Risking my relationships and people I just can't resist

People often said that Rose was manipulative.

But that simply wasn’t true! Those were cruel allegations spread by women who disliked how socially capable she was compared to themselves! Rose didn’t manipulate people. She simply helped them out in ways that benefitted both of them. Now, did she tell people that she would also be benefitting from their good fortune? Some of the time she did! And she definitely almost always did after the fact! That wasn’t being manipulative though, that was just Rose being savvy.

Dawn failed to understand the nuance of her logic. And she was supposed to be a genius? Too much time with her nose in books, and not enough time in the real world, that’s what Rose had to say on the matter.

…What Dawn had to say was far more colorful.

“No, Rose, you’re not going to lie to her.”

“I’m not lying!” Rose groaned, rolling her eyes.

“A lie by omission is still a lie.” Dawn was not impressed.

Rose puffed up her cheeks in a pout and crossed her arms over her chest. “It NOT that big of a deal!” She said. “Lying can be good sometimes, especially when it’s for the benefit of somebody else! Like when Ella and I were in the broom closet, and- Oh, never mind, not important. I love your hair, by the way, you should wear it down more often!”

Dawn’s eye twitched. Her tail flicked behind her gladly, appreciating the compliment even though she saw right through the other girl’s blatant dodge.

“I’m not falling for that,” she grumbled, narrowing her eyes.

Rose pouted again.

“What did you two do in the broom closet?” Normally Dawn wouldn’t pry into personal matters, but Rose was being really shifty. And given that this was Ella they were dealing with, and before now Rose had been convincing Dawn that the two barely interacted at all, the sudden mention of a mysterious “closet” incident was raising all sorts of alarms in the cat girl’s head.

And Rose thought Dawn wasn’t savvy.

“Look, it’s not what you’re thinking,” Rose said, holding up her hands. “I know where you’re going with this…”

“The last time I remember you going into a broom closet was with Gina,” Dawn said, utilizing her perfect memory to catch Rose by surprise. “And the two of you were DEFINITELY doing what I was thinking.”

“No, see, Nick was there too!”

Ah, the missing piece of the puzzle! Dawn’s eyebrows shot up as she processed this new bit of information.

The picture forming in her mind made her go pale. What had Nick been getting up to when she wasn’t looking!?

“Are… are you saying that you and Ella… had a threesome with Nick in the broom closet!?” Dawn nearly exploded. It took every bit of mental fortitude she had left after dealing with Rose for more than five minutes to contain her emotions and remain calm. “Talk about not addressing the elephant in the room! You want me to help patch things up with Ella after the three of you-?!”

Dawn was shocked that Cinder hadn’t flayed Rose alive already!

Rose scrunched up her face into a scowl. “I’m telling you, Dawn, that’s not it!” She said, shaking her head firmly. The serious look on her face actually caught the cat girl by surprise. Dawn was pretty perceptive, and Rose was a pretty bad liar when you knew what to look for. And right now, she was coming across as completely sincere.

“Rose? What… just… just tell me what happened,” Dawn sighed, rubbing her temples. She could already feel her headache returning.

“Not a threesome,” Rose said bluntly. Her succinct summary was more than Dawn expected from her. She raised her eyebrow.

The actress was actually keeping a secret. Would wonders never cease?

“…So let me get this straight,” Dawn said slowly, taking off her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose. “You and Ella did… something together. With Nick. In a broom closet, some indiscriminate number of days ago. But you won’t tell me what. Even though you’re asking me for help in getting along better with Ella? Is that right?”

People liked to say that Rose was a dumb blonde. That she was a vapid, selfish floozy who messed things up because of her bad judgment and massive ego. And no matter how true most of that was, Rose was far more complicated than people gave her credit for. And Dawn was getting a good look at that right now, with the firm expression on her face.

“I can’t tell you,” she said, understanding completely how selfish and unfair she was being (for once in her life) “I made a promise.”

Dawn’s eyes widened as she met Rose’s staunch gaze.

There weren’t any games in those eyes. Rose wasn’t playing around here. Every word out of her mouth was completely serious.

“Rose…”

“I need your help, Dawn, really, I do,” Rose pleaded with her. “But please don’t ask me about what happened before. I can’t tell you. Really, I just can’t. You have to believe me!”

Dawn didn’t like it. But Rose’s sincere plea…

“…When was the last time you asked me this sincerely for something?” Dawn cracked a grin and shook her head. Of course, with her memory, she knew the answer to that question, but she still amused herself by asking it.

Rose cracked a lopsided grin and shrugged.

“I don’t… ask for sincere favors very often,” the blonde admitted. “I like doing favors for people so they’ll owe me, but being in people’s debt… it makes me feel uneasy. Like back when I was struggling to make ends meet with my brother.”

Dawn sat up on her bed and adjusted her glasses, kicking out her legs playfully. “And of course, you know I charge precise interest,” she informed the other woman with complete icy sincerity.

Rose stuck out her tongue in response.

“…I am glad you came to me, though,” Dawn said after a moment’s pause. Rose looked at her in surprise.

“Even though I gave you a headache?” She asked, tilting her head to the side.

A vein throbbed in Dawn’s forehead. “If you know you’re doing it, then stop being such a pain.”

Rose batted her eyelashes playfully and leaned back in her chair, cupping her chin in her hands.

Dawn just shook her head in resignation. Well, it had been worth a try. “Rose… is there a reason you’ve been avoiding me?” She asked. This wasn’t just the first time in a while that Rose had come to her with a sincere request. It was the first time in weeks that the two of them had an actual conversation with one another. And that included when they’d had a threesome!

“Maybe I just felt awkward around you after the two of us were so intimate together,” Rose lied through her teeth with an innocent smile.

Dawn responded with a grunt and an obvious refusal to keep helping Rose with Ella if she wouldn’t tell her the truth.

Rose let out a long, exasperated sigh, and slumped her shoulders. “Fiiiiiiine. Since you were nice enough not to pry about the closet thing, I’ll tell you. It’s because… I’m not sure how to get along with you, Dawn.”

Dawn frowned. That wasn’t the answer she was expecting. Then again, she didn’t know what she was expecting when it came to Rose.

“Oh. I… I see,” she said, adjusting her glasses.

“Sorry,” Rose said with an awkward shrug.

“I just thought… well, I assumed it was because you saw me as competition,” Dawn said. “And being you, well… I just thought you weren’t really interested in getting along with me to begin with. You’ve mostly been focused on Nick, after all.”

“Of course I am, I love him,” Rose said with a sincerity that nearly knocked Dawn off the bed. She straightened up, a little flustered.

“Yes… you’ve made that abundantly clear,” Dawn said, feeling her face get hot.

Rose smirked. “Well, you were there…” she reminded the other woman in a singsong voice, enjoying how Dawn got even redder.

“Sh-shut it! Just go back to what you said before!” Dawn snapped. “About not knowing how to get along with me!”

Dawn had never really had many friends growing up. There were the girls in her gymnastics classes, but they were always focused on the competition. And then there were the kids at school, but they were all intimidated by her intellect. The ones who weren’t laughing about her size behind her back, anyway.

Nick had been the closest thing she’d had to a friend back in those days, and she’d thought of him as a stalker. Which was a pretty succinct summary of her life prior to adulthood.

Still, she’d always thought that she was capable of making friends, and always tried to be nice and approachable to everyone. It had only recently become apparent how short she had been falling in that regard; people liked her, sure, but just liking her in a general sense wasn’t the same as being close friends with her. Morgana was the only person on the island who really felt like someone Dawn could say was unambiguously her friend.

…It was kind of depressing when she thought about it like that. The closest person to a friend she had on the island was a girl nearly a decade younger than her.

So when Rose said she wasn’t sure how to get along with her, it hit her right in her most **** spot.

The troubled look on the blonde’s face wasn’t helping matters.

“Dawn,” Rose said, leaning forward and looking into the other girl’s eyes. “…I thought we were here to talk about my issues?”

…Right. Why was Dawn concerned that Rose didn’t like her, again? The woman was so self-absorbed she’d be a terrible friend anyway!

“...But since you’re helping me out, one good turn deserves another, so I can lend you an ear!” Rose chirped. “Like I said, I hate owing people favors. So if you’ll help me get closer to Ella, I’ll help you be friends with everyone else!”

“Hold it.” Dawn had to stop Rose right there. “First off, I’m giving you advice as a favor to Ella, not to you. Ella needs all the help she can get right now. Helping you is more like a bonus thing, I don’t want you feeling like you ‘owe’ me.”

Rose opened her mouth to reply but Dawn knew that if she let the blonde start talking it would be a while before she got in another word herself, so she cut her off before she could start.

“And second, I don’t want a favor from you in return, Rose, that’s not how I do things.” Her expression softened. “I don’t keep score.”

Her third reason for rejecting the offer, namely the fact that Rose was probably the last person she would ever go to for advice about making friends, went unspoken.

Rose shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Well, okay… I guess? But Dawn, I think you’re taking this a little too personally. I didn’t mean anything by what I said before about not knowing how to get along with you. It’s the truth! Don’t feel bad about it.”

“It’s the truth, don’t feel bad about it.” That was practically Rose’s catchphrase when she was flinging demeaning comments at people. Though that happened a lot less frequently now, thankfully.

“I just meant… well, we don’t have a lot in common. Like the other night, when you were talking about that fancy tea stuff… I was zoning out like crazy. And you’re, like, crazy smart, and you know all this really advanced stuff, and me, well, I’m a whole different kind of smart,” she said, unable to fully praise another person without stroking her own ego just a little bit in turn.

Dawn ignored that entirely, though, focusing only on the positive things Rose had said. “So… you’re saying you can’t get along with me because we just don’t have anything in common?”

Rose gave her a blank look that Dawn had never gotten before. The kind of look she had given herself many times, the “Are you seriously saying that right now? What are you, stupid?” look.

“Are you seriously saying that right now? What are you, stupid?” Rose asked incredulously.

“H-hey!” Dawn’s face lit up. “With you it’s hard to be sure, okay? We got along just fine when we were rooming together, and then it’s like you just stopped talking to me completely! I assumed it was because you thought I was a rival or something, like I said, I just…”

Dawn felt like an idiot right now. Which wasn’t something she was used to. Rose just smiled in amusement and shook her head.

“Oh, Dawn… you’re so cute, you know that?” She giggled, batting her eyelashes.

Dawn responded with a grump pout. “Rose…”

“I’m serious!” Rose held up her hands. “Look, I’m a simple gal at heart, with simple interests. And you, well… you’re not. Don’t take it personally! Not everyone is compatible together, that’s all.”

It was hard not to feel hurt by that, even if Dawn could rationally understand Rose’s logic. That didn’t remove the sting at all.

“So you were only hanging out with me because we were roommates?” Dawn asked. She really tried not to sound like a rejected teenager, she really did. But her statement came out even more pathetic, somehow.

Rose winced. “Don’t… don’t say it like that… Dawn, I liked hanging out with you! I enjoyed your company, but it’s like… what would we even do together? We have nothing in common! Is it really enough to just get along with someone? Is that all it takes to be friends with them?”

The sincerity of each word was like another shovel of dirt over Dawn’s coffin. Rose was trying here, she really was, and that was the worst part.

“…This might come as a surprise to you, but… I don’t actually have very many friends, here or back home,” Rose confessed.

Dawn looked up at her. Rose was right, she was surprised. Surprised that Rose thought that would come as a surprise to Dawn, or anyone else who knew her.

“I mean, it’s obvious why,” Rose said, gesturing to herself. “People are just intimidated by my beauty, my kindness, my humility…”

“Yeah, that’s gotta be it.” Dawn couldn’t keep the sarcasm from dripping off her words.

“…Ha ha. But like I said… you’re the expert here, not me,” Rose said, waving her hand at Dawn. “It’s why I came to you with the whole Ella thing to begin with!”

Dawn blinked. It took a lot longer for her to realize what Rose was saying than she was proud of.

“So wait, you… you think I’m better at making friends than you are?” Dawn looked at her, surprised.

Rose shrugged. “I mean… you are, aren’t you?” She pointed out. “Morgana likes you, Ella likes you, heck, you were just drinking with Gina and Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin last night, and she doesn’t like anybody but Kim and Nick! Did you know that girl hisses at me whenever we pass in the hallway? Hisses! She doesn’t even make a sound but it’s still a hiss! Who does that!?”

Wow. Dawn had never really thought about it, but hearing Rose’s perspective… it really colored her relationship with the others in a new light, and highlighted the contrast between the two of them that she had never really thought about until now.

Rose was a bombastic personality. Practically no one on the island had a “neutral” perspective when it came to Rose. They either liked her, or they really didn’t like her, and usually that flipped several times over the course of a conversation.

In contrast, Dawn was just… plain. Everyone liked her a little bit, and she didn’t have anyone who really disliked her, but nobody thought that strongly about her, either.

Regarding social interactions, they were practically opposites. And Dawn wasn’t sure if she would rather be polarizing like Rose, having close relationships with some women while almost antagonistic relationships with others, or stay like herself and just get along “okay” with others.

But apparently, Rose wanted to be more like Dawn, so maybe she’d already made that choice for herself.

No, I’m overthinking it. This is Rose we’re talking about. She doesn’t want neutral she just wants only the positive side of polarizing. She’s just a narcissist who wants her ego stroked.

Dawn was aware that a diagnosis of narcissism was not strictly accurate where Rose was concerned. But she still felt comfortable labeling the self-centered blonde as one in the colloquial sense.

It brought a smile to her face, at least.

“Rose… we can get along,” she said, standing up and looking at the other woman. “Even if we don’t have any common interests or hobbies.”

“Really?” Rose wasn’t convinced. “That’s nice to hear and all, since I really do like you a lot, Dawn.”

Coming from her, that was actually pretty high praise.

“…But I think if we hung out together more, then I’d just get bored,” the actress admitted.

“Yeah, probably,” Dawn conceded. She could be dynamic and fun if she wanted to be, it was just harder to come by than with someone like Rose or Carly or Vivian. Or even Kim these days. Everyone was getting more spontaneous.

Still… Dawn had firm proof that there was a part of her capable of doing that, if she set her mind to it. And she was very good at setting her mind to things.

“But I really do want to get along with you better,” Rose added. “And not just because you’re really helpful and good to go to for advice.”

“Yeah, I’d hope not,” Dawn said, rolling her eyes. “I can give advice without having to be your friend, that’s what any decent person would do.”

“I know, it’s great. I love taking advantage of that generosity of yours,” Rose chirped.

See? She could be honest! Not manipulative at all.

Dawn’s eyeroll seemed to indicate she thought otherwise, though.

“The important thing is that we get along,” Dawn said with an even smile. “Don’t you think so, Rose? Hobbies aren’t everything.”

“We got along pretty well the other night,” Rose pointed out with a sly grin, enjoying the way the other girl’s cheeks turned pink.

“…Whatever. Besides, you’ve been hanging around with Morgana a lot, recently,” Dawn pointed out. “So it’s not like you’re a complete stranger to getting along with people who you barely have anything in common with.”

Rose blinked. Now that Dawn mentioned it, she had a point. “Yeah, you’re right,” she murmured, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “And hey, with Ella, maybe it can be the same way!”

“Hold it.” Dawn grabbed Rose by the collar and yanked her back before she could run out of the room and screw everything up. “Ella’s a completely different story. With her? We’re going to have to actually try.”

“Ah… okay,” Rose said with a sigh. Nothing ever came easily these days, it seemed. Not even Dawn’s help!