If a friendship is poisonous, you should terminate it, right? Just another bug in the machine, a kink in the wire that makes your relationships tick, a bend in the dark road that you don't see until it's too late. Kanaya could easily be compared to all three: good lover, best friend. Closest in heart and hand, the secret smile that only Rose notices. She's poisonous, yes, but she's delicious too and if we're to die, we should die burning. It take seconds to ignite and minutes to burn, hands that move from fabric to fabric, doing to undoing, lips that purse against air until they find skin and leave tracks in their wake, each one a tiny burn, a tiny mark, a tiny memory of who burns brighter.
What if you're the poison? What if you're the flame? What if you're the bug, the kink, the bend? What happens when you can see the fire burning in front of you and you know you should put it out but the fire is too sweet, too welcoming, so you shine in its light and each flame burns sweeter on your skin?
Poetry has no place in sex, she read once, and poetry has no place here – she could sing love songs against her skin and paint flowery words onto the inside of her thighs, and her eyes could set the other's clothes on fire but the van is dark and the sky darker, a one day escape and a "walk" that ends in horizontalisms, on burns, on tears in the darkness. But she knows this, knows it more than she knows how to breathe, so when Rose climbs onto her lap she doesn't stop her, just presses lip to ardent lip and slides hands across the bridge of her shirt to the gap of her buttons. Rose is paler every time, ivory and gold and deep jet, lipstick smeared by jade lips. Rose laughs at the tickle of her fingers and her own skip the shirt and slide to the skirt, whispers use your fingers and they belonged to each other first, explored each other first, reached across the expanse of the sheets when fire burned too bright and they could never let go since. It is love or is it desire? Questions that burn in her mind as Rose gasps as she caresses and kisses, slides back, whispers murmurs across her stomach as hands slide down jeans and Rose leans down to kiss her, breathing against her lips and resting forehead to chin with muffling gasps as they slide down sideways – bless her father for his old people-movers and seats that slide down and those dumb window shades that never seemed to shade but will do for now – and they are down, they are flat, they are desperate and sloppy and too far apart and a bed would be better but pressed-down seats will be fine. They tangle tongues and slip across skin, gasping and moaning and burning, ever burning, hiding and lying and Rose whispers "I've got a boyfriend" and it sounds like a reminder but it's meant as a promise – a promise that this will happen against because Rose knows that eventually she will always be drawn back to that fire – and Kanaya whispers "anyway" and they keep burning.
The drive home should be awkward and stifled but sex turns to speaking quickly and easily, tongues bat as fast in conversation as in kissing, throats turn from ivory pillars of worship (if poetry has no place in sex then surely discourse is its home?) to the resting bed of opinion – they differ so much, united only in preference and dress code – but the conversation turns to sex anyway, the politics of it at least, and the promise sounds in the back of her mind – "I've got a boyfriend" "anyway" "I've got a boyfriend" "anyway" – and how ironic that the word should call to mind the sound of Rose's voice as the flames ignite and not the face of the boy in question. The car is warm and the seats are sticky and the car's as good as Kanaya's now – she got her licence, yes, and she's working with her parents so they pay her insurance while Rose studies old literature in high halls (anything but athletic, she'll complain about the stairs for as long as you let her) – so it's not like it matters that it smells like sex and sweat, but she cranks down the windows anyway and watches Rose's hair flutter in the wind. She still wants to wrap her hands in the strands, anchor herself to earth as Rose repays the favour, sliding lips to lips but those thoughts are best kept to the waiting bed where she'll replay the scene from a hundred different angles – she's the poison yes, but she's the antidote too, the water of Rose's smile that puts out the fire of her curves and Rose laughs at her distraction and says "eyes on the road" like she's wearing that shortest skirt and ostensibly they're there to find Kanaya someone to distract her but their hands still end up in familiar places at the end of the night and Rose keeps the skirt on and Kanaya comes extra hard that night, as Rose plays an old familiar tune that no-one else could ever cover.
Thoughts, thoughts, bedroom thoughts, memories and not for now, not as she pulls into the spot outside the house where Rose and Dave live and they wave goodbye and she comes home to another empty house – her parents are always away picking up clients and her siblings have all dispersed to their corners of the world – and in the darkness of her room she find another one of Rose's shirts on the floor with the unspoken assumption that one of hers is now in Rose's (eventually someone will suspect them when they emerge with each other's shirt on but Rose plays her games and Kanaya follows her lead) and she thinks about Dave and Rose and their happiness and the fact that they're supposed to be together and the fact that if she could break them apart she wouldn't because she doesn't love Rose, no, she could, but she just wants her, has never stopped wanting her from the moment they first slipped off shirts to the moment she said goodbye not twenty minutes ago – Rose is the constant in her brain. A flowery name for a dark girl, sarcasm and obscure references wrapped in politics and black lipstick, like verbosity and sharp violet eyes can dispel unwanted company till the only ones left are the ones she wants left, when her loquaciousness turns more forgiving and she drops the complicated language to "I've got a boyfriend" and if one word summed up her life it would be anyway.
Rose feels soft in her mind, but she was softer under her fingers.
They all gather to watch the show, all of Rose's friends and all of hers and-wouldn't you know it, they're all the same. Halfway across the world a dark haired girl watches excitedly, connected by a crappy laptop camera, and on the other half another one seats herself in the middle of the couch and springs forward to grab another handful of snacks and those crumbs will get on her couch but she doesn't really mind so she watches her friends settle down and presses play and curls up on the floor, back to couch, and if she feels fingers in the cords of her hair she knows to ignore them. The screen flickers and he's some frickin' star, this boyfriend of Rose's, this Dave who sits to Rose's left, and they all applaud when the metaphorical curtain draws and the metaphorical lights go on (the literal ones don't until Kanaya gets up to hit the switch) and he has the grace to look embarrassed but he's so goddamn cool that no-one buys it, but she smiles anyway. She smiles as they all shower him in compliments and her Rose kisses his cheek and she smiles as all her food is eaten and her all drinks and drunk and she smiles they all get drunker and drunker and she remains sober because someone has to clean up the mess and she smiles until they're all on the floor and she smiles as she covers them all up, head on one side and doors open so can hear if something goes wrong and the curtains are drawn and the doors are locked and she smiles as Rose lifts herself up and makes her way across the room and presses her against the wall and up, up they go till she kicks her bedroom door shut and pushes Rose down to the bed and removes every piece of clothing until she's ivory and gold and jet-black waiting and she sits on her lap and removes her shirt as slowly as she can till Rose pushes her over and rips the rest of them off and whispers I want you more than ever and I can't wait god Kanaya let's just fuck as if all the whispers in the world would empty the house. But they fuck anyway, and the conversation has still turned to sex, and Kanaya finishes on her fingers and she reaches up to pull her down but no no and Kanaya says "Please please will he finish you? Is he better than me?" like the answers ever mattered and Rose says no but she's moaning anyway and it's only the dark that she hears the sobs.
She's the poisonous friend, there's no doubt there, and she's the source of all her guilt and all the evil in the world, and if darkened words could temper darkened desire there'd be no adultery on earth she thinks, but she still thinks of Rose's thighs in the dark alone, even as she wonders if Rose is thinking of hers or if she's finally made the decision that you can't love one and fuck the other – better to love both or fuck neither – and if she's alone in the dark or if Dave is with her. She'd call him the poison – she was there first – but Dave and Rose belong together as the two of them do not, as much as their conversations are always easy and there's never awkwardness when the two are in the room.
She calls herself the poison all the way up until Rose calls her, sobbing, says "pick me up, I'm just outside of town" and she's never driven so fast, never been so scared of every bend in the road until she's running across the field and they're falling, falling, Rose is so slender, so easily broken, no shining torch of light but the embers of the fire and why why is all she can say, like tears could answer questions. "I don't know," Rose says, "I was lonely."
"I was here."
"You were there," she says, and points and-
"No. No I didn- I wanted to be there and I wanted to be there and I thought we had something."
"So did I but all you cared about was-"
"You can't love one and fuck another."
"But I love you."
"And I you, but you belong to him like-"
"No, I belong to me. I belong to me."
Silence, sometimes, is more telling than words, and the falling of snow means more than scorched earth ever could.
"Have you talked?"
"He's out of town again, filming again, it never stops, the house is so cold."
"You could stay at mine. It's empty too. I need some light for all the space."
"I know, I know."
The van is warmer and dryer and despite her words Rose moves to kiss her, and she could push her away but she doesn't –"I still have a boyfriend" "I know" – and they're kissing anyway and why deny it, Rose is all she ever wanted and all she ever will. No-one's hands could be the same as hers, no-one's lips, no-one's smile, no-one could imitate her or replace her, be better than her? Impossible, they're only kissing and it's all she wants, even as Rose moves down, down past her neck and the swell of her breasts, pushes her shirt up and kisses her stomach, undoes her jeans and kisses the down, kisses below, kisses her thighs, pushes her tongue in and each twist feels like an apology she doesn't need, an apology she should be giving, but she's moaning and gasping anyway and pale hands twine in paler hair and if the word sounds like love she can blame Rose's skill and no-one could ever feel like that, as she sits back and pulls her closer and kisses her and kisses her and returns the favour, because if there's nothing else to do they might as well just fuck.
They might as well just make dinner together and call the absent each night and move closer across the sofa till the TV's a distraction and they've fucked there and on one wall and they nearly did in the kitchen before they remembered who else would be there and even now they're pulling each other up to her bedroom and kicking the door in and falling to the floor and ripping off clothes and rolling around and Rose surprises her every time, this time she turns around and they're getting off at the same time, same pace, and her skin never felt softer in mind or in hand and they wake up each morning and go to sleep each night knowing it can only last forever but if there's nothing else to do they might as well just fuck.
She's got a boyfriend. Anyway.
She gets her tongue pierced anyway, because she can, and it feels new and strange against Kanaya's lips and she kisses it anyway, sucks around it, revels in just how much hotter it feels and Rose in her most pristine dress and heels and Rose in her high tops and skinny jeans – anyway, it's always hotter than the last time, and her family and her boyfriend can stay away for as long as they want, they might as well never return, they might as well belong, they might as well make it official.
But nothing can only last forever, and one returns and then the other and Rose goes home and Dave follows her and Kanaya moves, slides away, leaves them be because she does not belong, and finds comfort in the arms of her friends instead – each hot enough, each with brightly coloured lipstick that burns her skin, each with a throat that sounds out ecstasy as she reminds them that she knows them better than their boyfriends and she'd take them all out any day but they've all got boyfriends anyway.
And nothing can only last forever and cerulean lips kiss jade for the last time before jet says "I left crimson" and poison dissolves in the end.
It's not like she's got a boyfriend.
Anyway.
Some weird, rambly, un-thought-out AUstuck for you, conceived while distracting myself from unseen translation and written at 2AM because I can. The downside to studying two partially literature based subjects is that you tend to put thought into every word, to the effect that you could probably write an exam essay on this.
I've been revising Book 4 of the Aeneid recently, hence all the fire imagery.
This is my first time writing Homestuck, and, in no coincidence, my first time writing RoseKan and my first mature+ F/F fic, so feel free to criticise away.
The song this is based off of is "Sex" by the 1975.