Pillow Talk [The Carnival]

[Roza Vas]

Roza didn't care what he mother said as they came home late from the party nearly freezing to death.  She ignored the offers of tea and warmth by the fire and instead kept Esper at her side as she entered her sleeping section.  The house wasn't big, and everyone shared rooms, but they were sectioned off with hanging blankets and wooden panels for some semblance of privacy.  Esper had her own space and they had often shared space as young girls, now it was different.  Her mother understood the relationship had changed.  Long before Esper and Roza had figured it out themselves.  

Roza kicked off her shoes but that was the extent of her disrobing for the moment, her teeth were chattering and she pulled Esper down into the large comforter that covered her small bed.  "It'll be warmer together."

Roza had every intention of talking to Esper but as they lay together huddled under the blankets she was safe and warm and drifted off to sleep.  And when the sun streamed through the open windows Roza smiled having Esper by her side.  She leaned over and kissed her friend softly to wake her.  "When you are ready we need to talk about last night, and the question you asked me."

[Esper]

Esper was pliable, awash in the aftermath of the party’s experiences, and very very cold. She only removed the white contacts and sharpened teeth before she crawled in beside Roza. Her icy limbs curled tight, and bundled under blankets and rapidly warming flesh, she did not fight sleep.

Morning woke her gently, and for a moment Esper showed no indication of movement despite the soft stirring of Roza’s lips. For actually, she would rather not speak at all, preferring the quieter connection of the other girl’s heartbeat and how close they were laying. But, predictably, talk of promises earned her attention. She shifted lazily, and upturned her eyes. The fiery wig had long since fallen from her skull in the night, her bone-bleached hair slicked smooth underneath. Most of the prosthetics remained on them both, and she reached to run her nail against some of the scales clinging beneath Roza’s collarbone.

“Do you have an answer?” she asked, hopeful for so simple a conclusion, though she imagined there would be more in the way of bargaining first.

[Roza Vas]

The fingernail along the scales made Roza's insides squirm. There were things she wanted to do with Esper that they'd yet to do. Her mother was always watching. And there was never alone time when they were out doing other things. And it was definitely something she didn't want to share with anyone other than Esper.

But she gave her friend a slight smile. "Not yet. I wanted to explain and understand the reason for such a promise." She leaned across the gap between them and pressed a soft kiss again. It was too tempting not to when they were huddled so close together.

"My mother will not stop until there is a new clan member, preferably of new blood." Roza scoffed at the boys in the village. After Luka she had given up on Romani boys, they were all scum who left her for no good reason. "I don't want a baby. I want you." Roza's placed her hand on Esper's hip and trailed down as far as she could reach along her side. Her eyes following her fingers along Esper's body as she spoke. "Mother can have the child." Her eyes met with Esper's. "And then I can have you."

[Esper]

There was an echo chamber between them, and each small kiss was all the more intoxicating because of it. Inside Roza existed the haven which had brought Esper to the first place she considered home, and it had kept her with the carnival all these years even when distractions twisted her attention elsewhere. The trail of touch blossomed heat in Esper because it blossomed heat in Roza. It was a quieter and more personal desire than the basement at the party. There wasn’t an audience now. The moments were stolen, and Esper was greedy for them.

Mostly she accepted rules. If Roza set a boundary, Esper respected it because she craved Roza’s love and attention. But she didn’t understand them a lot of the time. Romani ways were utterly alien to her, for all that she had spent most of her life among them. When they were younger she had kept the boys away whenever they outstayed their welcome, not caring if the breakups hurt, because Roza’s tears were sweet and Esper was always there to soothe that pain away.

She shifted her hip under the touch, curled her leg to tangle with Roza’s, wriggling herself closer. “It will grow inside you, and I will feel it there, feeding on you. You will love it more than me,” she said. There was a solemn and intense insistence to the way she said it.

[Roza Vas]

Roza's body was tingling with sensation with Esper so close. As a child they had slept together and it was never as exhilarating as this. And she'd been with others, but they never felt like this -- not even when Roza believed she was in love. Esper could have forced those feelings on her, she could have made her loved the other woman anytime she wanted, but Esper never did -- never did wth Roza anyway, Roza did not doubt this was all her and her alone. And she wanted more than anything to give Esper everything. But there was always family. Family was everything and Esper was everything. The two often collided in ways Roza hated. This was one such way.

Roza unfurled her arms and took Esper's face between her palms and pressed a hard loving and desire filed kiss to her lips. One that if her mother caught her might send her to the dish washing for till month's end. When she pulled away breathless from the kiss Roza whispered softly between them "I will never love anything more than I love you. I promise."

A promise was a binding law to Esper. To break it, Roza knew the consequences would be dire. There was no coming back from a promise with Esper. She'd seen the end result. Usually made in a game by a mark, but still a promise was a promise.

Roza pulled back further so she could meet Esper's eyes. "If you want me to make the promise you asked of me last night, we cannot stay here. We have to leave. My mother will not allow it and I don't want her to send you away without me. And you know she will. Other Romani will come and she will marry you off regardless of what you want to some man you've never met who probably stinks and has no teeth and is too old to keep it up for long, and has no children yet. You will be alone and I would be alone. And I can't bear to be without you."

[Esper]

The kiss left her breathless, and utterly fallen at the altar of divine worship. It tasted of so much want and need and conflict. If Esper was an empty vessel, it filled her right up until she thought she would burst with it. Her eyes were blown wide as the promise rooted down in her soul, and she would have slipped closer into the embrace, drowned in it, if Roza had not shifted to meet her gaze instead.

The words were slow to permeate, more inclined as she was to mesmerise on the peaks and falls of cadence. Such desperation and devotion and defiance. Her hazel eyes were large and solemn, and even though she could peripherally feel all the other Vas’s in their various states of slumber, it registered as something distant. Enthralled so, it was like her body forgot the mechanisms of being human: she barely blinked.

“I would kill him,” she breathed. Esper never lied. It was not uttered with conviction but quiet certainty, more like an afterthought. The priests of the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore had underestimated her, once, and she’d had nothing to fight for then but her own whims. No one was taking Roza away. And Esper would make no differentiation between the people Roza actually loved should they try the same thing, unless Roza specified directly. Not now the promise placed Esper above them. Promises were dangerous like that. They were permission.

“Sámiel might help us leave. Ezekiel would. Or I could make them,” she said. Her fingers roamed softly. It wasn't meant to be a distraction; it wasn't manipulation or seduction or any of the games they played with others to get what they wanted. Her leg tangled closer. She felt the heat of every moment where skin touched skin.

Esper was not afraid of another life. But Roza had never known anything else, and the fabric of her world was built around the values of family. In truth, Esper thought Roza’s distress would be as sweet to her as the way she felt right now, bright with tingling warmth and desire, but Esper possessed a formality when it came to exchanges. It was all give and take, until an agreement was found. “But I want what you want, vita mia. Choose our path and I will follow.”

[Roza Vas]

The closeness was tantalizing their bodies mingling closer together, far closer than Roza dared before, her finger slid down Esper's side over the dress of the previous night to find skin of her bestfriends thigh. She wanted more, leaned in and breathed the same air as Esper and teased her lips with a kiss. "Then we leave. I will make the promise, for you. And only you. No child will come between us, this I promise." Roza didn't wait for the shiver to run through Esper's body as the words took hold in her. She closed the distance between their bodies and snaked her tongue into the other woman's mouth deepening their kiss.

If she was going to throw her life that she knew away, she was going to do it with grandoise style. Her mother would disown her. The Carnival would no longer be home. Wasn't that how other Romani branches started. Zeke would help, he was no longer part of the clan. He'd understand. But with Esper's lips against hers and Roza's fingers finding warm places to tease she forgot about the rest of the days problems. Right now, this moment was all that mattered. She was going to finally make love to her best friend something that they skirted around as young girls, and then relaized as a young women play the parts. This was real not a game. Her heart had always belonged to Esper.