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It starts with you on the couch in the living block, your moirail's wild curls under your hand, and their head in your lap.
Gamzee's chest lifts and falls in their steady, calm breathing. It's something you occasionally drift your palms over to feel, to smooth across the ridges of their still-raised vertical encasement struts. It's not that they haven't been fed enough. “Just can't all up and seem to be keepin enough motherfuckin clown on me, brother,” they'd put it.
You worry it's psychological. But there's not much more you can do for that than be their moirail, let them ragdoll against you and have your hand working softly through their hair, around their horns, rewarded with a little purr going on and on. They'd first flopped down near your side with that rattle and you'd puffed up as always to tell them, Gamzee, we're in the middle of the fucking communal respiteblock, somebody could see you. When no one is supposed to see them like that, soft, yielding, smiling tired and looking everything like they'd let the universe come close and walk over them. Just the thought makes your diamond-flavor aggression flare up, thinking no, not again. That won't happen. Because they have you.
Gamzee just smiles at you and goes Ain't nobody here's what to gander at me but you, and I ain't to mind so much your ganderin. And you could groan helplessly. And you do, but it comes out just a little soft, and they go down on your lap and you decide you don't want to move them. Not for the world.
So you're there reading with them by you on the couch, minding your own fucking business, keeping your ears keen to anybody walking in. So of course you know when Rose is there. You think about getting Gamzee off of you, but they'd get that look, not because they don't get it but because they just don't agree it's important and all they know how to do is look at you like they want something, and that would break your heart. So you leave them there, but you stop idly rubbing at their horns and fluff so much as to make their pan mushy.
Rose smiles right at you, while she walks past, which makes your eyebrows flatten down like mallets. Excuse you? What is with humans and eye contact, you wonder, because she trades it like you don't have a heap of moirail on your lap and that it isn't saying something.
She goes to get something from the bookshelf, comes back, after walking right in front of you, and sits down across from you in another chair. You put a palm over Gamzee's shoulder, not to keep them down, just to sit braced, and box your body language into this is mine, you fucking space primate. Can't you see me all over it? Give us some space. And you look at her dead on, because you will fight her, (okay you won't,) but it's rude. And you want her to know.
She notices, after a while. And looks right back at your stare, then down at your clown, then back up, and smiles. That does it.
You move out from under Gamzee's head and horns and stand, tossing your book to the couch. Your fists go to your hips in the most authoritative way possible, to offset the entirely un-authoritative flush of your cheeks. “Okay, Lalonde, what the fuck are you doing?”
Rose blinks. Gamzee mhhrrs quietly behind you, sitting up and scratching behind a horn. You're being looked at like you're not being an entirely fucking reasonable person, here. Even Gamzee's expression is kind of quizzical, when you care to look back at them.
“Maybe you could tell me,” she starts. “Though I somehow suspect you're about to.” Her voice is still fond and relaxed. Somewhere behind you, Gamzee comes out of the buzz into a sort of clarity and makes some kind of a heh, before cleaning themselves up presentable. This is not funny, you clown disaster, god, you're pitiful, but now is not the time.
“That's my moirail,” you explain, which apparently needs repeating. “Okay, yes I'm technically committing faux pas having them out in the middle of the block like this, but you don't get it. Gamzee is always like that, and-- you just don't look at them when I've got them under. You especially don't just waltz in like nothing's fucking happening and stare me down like that's not a direct challenge, Rose. I can't believe I have to explain this.”
Gamzee takes your hand, pulling you gently back towards the recuperation bench. “Chill, homie. She ain't gonna do nothing what for you ain't wanting her to.”
“That's not the point, I-” and they hush you, and suddenly you could yell at them for breaking the rules but oh no, you could never, not Gamzee, you trust them, and you let them make you sit back and start petting your face even if it makes a tiny voice in your pan scream. Rose shuts her book, and Gamzee lets you go.
“Sorry. I thought we were having a moment,” she explains. You have no idea what kind of moment she thinks that was, and you don't care, because Gamzee is still papping you right in front of her. You gently take their hand, muttering I'm fine, Gamzee. They smile and settle down along your shoulder, draping their arm over your full stomach.
You are fine. You realize amidst the embarrassment you're being ridiculous. She's a fucking alien, and aliens are weird, and they do weird shit all the time. “We were not having a moment,” you say anyway, as Gamzee nuzzles incorrigibly down on your sweater. “You were looking like-- I don't know. Like you didn't...”
Like you weren't scared of me, like you might try shit, like you might take them from me . Oh, god, that is ridiculous. Rose would never. Just because someone else did, doesn't mean...
“I did notice you were stern. I was meaning to acknowledge you politely. Smile and nod, yes-that-is-your-clown, Vantas. Call it human error.”
Oh. Wait, if she can read you that well, what the flying fuck is she doing sitting there? You realize too late you said it out loud. Gamzee purrs through a smile, and kisses your shoulder.
“That's easy. I'm curious.” She rests her jaw into a palm. “I've read about it in your books, but I've never exactly seen the Alternian phenomenon of pale in action. Between established moirails, I mean. I was thinking I'd sit here and do a little spectating. Scientifically speaking.”
That's got to be the most nonsense you've ever heard out of a human mouth that wasn't Dave's, but when you puff up, Gamzee paps you right down. Again. Your fault, maybe, for papping them in front of everyone that one time-- doesn't count, it was an emergency, and as it turns out not even Gamzee's fault-- god, what a mess.
“Picked the motherfuckin bitchtits of diamonds to get yourself looked all on most wickedly, sister,” they boast sleepily in their molasses oh-karkat-i'm-so-motherfuckin-obsequious-all-up-on-you voice, and now they're settling her with a look that's just a little bit sapient. Which she returns. Oh no, what's going on, here?
“I mean, don't let me bother you. But anything you'd feel comfortable explaining or demonstrating, well, I'd be grateful for the experience.”
You decide you're not getting left behind on this. They're not going to team up and make you bluster your way through all of your excuses until you're what, showing her diagrams? Fine. You take Gamzee and have them lay on their back in your lap, covering their throat with your hand. It's a gesture between defensive and possessive and soothing, and Gamzee goes down as easily as if you had pushed them, which you never need to do, not ever. (Not that you don't sometimes anyway, when they want you to.) Rose seems a little surprised. That isn't human, you're sure.
“At least you have good taste,” you explain, keeping your palm just firm enough down on them to feel their purrs. They arc their middle just a little bit, practically advertising the fact they have a bunch of spillable clown guts in there. “Nobody goes under like Gamzee. They pacify like hell. Most trolls wouldn't do this in a thousand fucking sweeps of moirallegiance--” You demonstrate, gently taking Gamzee's chin and turning their head, and they just let you do it and you have to gulp down your fascination even though you knew it was coming. “Much less right in front of some fucking alien. Stare long enough and you'd see shit I'm not sure gets replicated in anything but the really hardcore stuff,” you explain, quickly going red. You hadn't meant to admit exposure to that kind of shit, but oh who fucking cares, from what it sounds like humans go about papping their loose acquaintances with flagrant abandon. Doesn't change the weird feeling you get while petting Gamzee's throat, with her watching. You gulp, again.
“So,” they begin, watching patiently. “What can you show me?”
If Gamzee has opinions about this, they aren't sharing. They're just kind of sighing and wriggling pleasantly under your hand, unperturbed by your observer. So it's up to you, then. You're not going to whisper pale nothings or dig down into their personal shit (or yours, for that matter) because that would be, you think, enough to make even them unhappy and shy. But you can pap and soothe and work their horns. So you do. Rose can get the jam logistics from your books, anyway. What she wants to see is a troll gone pan-fuzzy, and sure, you can show her that. Now that she's agreed to keep her distance, anyway.
You pet Gamzee's face, card your fingers through their narrow curls, trace their lips wth the pad of your thumb. You take their hand and smooth fingertips over each clean, groomed claw, you work the base of their horns and you hush them best you can without being self-conscious. Their pulse might flutter a bit, but that's the only thing you get out of them a mile close to shame or bashfulness. Before long, they're goo. You're not going to take them farther than this in front of her. You're definitely not going to bring them to fat purple tears and snog them, and if she wants you to, she's just going to have to be disappointed. You even settle her with a firm stare now and then to remind her what's not hers. This clown doesn't really belong to anyone, but if they did, it would be you. And sometimes it's harmless to pretend.
But you can't help ruminating on them, with them in your lap like this. Gamzee's not stupid, or dumb, or completely incapable of agitation-- they just like you. They like this. They prefer being passive, and with you, they can be that and it's not as dangerous. And you can be a big blustering angry possessive idiot and not be alone because your bullshit bounces right off of them, and when it doesn't, it hurts you so bad as to learn the lesson forever. You're lucky. So lucky. Even more lucky they put up with you being an insecure moron, yelling at her like that-- totally overreacting, making a fucking disgrace of yourself as usual, but oh god does the look in their eyes make it all better. By not too long the sight of their pacification has you captivated, and you nearly forget about the human across the room.
Until you don't, snapping alert, clearing your throat as you withdraw your palms from their face. Gamzee blinks aware and shuffles back up with a sigh, but wears a sleepy effect on their face and posture, melting back onto your shoulder once they're upright. “There. That good enough?”
Rose has her thumb and curled finger to her chin, eyeing the two of you with a chilling smile. She's got an idea a mile long in her head before you can even blink, you just know it. “Thank you, Karkat. That was extremely clear. If I wanted to learn anything more... I'd say I'd have to do it through hands-on experience.”
You're about to agree, until you catch something about her tone. She and Gamzee are exchanging some kind of look. You're about to demand answers before Gamzee turns to you with a big toothy, innocent smile.
“Could be fun, brother.”
Oh, no.
--
That's how you get here.
You're not exactly sure how it happened. The arrangement baffles you, and there must have been a past you that rallied against it until something happened to convince you, and here you are now, the three of you in a room set aside for the deed. Like hell you were letting her do it on your pile. You can accept something about the idea is morbidly fascinating, but that doesn't mean you have to ruin the sanctity of your own respite block.
Gamzee sits on a chair near yours with a placid little smile, bouncing their foot. The spontaneous pillow-mound of impending sin rests at the foot of Rose's seat, where she folds her arms over her middle, ominously content. Apparently you're the only one capable of shame around here. It wouldn't surprise you.
“Any hard limits I should be aware of?” She asks. Gamzee looks to you, for fuck's sake. You've tried explaining they're allowed to do the boundary thing on their own, but you guess until it sticks, you can step in.
“Don't articulate any emotional reasoning. That is strictly our-fucking-business.” You lick your lips nervously, considering how to elaborate. “Maybe just don't talk to them. A little hushing, that's fine.” They're both watching you, and you try to be a proper fucking troll about it, sitting firm and heavy. “And this should be fucking obvious, but Lalonde, if you so much as lay a scratch on them, even on accident, I'm going to give it back twice.”
“Understood,” she says, shedding her cardigan onto the back of her chair. Oh, wow. Okay, so this is happening. “Are we ready to get underway?”
“Ready as any motherfucker could be at it, sister,” says Gamzee, like they aren't about to let someone they barely know put gripfronds all over them. You suppress a little shiver, then tell it to go away.
“I'm fine,” you say, even if nobody asked you. “We can start.”
Gamzee stares at you, inexplicably. Looking for direction, you realize, and that makes everything properly troll in you both swell up and turn to jelly, and you're lucky your frown stays on your face because damnit, if there's anything you need to take seriously, it's that Gamzee is looking for you to say 'jump,' and how high.
“Uh,” You start, your mouth suddenly dry. When the fuck did your tongue get so heavy? “Lie down for her.”
Gamzee is more liquid than troll in how they move back on the pile, unfolding their miles of clown lank into the gentle arcs of limbs that you know, that you've traced with your hands a hundred times by now. You know every bit of them, you've had iron-hard, Alternian claws over every prone vein and bit of vulnerable trollflesh. Gamzee is as lax and giving as if they don't know at all how easy it would be for someone to hurt them, but that's impossible. Of course they know. You chew a moment on the bitterness of the memory.
But they look calm. Peaceful, even. Anyone else wouldn't be able to see the subtlest hints of something deep under the sweet smile and lidded eyes, but you can tell they might actually be a little excited. Or scared. Something. Rose stands over them, watching your clown approvingly while they rest there with their throat wide-fucking open, their horns practically pointed to the floor. Your fingers twitch.
“May I begin?” She asks. She asks you, but she looks at Gamzee. She sees what's going on here, maybe even more than you do. Almost certainly more than you do.
“Yeah,” You say, with the last little bit of speech you have in you for the moment. You're too busy staring at the way Gamzee is entirely willing. If they have reservations, not even you can tell, and you're studying their loose posture almost greedily. All doubts are removed when they open their toothy mouth.
“Let's be getting the most wicked kicks on of the shit,” and for some reason, they push each shoe off their feet with their toes. Rose kneels down and before you can say wait-no-don't, if you could even get your pan to or get it to want to, she settles her palms on Gamzee's middle.
They purr right away. You feel dizzy. Rose experiments like that, just circling a palm down in the little hollow underneath their strut cage, tracing the arcing bits of their infraskeleton with her thumb. Eventually her fingers ease out into fanning touches over their ribs, and it's borderline sensual. You try to forbid yourself from making any noise by silently clearing your throat, and you watch Gamzee for unease. They look fine. You're starting to go red everywhere.
You watch as she moves up to their collar, something a little safer, and rubs along the meat of their shoulders. Gamzee hums in their deep voice, and the words come out in that sort of honk-heady-tone that's just them relaxed, but not so deep in pacification they breathe out every word. “That's real nice, what you're doing, sister.” You didn't expect them to be chatty, and from the way they try to mumble next, you think they didn't, either. “Karkat's real good at that... puts me down sometimes all at the end of the motherfuckin day, just gets a clown all motherfuckin jelly to him. How's a motherfucker even to do that, I wonder.”
“Mhmm,” Rose agrees quietly, adhering to the no-talking rule. You're not sure what to think about Gamzee babbling on about you when you're right there, but it's nice. Not that you were insecure, or anything.
“Used to get his mits on all too motherfuckin harsh, but that's just how he is to be. Taught himself up right quick,” They explain in a voice going soft, and you experience the painful memories of yourself too eager, working their muscles too firm, making them whine. Maybe it's just the mood you're in, but it breaks your heart and you pity the hell out of them all the more, for yourself having to be the way you were made. Fighting so hard, all the time, with things that don't need to be fought.
In a few moments Rose has them starting to respond. They're thin-pupiled through it, not wide and captivated like they get with you. You've seen that purple iris a thin ring so many times while they stare up at you, while you overwhelm them in one way or another. They're trying to keep track of what she's doing, taking inventory of her touches, how she's easing thumbs over their cheeks. But she's good enough at this they're going to fuzz anyway, that little rattle turning constant from them. Then they look to you, just for a bit.
“It's fine,” you say. It really is, to you. You have no fucking idea why. You should be so wildly upset. You're not upset. Your palms are warm and your stomach is doing something you're not sure you hate, but nothing's angry but your bug-brain. And you might even like the way it barks.
Shit, are you enjoying this? You try to tell yourself, no, but then Rose puts both palms against Gamzee's cheeks and they meet eyes with her and she goes shhhhhh, petting back their hair, and oh no. Oh, fucking no.
She's cradling your moirail's face so fucking tenderly, brushing away their curls and holding their head-- just holding, not restraining-- to look at her, studying the qualities of their smoothing expression. One of her palms slides up against their cheek like it was nothing, and she plays with the ends of their tufts of cloudy hair in her other set of fingers. Her hand goes back down their throat and over their sternum, rubbing consolingly, and Gamzee bubbles out a honey-sweet purr and their eyes flutter. Rose prods at them a little gently, like you showed her, cupping a palm to their skull and easing their head to turn. They give a soft hum. They're just letting her. They're totally hopeless.
“Maybe be getting on my ears a little, sister,” they suggest.
“Ears?” She asks. You step out of your weird headspace to decide questions are fine. “Are those pale?”
“Pale's all bein what a motherfucker goes and makes of it to get their chill on,” they mumble around a windchute going soft. “Won't be to knowing till you try it the motherfuck out.”
They're confusing her. Hell, they're confusing you. But maybe not, because Rose doesn't so much as pause even with her eyes windowing some sort of deeper thought, like it all makes sense to her, and she settles one of your moirail's spongeclots into her fingers and teases its little hills and valleys. Gamzee sighs, like this is easy for them. Your beatpump is hammering.
Her palms smooth their throat, languid and purposeful, splaying flat along their chest. You watch a swallow pulse down Gamzee's neck, and they hum warily as she rubs back across their collar. Her fingertips drag across where the bones raise up against skin, and Gamzee shivers, and so do you. Her hands fit everywhere they go, polishing into shoulders, daring up the length of horns. She explores their acquiescence and soaks it all in towards some ticking evaluation. Something alien. Something you don't understand.
Your pump aches as much as it pounds. It's fucked up, but watching someone else touch them, watching them let her, brings your pity to an absolute froth.
Your moirail, your perfect fucking moirail. You're basically making them do this, you figure. It's your fault some alien-- who could never know the millennia of instinct burned into your pan, miles of primitive coding that tell you to secure and protect and keep, twisted up somehow in your aberrant genes into this weird, disgusting want-- put their mits all over them. Just so you can watch and feel like you shouldn't be, and then want to all the more. There's not a hint of resistance in them, even if you can see their rising pulse in their neck, the rapid searching of their gaze. They're so alert and so fuzzed up at the same time.
Rose's hands ghost once more over their throat, fingertips tracing their tendons all the way down to their thoracic limb girdle, over their shoulders, down their arms, working across the middle of their sensitive palms. Gamzee holds back some kind of noise, looking almost feverish. They don't look at you, not directly. Their eyes dance around you, holding intermittently on the symbol over your chest. “Karkat...”
Like broken from some kind of dream, you sit up, moving in close to crouch near them. The second they say so, you'll get her off of them and soothe them up, make them all yours again, letting them know it's okay. “Hey, I'm here. You alright?”
Gamzee swallows, shuts their eyes as Rose's fingers drift back up their neck and over their cheek. They nod. They can't explain like this, not as Rose reaches up to gently tease the base of one exquisite horn and holy shit, the look on their face. They make a clicking, rattling trill they should only make for you and crumble under her hand. Rose shushes them. You must be red to your ears.
It's almost more than you can stand not to touch them, which is somehow exactly why not touching them right now is so good. There's no part of their skin you can't slather your gross mutant palms all over, but now you get to watch them wanting for it and getting it from someone else. And here's Rose settling hands down flat on their bare stomach, just under the hem of their shirt, and hushing soothingly.
Your must be getting that glazed look again, but it's downright hypnotizing, the way she's rubbing your moirail's belly and how they purr in that mix of pacification and illicit thrill. Or maybe that's just you, the only one getting your weird pale rocks off to this. Maybe the energy in Gamzee's sounds is something else. Or maybe this isn't pale anymore, this thing that makes your palms sweaty to watch an alien getting all over what's damn rightfully yours, but you don't know any quadrant it belongs in. You'll hate yourself for it later.
“You can kiss their throat,” you suggest, your voiceprism barely cooperating with you. “They like that.”
Rose nods, a look on her face that's so sly and knowing, you feel it dig all the way down to your shameful little core. She's everything you're not, when she lowers down graceful and at ease to put her mouth, her nubby human teeth right over Gamzee's pulse. You haven't been looking at her enough, you think. She watches them in a slow, patient curiosity as she mouths down along their throat, rubbing their side with her palm through their shirt, pulling lips across their dark gray skin. Their reverberation lobes swell up in their chest with a silent breath, their pupils are tiny little lines in the deep purple of their eyes. A purple just a bit deeper and more wild than Lalonde's. The colors are absolutely fucking intoxicating in your head, a mix of some vivid lavender as far off the spectrum as your own candy-ass hemoswill.
Rose pecks down their neck, and she leaves a fucking wet spot where her pink human tongue had touched your moirail's skin. You shiver. This is too much for you.
She keeps kissing them, sometimes using her teeth in exploration, nearly scientific but not at all clinical. Gamzee's thorax jumps with soundless gasps and their eyes keep racing about the room, but slower, going a little glassy. She's getting them into something like but not exact the same kind of pacification you work them down into. You have trouble quantifying the difference, but it's there plain as day. It's close enough for their purely empirical research, you're sure.
Rose smooths both palms up over their chest, rubbing a gentle circle over the small mounds of Gamzee's rumblespheres, and they make another sound. Their purr hitches into weird hiccuping growl that hums miles away from the frequencies of agitation, and finally folds off into a mixed, spoken sigh. Rose's palms keep wandering while she sits away to consider them with benevolent, curious scrutiny, letting her palms drift along their chest, over their thighs.
“They look calm,” she notes, sounding entirely satisfied with herself in a way that makes your stomach flip. Of course she is. Gamzee is there on the pile dumb and limp with pacification, purring at a note that sings in your ears. “Should I leave them be?”
“No,” is all you say. “You're just getting them started.” Ugh, you shouldn't be giving her orders; until you realize, you're not. Not to her, anyway. Gamzee's eyes lock on yours for the first time and they're breathing quick, to match their heartbeat, and they look at you adoringly. Like you did something good without realizing. And that's when you figure out what you're doing here-- they're putting themselves under the hands and lips of an alien with the express purpose of being the instrument of your fucked up gratification, and they know that clear as day, and they like it. That's what's happening.
You have the most pathetic fucking moirail on the planet. The dumbest troll ever alive, to do something so dangerous for you, so helpless, so very, very Gamzee. You resist covering your face and groaning, through some miracle. You're going to need to talk about this with them. A lot. Later.
But for now, Rose massages gently along their collar and throat and they purr, giving a little shiver. Maybe they're not entirely altruistic, here, but their intentions are just unconventional, not impure. Not like yours. Holy fucking shit. You want to wrap them up and hide them away, just for a minute, to pretend like you can protect them from everything. They accept and they take and they lay there under it, sighing softly beneath her wandering palms smoothing over their ribs, her thumbs pulling over their iliac crests. You snap out of the hypnotized buzz it puts you in with just enough time to prevent drooling, or something else weird. But you blot your mouth on your sleeve anyway.
She's just nearly teasing the length of their horns and their fluffy curls by the time she's really done, and Gamzee is a clown puddle there on the pile. When she sits away her face is alight in a quiet, thoughtful smug, and her hands retreat to fold shut against her hips. Your hands go over, trembling not at fucking all, (a tiny bit,) to touch your moirail (finally.) You drag fingertips from their shoulder to their elbow; awake, but hardly lucid, Gamzee gives a smile and a hum that ends in a soft little honk.
You don't die of pale, just barely.
Rose must see the look in your eye, because soon she's moving from the corner of your vision, standing to gather her things from the chair. “Thank you for the opportunity, Karkat. This was quite enlightening.”
“Yeah,” you mutter out. You owe her more than that, but you guess if she wanted to take, she would ask. She's just like that, and you're sort of left in the wake of what she's just done and you don't mind. You're looking at Gamzee, and right now it's all you can do. You're only the smallest bit aware of her leaving through the door, locking it as she goes. And Gamzee is looking up at you, and there's a pile right here.
You get on top of them. They let you. You nuzzle down into them ferociously, all of your words stopped up on each other and that's fine, because you have time to kiss all over them like the hungry wreck that you are, feeling their sides, soothing them. When the dam finally breaks you tell them how good they are, how pathetic, how dangerous it is to just let people get all over you like that, you dumb clown, while getting as all over them as you can. And they're delirious with pale pleasure the whole way, and not for the first time that evening, you're grateful.