Notes: Written for this prompt from the Captchalogue fic request meme on Livejournal: The other day it came to me that Gamzee would consider Rose's magic a miracle, and then I got on Pesterchum and long story short, this is now my otp
can I get something sweet and fluffy with them please?
The setting is a meteorstuck AU, where everything is basically sweetness and delight and no-details-about-the-lack-of-raging-homicide. It was the easiest way to fit the prompt.
"Amaze me," Gamzee said, "Go on, make your magic. Breathe."
"Hmm." Step and step and step. What a way to move, this Rose-girl had, pretty-poised as she took him in from all the frontways angles. If his back wasn't to the horn pile he thought that she would've circled him like a danger, all the time keeping that tiny smile on her face. Sweet and sharp. "I don't know, Gamzee."
"Nah, chica, you wanna breathe. Always a good idea. Do it with me, now." He held out his hands in an invitation to pull her closer. Rose stayed at cool distance and raised just one eyebrow, miraculous, but you had to help out friends, so he began to conduct. "Out, out, in."
"It's coming back to me. I'm saved."
"That's the way, sister."
"Considering all this interest, it's rather surprising that you never approached me via chat client. Or rather, it would be surprising if I didn't have strong suspicions about why this is our first conversation." Rose's grin got sharper. "Did you notice that we humans existed at all?"
Gamzee laughed. "Aw well, yEeEeEaAaAh, sister, it took a while to get my notice on for all that of you guys. There was enough to be getting used to being with all of my friends here, and chilling on down after all that making of murdermirth with like the imps and kings and demons. Kicking it with my best bitches and brothers in the horn pile was about all of what I wanted to be dealing with."
"The sentiment resonates to a certain extent." She turned to take a look around the computer lab. It was more and more busy and hot with all sixteen of just about everybody in the universe stoking up noise, but it was beautifully happy.
"Now, if you'd indulge me," Rose said, tuning up some strictness as she snapped her attention back to him. "To clarify the situation here: The magic arts I employed to help make our way here caught your interest. And so you decided to approach me once we arrived with repeated and - of course - entirely sincere overtures of friendship. Which would involve sitting down on a lot of bike horns. Correct?"
"Oh, yeah, girl, that all what you did blew every bit out of my mind. Out of all the shit I see any day that is too beautiful to get..." It was almost unbelievable she could be standing here like she was simple and cool, and no god had ever made her into fire. "You raising your arms and face and your belief like it's a thing to hold, not even caring to worry about all that ground breaking under you and your best friend posse..."
"Didn't I?" Her voice stayed all steady like she didn't notice him sniffling, which was really nice of her.
"Motherfucking beautiful," Gamzee said, kind of explaining the sniffles even though she hadn't asked, and gave her a grin. "And you sure didn't look anything close to the worrying kind."
Rose's eyes narrowed, finally letting her suspiciousness show a bit. "Is it only the magic that fascinates you?" she said. "Not if what you said earlier is honestly to be believed. But even if your psychology is vastly more different than I'd anticipated - how entertaining can breathing really be?"
"It might be the most entertaining thing there could be!" He went solemn about the thought. "Go around not breathing and it drops a stop in front of anything else that could be a good time if you."
"You cannot be serious on any level," she asked but without asking, mostly by laughing. You could hardly even tell it was laughter all up inside of her, gleaming all in the back of her gaze. Wow.
He was being distractible again, like his friends always got salty about. "It's not something I'm making a habit of," he said hastily. "I keep shit whimsical, you know? That's my jam." He pounded a fist over his heart.
"Stoner humour is a concept I'm familiar with in passing," she said, a bit of distant like she was thinking things over. "What I've gathered of it hasn't appealed, though. You're a veritable living parody and yet-" you could almost think she was frustrated or disbelieving, way behind her face where she meant it, "-you seem so genuine."
"Every word I'm saying is straight from me to you," said Gamzee, pressing fingertips to his chest and then holding them out to her, reassuring as shit if he said so himself. "Straight up between us two."
"I just called you a joke, you know."
"Aw fuck, my motherfucking miracle worker, is that what you see? Straight up? Hey, no, you keep on smiling."
There was a slight tight move to Rose's mouth, a bit of nervous maybe. She tilted her head the other way after he spoke, like a mark to the occasion, still watching him as if he was an endless spiral of colour and all the light of the suns in all the universe that she could see on into. Well, why not?
"That is what I see, I suppose."
"Chica," he said, the rumble-squeak of his voice going hoarser with pleasure, "that's the biggest compliment I've ever got! Since last time my best motherfucking friend Karkat said it!"
Rose stopped walking. She put her head in her hand. "You are so easily amused!"
"That's how it, is, sister! Best way to be having a bitchtits time any kinda place you might all be in."
"Here's a secret." Rose looked up. "I believe I might know exactly what you mean." And oh, he really was liking getting to know her little near-permanent smile, and how it looked like he could make it a little bigger.
A voice called to them from across the room; the other human that had her kind of pink and pale colouring. "Rose, I take back what I said that one time about how it would be hilarious to have you and the juggalo interacting. What would your mother and your Seventeen magazines have to say about this? It's social suicide. And oh my god I am dying here, ICP, why would you tolerate that."
"My mother bought a lifetime subscription to Seventeen for my last birthday," Rose said, lifting her voice. "And the entire discography of the Jonas brothers; then, later, with an apology for her callous oversight, the same discography as covered in a series of remixes featuring Harry and the Potters vs. Draco and the Malfoys. I think she had to assassinate key people in the entertainment industry, and the upshot is, don't ask me to care too much about modern music, Dave."
"You also sent me some of the Bowie and jazz she gave you. Not exactly my jams but I will still give respect, she made up for her crimes."
"Those batches aren't much to my taste, but aren't not ludicrously hyper-stylised to supposedly match it, either. I am still figuring them out." She looked away from Gamzee for the first time since Dave had begun to talk. "Do you mind? I'm having a conversation." She promptly looked back and Gamzee blinked at the sear of her renewed focus.
"WoOaAaOaOaAh," he said. "That Seer shit is for real."
She got a hitch in the hold of her body, like she was dodging that idea. Then she threw it back to him. "You think so? That my game-given title suits me."
"Maybe if we took the time for it we could be thinking up a better one, but I got to say you're living up to what it is you got. Yeah, like that," he said as she came round to his left side and met his gaze extra intensity all up in it.
They both jumped at the next voice blasted their way. Karkat was stomping over. "What is all this odd couple horseshit going on? At least I haven't had to pry Eridan off you, Lalonde - yet - but the sheer incongruity Gamzee and you are bringing to the table is makes the sight of this almost as bad as everything about the Serket versus Harley incident, and it's only been twenty minutes."
"We're engaged in mutual analysis," said Rose, "it's absolutely fascinating."
"Mutual?" said Karkat. He shared a look with Gamzee of having no motherfucking idea what that meant.
"Hmm," said Rose, and pointed at Gamzee while talking to Karkat. "Does he often act innocent like that? Denying his own insights?"
Karkat's glare actually broke intensity as rage was outweighed by not knowing what the fuck, which made Rose damn good for a beginner. "It's Gamzee. 'Acting' upright and coherent is as good as it gets, and look, even now he's not managing to stand."
"Hmm," said Rose again with all serious kinds of emphasis, and looked back to Gamzee complicit-like. As if, all of a sudden, they shared secrets. He sat up and leaned a little over to her.
"What the fuck ever. I'm going to deal with the rest of this clusterfuck, you two stay immensely bizarre and out of the way." He turned and called over his shoulder, "Gamzee, I'm getting Kanaya to make a doll so you can show me later where the therapist tentacled you."
Gamzee looked at Rose with awe. "Humans got tentacles going on?"
"To what anyone who knows me would call my deep-seated regret, no, we don't."
"That would have been fucking wicked."
"Oh, I must concur wholeheartedly."
"Not that you all aren't already. There's all kinds of motherfucking little pinkish-brown kind of miracles about all of you. -Shit, are you going to laugh?"
"No," Rose said firmly. They had been close to getting that one out loud, though, and he beamed at her.
Rose took to walking the crescent round him again, like other angles would be any help at all in getting what was right there. "Should I really try to figure out what you mean? Should anyone? If I do start understanding it would probably just mean I should check the expiration date on what I ate last."
"I'm not that much of a miracle, my Seer sister. I'm pretty easy not to have to understand." It was made of amazement the way her eyebrows got all worked up and down when she didn't get things. "C'mere."
She sank to her haunches to get on level with him, and he leaned forwards over his crossed legs and cupped her cheeks. His hands stroked the softness of pink skin - and it got red in the clear-veined human way that could make you sigh at the strangeness. Strange could be perfect, it turned out, and he felt happiness rise up in him at finding out, after all the believing, that things really could end up so good.
"That's it. S'all. I'm down with the simple shit, like breathing."
Redder. Reddest. Humans all had blood that was bright with red like Karkat's. That meant Rose was blushing, and yeah, he had just pretty much got real close and personal on her.
"Oh, uh..." Gamzee's own face got hotter than he could easily remember it being before. He dropped his hands and tucked them away under the knees. "Sorry, sis. That right there was me not thinking. Didn't mean to get all, uh, up on you like that."
"And yet there you were. I must take careful note, you understand, for future interactions. Danger: Avoid Makara at all costs if you value your personal bubble."
Gamzee skipped a breath, that strictest beat of all, he was so upset. "Aw, sister, no. I'll be keeping to myself. For real, at all costs?"
"Maybe," she said.
And maybe she meant that. She wasn't smiling like she'd been almost the whole time they'd talked, that secret curl to the corners of her mouth and eyes - she looked knocked off course a bit.
Rose was looking him right in the eye, though, staying at his level still. Maybe she was seeing something that she wanted to, or maybe she wanted to see what there was? She liked finding shit out, he already knew. And she looked real nice and pretty and all as she did it.
"We could be getting to know each other," said Gamzee. "You and me and all these other brothers and sisters - oh, hey, you'll be wanting to talk to our own terror-princess sister Feferi, there, she's believing about the same gods as what you do. And I-" He took his hands all the way behind his back. "Best behaviour, I swear it."
"We'll see." Rose stood, and then she was back to that same face she'd worn the whole time. A smirk for goodbye and she strode off, soldier-priestess, like she still believed and always would, deep in at centre, that everything could break under her feet and she wouldn't need to care.
A while later Karkat came back. No doll, though, which could've been sort of cute. Tavros might have liked it for hatching all those beasts of his in. "You are grinning like an asshole and staring right at her, a girl whose existence you've been aware of for half-an-hour, if that's not granting you too much credit. Gamzee, what the fuck is this?"
"Shit, best friend, I don't even know." Rose was all smiling bright, talk-talk-talking over by Kanaya, getting more hugs than she knew what to do with from the black-haired humans, and knowing that he was looking at her. It was easy to tell. She stood like so. Gamzee sighed and grinned. "I think it's being that we're both going to have fun figuring it out."