Chapter Text
You are waiting for the elevator to come.
There are four of you standing in this dingy, disgusting, dismal lobby, and one of them just coughed, wetly, onto the back of your neck. The other two people are standing just out of range of your peripheral vision, and this bothers you even more than the drying sputum on your nape.
You tighten your grip on the bags you're carrying, mostly out of annoyance than an actual fear that some drifter's going to jump you in this misbegotten place. Rush hour traffic's been building outside, and you can hear the downtown rush rumbling. It would be stupid to go home now, when you had to take two buses to even get in this neighborhood.
The elevator still hasn't come, and you've been waiting for something like ten minutes, and the wallpaper is beginning to offend you on a deep and personal level. You entertain yourself with imagining how it would feel to put your fist through the rotten drywall. You would luxuriate in systematically ripping the orange and brown paper off of it. You can almost smell the plaster clouds, and the damp wood splintering underfoot.
And then you would grab the closest human, and you would crack its neck quickly, and suck it dry while the blood's still warm. It would be easy, really, just one bite into an artery, and all that pungent candy-red blood will practically jump into your mouth. And then you would crush the body towards you, until you've smashed all its bones and burst all the lovely little bags of fluid inside it, just drink everything down until--
You take a deep, shuddering breath that knocks you out of the bloodlust. The air smells faintly like urine, a grossly human smell that makes you gag and remember that people are unappetizing things. Disgusting, pink things that aren't food.
Another wet cough lands on you, and that's it, you're taking the stairs even though you found a dead cat there the other day. You hope that someone's taken it away since then.
---
Suddenly, you are standing by your recuperacoon, blinking the half-congealed sopor away from your eyelashes. You are sure that you were asleep half a second ago, but now, you're frozen, hand raised in some nearly forgotten culling stroke. There are sloppy chunks of green slime slowly sliding off your body, and you wipe them off impatiently, still drunk from the dream you were having.
There had been a hill, a human, hovering over it. You had been standing in an orchard at the foot of the hill, and the vines had been full of heavy gr8pes, that exploded in whole clusters. The human had been saying a word, the word was your name, your name was different, it's on the tip of your tongue. You bite it viciously, hoping that you'll remember what he said, but instead of his voice, there is a drumming, a beating, a hollow, hateful, horrid, heartache of a harmony and--
Oh, you'd forgotten that you were already awake. The drumming resolves into the familiar noise of some asshole knocking on the door of your hive. Oh, hell.
You go to the door, kicking a carton of instant noodles to the side. Your footsteps are gumming into the carpet, but you don't care about the slime mingling with the fibers, now that your hive's so shiny and clean.
"Hello," you say, leaning on the doorjamb stickily, "you're early, as fucking usual."
The other troll looks down at you, and sighs before pushing past, and picking her way into the food preparation block. She's holding groceries again, like you want her stupid, fucking Earth vegetables and meat.
"You would do well to wear some clothing." She is bent over your refrigerator, horns knocking absently into the freezer door handle as she evacuates bottle after bottle of beer and hot sauce. Her skirt, chocolate brown today, is gathered and tucked between her knees; probably to spare her hem the horror of your floor.
"I've just woken up, of course. Duh, Kanaya!" You hold the vowels out as long as you should, then stretch your arms out ostentatiously, thrusting your bare chest out at her direction, "I need my rest, after all!"
She ignores you in favor of putting a plastic box of some grassy thing into the bottom drawer of your refrigerator.
"Is that the karflafla again," you ask, pouting, "you know I don't like the green stuff. Why isn't more of Earth food blue, anyway?"
Kanaya continues stowing away the rest of the food, before standing up and dusting her hands off. Like your refrigerator was covered in some horrible disease or something! You would be offended but, eh, prissy bitch. You smile widely at her, hopeless half-human harmless horror that she is. "Wanna get right down to business?"
"Why don't you shower first?" Kanaya has the gall to look haughty, haha, as if she isn't slavering for it. Her eyes dart to your neck, your crotch, your wrists, before finally settling on some vague point above your hairline. "Before you turn into some kind of walking sopor blob."
"All right, miss priss." You toss your gel-logged hair over your shoulder, showing off your neck. Kanaya's lips tighten into a flat, green line, and you laugh, a deep, dark belly laugh that lasts all the way to your shower.
Tame, tame, tame!
---
Vriska's hive is the cleanest you've ever seen it. It's terrifying, especially the way the whole place smells aggressively lemony. You can't visualize the other troll wielding a soapy sponge, but you try, hoping that the image will push the hunger down into something manageable.
You settle for going to the spare respiteblock, like you always do. There is another scent underlying the cleanliness, and it smells male. You'll never have Terezi's precision in identifying smells, but being a predator has given you some kind of accuracy. You can tell it's male, a grassy, fresh thing mixed with the musky after-scent of a body spray.
It could be Tavros, if the troll could manage to pull himself away from Dave Strider's orbit to make it to Nevada. But you eliminate the possibility quickly; Tavros is still too angry, and terrified, and ashamed, to ever come within a foot of Vriska, let alone stay in the same city.
It could be another troll, a nameless boy apart from the six obvious suspects. It's been years since any of the twelve have come to Las Vegas, and just as many years since you've bothered to visit any of them. You wouldn't put it past Vriska to have found a new sycophant to pull into her gambling schemes, someone to play matesprit or kismesis with again. You file a brief, mental note to go around asking if she’s gotten anyone tangled in her business.
You push open the door to the room, shucking your shoes as you go. Something makes you stop, and it takes a breath to realize why. There is a bright-blue bedspread on the usually naked bed, an entirely wrong shade of blue for this hive.
Of course. John.
You pick up the fabric, and rip it off the mattress, nose filling with the co-mingled scents of Vriska and her human moirail. You wad it in your hands, trying to crumple it, rip it, and make it disappear, before giving up and tossing it into a corner. You’re angry that your nails have been filed down to be so useless, even though you did it yourself, so that you don’t ruin any of the costumes you make.
Why didn’t Rose tell you that he’d come? You’d just spoken to her yesterday, and she had to have known.
You take your clothes off, to force yourself to be calm. This is your new Vivienne Westwood blouse, and you aren’t going to rip it over this. You carefully wrap your Black Marghi in plastic, and tuck it into the bag you’ve brought for this purpose. Your skirt follows suit, bundled a little less carefully into the blue freezer bag, and the whole thing put in the opposite corner of the bedspread.
“Done with my shower.”
“So I’ve heard.” You turn to look at her, and there she is standing in the doorway.
Vriska is standing against the light, hair in a dripping wet pile over her shoulder. She’s wearing a thin, blue t-shirt and little else, “You haven’t fed in three days.” She comes right up to you, bare feet between your own. It's funny how much better she looks when she's like this, fresh and unmade-up, utterly artless, and perfect.
You up the ante, and crowd into her space. Her hips fit into your grip, and you can’t resist running your thumbs up the curve of her belly. You really ought to take your time with her today, work with everything you know about her. Prove that some people may come and go, but this will stay. You know her best; you know the sloppy little things about her that no one else could possibly know.
You let your tongue press heavily on her pulse, and enjoy the exact measure of her body pressed against your own. You are so pale for her that you would know this body if it were ripped apart on a killing field. You’d know her hair if it was scalped away from her head, and ground into the mud. You know her warp, her weft, the weight, and wobble of every inch of her.
She breathes into your chest, and twines her arms around you. “Do it already.”
----
You feel her press her lips to your skin, and quite quickly after that, the punch of her fangs into your neck. It’s always a shock, the first bite, but by the time Kanaya’s on her third or fourth, you’re usually so into it that you pail yourself at the end.
Your toes clench into the carpet as she taps the vein. The muscles in your neck are straining from the pain, but you had worse. It’s helpful, anyway, to not harm yourself anymore by jerking suddenly. You remember how it hurt, hellaciously, when she’d missed the vein in the inside of your thigh, back in the beginning. You close your eyes, and wait for the venom to work its science on your thinkpan.
Kanaya is loud in your ears. She always tries to be a neat eater, but even she can’t avoid the errant slurp here and there. One of her hands is kneading your ass, again and again, as the other one just pins you close to her. It’s always like this in the beginning: with you just standing there and letting her take it, arms pinned tightly to your sides until, oh, she’s pulled out.
She gives the wound a long lave with her tongue, working her saliva into the bite to seal the wounds. You enjoy the little green marks you get from her, when the color of her gets trapped under your skin. They only stay a week or so, and you always do enjoy seeing them in the mirror.
Your neck is pounding dully, in counterpoint to the slick pulse of your nook, like your bloodpusher’s relocated to somewhere other than your chest. You’re helpless: you cleave right up to her, rubbing your face into her bare breasts, breathing in the peppery scent of her expensive perfume, mixed with the slight sourness of her sweat. You would lick, but your mouth feels as though it’s stuffed with cotton; you want more of the venom in you, now, but she holds you by the arms, and away.
You look up at her in heavy, stupid confusion, “What’s wrong now, fussyfangs?”
“When was John here?”
You shake your head, trying to clear the haze hovering on the edges of your thoughts. “This couldn’t have waited until after?” You try to shrug her off, but she’s got you pinned, and you really aren’t trying that hard. “It’s not exactly a secret, you know! Kid had a long weekend, and wanted me to show him the sights.”
Kanaya dips downward, and suddenly you’re on your back, dumped unceremoniously on the bed. “I think I’ve had enough.”
She’s already turned away and started unpacking her clothes. You blink up at your ceiling, trying to get your breath back. You. Hate. Her. Horrible. Human. Hesitancy. You prop yourself up on your elbows, and tilt your head to the bedspread, huddled in the corner of the room. “Had enough, or heard enough?”
“I’m just not very hungry after all.”
“You’re being stupid again!” Not the best argument you’ve ever used, but your thighs are giving out on you, and to your humiliation, you can feel yourself move slickly against yourself. “You haven’t fed in days, and you know how you get when you haven’t gotten any.”
“Who says I haven’t fed?” She’s half-dressed already, and her skirt is heavy enough that the glow of her legs barely makes it through the fabric. “There are probably a million trolls in Las Vegas, and I do work with a few thousand of them.” She pulls her skirt up and slides her four-inch heels on like they’re nothing, and you find yourself transfixed by the fucking hand-span of her thigh that’s exposed, before she drops her skirt down again.
“Do you honestly think that I’ve spent the past eight years drinking from only one troll?”
You laugh, and say, “Because I know you, fussyfangs.”
Kanaya flinches like you’ve slapped her, and tries to mask the movement by pulling her blouse on. Your laughter dies in your throat, helpless against the look on her face. She seems genuinely stricken, and there isn’t anything you want to do more than hold her until she calms. So you grab control of your legs, and get off the bed, and pull her close.
She doesn’t fight you off, and she presses her cheek into your neck, and that’s how you know how deeply you’ve cut her. “You’re so fucking careless all the time, Vriska.”
“But you know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You didn’t mean anything pale by it, is what you’re saying.”
You shoosh her; the sound hot, and wrong, in your mouth. She all but melts into your arms, and you know you’re doing it again, breaking her heart like it isn’t anything important to you. But you can’t help the kindness you feel, because you’re so flushed for her that you can hardly breathe when she’s around. She’s so pathetic, that you want to gather her up forever, and keep her all to yourself.
You kiss her on the corners of her mouth, as pityingly as you can manage, asking her to let you in. Stupid, half-human, horrible, self-hating Kanaya. And she kisses you back, so deeply that you can taste yourself in her mouth. You lick into her, nicking your tongue on a fang, and the entire kiss is subsumed by the full flavor of your blood. She moans, into your mouth, and sucks on you until you both have to pull back, gasping.
You’re so dizzy that you can feel your blood pooling lower down. She pushes her knee between your legs, right up against your nook, and you nearly lose it right there, on her fucking leg. “Tell me you know me,” she chants again and again in your ear, slipping her hand under your shirt, blunt nails barely scratching your ribs and down your front, “Tell me you know me better than anyone.”