awkwardly, between her kisses. To tease her you break away and bolt to the side that’s closer to the wall, letting your limbs splay across the fabric as if you’ve swooned. When she pulls off your shoes, your voice wavers in a dramatic simulation of coyness. “Miss Maryam, caress me gently! I am in the dawn of my youth!” Kanaya tuts, yanking your arm down from its histrionic perch on your forehead. She speaks slowly and chooses every word with care. “Eight sweeps, yet a virgin. How ill-prepared you must be for the imperial drones’ arrival. It seems it is my duty to make amends before your inevitable, swift, and deserved culling. Place a pillow behind your back, please,” she demands, and she’s already pulled your leggings down to your knees. “You’ll be more comfortable that way.” You fighting the urge to laugh at her flimsy commitment to this scenario.“Yes, mistress,” you manage. It’s only a little insincere. You aren’t humoring Kanaya, letting her tower over you like this, lying passive as her nimble fingers edge underneath your robes, pushing them upwards with insistent force. You’re perfectly in character! You raise your arms to help her lift the oppressive cloth off of you and the ache between your legs becomes unbearable as she pins your body underneath hers, her nails raking against your sides, her tongue tracing your ribcage. Her work skirt feels coarse against the inside of your bare thigh. You want to surge forward, aim for her hips to unbalance her; you’d like to undo the buttons slowly enough to make her groan in frustration. Instead, you allow your eyes to flutter closed. Your legs wind uselessly around her waist as she takes one nipple in between her finger and thumb, while the pressure of her cool mouth teases the other. “God, Kanaya,” you moan. You buck your hips, feeling needier with each swirl of her tongue. A terrible heat tortures you, and Kanaya’s mouth on your skin is both the cruel catalyst and the only possible relief. You don’t notice your thumbnail pressing into the base of her horn as you’re thinking of her tongue circling your clit. She shivers, instantly losing her precision, and her fang catches on the most sensitive part of your breast. God, that’s sharp! But fuck if it doesn’t make you throb. “Ah!” you both cry, and Kanaya jerks away, looking down at you in distress. “I’m sorry, Rose!” she gasps. She’s caressing your cheek with her thumb as if you need comforting. You shrug, too impatient to reassure her, and grip her shoulders hard, pushing them down again. Her face lands somewhere on your stomach, and you move your hand back into her coarse hair. “Just keep going,” you say, surprised at the rawness of your voice. Kanaya’s habit of doting on you is charming, but you wish she were less meticulously focused on your comfort. Earlier this week, fingers pressed between your legs, you had thought of your girlfriend’s hands everywhere: forceful on your shoulders, pushing you down, spreading your knees apart with no cautious preamble, fisting in your hair, forcing your mouth on her bulge. Thighs sticky with your own wetness, you imagined her breath tickling your ear as she whispered things to you, the sort of talk that would be hackneyed drivel in one of her books but ultimately gets you off faster than anything. “You’re mine, Rose. You belong to me,” she’d say, and you imagined her thrusting into you as she said it. You thought of yourself panting, crying out her name, surrendering to her, giving her the right to own you, all of you, your body and your soul. You don’t need her to treat you like this to enjoy fucking her. You just wish she would submit to recklessness, just once. You say, “Kanaya, please. Talk to me.” She removes her tongue from the inside of your thigh long enough to berate you. “Urgh. You can’t expect me to think clearly in this state,” she huffs. You should have expected a response like this. In states of undress she easily tires of wordplay. When you first explored each other she was curt out of shyness; now in familiarity she prefers to occupy her mouth in more productive ways. You decide to accuse her of having an oral fixation. “I don’t know what that is,” she says, lifting her head from your legs entirely. You squirm a little in her absence, and she looks smug about it. It’s a start. “But I can guess. Is it correct to assume you’re referring to how much I enjoy tasting you?” Smirking, she presses her palms to your inner thighs, and in a firm, fluid movement slides them up to your hips. Oh, thank god, she’s starting to tease you. You whimper, aching for her, and fight the urge to cover your mouth. “Yes!” you choke. She tilts her head, and oh, no. Kanaya thinks she’s come up with something clever. That crooked little smile is cuter than it is threatening, though you assume she’s grinning like this to show off her fangs. She moves her hands to your knees, and- Christ, yes- stretches them further apart. “As if it doesn’t benefit you,” she murmurs, and she looks so fucking proud of herself before she puts her tongue exactly where you want it. Neither of you are coherent for some time after that. End Notes Thanks to all on Tumblr who enjoyed this fic. I've never written anything nsfw before and your positive comments were a real confidence boost! I do plan to write at least one other chapter to resolve some of the situations I set up, though it may take me a few months to get around to it. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!