This is just a oneshot to get me back into writing, and also to ease myself into Homestuck fiction - never written it before. Sorry for any and all spelling errors - the keys on the DS keyboard are REALLY small.

DISCLAIMER: Kanaya and Rose and other random mentioned characters - Hussie (which incidentally is also my religion btw)

WARNING: CONTAINS PROFANITY AND IMPLIED SEXY TIEMS.

There was something daunting about seeing all those cardboard boxes in their livingroom.

Maybe it was the fact that they contained 15 months of posessions. Maybe it was the nostalgia of moving. It might have even been the near-emptiness of the house.

Or, maybe, it was simply the feeling of letting go.

Boxes meant change.

The TV was playing nothing but infomercials (H20 Vac - Clean With The Power Of Steam!) and had since transformed into a low, irritating buzz in the front of Rose's brain. Groaning, she slumped onto her back, dropping the remote to a cushion on the floor and propping her head against the armrest. The window across the room was wide open, allowing the fresh early-Spring breezes to flow through - Kanaya's doing, because Rose was content to sit in a stuffy, dirty room for hours on end. The jade-eyed troll had once discovered her in such a situation, when a game called Skyrim had arrived in their mailbox and Rose had absconded to the study for three days straight. Kanaya had been devastated after finally kicking the door in, crying out in horror whilst Rose stared boredly from the couch-bed. She remembered being manhandled into the shower, with the words "I will not have my housemate living in squalor!" coming from the window above the bathroom door as the alien girl cleaned beyond it.
Cherry blossom petals from the tree in the yard danced in the eddies of wind around the sill, before catching the mainstream and floating lazily around the roof.
As one managed to fall out of the breeze, it rocked slowly to earth, landing on the grumpy blonde girl's nose. She opened her eyes, staring up at the swirling petals and the ceiling.

The ceiling she would never see again.

A flood of memories choked her brain then, and Rose shut her eyes once more, thinking back to the day the actual painting of the space above her head had occured - last Fall, just before Winter began. The house had originally been lent to Rose and Kanaya for a few months at 65/m, which ended up being a much longer time than that for next to nothing.

Because, frankly, the place had been a debt-stacking dump.

It wasn't in a nice location; crime was frequent. Rose's job as a photographer for a modelling agency had required her travelling to a different place every day, and the nearest train station was 13 blocks away. Kanaya, who had been a model for the same agency, was called in far less often than Rose. She had a car pool, but was nonetheless inconvenienced by the distance between their address and the city. The girls had only accepted it in the first place because it was cheap, and came with free cable TV.
When they had first moved in, paint had been peeling everywhere, there was no hot water, and the whole flat smelled suspiciously of vaccuum cleaners, Sharpie pens, and weed. Rose still remembered walking in and getting hit in the face with the stink bat. Kanaya had just sighed, rolled up her sleeves, and opened all the windows. Back then, she was simply a friend and future roommate. Rose couldn't help but grin at the nostalgia; at the time before they were together, when they were both in love, but too haughty to admit it. She fondly recalled many totally amazing Kodak moments such as finding porn magazines hidden under the kitchen sink, half a broom crammed up the chimney and, to Kanaya's horror, a bucket in the hallway closet. Rose had promptly chucked it out the nearest window, shooshing and papping the shit out of her shaken-up friend in what Kanaya would later describe as "a very touching gesture that kept me from panicking".

It was only after 2 straight days of cleaning (and tinkering with the plumbing) and 2 nights of sleeping on the lumpy old couch-bed when, during a coffee break in the loungeroom, Kanaya looked up at the ceiling and said "We really ought to paint that." Rose had been picking threads out of her jeans, stopping upon hearing the troll's statement. The blonde followed deep green eyes up to the ratty, peach-coloured roof, its paint peeling horribly. "What colour?" she had asked, returning to her jeans. Kanaya hummed, thinking, tapping a long, elegant finger against the paint-smudged knee of her housework overalls. "Gray," she said, nodding to herself. Rose had agreed without thinking, and so a few hours later, the roof had been scraped clean of old crusty paint (which left a nice fucking cover of said crusty paint all over the room, but Kanaya had thought to drape plastic tarps over everything beforehand - damn you Kanaya, why do you have to be smarter than me) and was ready to be coloured anew. Rose had been mothered into wearing a giant t-shirt over her housework clothes, and wielding a paintroller the length of a car, considered herself to be armed and dangerous - boring ceilings beware. She told this to Kanaya (of whom only the right side could be seen as she was facing a different direction) in her best Terminator voice. The jade-blooded troll had snorted as she mixed the big (plastic) tub of paint, muttering "Ai will be bock," under her breath. Rose distinctly remembered watching Kanaya work - staring openly at the tiny, adorable frown of concentration as she worked the object in her hands. Long eyelashes fluttering on her cheeks each time she blinked. The curved point of her nose; her full, pursed lips over her fangs- she was wearing black lipstick that day. The gradient orange-yellow horn, bright like the sunset; rounded at its tip, the other's arrow-point just visible on the other side of her head. Jet black hair, short and feathery, curling delicately around her jaw. From there, Rose's eyes ran over the pale, soft-glowing skin of Kanaya's throat, and stayed there up until the low, pleasant chuckling of the subject brought her back to reality.

"Whilst the staring flatters me, the ceiling requires attention first," she had said smoothly, never taking her eyes off her hands.

Face burning, Rose had disowned any such staring that may or may not have even occured, drowning her paintroller in the tub of gray sludge and pushing it all over the roof above her. Kanaya continued to laugh, only increasing in volume when the ceiling had dripped and Rose got splattered with paint. Her roommate's laughter irritated the blonde, which lead to retaliation, which resulted in a paint fight. In the end, the roof was completed, and the girls had unanimously and spontaneously decided to paint the walls black, seeing as it was the only colour they had left dark enough to remove the evidence of their Dulux-warfare.

Her nose began to tingle, threatening tears, though Rose wasn't quite sure why. They hated this house - it was ratty and old.
So why didn't she want to leave it?

The petals in the air had long since settled all over the couch and floor. Rose shook her head, rubbing the heels of her palms into her eyes and chasing the beginnings of sorrow away. Images of the past still swam behind her closed eyelids.
"Kanaaaaaaaaya~" she drawled out, hauling herself upright and folding her legs indian-style. The study door creaked open, and the beautiful troll poked her head out. One eyebrow was raised in question, and Rose took a moment to inspect Kanaya's face before grumbling "Are you done with whatever it is you're doing yet?"
Kanaya murmered an "Almost". Rose sulked. "If I have to listen to another three hours of this douchebag -" she pointed at the man holding a mop on the TV, "- telling me how fantastic his H2O Bullshit-O-Matic is, I'm going to break something. It was amusing in the ironic sense at first, but now it's just repetitive and boring."
The black-haired woman sighed, coming out of the study at last. The door swung shut as she went, and Rose watched her pace around behind the couch, rotating her wrists slowly, as if she had been using them for a while. Kanaya looked stressed, Rose noted, and so the lilac-eyed girl heaved herself off the sofa, approaching her matesprit from behind and wrapping her arms around her waist. "Worried about the move?" she guessed, kissing up Kanaya's neck. The taller of the two made a thoughtful humming sound, turning around and wrapping long, slender arms around her.
For a while, they stayed like that, embracing on the loungeroom carpet - Rose's head tucked into Kanaya's neck, the daywalker's hands threading gently through soft blonde hair. "Hey..." Rose began quietly, feeling her girlfriend's questioning "Mmmm?" resound through her chest before continuing.
"Remember when we painted the ceiling?"
A sudden burst of laughter from Kanaya almost shocked Rose, who joined in after the initial surprise.
"I do remember, yes."
Lilac eyes glittered with warmth, their owner pressing ever-closer to the troll woman. "For some inane reason, that is one of my fondest memories of this place," she said.
Kanaya pointed to a part above them with the words "K. M + R. L" barely visible, something the jade-blooded girl had done with her finger the day they painted. Rose gazed up at it, remembering the pleased flush that had graced Kanaya's delicate features that day.
The two moved to the sofa then, snuggling up contentedly and sharing past stories, laughing at the idiotic things they'd gone through in the past year or so.

And then suddenly it was Sunday, and the movers were loading the last few items of furniture onto the truck. Rose stood in the garden amongst the flowers that shared her namesake, watching the way the jasmine bushes swayed in the wind beneath the loungeroom window. She saw the sky reflected on the glass, clouds sparse and wispy. Kanaya locked the front door behind her for the last time, handing the key to the landlord, who promptly got in his car and drove off. The moving van soon followed, headed to the girls' new place in a much better part of town.
They stood on the grass for a long time, neither saying anything. Rose found it hard to think.

She hated this house, so why didn't she want to leave?

Her eyes caught the mail flap on the door: 'Maryam - Lalonde'. John had bought it for them as a housewarming gift way back when. Kanaya had been delighted; insisting, stubbornly, over the ornate lettering, but secretly over the fact that her surname was beside Rose's. Flighty broad. Rose was proud of her.
The blonde teased Kanaya about the mail flap endlessly when she found out why she liked it so much. Rose still recalled the look on her face then - flushed and embarrassed, hiding behind a pillow on the sofa.

The tears began without her noticing; the first falling silently to the earth below, sparkling in the midday sunlight.

The memories continued.

One night, 4 months into their new place, they'd had a party for Vriska, Kanaya's moirail and best friend. Only those closest to them had been invited; Dave, Jade, John, and Terezi. Vriska liked keeping things simple.
Surprisingly, no one felt up to drinking that night, and so they'd gone to the 7-11 on the corner to buy snacks, come home, and played Trivial Pursuit for hours. Every time someone got a question wrong, they were pelted with pretzels. John had crammed 21 marshmallows into his mouth, and 3 up his nose. Rose remembered laughing till she was wheezing like an old man when Vriska made Dave sing My Little Pony songs - she absently wondered if the recording of that still existed.

Above the door hung a small wooden sign, with a whole bunch of Latin words carved into it. It had been there since they'd moved in. Rose still didn't know what it said, she realized, and now she never would.

Kanaya's finger brushed her cheek softly, collecting the tears she hadn't realized had been freely falling. The memories this house held of Kanaya herself surfaced then.

Rose coming down with the flu, and Kanaya taking time off work to look after her.
Kanaya having human idioms and sayings explained to her, and looking very confused.
Rose asking to learn Alternian, and Kanaya staying up all night teaching her.
Kissing for the first time - on the hallway rug beside the stairs, searching for more candles during a power-out.
Kanaya crying out in ecstasy, her head tilting back and her body arching off the bed, moaning out the blonde's name in a language that rolled deliciously from her tongue; so foreign to Rose's ears.

She didn't want to leave.

Kanaya still wasn't saying anything. She laced her fingers with Rose's, staring sadly up the drive, lost in her own thoughts.

This house had been a shell when they moved in; an unloved, neglected wooden box on an overgrown scrap of grass. Perhaps it had once belonged to a loving family, who had filled it with their own furniture and laughter and noise long ago. But their joy left with them, and it had shown in the sad, dirty property they had bought over a year ago.

The house looked different now, but had it ever really changed?

"It may be empty of material posessions, but it will always be full of our memories," Kanaya said quietly, as if reading Rose's mind. The grass swayed softly and the trees danced, the shadows sliding along the side of the brick fence. "What is and once was will stay here forever. Our past is recorded in the little things, like the ceiling. Even if they will never know who painted it, or the story behind it, someone seeing it will experience it. And, in a way, will share in the memory."
Kanaya's softly-spoken words shook Rose right down to her core. As the breeze ruffled her hair and dress and the sun beat down warm and healthy on her back, she finally found the answer to her question.

She hated this place, but she didn't want to leave.

Because this was the house she'd had two birthdays in. This was the house where she'd spent the long summer; lounging out on the porch in the hot July sun. This was the house where she'd fallen in love -

- and it always would be, regardless of her presence in it or not.

Rose smiled, wiping the lingering moisture off her cheeks and squeezing Kanaya's hand softly. Together, they removed the personalized mail flap, and left the yard. Shutting the front gate, they took one last look at the place they used to live before setting off down the street, and that was that.

Kanaya hummed softly at Rose's side, mail flap in hand, as they left their old neighbourhood behind them and headed for the train station.

A house will always be a half-completed shell without memories to call its own, after needs to host great tragedies before it can host greater celebrations.

It needs to be the cause of an argument before it can be the solution.

It needs to first be a prison before it can ever act as a shelter.

And it needs to be abandoned before it can be found.

Furniture can be removed. People can leave. The house can be knocked down - but a place that once held a family will never forget. It will always hold the memories.

And then, and only then, does the house becomes a home.

OH GREAT. NOW I HAVE DIABEETUS.

That was so fluffy.
/ /resists urge to kick everything

This was just a silly warm-up oneshot, so I don't really expect reviews or alerts or bitches.

But I'd appreciate them.

Especially the bitches.