Chapter Text
It’s late-morning when you rise, edging shamefully close to afternoon but just far enough from it that you can still maintain your dignified place as “not the latest sleeper in the house.” Even if Jade makes it to the kitchen before you, you can just argue that you were in your bathroom, putting on your make-up, and had actually been up for hours. Pay no attention to the fact that, if this is going to succeed, you don’t actually have time to put on make-up.
Perhaps you could turn on the shower and let it run while you select the day’s outfit, dash under the water just long enough to get convincingly wet, and then towel off and dress immediately after, thus creating the illusion that you were showering the entire time, explaining your lateness.
You think, more than likely, that’s taking it a bit too far, and settle for brushing your teeth and washing your hair in the sink.
Soft music filters into the bathroom from underneath the closed door separating you from Kanaya’s room. Although these living arrangements were quite conditional on you both having your own spaces, and although Kanaya abhors your unique brand of environmental chaos, at the very least she knows how to deal with your unfortunate slovenliness more than she would any of your other housemates. You don’t doubt that after one too many evenings coming home to filth covering the shower and/or sink and/or toilet lid and/or bath mat, Kanaya would have a spectacular meltdown the likes of which would rend your quaint little complex into an unidentifiable mound of sawdust. Even if Terezi hadn’t already claimed the drafty attic apartment, you know for a fact that she draws on her bathroom mirror with lipstick (for obvious reasons, but).
That you and Kanaya were assigned to one of the two suites the house had to offer was not particularly shocking. You weren’t entirely keen on experiencing any of Jade or Aradia’s dirt parties, either. To this day you’ve never seen the inside of their bathroom, and you never hope to.
You do tiptoe over and knock lightly on Kanaya’s door. The music continues to play, but you hear no movement. She must have vacated her room already.
Drat.
A towel ruffles your hair dry, and you smooth it down again with a brush that holds the traces of hair much darker than your own. You honestly don’t remember if it was originally Kanaya’s or yours; it’s too late now, in any case. Blonde and black have already begun their unholy intermingling and it’d be cruel to tear such a gloriously blasphemous union apart. You keep your toothbrush in a cup on your dresser, just in case.
The pleasant background music provided by Kanaya’s empty bedroom is drowned out when a loud voice blasts through the house, screeching away the gentle morning atmosphere. It sounds like Christina Aguilera. Terezi must have commandeered the stereo.
You slide on a pastel pink house dress and, for some unfathomable reason, prepare to climb headfirst into the din.
Your bedroom door swings open. Christina Aguilera’s dulcet tones abruptly cease. You’re guessing Kanaya had some influence over that, though you can’t be certain. You’re greeted by the delicious smell of Jade’s cooking—and you know it’s Jade’s because Aradia is fond of the sound of smoke alarms and nothing cooked by Kanaya or Terezi has ever been something you’d describe as ‘delicious.’ Terezi’s getting better at not adding a cupful of sugar to everything she makes, but you haven’t yet been able to impress upon Kanaya that ‘raw only’ diets are best left to vegans.
You put on your gameface, because your housemates can be Intense in the mornings (at all times, really), and they will pounce on weakness like a flock of kittens regarding an unsuspecting mouse toy. You have greater aspirations than ending up stuffed with catnip, so you endeavor not to let them get the upper hand.
High, mischievous laughter floats down the hallway, foreshadowing a premature encounter with one of your companions. You quickly assess the situation. Kanaya's voice is low and mellow, and while Jade's voice is a higher register it goes down when she laughs—opposite of Aradia, whose deeper tones escalate into a riotous explosion of sound whenever something is even moderately funny. (Terezi's pitchy, shrieking cackle is a class all its own.) Your deductions are sound enough that you aren't surprised when Aradia lurches around the corner, her teeth displayed by plush black lips, parted in a broad smile.
She didn't do her make-up, either. Ha.
“Rose!” she says, immediately bouncing to your side, both metaphorically and physically. As a wise man once said, 'red beans and rice didn't miss her,' and Aradia's paper thin button-up is doing an admirably terrible job of containing her full chest. That it's only secured by, what, three? buttons probably doesn't help.
Living in a bizarre polyamorous lesbian sex commune does seem to have its perks. But you already knew that.
Aradia is about an inch shorter than you, so her ample breasts slot nicely beneath yours when she crushes you in an enthusiastic hug. You don't betray yourself with your smile, though something about sunrise always makes you a little frisky. “Was that a cat being swung around by its tail I heard a minute ago?” you ask, keeping your hands by your sides.
She giggles. “Jade didn't check to see who had last used the stereo before turning it on, and guess who was working at home alone yesterday!”
Ah, yes. Terezi's weird obsession for multilingual pop music played at incomprehensible levels strikes again. She claims it helps her focus, but you suspect it's just a really elaborate ruse that she's learned to live with because she's too dedicated to admit it's a joke. “Is our common room still in one piece?”
“She turned it off before Kanaya made her opinion known, if that's what you mean.”
You snort. “Of course. We owe our lives to Jade's quick reflexes.” You’re mostly joking. You don’t actually think Kanaya would break the stereo just because she hates Terezi’s music. Probably. She’s broken things for far less. “Have you eaten already?” you enquire, eyes flicking down the hallway in askance.
“A little bit,” Aradia says, pulling away from you (unfortunately) and looking away, her carefree smile still plastered on her face. She never really got back into the whole ‘eating’ thing, after returning to life. You don’t entirely blame her, but Kanaya and Terezi worry so you try to encourage where you can. “But I have to get dressed now. Spending the day in your pajamas kills your sense of adventure!”
“I disagree,” you say, smoothing your hands over the fabric of your house dress. “Adventure can be had in many ways.”
“You never leave the house,” laughs Aradia.
“Lies.” You do so leave the house, at least once every week for groceries. Sometimes you write better when sitting in a pretentious little cafe, but it’s not your fault that Kanaya and Jade have cultivated the perfect inspirational greenroom. You just have very little need for the world outside your home, is all.
You listen to the sweeping escalation of Aradia’s laughter, graciously accepting when she swoops in to kiss your cheek. “Whatever you say, Rose!” she allows, before breaking away to cross the hall to her door, nearly adjacent from yours. “Have fun at breakfast.”
You’re sure you will.
It never fails to amaze you, the chemical reaction that is Jade and Terezi. They didn’t talk that much during the game, so you never really expected it. That’ll teach you to underestimate them. You endeavored to not repeat the mistake again, which is why you are only a little surprised to see Terezi in nothing but an incredibly spankable pair of red boyshorts and standing with one foot on her chair and the other propped on the table, while Jade pitches what looks like small pieces of bacon at her from across the room.
Ah, yes. Home sweet home. You make eye contact with Kanaya, who’s sitting balled up in an armchair, sipping coffee and watching the scene with what you estimate to be equal amounts exasperation and bemusement.
You float past the scene, helping yourself to a sausage on the way to the fruit basket. You got Kanaya an entire bag of blood oranges last week, as a joke.
Selecting one, you begin to cut it into segments, keeping peripheral awareness of the bacon antics, just in case either of them should misfire—or worse, get any ill advised ideas. “That’s not even fair!” Jade complains, though you detect the presence of a laugh in her voice. “I wasn’t even aiming for your mouth and you still caught it. You’re not supposed to be able to see, you cheater!”
Terezi is hanging from the ceiling light. Fortunately she weighs about as much as a wet newspaper, but if that thing comes loose, she’s paying to replace it. You chew your sausage thoughtfully as Terezi swings the whole unit like a pendulum, launching herself back within range of the table. You take care not to cut your fingers with the knife due to your inability to look away. It’s far more interesting than the average train wreck, because at least in a train wreck you have a general idea of what’s going to happen. This could go anywhere.
“Hey, whoa!” Jade’s fingers wrap around your knife-holding hand seconds before you miscalculate the distance between your palm and the tip of the blade.
By your estimation, it wouldn’t have taken off any of your fingers, but it might have demanded a few stitches. It’s not really the most visible of mistakes, but you don’t need to ask how Jade knew the exact distance between your flesh and the implement. “Hi,” you say, seemingly unperturbed.
“Hi yourself, Rose!” She’s warm against your back. You’re okay with this. “Lose some sleep?” she asks.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you almost cut your whole hand off there!” Jade exclaims, gesturing with the hand she’s still holding, despite that one having never been in any danger.
You smile. “Oh, give yourself some credit. I don’t have to be sleep deprived to find your breakfast sport absolutely fascinating. Maybe I was just testing to see if you were paying attention.” Jade rolls her eyes so grandly that you sense it even with her behind you.
“Of course,” she says, releasing your wrist. You don’t want her to go, but you allow it anyway. “That totally makes sense!”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Terezi has resumed an intimate relationship with the kitchen floor, much to the table’s relief. You make a mental note to clean it before lunch.
“There’s no way she could have guaranteed I would notice!” Jade protests. “Rose is definitely not weird enough to cut off her own hand in a passive aggressive demand for attention.”
“Excuse me,” you interject. “It wasn’t my entire hand. Maybe half. Depends on my mood.”
“I don’t think you can support that argument in a court of law,” Terezi says to Jade, after throwing you a smirk. “Miss Lavender Lalonde would cut off her own snout to spite her face if the sun so much as dared sit in the sky in a manner she found offensive. There's not a jury in existence that could be convinced otherwise.”
You hum. “Maybe that’s going a bit far? I find my own nose rather endearing.”
Terezi considers it. “Someone else’s nose, then. After they’ve undergone an elaborate surgical reconstruction that replicates your appearance so closely that your own lusus wouldn’t notice the difference.”
“I’ll allow it.” This is normally where you’d make a joke about your mother's habit of being too drunk to distinguish between you and the bronzed vacuum, but memories of your guardian’s teenage doppelganger stop you, as they usually do when you care to think that far back into your past. (It happens much more often than you like to admit; remembering.)
Jade gnaws on a banana, wrinkling her nose. “You really should be careful, though,” she says, letting the discarded peel dangle from her fingers. It’s endearingly gross how she holds the naked fruit in her hand without seeming to notice that her snack came with a perfectly adequate handle already installed with the purpose of easy, mess-free consumption. “I don’t think typing with a handful of stitches is the best supplement for creativity.” She waggles the half eaten banana at you. Precious.
You open your mouth to shoot something back, but Terezi intercepts. “I bet I could win a case arguing that if anyone was to get off on using their own superficial physical pain as inspiration, it would be Rose. I’d put money on it, even.”
“Oh my god, stop being a butt!” Jade exclaims, lobbing the banana peel at the spindly troll.
Laughing at them is comfortable and familiar, but you tune out of their antics long enough to avoid repeating the self-maiming scare, finishing your dissection without any further drama.
You load the slices of (fortunately) non-literal blood orange onto a slim glass plate and slip through the wide threshold between the kitchen and the sitting room. Kanaya is much more intent on her coffee now that the chaos has died down, her eyelids drooping and knees still tucked in close to her chest. She doesn’t react to the sound of the plate on the side table, doesn’t stir at all until you dip to press a kiss to the wisps of her bangs, disorderly on her brow. Kanaya sleeps about as much as Aradia eats, but waking up is always a chore. You’ve postulated a number of reasons for this, up to and including the difference between whatever nutrients she’d be afforded by the Alternian sun versus what Earth has to offer, but have thusfar failed to settle on anything concrete.
She sleeps less, and feeds more. It’s a workable solution.
“Good morning,” you greet. Kanaya makes a sound that might have been reciprocation, but holds an equal chance of meaning ‘I have no patience for this right now,’ much like when the neighbor dog hops the fence and digs in her flowers—although you’re quite certain that Kanaya would never dispose of you and make it look like an accident. “You’ll be pleased to hear that I did not dismember myself while making your breakfast.”
Her eyes shift under the heavy lids, glancing at your humble offering. “Ah,” she says dryly. You don’t expect her to have eaten already, because Kanaya likes raw but she abhors greasy, which tends to put her at odds with most fried food.
Kanaya doesn’t move. You roll your eyes. Love is pain, and all that. You pick up a wedge with one hand and remove her coffee cup with the other, presenting the fruit. “Come on,” you say, ignoring her glare. “Don’t force me to make any ill advised locomotive references. I don’t know if I can resist the temptation.”
“Don’t,” says Kanaya. She might have laughed that one time Jade made ‘choo choo’ noises at Aradia, but she made it clear to you that if you ever tried anything like that with her, it would be... unwelcome. You press the orange between her thin black lips, watching her sharp fangs sink into the pulpy flesh. A freckle of juice squirts from the rind and lands on your upper lip; distracted, you lick it away, admiring the wet shine around Kanaya’s mouth.
Boy, but you do get randy in the mornings.
She feeds herself after that, sipping her coffee in between bites. You flip through a magazine, settled on the floor with one of her feet propped against your shoulder, the knob of her ankle stabbing you in the ear.
Eventually her hand comes down to thread through the fluffy strands of your drying hair, and her legs unfold like the pinschers of a praying mantis, stretching out beside you. “I see you’ve returned to the world of the living,” you quip.
“In a manner of speaking,” Kanaya says, and stands. She is long and narrow and elegant, agile like a predator. You fancy kissing her, but if you embody the languid sensuality of morning, Kanaya is caffeine binging and morning breath. Her bulge will most likely be on lockdown until at least five o’clock. More’s the pity. “Mm,” she hums, and you curl your toes, humming in response. “My garden needs weeding,” she says. “I put it off yesterday. The rosemary needs to be transplanted to indoor pots.”
“Jade wanted some for the windowsill,” you say.
“I was going to include some of the thyme,” she adds. “And maybe buy some bush basil, or sage.”
“She’ll like that. I’ll join you in a few hours?” You enjoy writing in the garden while Kanaya tends to her plants. It’s how you spend many of your days, steeping in the companionable silence. Spending time with Kanaya is far from the problem—spending too much time with Kanaya... ay, there's the rub.
The light from the window streams down in hazy columns, live with flickering dust motes. It shapes the high arch of Kanaya’s cheek, painting shadows in the hollow of her throat. You thrum with the need to have your mouth there, following the heady scent of sun-warmed skin, chasing the tang of citrus past her lips until she glows bright enough to put entire galaxies to shame. “That sounds nice,” says Kanaya, and bends her impossibly tall frame to kiss your cheek. You bite the corner of your thumbnail when she pulls away, sweeping off with such careful, precise footsteps that you hardly believe that a few minutes ago she was barely verbal.
Finding things to do that aren’t basking in her presence every second of every day is still a challenge, but you know you’ll get sick of each other much faster if you don’t force the issue. You look back to your magazine, instead of succumbing to the wistful desire to watch her go.
You’re glad to have your thoughts interrupted by long, shapely brown legs and the clink of a mug against hardwood. The smile you offer Jade is gracious, even more so when she offers you a steaming cup of tea. You resist the urge to ignore the tea and kiss her instead, taking hold of the handle. It’s hotter to your touch than it is to hers. (You want to feel that residual heat under your dress, pressed tight to your skin, thumbs rough against your nipples.) “Thanks,” you say. Jade tells you what kind it is, but you’re too riveted by the long twist of hair draped artfully over her collarbone to really give a shit about the tea you’re drinking. You narrowly avoid burning your tongue when you swallow a mouthful.
Jade grew beautiful in the three years you were apart, and after the Game gently deposited your surviving friends on the afterimage of an old Earth, she grew lovelier still. When the differences were too surreal for you to handle, you only had to look to Jade for comfort and stability. Neither of you knew much of the outside world beyond your respective shades of isolation; the sting of society is intense, hitting what precious little you remember of humanity right where it hurt most. You can’t imagine what it must be like for Jade.
But now you have a world that’s a double-exposed print, nothing like you remembered despite it being cobbled together from the minds of everyone who should have known it best. It’s a cheap consolation prize. It will never replace the world you lost.
Your home was not always as carefree as it is now, but the pain could only be drawn out so much before it popped like a cheap, overstretched dollar store balloon. In the end, the fact that you were all together meant more than familiarity ever could. Besides, it’s selfish of you to feel unstable in your surroundings, considering what the trolls must have experienced getting used to human (“human”) culture.
Jade reaches across the space between you to rest her head on your shoulder, her spine curving to make up for your difference in height. The first time you met in person, she’d been shorter than you. Now, she stoops to kiss the hem of your dress, lips half off the cloth, pleasant against your skin. “We’re very lucky Terezi didn’t rip out the ceiling light,” you muse, staring out the window at the gentle slope of your yard.
She laughs. “That would have been pretty unexpected.”
“You’d have been the one fixing it,” you say.
“Then I’d be able to teach you how to do electrical wiring!” Jade says, not sounding put out or disappointed by this at all.
Haha, no. “As fun as that sounds, I’m going to have to pass on the prospect of electrocuting myself and possibly setting fire to our home.”
“I think a little excitement would do you some good,” she says as you sip placidly at your tea.
“My doctor says that my excitement intake is at a perfectly healthy level, and to increase it might put unnecessary strain on my heart. Apologies.”
“Not apologies,” Jade argues. “Excuses.” She then pinches you in the side, causing you to jerk and spill a large, fat drop of piping hot liquid onto your lap. It soaks quickly into the fabric, fortunately missing the part of your skirt that was actually covering your legs. You’re fine, but Jade squeaks in horror anyway. “Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry!”
You set your mug down on the floor and extract yourself from her grip, reassuring as you go, “Thank you for your distress; I regret to inform you that I think I’m going to survive.” She continues to hover as you pry yourself out of your house dress, not bothering with the curtains on the wide, open window. Your neighbors on that side are around pretty infrequently, anyway. There’s an image of you, shirtless, in nothing but a scrap of silky violet fabric, stretched over the doughy softness of your hips. Not the skinniest of girls, you nonetheless lack Aradia’s voluptuous curves, or Jade’s rock-hard musculature.
You’re soft. You always have been, though with womanhood you expanded like a marshmallow in a microwave. The sun’s rays are warm but the glass is still cold when you trace your finger around your swollen reflection, which on a good day you might describe as rubenesque.
Spidery hands slip like eels between your arms and your ribcage, folding over both of your breasts at once. You feel extremely lucky not to hear a ‘honk’ or some other such noise as Terezi raises up on tip-toes to sink teeth into your shoulder. “Can I help you?” you inquire, not really complaining, as it were. Her hands are just small enough to make your chest look moderately full, despite being the only part of you that didn’t seem to grow with age.
Her response is muffled by a mouthful of your flesh, which she chews enthusiastically. Considering you’ve been dying for some action all morning, you’re not particularly inclined to stop her.
You close your eyes, letting your head fall back as Terezi’s skinny fingers massage your flesh. You hear a soft chuckle, the creak of the hardwood, but you don’t give it too much attention until Terezi’s teeth withdraw and one of her hands twists back to rifle through your hair, tugging at the back. “I detect ruminating,” she whispers.
“Do you now.”
“I picked up on the scent of your wistful musings from all the way upstairs,” Terezi proceeds to inform you.
“Ah,” you say. “I’ll do my best not to project so loudly next time I find myself feeling pensive.” You know that’s not as easy as you make it sound. You and Terezi share a (rather belatedly formed) bond as seers, although your powers from the game have receded to nothing more than extremely sharp memories and heightened senses. Jade can tell the exact distance between a knife and your flesh from half a glance, and Terezi can hear you thinking from across the room.
“You say that now,” Terezi purrs, “But here I am, giving you what you want. You’re going to think you can get away with this in the future if I keep this up!”
You snort. “Are you implying my thoughts deserve punishment?”
She grins into your neck, nips your earlobe. “That is exactly what I am implying, Miss Lalonde.” The world spins, though not particularly quickly, and you’re facing Jade, still on the floor, and Aradia, propped in the armchair, both smiling devious, wicked smiles. Your back is tight against Terezi’s bony chest, her hand still in your hair, and you can feel all of her ribs through her shirt. “The prosecution would now like to present her case to the jury,” she announces.
“Go ahead!” Aradia says, laughing.
“The defendant, Miss Lalonde, has been having Emotions of a Dubious Nature—ones which I shudder to inform the court do not reflect very positively on herself! Although the defendant is, to use the lingo, ‘gagging for it,’ the prosecution would like to take a firm stance on dissuading Miss Lalonde from any future episodes. As it stands, giving her what she so clearly wants might just be enabling future misdemeanors, which is behaviour that, quite frankly, the prosecution is not willing to tolerate.”
“She’s suggesting I need to be punished,” you clarify, for the ‘jury’s’ sake. Jade has a hand over her mouth to hide her tittering, but Aradia looks to be trying her best to play along.
“No speaking out of turn!” Terezi reprimands. The hand on your hair disappears, giving you a second to wonder before five bony sets of knuckles come down hard on your backside.
Terezi may be small, but she’s far from weak.
You, admittedly, lose your composure a bit. The morning’s been testing you and it catches you off guard, wrenching hard at your competitive gameface. You squirm in Terezi’s arms, eeping loudly. When you calm down enough to process the people around you again, Jade looks a bit concerned but Aradia’s eyes are bright with whatever the troll version of homoerotic schadenfreude is (because you are sure that must be a thing). Terezi, unsurprisingly, is laughing.
Aradia’s jeans sit low on her hips, her torso cocked so her shirt rolls up the broad curve of her hip, exposing a few inches of plump grey flesh. She flicks the hem of her shirt back down and then gets to her feet, her (now painted) lips parted in a broad smile. “I don’t think you need our help,” she muses, sauntering toward you looking simultaneously very evil and very cute. You’re quite internally conflicted, except way less so when she presses against your front and Terezi digs her claws into the meat of your ass, and Aradia’s fingers come up to halo your chin as her other hand is much less gentle coming down on the outside of your thigh. “This seems like a great solution already,” she says.
“Is it an effective punishment if I enjoy it?” you taunt, lazily plucking your arms from between them and reaching them behind your head to drape backwards over Terezi’s horns. (You were going for her shoulders, but she’s way too short to reach.)
“I don’t think there’s any rule against that,” Jade says from the floor. Aradia’s mouth at your neck all of a sudden makes your head roll back, but you spare a glance for your oldest friend, lips tilting. Her shorts are always so incredibly small, showing off every toned inch of her long, muscular legs. They’re crossed loosely, her elbows propped on her knees, and from your position you can see right down her shirt.
“Lucky me,” you breathe, just as Terezi wheezes out another snicker and brings her hand to your flesh again with a sharp, bright smack.
“The prosecution rests,” she purrs. Seconds later, a purring of an altogether different sort breaks the breathy half-silence, and you blink in confusion, noting that Terezi seems to be vibrating at a less familiar frequency. That’s about when the opening to the Macarena kicks in, which you recognize (reluctantly) as her phone alarm. “Shit,” she says.
“Don’t tell me,” you say.
“I gotta go,” Terezi says. She slides out from between you and the window, pushes up onto her toes to kiss you on the cheek. “Take care of her for me,” she says to your other companions, and spanks you once more for good measure before flying from the room.
You sag back against the cold glass, letting your eyes close.
What would have been a calming sigh turns into a hitch of surprised breath when you feel unexpected pressure against the only remaining barrier between your skin and the air, opening your eyes to see brown fingers at the apex of your thighs. Jade is not on the floor anymore. Ah. She meets your eyes, grins so sweetly, and says, “Well.” You hold the air in your lungs, sucking your bottom lip between your teeth. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t finish carrying out your—ahaha—sentence, just because the prosecution had boring adult stuff to do.”
“Boring adult stuff,” you repeat.
“Yes,” says Jade, and her thumb dips low to slide the seat of your underwear to the side, and her fingers are so, so warm.
“Unlike this,” you say, somehow missing that air you’d made a point of keeping just a moment ago.
“Adult, definitely,” Aradia says, her calloused, pudgy fingers rubbing a circle on your stinging thigh, right over Terezi’s parting gift. “But if you really think it’s boring, I’m sure we can make a few alterations to change your mind!”
Jade’s fingers have a wide spread, and you feel every inch of the burn as she deals a powerful strike to the bottommost curve of your butt, and you feel your entire thigh rumble in response. The teasing fingers, stroking to collect the gathering moisture at your center, don’t yield even an inch when you arch forward, away from the blow; you gasp and rock back on your heels but the pressure maintained by Jade’s strong wrist doesn’t alleviate. The window grows warm from the extended contact with your skin. “I think we might need to shake it up, anyway,” she comments, forehead bumping lightly against your temple. “If we don’t she might get too comfortable!”
“Can’t have that,” agrees Aradia.
As far as mornings go, you find you have very few complaints.