Rose Lalonde’s house was big and strange and empty. It reminded Kanaya of hives back on Alternia, which were typically provided with far more space than the occupant actually needed; but, unlike a troll, Rose had not spread out to fill the space available. Her respiteblock was in a top corner of the house, and that cold evening, as Kanaya advanced nervously up the shadowy driveway to the front door, it seemed almost like a small cottage on top of some snow-swept concrete mountain: the retreat of an unusually metropolitan hermit, one point of light and life in a dark and desolate landscape. Vriska’s hive had been vast – it had taken fully ten minutes to descend from her respiteblock to the feeding ledge – but she had always seemed comfortable in it, happy to wander its halls and roam its passageways. Rose did not appear comfortable in her house. She moved around it as though hoping not to be noticed, as though too much noise or activity might attract the attention of the real owners and cause them to return. For a girl who projected such sublime confidence in most of what she did – the way she spoke, the way she fought, even the way she ate, all poised and effortless like a dance – such behaviour seemed both a little funny and a little sad.

She’d done her best for Kanaya’s visit, of course. In the centre of the huge open-plan hall which took up much of the hive’s ground floor, just near the foot of the stairs, two couches had been pushed together in an L-shape, facing in towards a flat-screen television and a low wooden table. This latter bore an impressive array of small white porcelain bowls, plates, and dishes, each piled invitingly with Earth delicacies: small ovoid green and black fruits with cross-cut ends, richly-coloured vegetable pastes, and the flat crunchy potato scales that humans seemed to love so much. In the centre of the table stood a tall and elegant silver candelabrum, five sinuous branches each tipped with a slim white candle. The light from these seemed to form a visible dome of radiance in the gloom, making you feel you could stretch out a hand to pick it up, couches and table and television and all, and shake it like a snowglobe of flame.

It reminded Kanaya of Aradia’s favourite movie, How a Brilliant if Hot-Headed Archaeologist Sets Out To Explore An Ancient Building Complex of Uncertain Purpose; How Said Complex Turns Out to Have Been Designed for the Containment of an Unspeakable Evil; How Rivalry With His Attractive Fellow Researcher, Accentuated By Her Slightly Higher Position on the Hemospectrum, Initially Seems Likely to Develop Into Kismesis, but Becomes Flushed Once They Are Forced Into Alliance Against the Greater Threat; Three Minor Characters Are Instantaneously Mummified by Terrible Necrotic Energies; One Falls Into a Pit of Spikes; Two Complex Puzzles Involving Ancient Runes and Movable Stone Panels are Solved, One Against a Strict Time Limit. Just before the final showdown with the unspeakable evil, there was a very atmospheric scene in which the two leads, now the only living trolls in the building, had a heart-to-heart conversation at the expedition’s base camp – a circle of boxes and rope piles in one corner of a vast subterranean gallery. Kanaya had always thought it was the best scene in the film. Seated on an ammunition crate, surrounded by echoing and sinister blackness, Troll Daniel Craig and Troll Salma Hayek finally confessed their mutual change of quadrant, the flickering radiance of a single failing oil lamp turning their faces into shifting masks of green light and grey shadow as they talked. The island of dancing warmth in the centre of Rose’s dark and silent hive looked just as intimate, and just as fragile. Kanaya’s chest felt tight and empty, and she didn’t know why.

They took a couch each, by wordless consensus. Rose fiddled with some equipment below the television and, after a couple of soft curses, convinced a film to play while they ate. (‘All human technology shares the fundamental principle that correct functionality can only be ensured via the shrewd application of sotto voce profanity, Kanaya. Some days my computer won’t even start without three quiet fucks and a whispered damnation.’) The title meant nothing to Kanaya, and stayed in her head for less than a minute; Earth movie titles were so vague and hard to remember. It was all shot in black and white, which was apparently a technical limitation rather than a comical error, and involved a man who owned some sort of entertainment venue and was very cynical, until a woman for whom he’d clearly been heavily flushed turned up with her matesprit, only they were wanted by the authorities. There was a very dramatic sequence where everyone sang a forbidden song which caused the entertainment venue to be terminated, and at the end the cynical man and another man apparently developed pale feelings for each other and went off together. It was all sort of confusing, and several times Rose was forced to pause the disc and make trenchant observations about the socio-political context which didn’t help as much as she evidently thought they would, but as the movie ran Kanaya found she was enjoying being confused. Human relationships were so refreshingly nebulous. Free from the pressures of romantic destiny, the characters seemed to drift through a fog-bank of unacknowledged tensions and unspoken attractions, operating in a kind of quantum state of emotional complication where to observe a feeling was to alter its value. There was no drive to clarify or to make explicit. It was bizarre, no doubt, but weirdly seductive too. By the time the end credits rolled Kanaya realised she’d eaten an entire bowl of the salty little green fruits without noticing.

In the kitchen they made cocktails. Didn’t actually drink them; just took a ceremonial sip each from the brimming glass, like some secret blood ritual, and then put it on one side while Rose recorded its constituent elements in neat purple pen on a narrow-lined pad headed THE DRY MANHATTAN PROJECT. The first couple were disastrous - violent collisions of flavour, sweet forced into compromising positions with bitter or sour. Each received a small purple cross in the margin. The third was interesting, but even the tiniest taste made Kanaya’s eyes water, and Rose said thoughtfully that they’d overdone the vermouth. They huddled in the candlespill like alchemists in a garret, heads close together, backs to the looming shadows, a single martini glass on the marble counter surrounded by a ragged semi-circle of bottles – cylinders, towers, and flat oblongs full of jewelled colour that sparkled in the light. The shared joy of experimentation burned between them like gravity.

The fourth cocktail was a success. It came out a deep pinky-purple colour, translucent and slightly misty: sloe gin, cranberry juice, and smaller quantities of nearly half a dozen other drinks dribbled in with preposterous caution. For the crème de cassis they’d had to fetch a pipette. Rose stirred it solemnly with a glass rod, took it in both hands, and gave it to Kanaya like a chalice.

What’s the verdict, Dr Maryam?

Have we created... life?

I Dont Know About Life

But We Certainly Appear To Have Created A Delicious Fruit Based Beverage

Try Some

She held out the glass two-handed. Rose, rather than moving to take it, bent her head forward to sip from its edge. Kanaya tilted it fractionally to let some trickle into her mouth, feeling something small and strange go off in her stomach as she watched the other girl’s top lip break the surface with a tiny ripple.

Rose straightened up looking a little distant, licked her lips carefully, and nodded.

Mmm.

Yes, that definitely warrants a tick in the margin.

Fruity, slightly perfumed, but still sharp enough to be interesting.

Kanaya, we have achieved cocktail.

What Is The Appropriate Next Step After A Discovery Of This Magnitude

Interesting question. I’m not sure.

I think there’s some sort of central regulatory authority that has to be notified.

Patents to be applied for, and suchlike.

And obviously we’ll need to write it up for the relevant journals before we stand any chance of nomination for a Nobel.

But first of all we need to give it a name.

You Mean Like The Name Of A Person Or Beloved Pet

Something a little more evocative, ideally. No-one wants to walk into a high-class Venetian cocktail bar and order a Steve.

Or, for that matter, a Fido.

Euphemisms for sexual intercourse have traditionally supplied a rich seam of inspiration, but we may set our eyes on higher things, I think.

A good cocktail name should convey glamour, elegance, and a sense of mystery.

In That Case

Perhaps We Should Call It A Rose

The other girl shot her a quick look, and then smiled.

I’m very flattered, Kanaya.

But it doesn’t seem fair for me to claim all the credit.

How about a Mary Rose?

That Sounds

Appropriately Evocative

Doesn’t it?

I’d order one.

Mary Rose it is. I’ll get on the ‘phone to our legal team first thing tomorrow.

They returned to their stronghold, Rose leading with the candelabrum held high like Troll Daniel Craig’s flaming torch. The new-gained Holy Grail stood in the centre of the table, reminding them of their achievement as they sat on the sofa – the same sofa, this time, somehow – and talked in endless meandering circles about nothing of consequence. It wasn’t the kind of conversation in which one traded facts, or compared opinions; but nor was it the pointless small talk one spoons out like putty to fill awkward spaces and fend off the silence a little longer. It was a silly, tilting, idle conversation, like a board game played between two friends who have no interest in the outcome and are moving the pieces just to watch the patterns change and hear the soft clicks of wood on ivory. It went much, much too well. Kanaya started throwing away moves, avoiding obvious routes, blundering into equally obvious dead ends, driven by a sudden perverse and desperate desire to fail – to be forced to give up and admit defeat, to leave the game in disgrace; but somehow Rose always found a way to soak up the damage, to loop gracefully round and dismantle her own traps, so that the pieces stayed in play and the outcome in doubt. Music was playing, a woman’s voice singing low and clear and smoky. Kanaya focused on the candles as much as she could, so she wouldn’t have to watch the way Rose’s fingers pushed the pale hair back behind one ear, the way her mouth quirked to the side when she made some self-deprecating remark.

A new song began and Rose broke off in mid-sentence, smiled, and slid neatly off the couch.

Dance with me, Kanaya.

The troll girl stood up nervously.

Rose I Am Reluctant To Quench Your Chaotic Urban Procession With The Cloud Juice Of My Inadequacies

But Dancing Is Not A Typical Alternian Pursuit

I Dont Really Know How

Oh, don’t worry.

My ballroom qualifications are rudimentary at best.

A lifetime of exposure to the ‘ill jams’ and ‘unmannerly flow’ of Mr David ‘This Beat Be Sick Yo’ Strider has rendered me no fit companion for Terpsichore.

I’m not going to drag you into some elaborate formal gavotte.

Come here.

Before Kanaya could protest, Rose had locked up one hand in a firm clasp, stepped in close, and snaked the other arm around her waist. As her mind flailed for purchase, Rose’s head somehow found its way onto her shoulder, so that Kanaya was practically breathing in her hair. There was nothing left for Kanaya’s spare arm to do but stick out horizontally or fold across just below the straps of Rose’s black dress. The latter seemed the only dignified option.

They stood like that, clinging together like victims of a tragedy, pooled in candle-light, swaying almost imperceptibly to the slow beat of the song.

God knows, God knows the direction

We’re heading in tonight

God knows, God knows that when we’re gone

They’ll paint our shadows white

God knows, God knows most wars are lost

Before they even start

God knows, God knows you’ll count the cost

With blood or with your heart

Uh

I Must Admit I Had Formed The Impression That When Humans Referred To Dancing

They Had In Mind Something A Little More

Well

Rhythmic

She saw the rake’s teeth jutting up from the grass, but not fast enough to change course. Rose raised her head slowly, oh so slowly, to look straight into Kanaya’s eyes, and the gleam in her own was so fierce and so hot that Kanaya felt herself flare up and wither and crumble to dust, like human rainbow drinkers apparently did, at least according to the Earth programme with the pretty red-haired witch that she hadn’t dared tell Karkat she’d started watching.

Kanaya.

You’re going to make me blush.

The pain was finally enough to lift the fog of body heat and subtle perfume for a second, a second’s dreadful clarity in which she saw what she had to do. Disengaging herself gently from Rose’s hold, she went over and sat back on the edge of the sofa, knees together, hands in her lap. The other girl followed, a little cautious, and sat down facing her.

Rose

I Have Had A Lovely Evening

And Now I Am Very Sorry But I Think I Am Going To Ruin Everything

Well, it’s extremely considerate of you to provide advance warning.

I can’t abide an ill-mannered cataclysm.

Before you begin to rain down destruction, should I take steps to safeguard the structural integrity of the building?

Corral my livestock? Call my children indoors?

Or just climb under the dining-room table and pray to be spared?

No The Damage Will Be Highly Localised

To Be Honest Its Effects Will Probably Not Be Felt Far Beyond The Confines Of This Upholstered Comfort Unit

Your Fictitious Offspring And Presumably Equally Nonexistent Milkbeasts May Continue To Frolic Unmolested

Then I shall adjust my dress, sit up straight, and depend on the allegedly infinite mercy of a God in whom I have never believed.

Perhaps He won’t hold a grudge.

Do your worst.

The violet eyes were as dark and teasing as ever. Kanaya marshalled what forces she had left, dug up a word, stuck it next to another word, made her way grimly down the line like a bricklayer working it out from first principles.

Well

You See

It Is Like This

Go on. Don’t choke now. You knew it had to come out.

You Seem To Be Engaging In A Systematic Campaign Of Ambiguous Behaviour

Designed To Obfuscate The True Nature Of The Emotional Connection Between Us

Ah.

Yes.

I keep forgetting your language doesn’t have a word for that.

I Should Stress At This Juncture That I Am Now Generally Quite Comfortable With The Conceit Of Wholehearted Commitment To A Scenario Which Is Demonstrably Untrue

I Have Grown To Understand This Strange Emotion Called Irony

But In This Case I Cannot Bring Myself To Participate

I Suppose I Had Hoped That The Simulation Of Flushed Feelings Might Somehow Prove To Be Taboo

A Line Which Even Human Insincerity Would Not Cross

I Realise Now This Was Naive

And That There Is No Emotional Configuration So Agonisingly Painful That Earth Humour Will Not Mine It For The Precious Gems Of Hilarity It May Contain

Something dripped onto Kanaya’s hands where they lay tightly folded in the lap of her skirt. As she watched the pale green trickle down into the declivity between forefinger and thumb she realised, with the vague, stunned concern of a disaster victim, that she was crying. She looked up and straight at Rose, baring her stained face to the firelight like stigmata. The eyes were deep and huge and sad.

Kanaya.

What makes you so sure I’m not being serious?

I Talked To Karkat

He Told Me About Humans

An eyebrow flexed in elegant disbelief.

The notion of Karkat making declarative statements is always a disturbing one, but when the subject is ‘humans’, one shudders to imagine the predicate.

Go on.

Well

I Explained About You

About How Nice You Were

Nice May Not Have Been The Exact Word I Chose But It Scarcely Matters

And He Just Laughed

He Said

DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP, KANAYA.

HUMANS ARE NOT HOMOSEXUAL.

Instantly she knew she’d said something that would not, could not, be forgiven. Rose’s face went solid, immobile, like a sudden frost. Her eyes took on a weird, far-away look, as though she were trying to pretend that she was the only person in the room. Kanaya felt the cracks craze and split her heart: knew that in another moment it would burst, and then she might be dead, or she might be alive, but it wouldn’t really matter any more. She had to finish it. She had to say it all. Then she could cut power to her limbs and let gravity do whatever it damn well wanted.

So I Asked Him What That Meant

And He Said That Humans Arent Interested

Romantically

In People Of The Same Gender

And Therefore I Am Forced To Conclude That Your Behaviour This Evening Is Not To Be Taken As The Expression Of Flushed Interest It Cleverly Simulates

Rose was a statue, a marble image of a girl on some monument abandoned to time and ivy, bleak and pure and impossibly lovely. After several seconds of absolute and perfect silence, she breathed out. It took a long time.

When I lay my lily-white hands on Karkat Vantas.

I am going to subject him to torments of such exquisite cruelty, such precisely-calibrated and richly-deserved agony, that even on Alternia the name of Lalonde will be spoken with a shiver of fear.

Um

What

Kanaya, listen.

I am, in many ways, a horrible, horrible person.

I am reckless, proud, secretive, repressed, unduly flippant, and so confident of my own intellectual superiority that I make Dave Strider look like Saint Francis of Assisi.

No easy feat, I can assure you.

Rose

Wait

She had been prepared for mockery; for delicate disappointment; for a tilt of the head and a change of the subject. Not for this. Never for this. Rose was kneeling up on the couch, and there was something in her eyes, in the bones of her perfect face, that Kanaya had never seen before. A stone had come loose, and this was an avalanche, and there was no running from it.

If I had even a scrap of decency, a shred of altruism, in my pale and wretched frame I would tell you to run, to get away from this miserable accursed house and its callous little chatelaine.

I am a danger to everyone and everything I touch.

I don’t deserve you.

I could never, in a thousand lifetimes, deserve you.

But God help me I still want to try.

Rose My Much-Taxed Bewildermeter Has Just Exploded

It Simply Cannot Take This Much Bewilderment

Have I Misread Things Catastrophically

Has This Whole Evening In Fact Been An Attempt At Pale Solicitation

Kanaya, our earlier triumph of nomenclature notwithstanding, I don’t think there’s a name for what this evening has been.

Although honesty compels me to admit that a Pale Solicitation would be a wonderful name for a cocktail.

You’ve stumbled into the classic error of assuming strategy where no strategy exists.

Do you really think me some teenaged Julius Caesar of seduction?

Deploying olive-bowls and Humphrey Bogart to fence you in a blind quadrant so I can rake you with sustained fire?

This isn’t tactics, it’s ineptitude.

I’m not being opaque because I find it entertaining.

I’m being opaque because I’m no damn use at being anything else.

A skill-set based around matching wits with omniscient pranksters and bluffing cosmic horrors with no cards in one’s hand does nothing to promote spontaneity.

If I told John I envied him his way with words, he’d laugh himself sick, but all my polysyllables are ash and vapour before his one great gift:

He can come out and say things.

I can’t.

I’ve built so many walls I had no option but to call you to the labyrinth,

lure you inside, and trust you to bring us both out alive.

Very slowly, as if expecting to have her fingers bitten off, the other girl extended a hand. She drew her thumb across Kanaya’s damp cheek with infinite care, then ferried it back to her own mouth and pressed it gently to her lips.

I want to get lost in the rain with you, Kanaya.

I want to start off kissing the hollow where your neck meets your jawline and then work downwards.

I want to hide under a blanket with you and feed you pieces of croissant.

I want you to keep me warm.

She moved then, and Kanaya moved to meet her, and somehow their mouths were crushed blindly together and her hands were gripping Kanaya’s shoulders like they were too afraid to let go, and everything tasted of salt and hunger and crème de cassis. It was a shipwreck of a kiss: clutching limbs, wet skin, and the triumphant crash of the ocean.

When they pulled apart, more out of an astonished need for air than anything else, Rose’s face was smeared with streaks of green and her eyes were dancing.

I Am Suddenly Extremely Happy

Can We Do That Again Please

Dr Maryam.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Carry me upstairs?