Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/709988.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Jade_Harley/Rose_Lalonde
  Character:
      Rose_Lalonde, Jade_Harley
  Additional Tags:
      gillkink, Xeno, Xenolinguistics, Species_Swap, Tentabulges
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-03-06 Words: 2464
****** traduttore, traditore ******
by inklesspen
Summary
     Rose becomes a seatroll in an ectobiological accident. Jade helps her
     cope with the resulting alienation.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
Your name is Rose Lalonde, but ever since two nights ago, whenever you try to
say it, it comes out as Rohseh Lalond. It's been two nights since you became a
troll in the sort of ectobiological accident you would previously have
dismissed as beyond all probability.
You expected some of the differences; gray skin, finned ears, a lukewarm body
temperature, and a somewhat better understanding of quadrants. The linguistic
difficulties were a bigger surprise. The game still translates like it always
did, but you think and speak in Alternian now and some concepts simply don't
translate. You had tried to reassure Jade that you were still her friend even
when you looked like this, but you couldn't find the words; it turns out to be
true that the Alternian for friend and enemy are the same: someone with whom
you compete for resources and status.
Eventually you settled for giving her a hug. Her body heat shot through your
body, even as you had to consciously hold back your newfound strength to keep
from crushing her. She trusted you completely, you realized, no matter what you
looked like. You wondered if what you were feeling was what trolls meant by
"pity". Then you decided that if you're a troll now, you can determine what you
mean by it for yourself.
This will be the third night of your new existence. You wake early in the
evening, pull yourself out of the recuperacoon, and cycle the sopor back into
the jury-rigged recycling system Equius had designed. Your horns still get in
the way when you try to get dressed. You set aside yet another ripped shirt and
settle for a button-up blouse and one of the skirts Kanaya's designed for you.
The central living block is unusually empty; normally this is one of the
busiest times on the meteor, as dayshift humans wind down for the evening and
nightshift trolls prepare for another cycle of exploring the depths of the
meteor labs. With no ready source of grist, you've all resorted to
cannibalizing the lab equipment and appearifying food from grocery stores on
Earth and dead trolls' hives on Alternia. When you look in the kitchen, though,
you find a poster on the refrigerator, red chalk on grubstruction paper, which
proclaims that Cultural Movie Hour with Karkat and John started twenty minutes
ago; somehow you missed the planning in all the trauma of figuring out your new
anatomy. Since you can't hear the sounds of strife in the hallways, you surmise
they're showing one of Karkat's movies rather than John's.
You pour yourself a bowl of grubflakes and add soya milk; it's a bit unnerving
how Alternian cuisine involves so much cannibalism, but there's not much you
can do about it now. Most Earth foodstuffs don't agree with troll digestion, as
Terezi found out to her displeasure soon after you all arrived. When you return
to the living block, you find Jade there, casually leaning against the
bulkhead. "How are you doing tonight?" she inquires with typical enthusiasm.
"I feel rested," you reply, "and surprisingly peaceful, given what I am
informed are my bloodcaste's tendencies." Eridan had given you a long talk
about the seatroll condition the first night, after it became obvious that your
transformation wasn't just going to "wear off". You're not entirely sure how
much of what he said was exaggerated to flatter his own ego, but it still
provided a context for your new existence.
You sit down on the couch and start eating. The grubflakes have the same
comforting texture as everything else made from dead troll baby; Alternian food
relies more on spices than you're used to, though of course nobody puts much
spice in breakfast cereal. But they're filling enough and it's not like you
have grub-free meal options right now.
Jade makes a face. "That's not really what I meant, you know," she says,
flopping on the couch next to you. She sprawls her feet over the arm of the
couch and rests her head on your thigh. "Are you adjusting any better to the
new body?" She pokes nonchalantly at the claws on your hand holding the cereal
bowl. You've alchemized some claw caps (Soft Paws && fingernail polish ||
fingerless gloves) which keep you from scratching your eyes out until you get
accustomed enough to your new body that you don't rub your eyes when you're
half asleep. It looks a little ridiculous having the red plastic covers on the
tips of your hands, but that's a small price to pay for continued vision.
You finish your cereal and set the bowl aside, freeing your hand for her
inspection. "I won't say I'm adapting perfectly," you tell her as she
manipulates the joints in your fingers and examines the webbing between them.
"However, until Sollux can reverse-engineer the operating system in that lab,
the safest thing is to accept this and deal with the changes as best I can."
Jade works her way up your arm, prodding inquisitively at the chitin that lines
the inside, above where the veins would be if you were still human. You suppose
trolls have circulatory systems in roughly the same place; Feferi explained
that the chitin served as armor when trolls were first evolving, a necessary
defense among a species that fought with tooth and claw.
"I'm glad you care, though," you say, turning your least fang-filled smile upon
her. "This would be so much more difficult if it were not for the presence
people I've learned I can rely upon." The lexical gap is still painful. This
ungainly construction is the closest you've managed to come to describing the
relationship you had — have with the three remaining humans. You've tried
having Jade pronounce the English word "friend", tried making the same sounds
with these alien lips, but you still can't say it smoothly enough. You think
your faculty with English is the part of who you were that you miss the most,
much more than the inky-black skin you grew up with or your eye color that's
turned to troll yellow. "Why aren't you at the movie with everyone else?" It's
certainly nice to relax with Jade, but she hadn't been here when you first came
out of your respiteblock.
"I could feel you'd gotten up," she replies. You blink at her, and she
explains. "Space powers, I guess? I can feel the meteor moving through the
void, and I can feel us moving through the corridors. It's feels kind of
weird." Then her face turns red. "Not that it's anything like how weird you
must be feeling; I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
You shush her with one carefully-placed fingertip. "It's okay, Jade. I won't
snap at you over something like that." You get up and return the bowl to the
foodblock. When you return, Jade has flipped onto her stomach and is propped up
on her elbows. She looks up at you at an angle that must be giving her a sore
neck and certainly gives you a look down her shirt. She grins again. "Like what
you see?"
You laugh at her artless manner. "Come on," you tell her, flipping her over and
helping her to her feet. "Let me show you what I've figured out about troll
physiology."
She walks with you to your respiteblock— your room. Your old bed is pushed up
against the wall to make room for the recupercoon, with your knitting projects
and discarded outfit choices scattered across it. You brush those aside and
gently pull her down next to you.
"You've seen the claws, of course. And troll skin is remarkably tough even
where there's no chitin; otherwise they would likely bleed out any time they
slept without sopor." You brush your hair back behind your earfins and invite
her to lean in for a closer look. "I have no idea why seatrolls have fin-shaped
earlobes; it can't be that much of an evolutionary benefit." She takes the
proffered fin between thumb and forefinger and the heat of her touch sends
shivers down your spine. "It's —" and you gasp as she runs her thumb up the fin
and back down. "— Remarkably sensitive."
"It's so pretty, though!" she says, and runs a finger along the edge of each of
your ears. The sensation is beyond belief; if you were still human you think
you'd be reduced to a helpless, quivering state, but apparently troll bodies
take a little more to get going. Even so, Jade clearly has no idea what she's
doing to you. "I just love how elegant they look. They suit you, Rose."
You give her a weak smile. "Jade, I think what we're doing here is basically
seatroll foreplay." You can't deny you haven't thought about her, but you never
thought your first time would be in an alien body and what if she isn't
interested the way you seem to be? Except she's now unbuttoning her shirt,
which suggests she has at least some interest.
"Well, I'm game if you are," she chirps. She tosses the shirt carelessly to one
side and unhooks her bra. Her breasts aren't large, but they seem well suited
to her athletic frame. Her delicate nipples command your attention for a few
seconds; she notices and brings your hands up to cup them. You wish again you
had your old human palms and fingers, but even with the tough skin you have
now, it's amazing to feel them stiffen under your touch. "What do you think?"
Shyness doesn't seem to be in Jade's repertoire, but you sense she's making an
effort to be vulnerable here.
"I think you're amazing," you reply. You pull off your own blouse, at the same
time dislodging the scarf you'd wrapped around your neck. Female trolls don't
really have breasts, you've found; while there are organs in roughly the same
place, they're vestigial, remnants of an age in troll evolution when a female
might have to metamorphose into a mother grub to keep the the gene pool stable.
They certainly aren't sensitive the way you remember your breasts feeling when
you used to explore your body, late at night.
Jade's gaze alights on your gills, low on your torso and just below the
grubscars where the middle legs of your entirely hypothetical grub instar would
have been. She emits an appreciative "ooh" and flutters her fingers just above
the surface of your skin, apparently unsure if it's safe to touch them. If
you're honest, you're not sure either; they're sensitive enough to feel the air
currents she's stirring up and you have no idea what will happen if she touches
them, but in the spirit of the endeavor, you say "go on, feel them."
She does, ever so gently, and the brush of her fingertips is utterly unlike
anything you've ever felt before. You realize you're making a soft keening
noise and Jade looks at you questioningly, but you urge her to continue. You
feel something atavistic, deep inside your brain, warning you how vulnerable
you are right now, and you decide you like that feeling too. Something quivers
in your groin; you're still so unfamiliar with your anatomy that you don't know
if it's the "bulge" or "nook" or something else.
You can hardly bear to break contact with Jade but you quickly shimmy out of
your skirt and remove your undergarments. When you look down, you can see the
same thing she's looking at: the bone bulge where your pubic mound used to be.
Tucked just underneath is the tiny opening of your nook. You think you
understand that well enough, based on comparing what the other trolls have told
you to your own knowledge of human anatomy, but the bulge is completely outside
your experience so far.
Jade returns one hand to your left ear, petting it gently, while she reaches
for your nook with the other. She curls one finger into the opening and you
nearly lose control of your limbs. You pull back and let yourself fall onto the
bed. "Wow, you're pretty tight, Rose," she says. "Are you sure this is okay?"
"Do that again!" you insist, placing a hand on her side to steady yourself.
You're only a little surprised at the level of need in your voice; Jade has
awoken instincts and drives in your body and you need to see this through.
"All right," she says and she gently slides her finger back inside you. "I
think you have room for another finger," she adds, and suits action to words.
The stimulation is apparently enough to bring your bulge into play; it slides
out from behind the bone sheath and curls around Jade's wrist. "Uh, Rose? Did
you know your tentacles have suckers?" You weren't expecting that! Apparently
your particular variation on troll genitals splits into four tentacles. It's
the strangest thing to feel them wrapping around Jade's wrist and pulling her
closer to you.
"Are they hurting you?" you manage to ask. The last thing you want is to injure
her, especially after she's been so accommodating. But she adjusts her position
and continues exploring your nook with her fingers. You feel amazingly full,
but you continue to get more and more aroused. You're surprised you haven't
found a climax yet. "Keep going!" you urge her. She bites her lip cutely and
concentrates on her task, her idle hand coming to rest on your gills. The
combined sensation takes your breath away; you gasp "Yes!" and twist your torso
so her hand rubs across the filaments.
She takes the hint and begins to explore your gill even as her other hand is
busy inside you. In response, your slits expand and her finger runs between the
edge of two of them. At the same time she accidentally twists her fingers
inside your nook just so, and that's enough. Your first orgasm as a troll is
mindblowing; your vision and hearing fade away as touch becomes your entire
world. It feels like your entire body is quivering under Jade's caress. You
manage to spare half a thought for worry; if you hurt her with your seatroll
strength during this, you'll never get over it. But when you come back to the
world, she seems fine. "That... that was unbelievable. Amazing," you tell her,
and lean in to kiss her lips.
The taste of her is enough to distract you for a moment, but eventually you
realize the sheets, along with Jade's pants, are soaked with what you presume
to be your genetic material. You try to apologize but she waves it off. "I
guess that's why they use buckets," she says, and dives back into the kiss.
You begin think you'll be able to adapt to this after all.
End Notes
     This came about in one of lantadyme's Google Doc writeparties back in
     January. It's my first time writing NSFW stuff and I'm sure there's a
     lot I could improve on. Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it!
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!