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It's when you're walking through the corridors of your transport ship that you find her at her familiar haunt. These days, she's always here, pressed between the cold, closing gray walls and her wicked brothers. Working as a legislacerator under the part of the law devoted to the subjugglators, her downtime and work time has been filled with sticky syrups and purple grins.
Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are a threshcutioner in the Imperial Fleet, pledged to Her Imperial Condescension to uphold the laws placed by her in the 3rd Ruling, for the justice of Her Empire and the continued cooperation of the Conquered Races.
You are also pledged to another fearsome woman, but only in mind.
You love a broken girl, one who drowns herself daily, gumming up her fractured eyes with sugar and mirth. She deals exclusively with the subjugglators, something most certainly assigned to her to wear her into the hull of the ship. You climb through a portcullis welded into the cool walls and emerge into a smokey room completely adorned with rich purples and tyrian dashes. The air is clouded and thick with the scent of smoke and greasy face paint and stale sugar, already sucked down and leaking out through the pores. Trolls are piled up around, the oily scent of the blood spatters on the wall making you gag slightly.
Many are passed out, probably depressed from so much sugar. One of the Commandants to the Grand Highblood sits at her reigning chair, giving you a smooth eye and a wickedly evil grin. Her face is smeared with angry blots of gray and cream grease, freckled specks of indigo dotting the gray expanse. Her hair is long and tied back in what appears to be a million braids.
She beckons you over, silently conveying to you that waking her brothers is a pain you would not wish to suffer. You come to stand in front of her and she hands you Terezi's briefcase, then points her finger meaningfully at a particular mess of trolls piled high on cushions. Her limp gesture clears a path in the smokey air, and you see Terezi flopped next to a large mass of knocked-out royalty. The teal and red of her uniform contrasts starkly with the blacks and grays and purples donned by her wicked brothers and sisters.
You press your palm to your mouth then the back of your hand to your forehead, a sign of thanks. You bow to her, an acknowledgment of her position and her ruling to allow you to live.
You move to collect Terezi, dance over and avoid the bodies strewn across the floor. She mumbles a little when you lift her over your shoulders, carrying her as you would carry a wounded soldier. You make another sign of thanks as you leave the thick, stifling room. The sharp light of the hallway burns your eyes as they adjust. You can feel your iris contracting as it flexes to find what size is acceptable for the continued use of your retinas.
You blink a few times as you carry Terezi and her case down the long hallway. You get her into a transport elevator, punch in the number of her block. You zoom away through the massive ship, thick metal walls separating you from the vacuum of space, the largest and mostly conquered frontier your kind has ever seen the likes of.
You arrive shortly at her block, using her password to gain entrance. Inside, you lay her across a couch and turn around, intending to leave like you have every time before. Instead, you turn back around and assess her state.
She is a complete mess, grease paint and soda-pop-sweet sugar sticking everywhere and staining her skin with the scent. You shake her to wake her a little, get her to be a little more cooperative. You sit down next to her head on the couch and pull her into an upright position, shushing her when she makes a groaning noise.
She cracks an eye at you and sniffs a little. She asks where her glasses are.
“I think they're in your brief case,” you murmur, keeping her sitting.
She closes her eye and sighs. When she speaks, her words are slurred and blended together. “If you break them, I'll sell you to slavers.”
You quirk your mouth at her. You stand, telling her she has to get cleaned up. She slumps back down, her mind obviously not possessing the proper higher functions for this.
You sigh and press your eyes into your skull. She gives a limp cough, spewing the scent of stale sugar and air. You appraise her greased and stained form, and you pity her so profusely in this moment. You lean down and pull her up, half-carry, half-drag her to her ablution chamber.
You hold her with one arm while you lay a towel for her in the ground. You shuffle her boneless form so she's leaning against the wall while you turn on the faucet for her ablution trap. She stirs and mumbles words that you can't understand, you doubt that she's even doing it consciously.
It's difficult to get the water to a proper temperature for her. Being colder than you by blood, water that might seem pleasantly hot to you could give her burns. You give an approximation for her, deciding that lukewarm for you, might be the best for her.
While the tub fills, you busy yourself with her clothes. She gives your fumbling hands halfhearted slaps as you attempt to unbutton her vest. She tries to fix your hands and their clumsy mistakes, helping you with the simple clasps that are too small for your large grip.
You help her shuffle the vest off and she leans her head against your shoulder, her horn scraping your skin lightly. She takes a deep breath through her nose and then lets it out, her cool body pressing to you.
You take in air slowly, through your nose, calming yourself. You let it out in a rush and gently push her off. She makes a noise of protest, but you begin to pull her shirt off of her. She's limp and allows you to remove it, her eyes closed and her head slightly hung.
Your face burns as you look away from her chest, definitely not used to seeing this much skin on her. The teal flush burns brightly from her, and you think it may have hurt your eyes, because you need to avert your gaze.
You move down and pull her boots off, tossing them across the chamber until they clunk on the door. The loud noises seem to stir her some more and she gives a few sniffs at you. You focus on tugging her leggings and skirt off, specifically trying to ignore how more of her is exposed. She lifts herself a little to allow you a better chance to remove them, her undershorts coming off with along with her leggings and skirt.
You stand up and get behind her, hook your arms under hers, and lift her into the tub. The water sloshes as you pour her in, her legs bending awkwardly underneath her.
She flinches, and you notice a few beads of sweat beginning to form on her head.
“Shit,” you mumble. “Too hot?”
She leans her arms on the edge of the tub and positions her head on them. “A touch.”
You turn off the hot water faucet and crank the cold up for a few moments before turning it off.
“Better?” you ask.
She nods weakly, her eyes closed. You get soap and a washcloth, run them together under the water until they foam up. You kneel down in front of her and clear her hair from her face, run the sudsy cloth through her hair and around her head. She makes a face as you do so, the soap dripping down her nose.
She moves away from the lip of the tub. “I can wash myself, you know,” she mutters, the water already clouding with dirt and sugar.
“T don't want you to drown yourself accidentally on purpose.”
She huffs at you and slumps a little in the tub. She doesn't move to come back over, so you roll up your pants and step in, the edge of the cloth getting wet regardless. You sit on the lip and she sloshes over to sit between your legs, still slumped over.
You wash her back and try to look through her while you ask her what happened today.
She heaves a deep sigh and shifts a little. “The usual. They culled a kid front of me today, but it wasn't justice. They've done it before, but this one didn't even beg. She just let herself get killed.”
You snort. “So you get wrecked about it.”
She shakes her head a little. “She didn't even fight back. They just culled her and that was that.”
“You've killed plenty of kids before.”
“So've you,”she mumbles, the words sounding more like “so few.”
You shake your head, mostly to yourself. “They're just trying to wear you down Terezi, and you know that.”
“They can't beat me, you know that,” she returns. After a moment of silence during which you pour water on her to clear the soap away, she asks you something.
“Why are you doing this?”
You'd moved onto washing her arms. You pause to consider exactly why you're doing this. You love the girl, no question is in your mind about that. But this whole scenario is foreign to you, really only something that occurs between moirails. It hurts that this is probably coming off as white as sugar to her.
“You're a fuckin' mess,” you mutter, resuming your scrubbing.
She chuckles, the water shaking with tremors. “Like you're one to talk.”
“Terezi, that room was terrible, can't you request a transfer to somewhere else?'
“And risk getting moved away from you? Of course not.”
Your voice darkens, lower than you intended it to be. “Don't joke about that, Terezi.”
She shuffles around so she's facing you. Her hands are on your knees, dark stains forming on the fabric there. She looks up at you and gives you a sniff.
“Karkat, are we doing something wrong?” she asks, her tone contemplative.
You stare at her eyes, red with the dancing reflections of the water. She blinks a few times, her tongue darting out to get a better view of the world. “Like?”
“Like this,” she replies. She shuffles a bit closer and tugs on the hem of your shirt. “I'm not going to be the only one naked here.”
You shove her hands away. “No, I am not stripping. I'm not the one with the problem. I'm the one with every problem but yours. I'm the one who can stand properly.”
“I don't have a problem, I have a job.”
You take that in and spit that you have one too. God only knows you both have jobs, duties. Duties that pulled you two apart and away from each other. She sits back, her breasts moving out from under the water. She's unashamed, but you manage to pull up enough embarrassment for the two of you.
She doesn't respond past asking you to get in the tub with her.
You think about leaving, but instead, you vocalize how you're not taking your clothes off, again. She says she just wants to talk to you, c'mon, let her return the favor.
She looks like she wants to repay you, so you step out of the trap. Your shirt and pants come off, but your undershorts stay on, you would like to retain at least a modicum of modesty.
You climb into the lukewarm water and sit down across from her. She smiles at you and reaches forward. She sloshes water at your face and you push it back at her. She laughs and the two of you play for little bit before she eventually just settles into sitting next to you.
She has one of your hands and is tracing whorls into the water with it. “I feel a lot better, you know,” she states.
“About?” you ask, extremely focused on what she's trying to draw on one of the least-permanent surfaces in the universe.
“I didn't want to stay there for the day, that's for sure. So, thanks for getting me out,” she says before she kisses the palm of your hand and presses the back to her forehead.
Your voice comes out a little more shakily than you intended. “I've gathered you from there before.”
She shrugs, small and still holding your hand. “Yeah, but you stayed this time. And really, it was so much worse than before, being there.”
“Because of that kid?”
She sighs. “I have to write reports for them and they can't kill me, but they can make me do any vile task they think of.”
Your mind shoots to the very worst conclusions possible. “Isn't a transfer an option?”
“No.”
“It's not worth getting wrecked over.”
She quirks a corner of her mouth into a frown, sloshing closer to you in the water. “It's not worth possibly leaving the ship over.”
She lays her head on your shoulder again and wraps her arms around you. You hug her back, pressing her closely to yourself. She sighs into your shoulder and presses her lips there, the whole show extremely pale and extremely painful.
You don't know how long you stay like that, just talking to each other, but it's long enough for the water to get to a suitable temperature to make you shiver.
Your frame gives a healthy shake and she gets off of you, asks if you want to get out. You don't answer, you just vacate the trap as fast as possible for you without slipping on the floor. You grab two towels and bring them back, set them down, and pull Terezi from the tub. She's a little shaky on her legs, but she holds onto you for support. You give her a towel and she wraps it around herself before you take you own and dry yourself with it. She helps, taking one end of the towel and rubbing it over your arms, probably in an attempt to warm you up a little.
You contemplate removing your underwear, but decide against it in the face of modestly. You pull the plug for the trap and the lead the of you into her respite block, setting her down onto her couch. She tugs you down so you're sitting next to her. She moves into your lap and lays her head on your chest, her arms hanging in front of her. Her horn scratches your shoulder a little.
“I'm sorry we haven't talked about us in a while,” she murmurs.
“There isn't an 'us,' Terezi,” you give back. There hasn't an “us” since the two of you were small and hadn't yet ascended. Your matespritship was sick and withered because of your jobs. But you're older now, maybe you just needed time?
“There used to be, and there still is.” she sighs, picking at a thread in the towels. “I've missed sitting with you like this, you know. We hardly get time to talk anymore, and when we do, I'm either strung out on sugar or you're strung out from not sleeping for 4 nights.”
You pull her closer, tighter to yourself. “Your wicked brothers are going to be the reason we're going to get culled.”
She laughs, the mirthful sound bouncing off the metal walls. “Of all the reasons we could get culled, I doubt they'd be the main reason.”
You snort. “Right, the blind prophet and the mutant soldier.”
She laughs again, harder this time. She turns her face into your chest as she laughs, muffling the noise with your skin. Yo can't help but crack a grin at how hilarious she manages to find everything.
Her laughter eventually peters out until the room is silent, just the sounds of your breathing. You're overwhelmed by the situation, the night. She's cool and around you, the conditions you'd gathered her from completely terrible. She was barely conscious, and maybe only half-alive. Stripping her had been one of the most gloriously awful experiences of your life, and here she is, still alive and conscious and breathing and you love her so fucking much.
You press a light kiss to the crown of her head. She jumps a little before she returns and presses a kiss to your collarbone. She's not light or sweet, she doesn't give you a peck or a nudge. She presses, open-mouthed and hard to your collar. She gives a small bite and your head goes back, a groaning noise spilling from your fangs. She makes to leave a bruise.
She detaches soon, and leans up to press to your lips. You give in eagerly to her, hold her just a little tighter, just a little closer to yourself. Your mind swings back to reality.
You pull away from her and ask her what she's doing.
Her eyes look heavy and her skin has that teal flush from before. “I've really missed you.”
You swallow, a lump hard forming in your throat. “So what does this mean?”
Her eyes close all the way and she leans her forehead on yours. “If only our communication skills with each other weren't so shitty.”
“If only our lives weren't so shitty.”
She kisses you again, harder and more passionate than the last. She breaks off quickly, and you whine, definitely wanting more.
“Do you want to try it again?” she asks, her thumbs gliding over your cheek bones.
You close your eyes and lean heavily into her touch. Your pan hurts a little, and your pusher is punching your sternum, probably gearing up to break through.
“Do I take that as a yes?” she asks, her tone light with flecks of worry.
You consciously remain silent in what is probably the first time in your whole life, a small, probably pathetic-seeming nod coming from you.
She breathes out a sigh of relief and hugs you tightly again, her face in your neck. You hug her back, your mouth pressing a wet kiss to her throat. She makes a humming noise of approval, leans her head back to allow you better purchase. You leave a trail of kisses and nips from her throat to her shoulders, then travel up to her mouth. You press light brushes to the corners of her lips and she shivers, a large shake wracking her frame. Her hands on your shoulders grip you tighter, her nails a little biting.
She leans in and gives you a quick press to the lips, soft and fleeting. Her towel has shuffled down her body at this point and you ask her if she wants you to take it off.
Goddammit, Karkat, of course she does, she's not a wriggler.
You push it all the way off and your face burns a bright, dangerous red at the sight of her. Sharp angles and that teal flush remind you of when the two of you were younger and more shameless. She reaches a hand down and tugs the towel that slid down your legs, off. Your hands remember how her hips felt and place themselves there, falling easily back into old routines.
She kisses you again, a hand going behind your head and the other around one of your horns. She rubs hard circles at the base of it, the sensations easily pulling an ugly moan from you. You leave her lips for her neck.
You make sure to leave a mark there, soft bites and gentle kisses dragging gasps and groans from her lips. A hand wanders up to her breast, and you work her there, running your thumb over the centers of them. She gives a choked noise to you, and a slight jump of her hips. She scoots closer to you and grinds down softly, her head coming to rest next to your own.
You don't leave her neck, but your arms wrap around her, pull her as closely to you as possible. Your hips roll together, her mouth open and breath heavy as it saturates your hair. You press another kiss over her pulse she breathes out an “oh, God” before shuddering again.
She feels amazing, the sensation of just having her with you again completely overwhelming for you. You think of how she was a few hours before, wrapped around insanity and sugar and grease paint, and how she is now, wrapped around you.
She tugs on an earlobe with her teeth, urgently trying to convey to you that she really needs this. You push her off a little and end up with the both of you on the floor, the carpet breaking the fall slightly. She gives a breathless laugh and you growl as you tug off your undershorts.
You lean against the couch and she pulls herself in to kiss you again. You smile a little as she pushes closer and closer, her subtle warmth sinking into your skin. She presses down on you and your head knocks against the edge of the couch, your eyes threatening to roll back into your skull.
She releases a noise caught somewhere between a gasp and moan, and she immediately begins rolling her hips with yours. The movements are slow and soft, nothing like the harsh grates from when you were seven or eight. Your hands grip her hips, keep her steady and yourself, grounded. Her face is against yours, not so much kissing as brushing your lips together and whispering noises of pleasure to each other.
She shakes as you two make love, small beads of sweat gathering on her and rolling down her skin, giving that lovely teal flush a true iridescent shine.
She breathes out your name in between curses and praises to some deity. You echo her breaths, her own name mixed with words you don't consider strong enough to convey the waves of pure feeling crashing between the two of you. Your thoughts are jumbled in your head and Terezi's pants and cries get more and more distressed as the two of you grind and slide together.
You rub your hands down her back, breathing coos to her. She shakes even more, her thrusts and rolls becoming more erratic as she tires to find some release. Her hands grip your hair hard, her arms wrapped over your shoulder. She squeezes her eyes shit tightly, thin tears leaking out and leaving a bright trail down her face.
You kiss her cheeks, whisper to her to just let go.
And she does.
She gives a strangled scream as she spills over the edge, clutching you wildly. She squeezes around you and you can't hold on anymore and you scream your release into her shoulder, teeth sinking hard into the flushed skin there. You feel the warm liquid of your combined genetic material seep into the carpet, and you can only think of how the two of you just took a bath.
She breathes heavily and comes down from her high around you, her breath hot on your neck.
You run your hands over her back again, whispering just how much you love her as often as you can. She breathes back that she loves you too. She slides herself off of you, wincing slightly as she does so. She adjusts herself so her back is against your chest and she takes one of your hands, twining her fingers with it.
She then disentangles them and pushes a kiss into your palm. She gently presses the back of your hand to her forehead.
A sign of thanks.