wintersday: (Default)
wintersday ([personal profile] wintersday) wrote2020-08-30 08:34 pm

Fic: Dog Stars

Title: Dog Stars
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: Jade/PM
Wordcount: 458
Rating: PG
POV: Second Person
Summary: A god and a messenger play a chasing game across the wilder reaches of space.
Notes: Takes place post-SBURB in a timeline where the ring was not destroyed. Beyond that, I don’t even know.



You were never meant to be more than a messenger, and in too many ways, you are not yet comfortable with being more than you were meant to, but there are parts of your new station that you wouldn’t trade for anything. With the ring on your finger, you can see the universe for what it is: a glittering cloth, one that folds and ripples, bending to the arc of your wings as you fly. The girl who races after doesn’t need a ring; her power isn’t borrowed, and the domain you visit is hers to dwell in. But this is a game, not a battle. There’s no object here but speed and joy, and so you dart between rings of ice-crusted debris and through the hearts of nebulae, chasing the tails of comets, unconcerned with the particularities of distance or scale.

She catches you. Of course she does. How could she not, when the same thing that makes you her equal in the chase makes you crave her hand in your fur, her voice calling you words like good and mine and friend?

You roll to face her, and she laughs and nips at the nape of your neck as you both go tumbling. Her scent is a strange medley of cosmic dust and dark garden soil and animal self, like a litter-mate would smell if you had been born the way that mammalian beasts are born, and though you hadn’t planned on abdicating the entirety of your dignity, you catch yourself licking her face. But before you can feel embarrassed by the lapse, she’s got her legs wrapped round your waist and her hands in your fur, scratching between your shoulders. Her fangs are visible when she grins; her own ears tilt forward with canine interest, and there’s a funny little lurch in the pit of your belly at the sight, part daring and part reverence, part something else. She is what she is, and you’re only a messenger, but it’s hard to be afraid in the face of a smile like that, and all of a sudden, you think you know exactly what she wants to hear. So you bury your fingers in her thick hair, paying special attention to the spot just behind her ears, and say the words that almost manage to encompass the warmth you feel at the sight of her.

“Good Jade. Best god.”

God or not, she shifts beneath your touch, suddenly bashful, and leans forward to lick the tip of your muzzle with her small, pink tongue. Her fur is coarse beneath your fingers, and when you run your other hand down her back to rest just above the base of her spine, you can feel her tail wagging.