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Oh, no, you think dizzily when you see her for the first time, pale skin wrapped in her crossing-guard hoodie, she’s hot.
And thank god that’s about all you have time to think, because otherwise you would be in way deep shit. From then on your life is a huge clusterfuck of punch-card alchemy (yes), monster battles (hell yes), becoming a huge badass (hell fucking yes), and giving Dirk romantic advice (not really that great). It’s all a blur when you look back, even though it seems perfectly clear and coherent and logical as you’re actually doing it.
And then, just as quickly as all the shit bubbled up, it’s gone again. The end of the game brings more peace and quiet than you ever imagined could exist. Your new world has no Batterwitch, no assassination attempts, no dead parents, no swarms of carapace people teeming around your house. You have had about as much carapace people as you can take, to be quite fucking frank.
No dead parents, which means you are now sharing your house with a warm (rockin’ booty) body again. The space isn’t the issue - you have more than enough empty space in your huge-ass forest mansion, it’s like some kind of fairy tale about Blondebeard - the issue is that... she’s hot. She’s your mother and she’s hot, and way aside from that you want anything from her, a scrap of attention, a hug, a cuddle, something that your own mom is, was, way too busy to ever give you. There’s no rebellion here. There’s nothing eating up her time, but you still feel bad wanting it. You aren’t really comforted in your fucked-up need for attention by the fact that she isn’t your mom, exactly; your mom was terrifyingly elegant and poised and aloof, and Rose is still just a teenage girl with chapped pink lips and dark circles under her immaculate makeup. And even for all her awkward smiles, the oh shit you’re Young Mom look in her eyes that you know matches the look in yours, the way she licks her thumb when she turns a book page even if she’s just put on hand cream, she’s the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen in your life and she knows you more than anyone you’ve ever met.
Thank whatever weird fucking tentacle gods that made the game that made you make this world - shit that’s a whole lot clunkier than just saying thank god - whatever, thank god you more or less avoid each other the first couple of weeks except at meals, because you’re sure if you had to see her as often as you not-so-secretly want to you’d just break down into tears and cling to her and never, ever, ever let go. But it’s not the first couple of weeks anymore. It’s the seventh evening of your second full month in the huge house together, and you’ve bumped into her on the way to the bathroom, and she’s wearing her nightgown and there’s a sleep wrinkle on her wrist and suddenly you feel like you’re going to paint the hallway with barf.
“Good evening,” she says as she brushes past you. Your t-shirt ruffles when she passes.
“Shit,” you say, then “wait,” and you take her hand, your fingers resting on the little dip in her soft, soft skin. She turns to face you and looks up into your eyes in the weird twilight dark of the hall, but she doesn’t pull away and she doesn’t say anything. You can hear her breathing. “Shit,” you say again, and you embrace her like you’ve wanted to so bad, and about half a second after your face is nestled into the perfect cradle of her neck you start to sob like a whole fucking litter of kittens. She’s stick-straight in your arms for a minute, her hands splayed stiffly over your back, but when your tears touch her skin she softens against you. One of her hands rests at the small of your back, and the other goes in between your shoulders. Meanwhile you’re clutching her to you whatever way you can get. You feel like some kind of really shitty sloth.
“Hush,” she murmurs. “Mother - Roxy, hush.” That sets you off ten times as bad, and you’re sure you’d be falling on your ass if her stout little body wasn’t holding you up. She turns her head to whisper something more to you, you think, and her breath touches you just for a second. Her lips pick up a tear or two, and you hear the hard hitch in her throat as she tastes them. And then you have a sobbing Rose clinging to you like somebody turned on the sprinklers, her mascara running and her nose flushing the prettiest red you’ve ever seen. You hold her, she holds you, you hold each other desperately, squeezing so close you can’t tell whose legs are whose, a column rising up in the middle of the hall spitting on all that fucking smooth white modernism that surrounded you your whole life. You hiccup into her ear and her fists clench in your shirt. “Fuck,” she says, the swear like wax dripping over your shoulder. “Fuck,” you agree, but you forgot your lips resting on her, and just that one magic word makes her whole body shiver in your arms.
Just like that, the spell breaks, and your legs take you away from her even as your hands linger on her hips. The blush from her nose has spread over her cheeks, and you’re pretty sure the same pattern is burning on your face. She tries to say something, but it comes out as a thick teary gurgle before she clears her throat. “I still need to - “ she whispers, gesturing past you to the bathroom door. “Yeah,” you say, “yeah, whatever, okay, see you tomorrow.” And you run like hell back to your room.
---
You jerk awake the next day at like noon, a couple of hours before your normal wakeup time, because there’s a knock at your door. Unless you dreamed all that Sburb bullshit and it’s the secret Crocker police come to bust your balls, there’s only one person it could ever in a million years be. You briefly consider pretending to be dead, but that would work for about five seconds until she felt your pulse and then you’d be touching some more and shit would suck all over again. So you haul yourself out of bed and drag your heels over to the bedroom door.
“What’s the password?” you ask the doorknob.
“I’ve made you breakfast, you indolent shrew.”
“Awesome.” You ignore for a second that you’re scared shitless of seeing her at all, forget the possibility of accidentally touching her hand or something, you pull the door open. Yep, there she is in a tank top and a skirt and a smirk, holding a tray with some scrambled eggs on it. They look burnt. She burned your scrambled eggs and you have never loved anybody more. Your stomach lurches to think it. You take the tray from her, bunching your hands up all weird so you don’t brush your fingers on hers, and then you stare at each other.
“May I come in?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Uh, yeah, sorry, just sit wherever. I mean, I guess this is your house, you know where all the furniture and shit is anyway.” You step backwards until your calves bump the bed, and as you plop down you remember, way too goddamn late, that there are no chairs at all. She looks around with an expression that might be disgust and then tucks her hands up against her thighs as she walks over to you, sitting down not too close but not too far from you on the edge of the bed. You take a bite of the eggs and try not to wrinkle your nose. Oh fuck, they’re terrible. It tastes like she dumped half the pepper shaker in there. You stab your fork into the yellow glob and soldier on anyway.
“This isn’t my house,” she says. “It’s yours.”
“Hell no. It was still your house even after you...” Shit. You stare at the plate and shove your eggs around.
“Well.” She practically snaps it, her voice sharp, and your head jerks up. “It has to be someone’s house or the bills are going to remain unpaid.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth she looks shocked, her slim pale fingers pressing over her lips. Even a shitty breakfast is better than letting her see the tears stinging your eyes, so you force yourself to stare into the shrinking sun splattered over your plate again. There’s a long, long silence that doesn’t help the lump in your throat. “I’ve imposed,” she says after a while, standing from the bed. “I’ll excuse myself now. Try to enjoy your breakfast, despite my obvious lack of cooking ability.”
You drop the tray on the floor and stand up too. “Don’t you dare,” you say. The words practically come out by themselves. “We’re finally talking and just ‘cause you fuck up once you’re leaving me here all by myself again?” Your voice cracks. Shit, can’t you talk to her without wanting to cry? “Is that why you never wanted to be around me? Because I couldn’t ever say the right fucking thing?”
Rose looks like a cartoon character who’s realized she ran off a cliff a dozen frames ago. “Roxy, I never meant to upset you, I just - ” Her lips twist up and she tries to look away; in a moment of fucking amazing bravery you grab her chin and make her look into your eyes. She swallows before she speaks again. “I don’t want to ruin things with you like I did with... you.”
“You couldn’t ruin things with me if you tried,” you say fiercely, and then whoops what the fuck oh god no your mouth is on hers. Her lips are slick and sweet. You still taste like overpeppered egg. You regret everything instantly, or at least until her surprised gasp fades from your senses and she leans in against you, her body so close and warm you can feel it in your bones. She doesn’t shove you away, she doesn’t punch you in the face, she doesn’t puke down your shirt - her hands rest on your shoulders, one thumb against your neck, and her mouth opens slowly against yours. Ohhh fuck, you are in the very deepest of shit. And yet, your brain is so cloudy and blissful with the taste of her that you don’t have time to care. You sit back down on the bed, leading her with your hands; she sits in your lap with elegance and poise you can feel, her lips still clinging to yours. You whine into her mouth, and she must take the little sound as an invitation to slip her tongue in, which makes your whine turn into a moan. Oh, god, you’re kissing your mother, you’re kissing your mom, you’re kissing Rose and she tastes like toothpaste and home.
She spreads her legs, which is such a completely smutty feeling against your lap that you groan nice and loud and mush your tongue against the roof of her mouth, but it turns out she’s just balancing her knees on either side of your hips, and then it turns out she’s pushing herself against you and this is such Cinemax shit that you giggle all over her lips and she kisses you so, so much harder. You want to say something, to ask her if this is okay (like you need confirmation when her fingertips are resting on your stomach just under your shirt), to tell her you don’t blame her for anything, but you remember what happened the last time you spoke when you were this close. It’s not worth the risk. So you just wrap a leg around her wonderfully thick hips and hold her there as you kiss, half-drunk on just her whispered sounds of - what? Lust, pleasure, shit it couldn’t be love, could it?
Your lips slip off hers and make their cozy new home against her neck. The tradeoff is totally worth it - you can’t swallow up her hot breath anymore, but now you can hear her murmur “oh, yes, there, ooh,” and she even says your name a few times. Hearing it like that, all heavy and aching, is enough to send your guts into brand new knots of desire. One of her hands slides up your neck and into your hair, and you don’t even think about the consequences as you mark her skin with outlines of your mouth. “God, Rose,” you groan against her throat. You’re still trying to catch your breath after that amazing kiss, so it comes out kind of like you’re already wobbling on the edge of completely losing your shit. She looks down at you, and that smirk looks even hotter when her face is all flushed and her eyes are dilated - wait, that’s not a smirk. Oh, fuck, she’s smiling. Suddenly you understand jack shit. That’s apparently all right, though, because then she gives you a little shove on the shoulders, sending you thumping down onto your back.
“Roxy,” she says, all breathy and needy and oh god you’re pretty sure your panties are fucking ruined. She swallows and licks her lips. “We should not be doing this.”
Fuck.
You’re lying on your goddamn back in bed with your mother and you should not be doing this and you’re a fucking freak what the fuck is wrong with you, why did you think this was a good idea, you are fucking disgusting, you started all this and now she’s ending it -
“But I want to,” she says. Her voice is still low and gentle and heavy. “I want to very, very much.” You’re still in shock when she leans down and covers your mouth with hers again. Shit, talk about whiplash. You push her back, just enough for an inch or two of breathing room, your lips still tingling from her kiss. You want this more than you can even say, but there are about a hundred thousand reasons why this is the most fucked-up thing you’ve ever done or thought about doing, even worse than that thing with Cal and the video camera. Even still you can’t resist cupping her cheek in your hand; she tilts her head toward your palm.
“I want to too, but shit, Rose, we never talk about anything, and we barely know each other, and we’ve got all these fucking issues just floating around everywhere and god, how did you ever get so gorgeous?” She looks pretty much just like you, the same nose, the same lips, her eyes just a shade darker than yours. Sure, she’s shorter and thicker, but that’s a two-for-one deal of making you feel less like a narcissist and more like someone who’s making out with a really hot girl. You watch her think, your eyes fixed on the little lightning-bolt wrinkle between her eyebrows that was so much heavier when you were young. It must be as hard for her as it is for you right now to come up with something to say, with all that need pounding in your twin skulls.
Rose rolls off of you and sits at your side again. The bedsprings creak under both of you. She pulls her knees up to her chest and frowns, her eyes fixed on her bare toes, the nails painted black like yours are pink. You feel like an enormous asshole; you sit up and push the fog out of your brain, because god you don’t want to think about her silky thighs wrapped around your head while you’re trying to cheer her up. Shit, you thought about it. You sigh through your nose and rest a hand on her shoulder. “We are so fucked up,” you mumble.
“I’ve spent my whole life ignoring my own desires, and my mother, and my apparent desires for my mother, so I don’t see why this should be any different,” she says, face buried in her arms. You really, really want to hug her.
“This isn’t the same, Rosie. I mean, all that doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
She peeks up out of her little cocoon. “How so?”
You are winging it like fucking Mothra here, but it seems to be working. “We made this world, c’mon. We get to decide what’s wrong and what’s right. And it’s not like we can make gross three-headed kids or anything.” You give her a way forced grin, which grows when a tiny chuckle comes from her covered mouth.
“That’s all well and good, but feelings aren’t known for being terribly rational.”
“I got nothing for that, Rosie - Rose. I don’t know. Maybe you’d feel better if we - “ You swallow. “ - spent more time together?”
She looks up abruptly. “You want to spend time with me?”
God dammit, you’re blushing. She’s going to think you’re some kind of mushy piece of shit, she’s going to chuck you out on the street and leave you with nothing. “Yeah,” you sigh, embarrassed. “I mean, I never got to do it much before, since you died. And before that you were always too busy for me.” Your hand slides down from her shoulder along her arm, and she lifts her hand out from underneath her other one to let you hold it. You tangle your fingers up with hers, then, aching again, you kiss her knuckles. “So yeah, I want to spend a lot of time with you. All of it I can get.”
“I missed you so much,” she says. The words fly straight to your heart. They’re enough to make you pull her into your arms again, holding her tight to you. This time you’re not sure who starts the kiss, but it’s raw and sweet and hot. I want to spend time with you seems to mean I’m going to take your bra off under your shirt, and I missed you means let’s see how soft your thighs get at the top. Both your hands busily seek delicious warm places they absolutely should not be. You’re never going to get tired of the way she moans into your mouth, or the way she lifts her hips to your touch, and the silk-slippery tightness of her around your fingers is a brand new joy that’s etched into your grey matter for good. Your palm presses her mound in slow rhythm, drawing sigh after sigh from her lips. It feels like some kind of dream - she’s so willing like you never thought she could ever be, and her free hand, the one not squeezing your thigh, rests in unimaginably gentle touches along your arm and shoulder and neck.
When she comes with your thumb on her clit and your fingers crooking inside her, you’re still having a hard time believing this is actually happening to you. Instead of screaming and ripping up the sheets, she just sort of lifts up against you hard for a moment, then relaxes like you’ve taken a huge weight off her shoulders, her eyes fluttering shut and a wine-colored blush spilling down to her chest. You’re not sure when you’re supposed to take your fingers out, so you just wait until her insides stop rippling quite so deliciously. You stare at your fingers. They’re a little wrinkled from all that amazing wetness, wetness that makes your nails shine like liquid. She catches you looking when you hadn’t even realized her eyes were open.
“Here,” she murmurs. She sounds even more satisfied than she looks. She’d probably call it languid or some shit like that, her sprawled all loose on the bed, but you’re pretty sure it’s just the most perfect thing you’ve ever laid eyes on. You wonder what she wants, and then she’s touching her fingertips to the inside of your elbow and slowly dragging them up the inside of your arm, drawing your hand towards her. By the time your fingers reach her lips your heart is wrapped around your, uh, really interesting places, and they’re both begging for attention. This is way better than getting off by yourself, though. Her tongue peeps out between her swollen, smeared lips and touches your wet fingers. She shivers a little, goosebumps rising on her skin, and then takes those two fingers into her mouth. Her lips kiss your palm and her tongue swirls in some Seven Veils-style delicacy; she laps up every last drop of herself on your skin, then lets you go. Your brain is more or less fucking defunct. “There, all clean,” she says, like you hadn’t actually been a participant in her sucking on your fingers like a black hole tickling at a galaxy.
“Uh,” you say. “Um. I... wow. Wow.” Your throat is so dry. “Do you, uh, I mean, shit, I could sit here and finger you all day if you keep looking like that, but, I mean, I’m wicked turned on and - “ She shuts you up by rolling onto her stomach and looking up at you with the biggest pupils you’ve ever seen on somebody who wasn’t totally high.
“May I?” she whispers. She very nearly doesn’t have to do anything at all, because the tone of her voice hits you right between the legs like a fucking sledgehammer. Your voice leaves you entirely. You can’t even manage a little croak, but if you don’t get some right now you are going to literally die. So you nod just once and reach down, twining your fingers into her hair, and the tug you give her is a bit too rough from uncoordinated lust. She apparently does not give a shit. She gives the opposite of a shit. She crawls up between your splayed legs and runs her cheek right up your thigh under your skirt, kissing a trail along your flushed skin. You close your eyes. Oh fuck yes this is everything you could possibly want, her teeth running against you with a touch so light it’s almost painful. You hear her make a small sound of pleasure under your skirt, and before you have time to wonder she presses her nose up against your soaked underwear. Your hips jerk in reflex, but your hand on her head keeps her from going anywhere. And right about then is when you stop thinking about the rest of her and start thinking about her mouth, because she’s tugged down your panties in one impossibly smooth motion and her tongue is spreading you slickly open. Your whole world is soft lips and silky tongue, not even the barest hint of teeth now. Her every movement drips with care. Coincidentally you’re dripping too, right onto her tongue, and she laps up every last bit even more eagerly than she cleaned your fingers.
It’s not long at all before your thighs are pressing around her head and your hips are arching up towards her in an embarrassingly familiar way. She mumbles encouragement against you, like you even need it, but the vibrations of her lips and your mindblowing sensitivity are a hundred times as much stimulation as you need. You try not to make too much noise, but you can’t stop yourself from slurring her name a few times when you finally tumble over the edge. You swear you hear a whimper or two from her. She’s got a much better idea of when to stop than you do, apparently, because right when your worn-out body can’t take any more she pulls back and sits in front of you, breathing heavily. She looks... like she just got fucked really, really well, which you figure is not as much of a lie as it could be.
You stare blearily at her. With the fireworks still bursting behind your eyes, her pale skin looks splattered with red and green and pink paint that throbs with your pounding heartbeat. She licks her lips once, then a few more times, and all you can do is keep staring while your brain tries to grab the rest of your body out of the spreading pool of bliss that is your consciousness. Shit, wordiness must be contagious. But if it’s transmitted that way then maybe it’s worth the Scrabble-vomit symptoms. “Rosie,” you mumble. Your tongue feels like a piece of carpet. No wait, bad analogy. Or really good analogy, depending. Whatever. “Rosie, that was fucking amazing. Where the hell did you learn to do that?”
“I read quite a bit, you know,” she says, all prim and proper even with her mouth smeared so badly you want to lean in and make it even worse. She cracks another smile. “Your vivid enthusiasm was a more than adequate guide.”
Your face turns bright red as you remember the noises you made and the way you yanked on her poor hair. “Your head, uh, is it - ?” You reach out and touch her shoulder, then slide your hand up the back of her neck, stroking your fingers over the short soft hair there. She shivers and scoots closer to you, giving you plenty of room to wrap your other arm around her waist and hold her against you. She’s so warm.
“My head is fine. More than fine, in fact.” She tips her head against your shoulder and closes her eyes.
“That’s good.” You press your lips to her hair anyway. She tilts her head up just right and aligns her mouth with yours, and for a good while you fall into another kiss, this time without any hurry at all. You savor every last second of it, and by the time you’re done you’re lying in each other’s arms, legs all wrapped together, happy as two pigs in shit or whatever. You forgot what you planned to do today. Or ever, really. All you can think about is her and how perfectly she fits into your arms, and how good she tastes, and how you could spend the rest of your life listening to her breathe. You wonder when you turned from a total imp-slaughtering badass into a fucking homebody. She settles tight against you, her hands at the small of your back.
“I think we’ve both earned a rest,” she says. She barely has to raise her voice at all for you to hear her, you’re so close.
“Yeah, I think so too. Sweet dreams, I guess, Rosie.”
“Sweet dreams, Roxy.” She reaches down and tugs the blankets up over the both of you, and when she nestles in again, there’s something that compels you to kiss her hair again and whisper “I’ll be right here when you wake up.” You don’t even have to open your eyes to know how wide she smiles.
---
When you wake up and crack open your eyes, you see the sun has set; the fenestrated plane in your room shows only black, and the bullshit adaptive lighting in the hallway is brighter than it was before you went to sleep. You grumble and squirm and then remember Rose in your arms - for a second you thought you dreamed everything, but there she is, still settled against you and sleeping like - well. She’s not sleeping as good as you were, that’s for sure. All her melty contentment from earlier has gone away and been replaced with tension. She’s stiff, curled in on herself, facing away from you with her arms wrapped around her chest. You can’t tell if she’s awake. You brush your nose against the nape of her neck and kiss her there; she shivers and relaxes just the smallest bit.
“We need to talk,” she says into the pillow.
You frown and scrunch closer down against her. “Didn’t we already? I mean, I thought I kind of already acted like a dick about this - whatever this is. And then we - ” And then you fucked. “ - and I thought that was the end of it. Um. Is that not what happened?”
“Do forgive me if I decline to throw my apprehension to the winds and make love to you without a second thought. I’m still not entirely sure about this, Roxy. This is extremely unexpected.” She turns around to face you. Her mouth is set in a pursed frown, and her eyes are shining with a couple of tears. Your heart gets tight and heavy in your chest. You lift your hand to her cheek, then kiss the wetness that spills there - she doesn’t pull away, or even twitch at your touch.
“Unexpected doesn’t mean bad. That sure as hell didn’t feel bad.”
“It doesn’t matter how it felt, Roxy. We can’t. That’s too easy. It - nothing easy ever ends well.” She draws a harsh breath.
“Can’t you just give it a try? You don’t have to make it so hard on yourself. We’re done now, we won and everything’s - “
“Stop using the game as an argument!” she snaps. Her voice is hard, cracks running all through it. “It’s over now, and we’re supposed to be normal. Normalcy is our reward. And this - “ she gestures to you - “is about the furthest thing from normal I can think of!”
That hurts like a punch to the gut. “I don’t see you getting out of bed,” you snarl, shoving her away. “I don’t see you stopping me from kissing you, either. Maybe you need to take a look in your fucking stupid psychology textbooks and see what that means, you sick fuck!” Your voice rises in pitch until you realize you’re yelling at her when she’s hardly a foot away. You grimace and open your mouth again to apologize, but she cuts you off.
“You need to take a good long look inside your booze-rotten mind, since you’re the one who started this ill-advised enterprise in the first place! Perhaps I was simply afraid of hurting your feelings!”
“Is that the best argument you can come up with?! You didn’t want to hurt my feelings? You never seemed to have a goddamn problem with it before!”
“I’m far from what your mother used to be! I care about you, even if she didn’t! I love you!” Her hands slam over her mouth as soon as the words come out. “Fuck,” she says into her fingers.
You stare at her. Your eyes started prickling with tears a while ago, and now they’re streaking down your face, but holy shit does that ever not matter right now. She loves you. Is that why she was afraid to be near you for so long? God, you’re both so fucking fucked up. And then you realize that you’ve been staring silently for like five minutes, your thoughts whirling. Her eyes are saucers of terror and she’s letting out tiny little whispery breaths and her shoulders are shaking and oh shit you know a panic attack when you see one.
You have no clue what you’re supposed to do in this situation. But that’s pretty much how your life is going lately, so you just roll with it.
You pull her hands away from her mouth and thread your fingers through hers, cupping her cheeks in your hands so she can’t do anything stupid with them. You rest your forehead on hers and look into her eyes - wide, darting around, her pupils tiny. “Rosie,” you whisper. “Rose. Rose, come on, take deep breaths, it’ll be okay. It’s okay. I’m not mad. I mean, if you care that I’m mad. Shit. I mean, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay, we’re good, it’s all good, don’t worry.” Her quick breaths slow a little, probably because she’s now distracted by raising an eyebrow at you and half-smirking in her trembling, sweating state. Thinking you’re a total dickhead is better than having a panic attack, though. You nod against her in agreement with whatever she happens to be thinking and give her hands a squeeze. God, this is all fucking backwards, she should be comforting you after some stupid martini-induced freakout. She’s way put together, she’s brave and strong, you’re just some dumb girl who can’t keep her hands to herself. “Sorry,” you say to her, and bite your bottom lip. You’re kind of a fucking dumbass and this is all your fault. “I mean, I, I guess - shit, Rose, I love you, too.” And you forgot to tell her that, too. You are just making a huge fucking mess here.
In response, Rose looks even more panicked. She wrenches her hands out from under yours and puts them over her face, hiding herself from you. You hear a quivering whimper from inside. “Rose, come on,” you say as you tug at her wrists. She doesn’t budge. “Rose, we’re never going to get anywhere if you keep hiding!” You are totally not an authority on this shit. After all, you’re the one who fucking bolted after the first time you’d held each other in the lifespan of an entire universe. But this is a bad time to be thinking about what a fuckup you are because she’s unhappy and you love her and these are two things that should not ever, ever happen at the same time as far as you’re concerned. You put your thumbs on the pulse in her wrists, remembering the sleep crease that was there the night before. “Come on. I won’t hurt you. Never. Please look at me?”
Her fingers part just enough for you to catch a flash of pink iris. When she speaks, her voice is still wobbling without a foundation, but it’s regained some hardness. “I’m not a child, Roxy. If you insist that you are not my mother, then please stop addressing me as though you were.” That’s okay. This is okay. If snapping at you makes her feel better, then that’s all right. Her voice softens. “Do you really love me?”
“Yeah.” You give her the biggest smile you can muster, which actually isn’t very big at all. “Like I said. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Her voice trips over something and falls again into shaky uncertainty. “I’ve just snapped at you for no reason for what must be the thousandth time for you. Here I am rotting away in esquivalience while you care for me - I barely even managed to cook you breakfast. I’m the sorry one.”
“Nope. I’m sorrier.”
“Roxy.” You like the way her voice changes when she’s irritated. It’s sort of cute.
“What? Come on. We can’t do this stupid runaround thing forever, you have to admit I’m a sorrier sack of shit than you.”
“You are not a sack of anything save perhaps sweetness and light.”
“You are so fucking corny.”
“I suppose it must be genetic, then. What was it you said? You won’t hurt me?” You could spend a million years listening to the shifts in her tone - amusement, pity, tenderness, anger, they all sound different. You never noticed that kind of inflection in your mother’s voice. Was it even there?
“It’s true, though! I won’t. I won’t hurt you, Rose.” You grin. “Unless you ask for it.”
Her face flushes brightly. “Roxy, you are a wicked young woman.”
“Guess what else must be genetic?”
She snorts and lets her hands fall from her face, finally. She looks pretty much back to normal, save for a few tears still wetting her cheeks. You kiss those off, drawing near to her slowly so she can push you back if she wants. She doesn’t. While you’re running your lips over her cheekbones, she murmurs, “What, precisely, does one say in this situation?”
“I dunno.” You give her a little kiss that she returns with a salty-lipped smirk. “Other than that you’re totally amazing for putting up with me.”
“Hardly.”
“’least you seem to be feeling better. Did I, uh, did I do that okay?”
“You handled my momentary breakdown with aplomb. And yes, I’m feeling quite a bit better.” She pulls back enough to take a long breath and stretches. “Although I feel rather like taking a walk to clear my head, if you don’t mind. I think I need it after that.”
“It’s the middle of the night, what the hell you’re going to take a walk?”
She just raises an eyebrow. “I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.”
“All right, point. Just take care of yourself.” You kiss her again, hard and quick, and she laughs as she slips out of bed.
---
You’re more or less instantly bored when she finally manages to pull herself off your lips and out of the house. The place is empty as hell with just you in it and no Rose to fill all the silence with being the best thing that ever happened to you. You roll around in bed for a while and snuggle into the warm spot where she slept, but that doesn’t entertain you for very long, no matter how good it smells. Normally you’d have a drink or two to pass the time, but somehow you don’t think Rose would appreciate it if you were passed out stinking of booze when she got back. Instead, you smash open a bottle from your sylladex and retrieve your whiskeytop. You’ll mop up the broken glass later. If you remember. You flip the whiskeytop open and Nyx boots itself up to your homepage, AskJeeves (he’s soooo charming). You admire his good taste in clothing for a while before your thoughts start to wander back to Rose. You couldn’t be gladder that you’re finally talking, and getting to know each other, and god damn is she ever amazing, snarky as fuck and so bad at covering up her care and so, so good in bed. Fuck, now you’re thinking about her head between your legs again, and how she gasped so sweetly when you pulled on her hair and how that made her even more eager and greedy...
You scrunch your eyes shut and tilt your head back, trying to abjure all these thoughts of screwing Rose’s brains out. But they’re pretty fucking persistent. All kinds of lovely heat starts crackling between your legs, the flames stoking up higher and higher until you definitely can’t ignore the fact that the sheets are getting ruined as hell. You can practically hear her voice in your head: “Roxy, indulging yourself again already? No wonder your typing is so poor. Your eyesight must be terrible.” You don’t bother to correct imaginary Rose that you touch type, obviously. A quick search (thanks, Jeeves!) leads you to - well. Well. In about five minutes you’re reading up all about girls who like their hair pulled and their fingers sucked. Thankfully most of these sites are designed to be easily navigated, so your clumsy one-handed typing, even worse than usual and cut in quarters from your usual 180 wpm, is forgivable. With your legs jerking lightly and tabs closing half at random from your twitching accidental mouse-clicks, it seems like a great idea to order some stuff to surprise Rose with. She’ll be overjoyed that you were thinking of her, you bet. And you’re already imagining her in all these pictures, pictures of girls on their hands and knees, collared and leashed, nuzzling the tops of some lucky woman’s stockinged thighs. Fuck. She’s going to kill you and it’s going to be great. This stuff isn’t that expensive anyway - you seem to have an absolute dickload of money piled in both your accounts still. Some bondage - shit, you’re buying bondage gear you are so bad and it feels perfect - bondage stuff won’t make that much of a dent in your funds.
The totally awesome purchase slips your mind as soon as you finish and slump onto your back, pressing an indentation of wicked satisfied Roxy into the pillow which is already kind of flat from both of you rolling all over it. You feel warm and tingly from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, your earlier panic all forgotten.
Speaking of Rose, you hear her come in and close the door loud enough so that she makes sure you notice. You roll out of bed with the excitement of a cat who’s heard the can opener, but the sheets tangle around your legs and you pitch onto your face. She walks into your bedroom to see you wrestling with the sheets, your thighs still hopelessly fucked up with stickiness and your whiskeytop’s screen proudly displaying some curvy blonde with her legs flung Maginot Line wide. A single eyebrow climbs up her face, and it gets some pretty unreal air before she says anything. “Getting an early start to your day, I see.”
“Hey, at least I’m not drinking this time!” You huff and writhe around in the pile of sheets, but that only gets you more tangled. Rose sighs, drawing one of her wands. For a second you’re terrified she’s going to put a bolt of squamous fuckery through your head, but she applies the weird crackling rays with skill and delicacy you didn’t really know she had to peel the sheets off you, leaving your skin bare and tingling.
“There,” she says. “I’ve taken care of yet another problem for you, since you are completely unable to tend to yourself.” She bends, smirking, and offers you a hand. You take it gladly and stand more or less under your own power - you sure as hell don’t miss her eyes sweeping over you. “You haven’t gotten dressed.”
“Nah, why would I when I know you’re coming back?” You drape your arms over her shoulders and give her a wet smooch on the nose. Getting a closer look at her, you see the night winds have rumpled her outfit - or maybe that’s just because she pulled on the clothes you flung halfway across the room when you were making love to her.
“I could have been eaten by bears, you know.” She tips her head to the side and brushes her lips along your jawline. “I could be screaming in the woods and you would be none the wiser, because you’d still be sitting around touching yourself. Honestly, Roxy, you are the very definition of a lush.”
You push your hips forward against hers and laugh. “Yeah, and you love it, you fuckin’ stick in the mud! Speaking of sticks in the mud, how did your walk go? Like you’d ever get eaten by bears, you’d give ‘em one of your looks and they would immediately shit themselves to Mars.”
“I doubt that level of orbital acceleration is possible from simple excrement,” she says as she trails her fingertips down your spine. You get all goosebumpy at the attention and let out an excited little moan; she covers your mouth with hers for a moment.
“I guess that walk really did clear your head,” you mumble against her lips. “And hey, who’s the scientist here? Not you. I should know if a bear can achieve orbit just by shitting!”
“You are absolutely ridiculous,” she whispers. Her arms slide tight around your waist, and you share a long, slow kiss. “Mm. Now let me change out of these clothes, it feels like I’ve been wearing them for days.” You let her out of your arms and she walks towards the door.
“Wait, hey.” You grin at her as she looks over her shoulder at you - just her looking at you makes your heart do this weird flippy thing in your chest. You are pretty goddamn hopeless. “You can totally just wear my clothes. We’re like the same size anyway.”
Rose looks down at her round hips and, uh, what’s the word, ample chest, then back at you where you’re standing naked as a singularity. You’re like half a foot taller than her and two cup sizes and half a pear’s worth less full-figured. “Mental instability must be contagious.”
“Yeah, yeah. Are you gonna change or not? I want a drink.”
“You’re returning to your old ways so soon?” She turns around all the way, and before she can fake-ass-nonchalantly put her hand over her mouth you see her lips pulled down into a frown. You sort of feel like an asshole.
“Something soft,” you say quietly, even though that’s not what you were thinking at all. “You want one too? I can make an egg cream or, uh, something, if you want.”
The relief in her face is pretty much instant. “An egg cream would be fine, yes. I’ll join you downstairs shortly, after I change. Er, are you going to get dressed?”
“Uh. I’ll just throw something on.” You smile. “Figure we’ll be getting naked again pretty soon anyway.”
“Just for that I am going to keep every stitch on.”
You scoff at her as she leaves, chuckling down the hallway. As you shuffle through your drawers in search of something appropriately baggy and comfortable to wear, your head swims in glee with all the touching and closeness and tenderness you just had with her - it’s like you’re really dating or something. How fucking perfect can this get?
Wait. You don’t remember buying a shirt like five sizes too big for you. You pull it out of the drawer and give it a shake. It’s a black turtleneck with Rose’s horrorterror squiddle design on the collar, and it still smells very lightly of the perfume your mom used to wear for special occasions. It must have gotten mixed up last time - the last time - she did the laundry, and when the game saved the image of your room or whatever...
...you hold the turtleneck to your nose and smell it. Tears drip onto the fabric.
When you finally get downstairs, Rose is already seated at the kitchen table knitting something pink. Her face is a little scrunched up in that weird way that makes her look like her panties are riding up her ass, but you know it means she’s concentrating really hard, which is good because if she’s concentrating she won’t see the drying tears you couldn’t wipe off your face. But she looks up when she hears you coming into the kitchen, and the concentration drops from her face to be replaced by a much easier Scrabble word. You tug at the collar of the turtleneck as her eyebrows come together in concern.
“Hey,” you say. It’s really hard to keep your voice level, so to cover you pretend to clear your throat.
“Roxy,” she whispers. Somehow you can hear it halfway across the room. “Come sit. Please.” You go to her without even thinking about it; she’s pulled up a chair beside hers in what’s probably the kindest gesture you’ve ever seen her make. When you sit down in it, you fold your hands between your bare knees, staring at the turtleneck sleeves where they’re still stained with flecks of purple ink that won’t wash out. Rose puts down her knitting and rests her fingertips just under the sleeve, on the inside of your wrist. You snuffle at her gentle touch.
“I saw you looking at the sweater,” she says. “I didn’t want to interrupt.” She worries her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Yeah,” you sniffle. “I miss her so much. I miss her more than anything, Rosie...” Your voice cracks so hard that for a second you’re sure you’re about to lose it and burst into tears for like the twentieth time this week. But you manage to hold back the flood.
“I know,” Rose says. She frowns harder, the wrinkle reappearing on her forehead. “If it’s any consolation,” she continues as she moves her chair a few inches closer so she can rest her knee against yours, “I miss my mother quite a bit as well.” There’s something sweet on her breath; you look past her at the table and see a pair of steaming mugs that must have been hidden in the coils of her knitting. She follows your line of sight, her eyes flicking over; you can see how bloodshot and tired they look. You realize suddenly what a hard day she’s had while you’ve been lounging around like... an indolent shrew. “I made us some tea, since I supposed you wouldn’t be in the mood for bartending.” She pushes your mug closer to you, and you both sit in silence for a little while as you sip your drinks. The tea is good, strong and milky and sugary - just like your mom used to have all the time while she wrote. You fail to realize again when tears are rolling down your nose and dribbling into the cup.
Rose takes the mug from you and puts it down. Her hands tangle up with yours right away, and she leans in, pushing her face so close to yours you think she’s going to kiss you. But she just puts your foreheads together - you can practically hear all her brilliant thoughts swirling around in there, so busy all the time she has to pause to sort them out before she talks. “I miss her badly,” she says, her voice hot and fierce. “I hated her when I was growing up, and then I lost her, and it was... as though all the love I should have been feeling came all at once. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.”
You turn your head to brush your nose on hers, and your tears mingle with the ones that are meandering down her cheeks now. “You’re not alone,” you tell her. “You are not alone and I’m never gonna let you be alone again. That’s more important than anything, is us not being alone anymore, because if we are then none of it ever meant anything, right?” You want to get closer to her, but you’re already almost sitting in each other’s laps, and you have a tickling feeling that you won’t ever be able to get close enough, not even if you crawled inside her skin and curled up around her heart to warm it up.
Her fingernails are leaving deep half-moons in your hands, and you’re squeezing her fingers so hard they’re white. “I am never going to let you be alone,” she whispers, breath hissing out over your lips. You drop your face into her shoulder and pull her hands, and she climbs right into your lap like she was there all along, and you cling and clutch and cry with the most hideous ugliness you’ve ever let yourself show. You can’t see her, you can only feel her great heaving breaths, but even if you couldn’t you’d know she’s doing just the same as you.
You cry for a while before both of you finally release your holds on each other and lean back, breathing deeply but with less heaviness than you’ve felt in a while. “Thank you,” she rasps. “I needed that - as though we haven’t done enough crying between the two of us for a hundred Victorian widows, hm?” She forces a smile that turns real when you take her hand and kiss her palm.
“We gotta stop this moping-around shit.” Your voice is syrupy with tears until you swallow, your throat clicking. If she made the effort to fake it, you can at the very least do the same. “We’re just a couple of weepy old ladies, is what we are. We need to get us some veils.”
“Ancient,” she agrees, and bends to kiss the top of your head. “Although I think a veil would do neither of us any favors.” A happy little bolt of electricity skates down your spine to ground itself in the hand she’s tucked underneath one of your thighs. “Drink your tea, it’s getting cold,” she says against your hair, fondness creeping glacially back into her voice and leaving behind the lumpy tracks of your crying jag.
You drink your tea, this time without any saline sobbing trouble. She stays in your lap - the heavy feeling of her there keeps the sadness way away from the fort it’s set up inside you, though you’re not sure how long that’ll last. Hopefully long enough for you to forget how much missing hurts. “Rosie,” you say when you’re done, licking your pink lipstick off the rim of the cup, “how about we take it easy the rest of the day? Feels like it’s been a week since we woke up. Emotions are fuckin’ hard, no wonder you always pretend not to have them.”
“I pretend no such thing, you’re just so willfully blind to what I mean for you to see.” She brushes a hand over your hair and kisses your temple. “And that sounds quite all right to me. Shall we move ourselves to the sofa, whereupon we will make a point of it to avoid any strenuous emotional conversation?”
“Hell yes.” You pick her up and sweep her into some kind of fucked-up bridal carry, and she laughs high and bright the whole way into the living room, even with you able to feel the little stoniness left in her limbs. You settle down on the cushions, and she sits next to you, sprawled half over your lap... and in less than five minutes you’re both so fast asleep you can’t even remember if you bothered to turn the TV on.
---
You’ve already forgotten your really fucking ill-advised purchase while Rose was out, so when the box arrives a couple of days later - days spent trying to cook (horrible failure), watching TV while Rose reads (a success, especially when you play footsies under the blanket), and lounging around in bed together (too fucking awesome for words) - it’s a total surprise to you. “Roxy, what’s this?” Rose calls from the kitchen. “Did you order something?” You remember about half a second too late, when the slicing of tape is followed by a gasp. You’re in the kitchen before you even recall getting up, tripping over your feet as you zoom over the tile. Yep, Rose is standing right there with a black leather collar in one hand and a long pink lead dangling from the other. Her face is so stormy you’re pretty sure a lightning bolt is about to shoot out and fry you. “Roxy,” she says, her voice thin. “Why was bondage gear delivered to our house?”
“Uh. I can, oh shit, I can explain.” No you fucking can’t. She is going to skin you and fly your hide from a flagpole. You are literally the stupidest person on the planet and now she’s never going to kiss you again and you’re never going to get to hold her all because you looked at some goddamn porn. She shakes the leash a couple of times - then starts laughing, a dark-chocolate chuckle that makes you really uncomfortably aware that she’s a gorgeous woman holding a collar.
“You look terrified,” she says.
You realize like a minute too late you were holding your arms in front of your face in case she chucked the collar at you. When you put your arms down, your eyes sweep back and forth before hesitantly meeting hers. “Fucking yeah,” you say. “I forgot I even ordered that and now you’re gonna gut me and make sashimi out of my ass.”
“I suspect a less fatty area would make a better meal,” Rose says. It takes you a second before you bristle, and she chuckles again. “Regardless. I’m not angry with you, Roxy.”
The tight knot of terror in your stomach washes cold down your legs, and you flex and unflex your toes against the tile floor. “I’m glad. I, uh, honestly I forgot I even ordered that. You can just throw it away if you want.” No, no, hell no, you want to tug on that leash until she’s safe between your legs, you want to run your fingers under that collar and listen to her whine, but shit you’re more ashamed of yourself than you’ve ever been.
Rose looks astonished. “Throw it away? Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m a weirdo freak who wants to see you in a fucking collar?” You sort of casually put your hand over your mouth after you say it and hate yourself that little bit more.
She doesn’t say anything. Her already-wide eyes get a bit bigger, and she licks her lips with the tip of her tongue. Watching that makes you feel pretty faint. Her eyes flick to the collar, then to the leash, then back to you, and you see her throat tighten as she swallows. And then, she holds the collar and leash out to you.
Your heart fucking stops. She’s wearing that same nervous look that threatens to tip over into need, the one you remember from the first time you wrapped your fingers into her hair. You don’t remember taking the stuff from her, but there you are holding it, and you can’t look away from each other, and instead of being stopped your heart’s now pounding deafeningly in your chest. All you can hear is the blood rushing in your ears.
“Um,” you say.
“It occurs to me that I may have, as they say, jumped the gun a bit,” Rose says, her face pale. “I mean, did you even - did you even order this for me? Or is, is there someone else - do you want it on yourself - is this purely scientific curiosity?” All the words come out of her in a gush so fast you can barely catch any of them, and it leaves your mind stumbling.
“It’s for you,” you blurt, “like I said, I want to see you in it, fuck, Rose, I want to put you in it, I want to - “ You don’t get to tell her what you want to (thank god) because before you can even get the words out her lips are sliding slippery against yours, and all the thoughts that’re left crammed inside your head wash out in a long, relieved moan. You just stand there for a while and kiss her, her arms around your neck and yours around her waist; you forget you’re holding the leash and collar, because this is good, this is very good, sweet and vanilla and completely nonterrifying. You briefly wonder when kissing your paradox mother-twin became something that was normal in your life, but you’re so used to the taste of her tongue by now that it’s hard to get worked up about it.
The kiss doesn’t last nearly long enough for your tastes. Rose moves one of her hands to your arm as she takes her lips from yours, her nose still resting on your cheek and warm soft breath filling your whole world. She traces her fingers down your arm to your hand, then to the collar, and out of the corner of your eye you watch her touching the leather and the metal ring on the front. She shivers in your embrace and swallows again, and then - wait, what the hell is she doing? You look down at the top of her blonde head in confusion. Your addled brain eventually puts four and thirteen together and you see her get on her knees, then tip her chin up so she can meet your eyes again. Your legs are suddenly so wobbly you think you might be joining her down there in a minute, but you reach behind yourself and grab a convenient counter for balance. The leash’s clip taps in a staccato stutter against the cabinet.
You don’t even have to ask to know what she wants. You half-bend at the waist so you can touch her; you tilt her chin up and spend a few seconds running your fingers along her jawline and against her neck, watching starry-eyed at the way she turns her head into your touch. You’re pretty sure in some of the stuff you were looking at, the girls got ordered to hold still, but you don’t want her to hold still, you want her to keep kissing your palm with her perfect lips. You hope that’s alright for this kind of thing. The kitchen light catches against the wonderfully pale skin of her neck, and you remember that you’re supposed to be putting this collar on her. So you bend down a little more and put the leash down next to you, then unfasten the collar - she tilts her chin up again to give you room, and you see the goosebumps already rising at her throat. A small whine comes out of your mouth all by itself.
When you touch the leather to her skin, both of you catch a breath and hold it like it’s a bird batting its wings against your ribcage. Your fingers brush the nape of her neck and you feel her hair prickle; your thumbs curl under her chin for a moment. The collar’s clasp is on the back, and your hands are shaking so hard with sheer desperate aching need that you fumble it a couple of times before you get it closed. Her held breath stammers out as your nails scrape the cool chromed clasp, but once the collar is fastened, the breath turns into a low, smooth sigh. Rose breathing hard on her knees in front of you is already the stuff of wet dreams, but there’s still something left to do. You bend and snap the leash’s fastener around the ring in the collar, and when you stand up and give the leash a small tug, she whimpers right out loud like she doesn’t care who hears.
You look down at her wide-open face, at her pink tongue licking her perfectly painted black lips and her cheeks flushed with the kind of blush that makes her eyes shine wet. The hot pulsing ache between your legs is starting to override your brain, most particularly the part that just knows she wants to be ordered around - the part that tugged her hair, the part that bought this shit in the first place, the part that sees the look in her eyes that delves straight down into you like a flare tumbling through a cloudy sky.
You try to say something, but your voice is lost again. She keeps looking up at you, so needy and trusting and gorgeous, and on that foundation you get your words back under you. “You were looking through the mail, right?” you ask her, your voice hoarse before it evens out with slowly-growing confidence.
She looks confused. “Yes,” she says. “What does that have to do with - “
You tug on the leash. Not hard, just enough to give her a start - and her lips close as her eyes get even wider. She swallows. “You were looking through the mail. Right?”
“Right,” she says, and gets up on trembling legs. You feel way fucking sexy as she walks back to the counter where she had all the non-package mail. You wrap the leash around your hand so she can’t get too far away, just enough to tug at her neck a little, and the quickening pace of her breath is absolutely worth it in ways you’ve never considered before in your life.
There’s not that much mail, which is sort of horrifically disappointing. She stands at the counter and leans on it for support - nope. You yank the leash. She gasps and arches back, pressing her breasts out a couple of inches further; you lick your lips. “Stand on your own,” you say to her.
You had absolutely no idea “yes, mistress” were the two fucking hottest words in the English language, but you learn something new every day.
Rose takes a letter and regards it for a second or two. It’s addressed to her, obviously some kind of spam crap, probably a credit card. She starts to throw it away, but your hand tightens on one of her wrists. “Open it,” you murmur.
“Roxy, it’s just - “
“Open it.” She swallows again, god you love it when she gets all breathless like that, and works her thumb under the envelope’s flap. You take the opportunity to walk behind her and cradle her gorgeous ass with your hips. You breathe on the soft nape of her neck, smell her hair, just barely touch your lips to her skin - you’re not even paying attention to the mail anymore. She’s taking up all your senses.
You’re pretty sure it doesn’t take like ten minutes to open a letter, though, as much as you’re enjoying nibbling marks onto her perfect shoulder. You look past her messed-up hair and see that the junk mail is crumpled in one hand and the envelope has fluttered into the sink. “Bad girl,” you growl into her ear; it takes a couple of seconds for your brain to catch up to your mouth, and by then you’re already tugging on the leash. “What if that was an important letter, huh?”
“I don’t,” she chokes, until you let the leash go enough for her to speak - “I don’t think so.” She smooths out the crumpled sheet with shaking hands so you can see that they’re offering you a sixty percent APR on some crap you don’t care about because it probably isn’t Rose Lalonde.
“Fine,” you say against her throat. “Yeah, whatever, I mean, you don’t actually care, right?” She doesn’t answer, so you turn her head with your fingers wrapped in her hair and kiss her. She lifts one hand off the counter, then puts it down, her nails scraping against the countertop when her fingers curl. “You just want to fuck, don’t you.” No answer. “Don’t you?”
Her cheeks flush so deeply you can feel them burning. “Yes, mistress.”
Christ. You can practically feel your self-control dripping away down your legs. You kiss her again, in lieu of actually saying anything. Like you could let out anything but a wobbly moan anyway. You get so engrossed in the kiss - she’s so fucking enthusiastic, her mouth sliding against yours, but she doesn’t take her hands from the counter - that you don’t even notice your palms sliding up the insides of her soft, soft thighs. She gasps into your kiss when your fingertips brush the space at the tops of her legs, and you don’t waste any time in pushing your fingers in. Of course that makes her hot little sounds get even more excited, and with every motion you make against her they get sweeter and higher, her self-control shot, until she has to break the kiss to breathe in between moans. She bends over the counter to keep her balance, and with her ass stuck out like that you can’t possibly resist giving it a swat, and - oh. Wow. She likes that.
You let her lick your fingers off again. Once they’re clean, you stroke her hair and kiss her embarrassed/dopey/pleased cheeks and hold her in your arms until she’s caught her breath. You stroke your nails up and down her spine and, when she shivers in excitement against you all over again, you rest your hands on her shoulders and push until she’s on her knees. This time she doesn’t need to be told what to do.
---
That night, when the two of you are way more than overtired and aching and needing about ten showers that you’re not sure you can stand up long enough to take, you unhook the leash - but leave the collar on - and give her a goodnight kiss. It’s a goodnight kiss that stretches on for a good five minutes, and her grateful, teary-eyed gasp afterwards makes you want to while away the rest of the night with your tongue between alternating pairs of lips. Unfortunately, you are way too damn tired for that. You decide to put it on the to-do list for tomorrow. Like you need to be reminded.
Rose asks if she can stay for a minute and collect herself. You say of fucking course she can, you’re done wrapping her around your little finger for now so she can do whatever she wants, what does she think this is, some kind of pillory, and she smiles so bright that you just have to sink down into her lap and spend another long while kissing her perfect swollen sticky mouth. Her fingers ruffling through your hair, her breath slipping out against your cheek, the pressure of her knuckles along your spine, every little thing she does just gets you more hopelessly head over heels for her. You wonder if she feels the same way, and then you remember the collar, and you’re filled with fierce, sweet warmth. You’re so intent on smooching her that eventually she has to push you away, giggling in between your mouths that she really needs a minute to clean up after all that and would you kindly get off to whatever Roxies do when they are not drinking or fucking?
So you kiss her again and evade her smack to skip up the stairs. Or at least you start to skip before you almost fall on your face, and then you drag your feet up the steps a little more carefully. You are so tired. It hits you harder when you don’t have Rose there wiggling into your heart. You stagger down the upstairs hallway without even really thinking about it, wrinkling the carpet in your wake. Rose is going to kick your ass, but if you bend over to fix the stupid damn rug you’re probably going to topple over and never get up again. You decide to just ignore the mess for now. Maybe she’ll clean it up without the forty lashes. If you’re lucky. (You are never lucky.) You sort of blank out when you go into your room; it’s only like fifteen steps to your bed and you apparently have it in you to speed up to get there faster. You fall down facefirst into the welcoming blankets. The cloth feels great on your naked skin, but you’re out too quick to appreciate it.
By your cotton-headed reckoning you get about half an hour of sleep before there’s a knock on the doorframe. Rolling over and taking your face out of the blankets warm with body heat is like walking out of a cozy winter cabin into ice hell. Rose is sticking her head in; you can see the collar’s ring glinting even in the darkness of the hallway.
“Sleeping by ourselves now, are we?” she says. You can’t tell which side of the sarcasm line she’s dancing on.
“Mmmuhhhh buh blaaar,” you say, then groan and drag your hands over your face and try again. “I... fuh. I was tired. Sorry, Rosie. Are we sharin’ the bed tonight?” You manage to sit up on your elbows.
“Well,” she says almost shyly, “I had hoped. After all, we have been for the last few days.”
“I thought, uh...” You touch your neck, staring blankly at her. “I mean, uh, with the - that - and all -”
Rose arches an eyebrow and grins. “If you think the simple addition of a collar to my wardrobe is going to make me curl up at the foot of your bed like a loyal hound, you have another thing coming, Roxy.”
You break into a tired smile at that. “Fuckin’ get over here, then.” You open your arms, and she pads over to you and curls up into your embrace. The two of you tilt onto your sides, and in a few minutes you’re asleep again like she never woke you up, your face buried in her messy hair.
---
Every morning you wake up next to her feels like the start of a new verse in the poem of life, or some bullshit, you decide as you watch Rose sleep. All the tension you’ve been trying to cuddle out of her seems to finally be gone, and she’s even smiling a little as she dreams about something that’s probably a hell of a lot better than giant space tentacle monsters. You kiss her temple; you can feel the pulse in her head underneath your lips, and you sigh in pleasure at the sensation of her just being alive. The collar is still on. You’re not surprised that she could sleep with it - you found out that she can damn well do everything else with it, and you were both so beat that you could have curled up and had Prospit dreams on a bed of red-hot knitting needles. She doesn’t wake, just turns slightly and makes a sleepy sound.
You abruptly decide, with that dozy noise, that you are going to make her breakfast. She did the same for you, so it’s only decent. When you’ve remembered to eat amidst enjoying life, you’ve been taking breakfast together, but now she’s all out of it and you can totally bring her breakfast in bed and this is the best plan you’ve ever had. You slide out of bed, careful not to wake her, and pad downstairs barefoot and naked because you don’t want to make any noise opening and closing drawers. Man, you smell like a champagne room. The kitchen is just like you left it, that is, fucking full of dirty dishes and oh damn the fridge is open. You kick it shut as you go by.
You glance over to the kitchen table and see something that you didn’t leave there. There’s a package sitting on the table, bound up all as pretty as you please with purple wrapping paper. The package has a a purple bow, too, and a tag written in an elegant hand: “To Roxy, from a not-so-secret admirer.” Gee, you wonder who this could be from. You smile fondly at the table. As happy as you are that she apparently decided a collar and goddamn leash was a gift that needed something in return, you really want to get Rose’s breakfast ready before she wakes up.
Pretty much as soon as you think that you hear footsteps on the stairs. Rose comes down slowly like a goddamn angel descending from on high. She’s even wrapped in a white bedsheet. She knuckles at her eyes, still a little bleary with sleep. “Your deviation from your typical sleep habits, that is to say, being out of bed before noon, is apparently enough to wake me from my exhausted slumber. Do you have a particular reason for divesting me of the morning laziness I’ve grown so used to, or did you only want to shake things up?” She stands there with her arms crossed, leaning on the doorframe, then smiles, very slightly. “I thought you’d absconded entirely. Imagine my relief when I found that you’re only staring longingly at the kitchen sink.”
You almost throw an egg at her, but before you can even grab a spoon and flick a bean or something in her direction she dismounts the staircase and lays a hand on the box on the kitchen table. “No interest in the paltry gifts I fling at your regal feet? I should have expected as much. I - “ By the time she launches into her next sentence without even the basic courtesy to look back, you’re across the room and you’ve got her in your arms already. She’s kind of tense, but all that melts away when you run your fingers over the nape of her neck.
“I wanted to make you breakfast in bed,” you tell her with your face buried in her hair. “Kinda fuckin’ hard if you’re not in bed anymore, though. What actually woke you up?”
“How charitable of you, to assume I lied. I honestly thought you had - grown tired of me.” She burrows into your hug even closer.
“Hell no” is the only answer you can muster. Your arms are tight around her, her warm sleepy smell filling your head. You could doze off right there, if she didn’t press her lips against your collarbone and whisper “Are you going to open your present?”
“Present, hell, I was going to wait until you were all fed.”
“Roxy. You’re as bad a cook as I am. Potentially worse, if that’s even within the realm of possibility. We may need to enter Deflonde One.” As she talks, she reaches over to the table and picks up the present; you hold onto her waist so she doesn’t fall over.
“I thought you might talk less if I wore you out,” you say as you take the package. She seems pretty anxious for you to open it, so of course instead of tearing the wrapping paper open you start to carefully, very slowly untie the ribbon. “Turns out, no, you run on some kind of fucking dilithium battery of pure snark and I can’t ever hope to run you down unless I, like, pop off your battery cover... and... that metaphor kinda got away from me.”
“As ever, you astound me with your unparalleled talent with the English language.” She taps her foot while you continue to undo the wrapping, which you’re still picking away at. When you finally toss aside the ribbon and continue on to the folds of wrapping paper, you make sure she’s looking when you slide your thumb underneath the fold and work the tape off without ripping anything. She doesn’t look for long, because she suddenly finds something really interesting going on in the wallpaper, but she definitely saw.
With the morning’s foreplay done with, you finally get the package unwrapped. It’s a box, which you open without all that damn fanfare because you are now curious as hell about what she’s gotten you. The top of the box comes off, and inside you find a portal into the universe of pink. Once you take it out and unfold it, you find that it’s actually a long scarf, knit by hand. You blush as you realize this must have been what she was knitting when you came down dressed in - you don’t want to think about that. Rose still isn’t looking at you, her eyes cut to the side as she bites her lip. The scarf’s nearly long enough for each end of it to reach the floor, even with you holding the middle in your hands.
“It’s based on one my mother wore,” Rose says. “It was originally going to be a martini cozy for you, and then I saw you wearing that turtleneck...”
Your eyes start to well up as you remember the sweater. Suddenly you don’t want to make breakfast, you don’t want to talk to Rose, you just want to crawl into your bed in your room and bury your face in that shirt and cry for the rest of your unnatural fucking life. Your hands start to shake, the scarf’s ends trembling above the floor.
Rose puts her hands over yours, with the scarf in between. She takes it and steps in close; watching her has distracted you enough that the tears start to run down your face, and when you feel the hot trails cooling on your skin the waterworks start all over again. Rose doesn’t seem to care, though. She lifts the scarf and slowly winds it around your neck, wrapping it again and again until your tearful, trembling throat is safe beneath layers of yarn. And then she leans up and kisses your cheeks, wiping away your tears with her lips. It’s not that hard to stop crying when she’s so close to you, and soon you’re just holding each other, her face buried in the scarf and your nose nestled into her hair. You sway slowly together, not speaking; you’re not sure which of you started the motion, but it comforts you.
The two of you stand like that for what must be half an hour until you break the silence. (Of course it’s you. Rose and silence are old buddies.) “I love you so much,” you say against the top of her head.
She smiles and shifts against you, her fingers brushing over your back. “I love you, too.”
“Yeah? Enough to let me make you that breakfast?”
“Let’s not be hasty, Roxy.”
You smirk and give her a push back. She looks at you with tenderness painted on her face where her makeup isn’t, and you know she sees just the same thing in yours. And when you toss the ends of the scarf over your shoulder and stride to the pantry, she’s right there at your side, the black leather of the collar standing out at her pale skin.
“How’s this for normal?” you ask her as you pick up some pancake mix. “Two girlfriends making breakfast together, right? Nothing fucking, whatever, fucking Jungian about that.”
“Freudian.”
“Freud her? I hardly - “
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”