Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/372711. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: F/F Fandom: Homestuck Relationship: Kanaya_Maryam/Rose_Lalonde Character: Kanaya_Maryam, Rose_Lalonde Additional Tags: Watersports, Community:_bloodyvalentine, Xeno Stats: Published: 2012-03-31 Words: 2039 ****** Through you I drain ****** by gloss Summary KANAYA: I Would Function As A Premium Escort To The Load Gaper And Thats About It Kanaya likes Rose flustered. Discombobulated, even. Notes Title from Whitman.   Their coffee has long since cooled, but Rose is too absorbed in what she's working on to notice. She sips it, shudders at the taste, then takes another before setting the mug down. She never takes her eyes from the page. Kanaya watches. Rose wriggles in her seat. She looks as if she's trying to get comfortable, but she's already ensconced in the alchemized armchair. (Not a chair made out of severed limbs, any more than a wing chair is constructed from the flying parts of shriekbeasts: these definitions are just two among the thousands that Kanaya has learned about human beings.) To her eyes, the chair is nothing so nice as a pile, but the humans seem to find such furniture more acceptable. Despite the plump cushions of the chair, Rose squirms again, shifting from side to side, then crossing her legs. Kanaya looks back down at her manuscript, but not quickly enough. "Yes?" Rose asks. Her hair crowds her eyes; curling her claws in her lap, Kanaya quells the urge to brush it back. She would like to give it another trim, but Rose never seems to have the time to spare. "What is it?" "Nothing." Rose snorts lightly, indicating, Kanaya has learned over the past months, both amusement and disbelief. It's an elegantly economical sound. "All right." "More coffee?" Kanaya rises and gathers their cups before Rose can refuse. She rinses out the old sludge and fills them anew. "Thanks," Rose says, accepting the cup and taking a long sip. Her face screws up at the taste, but she covers it with a smile. "God, we really have to fix that perco-lificator." Kanaya doesn't know what flavor Dave and Rose are expecting; they have described coffee as bitter, acrid, rich, but adjectives and their synonyms have been remarkably unhelpful. "Here," Kanaya says as she fixes Rose a tall flask of cool water. "Maybe this will be taste okay." "If I didn't know better," Rose says, drinking down half the flask before continuing, "I'd think you were trying to distract me from work." Kanaya drops her eyes. "Nonsense." ”Of course it is.” Research takes up most of their time; it is and always will be Rose’s goal to analyze and master their circumstances. ”It’s not as if I didn’t warn you”, Rose will remind her periodically, should Kanaya get a little too clingy, a little forlorn about so much time spent together, but not *together*-together. (The phrasing is Dave’s, used while dodging Karkat’s demands that he define his relationship with Terezi. Kanaya doesn’t technically understand the phrase, yet somehow, its redundancy feels meaningful.) Rose wriggles again, side to side, then leans forward, one elbow propped on the table. Her discomfort is as finely expressed as her thoughts: small gestures, minute fixes and shifts. Kanaya waits for her to speak, but Rose is reading again, brow furrowed, lower lip caught in her small, blunt teeth. Soon enough, however, Rose sighs and leans back to uncross her legs. She takes a deep breath before getting up. Normally, Kanaya knows, she would close her book, then align it with the rest of the stack, place her pencil perpendicular to the pile, and put her husktop to sleep. Instead, she moves as carelessly as Dave might. Kanaya slips off the edge of the table, quickening her pace to catch up as Rose approaches the transportalizer platform. ”The machine is broken,” Kanaya reminds her. The mayor and Terezi got chalk- happy on the controls; ever since, they have been misfiring, sending them to unknown areas in the complex when they work at all. Rose glances down to where Kanaya clutches at her sleeve. ”Your solicitude is...charming, but I can go by myself.” ”Where?” Kanaya exhales and adds, more calmly, ”That is, are you all right?” Rose gazes steadily at Kanaya’s hand, a smile deepening the corners of her mouth. ”I’m just fine, Kanaya. But I do need to, ah. *Go*.” Kanaya shakes her head. ”Human bladders truly are tiny.” ”You’ve been thinking about this.” Rose looks up then, gaze flicking over Kanaya's face, reading who knows what there. ”Curious,” Kanaya says. She tries for a light tone, but fails; Rose’s expression says as much. ”You’re a very curious...” ”Species?” ”Person.” ”Yet here we are talking about human bladder size, rather than your interest in my...” ”Bladder?” Rose smiles. ”Interesting. I was going to say in my person. You insist on confusing the taxonomically typical with the personally idiosyncratic.” Someday, when neither of them suspects it, Kanaya will get the better of Rose. Someday, she’ll be quicker, more agile, wittier. That day, if it ever comes, is still a long way off. ”Let me check the transportalizer,” Kanaya says. ”It will just take a moment.” ”I'll just walk." Rose tugs at the hem of her tunic. "It's not safe alone." Rose taps her temple. "Most fortuitous path, remember? Ring a bell?" "There's nothing fortuitous about Makara," Kanaya says. Even his name makes her wince, her stomach roil. She straightens her shoulders and grasps her lipstick loosely. When she equips it into her chainsaw, the weight of it in her hand is familiar, reassuring. ”I’ll go with you.” Rose shrugs. ”Suit yourself.” The corridors of the complex always seem to have just ceased humming. There is a closeness to the silence that clings to the back of one’s neck. They move side by side through the dusk. Kanaya tries to pull ahead - she is the one who’s armed - but Rose keeps pace with her. Her steps are quick and light; sometimes, besides her, Kanaya feels as if she can only plod. ”Almost there,” Kanaya tells her. At the load gaper, she slides open the door and steps aside. Rose stops on the threshold. She looks up at Kanaya, takes Kanaya's hand, squeezes it. In the cold glow off Kanaya herself, Rose’s face is drawn tight, pallid, her eyes squinting. She shifts from foot to foot. ”You really filled me up on coffee,” she says. Not angrily - Kanaya knows what her anger sounds like - but almost wonderingly. Before she replies, Kanaya sheathes her chainsaw, then cups Rose’s cheek. Her skin is always just that much warmer than Kanaya expects; she hopes she never begins to take this tiny daily surprise for granted. ”I’m sorry,” she says. Rose chuckles, but even that sounds slightly strained. ”No, you’re not.” Rose is always going to get the best of her. They both know that, even if they’ll never say it. All Kanaya has in her favor is stubbornness. Stubbornness, and a modicum of greater physical strength, both because she’s a troll and, now, the undead. But Rose is stubborn, too. She simply prefers subtlety, the elegance of suggestion, hint, and misdirection, to crude obstinacy. When Kanaya kisses her, Rose shudders against her. She nips at Kanaya’s chin and buries her face against Kanaya’s shoulder. Putting her arms around her, Kanaya believes she can feel every small, tender aspect of Rose’s body. She kisses the part in Rose’s hair and inhales the scent of her there. ”I’m going to --” Rose looks up, her eyes wide. ”Kanaya?” Rose asks questions to prove a point, to elicit information, to score, to win. She so rarely asks out of ignorance and wonder. Kanaya's name becomes a question, an invitation, a proposition. Kanaya turns them around so Rose is leaning against the wall, hands gripping the safety railing. Kanaya leans into her, flattening herself against Rose, and kisses her again. ”Just let go,” she murmurs. Her hands alight on Rose’s waist, working her leggings down her hips through the tunic. Rose squirms against her, moaning for half a moment when Kanaya suckles on her throat and cups one breast, thumb ticking over the nipple. Human women usually wear undergarments built like suspension bridges to encase their mammaries. Rose is small enough - just filling one of Kanaya’s palms, weighing a bit more than a seedfruit - that she has done away with the tradition. Neither dreamer apparel nor God Tier costumes come with them, anyway. So there is only a slip of silk between Kanaya’s touch and Rose’s skin - her breast, the curve at her waist, the heat nestled at her upper thighs. Rose wriggles and sighs, working her leggings the rest of the way down, and clutches at Kanaya when she slips her palm between her legs. Their kisses are always unbalanced; Rose wants deeper, wants to taste and feel, and Kanaya *can’t*, not without slicing her beloved to ribbons. She pulls lips over her fangs, kisses the hollow of Rose’s throat, gets lost in the thunder of her pulse and exquisite clamor of her breath. Kanaya wants so much more. Rose, face-down and spreadeagled, pink and white skin and damp gold hair, ribs heaving, sex glistening and shining. Rose with fangs, claws, the stamina and endurance and pain threshold of the weakest troll, Rose who knows how to cut and fuck Kanaya just right, how to break ribs and make the blood flow. But any Rose, especially one so frangible and flushed, is better than none. ”I need to --” Rose is saying, stuttering, the words broken past syllables. She tastes like sunshine and salt; her blood must be as heady as anything. ”I need you to --” Kanaya says, ”need you, too --” So many words that sound the same but signify otherwise. She kisses Rose’s open mouth, lifts the tunic to her waist, and rubs between Rose’s legs. First the sensitive button that makes Rose grunt, then farther back. Rose’s hips work, chasing Kanaya’s touch, and she complains when Kanaya sinks to her knees and presses her open mouth to Rose’s mound. ”Oh, god, don’t --” Kanaya licks there, parting the outer lips, then the delicate inner ones. Human genitalia is almost absurdly simplistic, charmingly so, so easy to open, easy to taste. Her own bulge is thickening, her nook slicking and swelling, as she inhales every trace of Rose and curls her tongue against Rose's hole. Rose's hips pitch forward as she grabs one of Kanaya's horns. "I'm going to --" The muscles in her thighs flutter and there's the sound of a groan, simultaneously ashamed and relieved, as she lets go. The noise, the welling heat, the fact of Rose's surrender, all combine to twist and writhe right through Kanaya. Rose's urine flows in pulses, hotter than coffee, over Kanaya's mouth, down her chin. She drinks Rose down, all the hot sour cascade, and keeps her tongue working, flicking from hole, around clit, and back again. As the urine slows, Rose pushes her hips up more insistently, the rhythm gone ragged, and her dull fingernails dig into Kanaya's head and the sensitive base of her horns. Kanaya corkscrews her tongue, the liquid texture of urine giving way to the stickier one of Rose's lubrication. She buries her face against Rose, heedlessly sucking, claws digging into the back of Rose's thighs. Her seedflap pulses, fronds unfurling and tickling at her nook. The pleasure, drunken and overwhelming, floods her from mouth to bulge, catching her up, tossing her about. When Rose comes, she bends back Kanaya's horn and shoves her hips hard enough to smack against Kanaya's nose. She half-sobs, half-keens, as she slides down the wall and embraces Kanaya. She touches Kanaya's chin, draws her fingertip lightly over Kanaya's swollen, bruised lips. Her voice is hoarse when she says, "I can't believe you did that." Kanaya rocks back, her bulge and fronds entangled, needful, and smiles tightly. "I want all of you." Honesty is what they have, the best thing they share. Rose closes her eyes and rests her forehead against Kanaya's shoulder. Her breathing is still frantic, her heartbeat, too. The tremors coursing through her jump to Kanaya's nerves, tick and flicker and accelerate. When Rose reaches for her bulge, strokes down and back and lets the fronds snag and wrap around her fingers, Kanaya tips forward, hand braced on the wall, rubbing herself against Rose's forearm. Rose kisses her, her jaw and throat and even a lock of Kanaya's hair, and doesn't withdraw even as Kanaya herself comes with a gush and a moan. They press their foreheads together, gasping and soothing, and the silence around them is, finally, content and undisturbed. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!