Author's note: I have a secret fear I'm going to wind up in a special hell for writing this... oh well. Enjoy. This little tidbit has been bouncing around my brain for a couple days now. One-shot. Drabble.
Jenny remembered being a child. Mostly just work, factories and selling matches and being very much on her own. She remembered once she had been playing in a marsh when she was still very small. Her skirts had been muddied by the polluted waters. There had been a snake that another child caught and threw at her. She caught the creature in her hands. She remembered how surprised she was that the snake was so smooth. She thought it would be rough and scaly, instead her fingertips slid down the snakes smooth scales. She stroked the creature briefly, before redepositing it on the ground. Not like there were many marshes around London though, sometimes she wondered if she dreamed the whole thing. Years of cold fingers and toes, scraping by the best she could, always covered in a thin layer of grime.
When she met Madame Vastra, after recovering from the shock, of both her assault and the true identity of her rescuer. She remembered wondering if those green scales would be smooth like that one snake. Most of her world is more concerned about her lover being a woman than they are about her not being human. It doesn't bother her, not anymore. Not after all the things she's seen. Not after their many adventures or times or worlds they've seen. Not like when they'd met, she'd been barely out of childhood and not even fully grown. She'd become the maid and housekeeper of the famous detective, the lizard woman. There had been adjustments of course, their species were different after all, but the scales had never been one of them.
They were even softer, those scales of her wife's. She remembers the first time they kissed and one of those green scaled hands stroked her cheek. It had been the softest touch she'd ever felt. Not rough hands of employers, or local boys. Or worst of all; men figuring they could take what they wanted from her. She'd never had much interest in men, and was relieved when those days were behind her.
Although Vastra wore a veil, she'd seen people stare at her, seen children try to touch her scales or doctors imply that her darling had a skin condition. It really was just skin, like that snake's. Smooth and seemingly endless when she chose to explore it. Or when it was pressed tight against her own, when they stroked and caressed each other, or when in a passionate frenzy Vastra would drive her to keening and shaking with the rub of that body and those fingers against her soft yielding flesh. The softest scales of all, were those on her wife's belly and thighs. The ones she would absentmindedly stroke then they were alone in bed.
She mused as she ran her fingers down the soft-scaled back of her wife, pressed close tonight in attempt to stave off the cold. Despite the fire, this was how it had been for many years now. Longer than they had been lovers. Unable to generate her own heat, Vastra smiled and shifted closer one night, and so it had begun. Even then through the thin nightdress she had owned, Jenny had been surprised by their softness and her own reaction to Vastra's proximity. Now in the dark their eyes are both knowing as they seek each other once again.