Archive of Our Own

“Sex is so weird,” Nina states absently.

Andrea does not stop peppering her cheeks with kisses as if she were capable of planting spring into her and make Nina bloom with the power of her will alone. It would not be an impossibility either or something so far-fetched.

Her possessive palm resting until then on Nina’s bare leg suddenly moving up, up, up with deliberate slowness.

Nina thinks of a lion stalking its prey until Andrea reaches the short shorts she’s wearing and couldn’t change when she returned to the dorms from her afternoon run—after seeing Nina very sweaty, Andrea more interested in pushing Nina on the bottom bunk bed and climb on top of her, saying, almost bored but with hellfire in her eyes and smelling strongly of cocoa and wet earth, “I will give you a better reason to sweat, what do you say,” and Nina responding, her breath already knocked out, one two three, out! “Yeah, yes, okay,” and whatever thoughts Nina might have of a lion’s diet melts away, it’s snow in the sun, Nina’s composure every time Andrea touches her with Purpose.

By themselves they are not alarming and yet at Ninaʼs words Andrea pauses her onslaught, fortunately with no terror in her scent. She pulls back a little to look Nina square in the eye, inquisitive.

“Are you saying no?” she asks.

Nina licks her lips and flexes her fingers on the sheets, claws out. Tries to express in a coherent way that NO is the furthest thing from her mind, that NO as a word is a closed drawer devoid of lock until it is necessary to open it but it is not needed at this very moment.

She gives up, still entranced by Andrea’s kisses. Whispers, “No. I mean, it’s not no.” Believing that Andrea will put a stop to everything even so—I’m not interested in resuming this, take a red card, to the benches you’re going to. And that would not be a disappointment, never a disappointment, not that Andrea says NO in bed and is respected in that but Nina almost regrets speaking impulsively with her brain turned to molasses.

It’s the fever. Elusive creature and so instinctive.

Stupid, all the same.

Andrea watches her and continues to watch her. Doing calculations. Stone monolided eyes colored in a spectacle of greens and browns and golds. Nina could never get lost in those eyes because she’s lost no more and the Foxes gave her a compass when they decided to love her as a real person despite all her bullshit and fakery but she’s a fan of traveling in Andrea’s eyes and recognize the path that guides her back to the place that will always receive her with open arms.

It doesn’t take long, though, for Andrea to snap Ninaʼs elastic waistband twice in a row, her question, so Nina lifts her hips, her answer.

With this Andrea returns to Nina’s jaw. Kissing and licking and kissing some more. She pushes herself up, propping herself up on one elbow, having found what she was looking for in Nina’s absence of tension, or not having found it.

Instinct or choice or a mix of the two, not that it’s important, Nina ends up arching her back enough for Andrea to remove her shorts and boxers, like a mountain toward the sun—and Andrea doesn’t miss out the opportunity to caress all that exposed skin. Tender, so fiercely tender—as only someone who has been fed with violence until they have choked on its thin bones while starving to death can learn to be. Beating softness into submission. The tenderness of a tendon connected to another tendon.

Andrea eats a feast with her fingertips, lingers on Nina’s thighs—before tossing the two garments away to the floor, not a care for where they land, and letting herself collapse back on Nina. An oof escapes from her, only half-serious. Andrea covers her with her entire body, the substitute for a weighted blanket. Naked from the waist down Nina can’t avoid the shudder that runs through her, an earthquake as devastating as Andrea’s love itself. Everyone, run for your lives.

Making a fist on the sheets Nina forces herself to relax her grip and brings her hands up to Andrea’s short white-blonde hair, tangling them through it. Andrea smells pleased at her reaction not even bothering to disguise it in her scent. For someone who used to want nothing, the little she wants today really is—

Nina automatically stretches her neck against the pillow to give Andrea better access. One cheek resting above Andrea’s head. Humming in approval Andrea travels from her jaw to her throat and from there to the side of her neck. She scents her from time to time. Minus zero subtlety. Applies pressure with her fangs, right on Nina’s scent glands.

She doesn’t bite down.

How scandalous.

Nina gasps, still. It’s not like Andrea means to bite her. Andrea won’t bite her—even if she asks, especially if she doesn’t ask. Nina hasn’t asked. She’s not sure why not. The unmarked napes of both Nathan and Mary in high definition in her memory even today play like the TV with static on a motel—an arrogant: no self-respecting Alpha gets bitten by his mate, Junior and a despondent: that kind of bites you reserve ongle fi sum’ady who loves you and is loved by you, Abra.

Maybe it’s because the offer of that might not be well received, something that maybe Andrea would snarl at, something that maybe Nina isn’t even ready for.

Too much commitment for someone who as sure fuck is not her answer.

Nina prefers to spare Andrea the bother of rejecting her in the long run, long before Andrea graduates and leaves her alone adrift in Palmetto anyway, Nina drowning in solitude with no float in sight—of acknowledging herself as uninteresting to Andrea within a couple of years no matter how small that chance is.

Mi nuh wa dis tuh end. Fractured Patois of a fractured girl with a fractured identity, scattered all over the world. Not belonging to anywhere except anonymity.

And Andrea’s brutal response perhaps deflecting but not lying.

Everything ends.

That has not changed.

Nina is not going to assume.

She does well to remember that that hasn’t changed.

It’s nice, though, the drag of Andrea’s fangs. And maybe Nina puts her fingers there sometimes and pokes and prods, wondering. If it could be less penance and more reward, not like Lola crooned on her way to deliver Nina to death like someone who delivers a pizza to a stranger’s address or like Riko implied in his provocations at The Nest on Christmas break or like Mary warned her in horror stories in broad daylight.

If the mating bite could be a medal to wear proudly—bronze, silver, gold, who cares as long as it belongs to Nina—and maybe feel good—

Until she forgets again, lacking nothing to be content with in present tense.

Present tense meaning: Andrea.

Andrea who uses her tongue, turns it into a brush—her watercolor saliva. She is a street artist, an expert in conceptual art. Moves her hand from Nina’s thigh where Andrea has been squeezing in appreciation to her clit, reaching between them, and languidly rubs it, that little bud, in equally small circles.

Barely there.

Her touch. Her touching.

Causing another shudder. A groan with no chance to stop. Brawl on the field, in the middle of a game. Racquets colliding. Should we call the referee? Causing Nina to get more wet when Nina is already wet enough. Cannot contain her tangerines and saltwater.

The towel under her already soaked to every fiber.

Nina ruffles Andrea’s hair. Doesn’t yank it. She scratches it, not as cautious but not too roughly either. Feeling warm and feeling wanted and feeling like a pint of ice cream in the mouth of the desert.

Lions.

Andrea has always been a fan of toying with her food.

It’s just a hand Nina thinks absurdly. There is no need to get so shaken. To let all her atoms be rearranged and for the universe to take a turn to the left.

“Oh?” Andrea finally asks, distracted. Paying more attention to her ministrations. Her movements are constant but calm, glacial. Not aggressive enough for Nina to cum soon but pleasurable nonetheless. Nina wants to sob.

Gone are the days where Andrea threw the tap of her beer can at Nina to get her attention, where Andrea only fucked her in clandestine—bluntly and not gently against walls or floors to cling to a precarious illusion of emotional distance.

Now. Now Andrea extends it. If she’s in a good mood, if they don’t want it fast in their shared desperation.

When Andrea is in the mood she is subtle but not secretive. She puts Nina on her bed and stretches the moment like she stretches the elastic on Nina’s stockings whenever Nina is wearing them until they snap. And when they snap, they snap together.

Andrea’s mouth always close to her throat.

She scratches her teeth against Nina’s skin because Andrea is like a vampire except instead of human blood she’s perpetually thirsty for Nina—three years of this and a this and all the evidence points to the fact that there is nothing Andrea enjoys more than being kissed on her neck by Nina except kiss back Nina on hers. Nibble at Nina’s throat in particular every couple of minutes. As if it were marshmallows. The print of Andrea’s black lipstick with the terms and conditions. First comes the bright red everywhere, then it morphs to purple, as payback. “Is this your way of implying that my fingers feel weird? Way to make a girl feel appreciated, 小さな狐.”

“You know that is not wh— mgff!”

Disinterested in listening to her and now with a clear conscience because of her not no Andrea gives her clit a hard tug. Nina grunts, not expecting it.

There’s a tickle in her spine.

Nina’s hands travel to Andrea’s shoulder blades, covered by a dark short-sleeved shirt. Another safe zone. Another area drawn in advance.

In case of an earthquake, take refuge here.

They’re still trying to make sense of Andrea’s boundaries when fucking, in mating cycles and outside them. What touches are okay, and where, and when. But this—nodaways this is well recieved, more often than not.

Andrea tugs on her clit again not as a warning but in approval. Nina tightens her grip. Pain-pleasure-pleasure—what always means to rediscover herself in Andrea’s presence. The body not as a crime that is still being committed, recipient of abuse—any abuse—but as a body, her and Hers.

Conversations in the dark. Lying in the same bed, two feet apart. Andrea’s hand bruised from sparring earlier with Renee over Nina’s left ventricle, clutching her shirt tightly.

“You are yourself before you are an omega, do you hear me? This is the moment when you nod your pretty head to tell me that you have understood. Do not make that face.”

Now. Now Nina rocks her hips against Andrea’s solid weight and grunting with the engine of her inner Maserati Andrea rocks back, clearly hard through her pants. Nina gets even wetter.

She is enjoying this, she’s enjoying me.

Nina kind of wants to purr, in pride. For the delight that Andrea is also receiving pleasure from her, in her own way.

Never just one hand Nina remembers between gulps of air.

Andrea’s hand. Andrea herself.

Everything that matters.

And yet.

“That’s not, unfgh, fair,” Nina protests, half-heartedly. Pulling Andrea close, closer, closer still. Why can’t they be one and the same—?

Andrea snorts. She continues to rub her thumb against Nina, picking up a rhythm. Ready to take the first bite. Enough games, here comes the lion. This is the food chain, baby. It sounds like Andrea’s voice, in her mind. The black varnish on her nails shining as it usually is the day Andrea allows Nina to touch it up. She’s soaking herself in Nina's fluids. Shinier.

Andrea interrupts her art of giving Nina hickeys to look Nina in the face. Not holding back the urge to kiss her forehead softly first. Nina’s eyelids flutter. She chases after Andrea’s lips, whimpering, and Andrea grants her another equally soft kiss, just at the edge of her mouth.

Outside of the goal.

“Nina. Nina, Nina. Bo-bana, banana-fanna. Fo-fanna, fee-fi-mo-mana, Nina. Oh, how sad. The injustice of it all,” Andrea laments monotonously. And pulls her thumb away from Nina’s twitching clit, descending to her folds, sliding between her wetness and slick—almost playful—before driving two of her fingers knuckle-deep into her pussy, straight to death.

Once again taken by surprise Nina yelps, squeezes Andrea in.

Her thighs quiver in excess, more slick gushes out of Nina, drenching Andrea’s hand completely. Getting her all sticky. It’s so—

Andrea hums again, attentive to all her reactions. Heavy eyelids framed by lashes of sunlight.

She sniffs around, pressed against Nina, chest-to-chest. Only their shirts as a barrier. No yellow card or red card. Yes, yes, there is no unsportsmanlike conduct, the match is not over. Keep playing. You are going to win.

Andrea sets up an equally slow pace in scissoring her. The noise of Andrea’s fingers inside Nina's folds is obscene. Nina’s going to catch on fire at this rate.

“Okay, let’s see,” Andrea pretends to think about it. “Leave your message after the tone. The tone being your moan when you squirt so hard that the walls get painted white and Kevin ages thirty years when he finds out once he gets tired of seducing his racquet. Beeeeeeeeep. What I am trying to do is give you an orgasm. Tsk, tsk. I would appreciate your cooperation.”

She’s cooperating. She is. Nina is a team player, after all. They play as a team in this kind of intimacy. Not like in Exy, sadly, but at least like in... ping pong. With teamwork. Like you and me, and me and you, and all the bad and good versions that we will become and have been, our us taking only the space that has been offered to, smiling between the syllables—never a them.

Her pussy clenches and unclenches and clenches again.

“Mean,” Nina accuses but she sounds breathless.

“So I’ve been told.”

Nina’s next quip is drowned out in an embarrasing growl as Andrea stretches out her fingers.

Then Andrea leans down and licks into her mouth. Sucking on Nina’s tongue like she sucks—other places. It distracts her. Dangerous but not. Nina’s heart beats enamored blood at a reckless speed, playing bait. Andrea is too greedy when it comes to her, to them. Still, she grinds her own hips, a bit hesitant. Nina feels clearly Andrea’s dick against one of her thighs.

Tragically they need to breathe. Their kiss is broken. Like dogs in a marathon, both panting. Spit-smeared lips. A thread of saliva connecting them.

Nina recognizes the nudge that Andrea needs to appease any last-minute doubts, no matter how many times they do this—that Nina can take her desire, won’t be crushed by it, celebrates it, enjoys it—whenever Andrea is willing to give it. So Nina grinds her hips too as a sign of approval. Another yes.

She turns her volume up from a ten to a thirty knowing how Andrea feels about it. How it goads her and excites her that Nina is vocal in her pleasure, not hiding it just like she no longer hides her truths. These ah, ah, aaaaaah numerous and enthusiastic and sincere. Multiples of three.

Vaguely relieved that all the rooms in Fox Tower are sound and scent proof, nothing leaking into the hallways outside—even if it’s recommended to spend heats and ruts in an official campus heat room or other place with real privacy—Nina pushes Andrea’s hand further in, now in three thick fingers. Curled up inside Nina like a cat taking a nap.

See, teamwork.

Andrea’s breath hitches, for a second, and then Andrea starts to move. Dry humping Nina into the mattress and pumping her fingers at the same time.

She slips from her careful self-control. Grows in confidence.

Around her. Above her. Inside her. Andrea is everywhere. Her weight this delicious thing, holding Nina down and holding Nina together—

Nina’s toes curl.

Her perfect memory makes it easy for Andrea to remember the amount of brute force required to break bones with the single hit of a racquet in a stadium full of spectators, how to disarm the brakes on a car so nothing except an accident is suspected in the event of orchestrating a car crash with it, the exact location of Nina’s g-spot.

Andrea aims at it. One point, two points, three points. Scoring on it. More than once. Unforgiving.

Everything in Nina burns.

Not so different from when Nina goes into heat now that she lets herself—that she can pay for that vulnerability. A nuclear fever in the making, sweeping through. But without a body count. Not lethal at all. Odd, undoubtedly. It is the opposite of a clothes iron and Nathan, and charred bones buried in the sand and Mary, and red dye burning her scalp and Riko, and a lighter zigzagging in a maze of flesh and Lola, and her own skin melting and Nathania, and it doesn’t even hurt—

Nina lets out a mix between a giggle and a sob. Maps the width of Andrea’s back, not tentatively, taking comfort in each muscle flex.

Any good house requires strong foundations.

It’s fucking hot. Andrea is too hot. Nina begins to sweat in earnest. The dark brown skin on her cheeks getting darker if possible. Andrea’s pupils dilate as she notices it, Nina’s sweat. She maintains the same hard and intense rhythm. On both her fingers and her hips.

A delicate admission, in another time. I like that you like it, as well. It seems that stupidity is contagious.

“Still yes?” Andrea confirms. Hips rolling in, precise.

Nina doesn’t question why Andrea is asking again, her sudden need to reconfirm it. She’ll always give her her verbal and non-verbal consent.

As many times as it takes.

And so she nods. Desperate, after so much teasing. Wanting to be scored, wanting to cum, wanting Andrea to be the match that lights her up and consumes her alive, wanting to be good to Andrea and for Andrea to feel good due to her—

Nina slurs, “Yah.”

Andrea takes Nina’s yes for what it is. She tuts, in mock disapproval.

“Are you going to keep telling me how weird is this, then? How about making a diagram? Maybe a Power Point presentation. With nice pictures attached and all. In Comic Sans MS font,” she gives Nina another small kiss, chaste, on the lips. In contrast to everything else. This time Nina denies it, panting continuously. “What is that. Did the fox get your tongue?” Andrea curls her fingers again. Stops stretching them and presses them together and shoves them in. Shoving them into Nina. Filling her up. So, so nicely. Nina sobs, a tight pressure on her belly, near her cervix. Andrea’s other hand snakes over Nina’s ass. Not squeezing, just. There. Appreciative. “That’s fine.”

“Andrea—”

“That’s fine, Abra,” Andrea repeats. And returns to Nina’s throat and bites down. Not so much to draw blood, quite far from the back of her neck.

Pretty scandalous.

The final buzzer and the winning point and the goal lighting up in red and the end of the game and Nina all blazing and her mind liquefying with all coherent thought and the powerful aroma of wet earth and cocoa that intoxicates her and—

Andrea moans a little against a new hickey, her own hips grinding insistently. Carelessly, stains her pants with Nina’s slick.

Nina’s insides are a volcano. She hiccups, whines, writhes around the sheets. Lucid enough not to shed tears and ruin the moment. She can feel Andrea pushing, pushing, with three fingers—

The palms of her hands are sweaty, where they cling to Andrea’s lower back. Another safe zone. Nina always remembers her coordinates. She scratches Andrea, just a little, claws sliding over cloth. Turns her neck to lick Andrea on her own pulse. Because of that Andrea humps her with more vigor. Her breathing catches. She growls at Nina. Like a lion. Like a predator. Like someone who feels good.

“Are you going to squirt? I know you want to,” Andrea mutters, conspiratorial. Her lust all over the place. “Squirt for me, Abra. I’m— fuck,” Nina licks her again, more furtive, whining in need. In response, still three-fingers deep in her, Andrea roughly rubs Nina’s abandoned clit. Just once. “I am waiting. Tick tick tock.”

And like any good volcano Nina cries out and trembles and groans and erodes, keeps eroding.

X

“Why is it weird,” Andrea asks.

She reached her release too, cumming in her pants, her knot popping out—making her own mess, not long after Nina.

Silent for fifteen long minutes Andrea reordered herself along with Betsy’s techniques—safes on top of safes, inside her armor once again—as Nina purposely released her scent as much as possible to help Andrea stay grounded and babbled about Algebra and the dichotomy between good and evil and how frustrating the demonization of sharks is.

(Once upon a time, this:

“Would it help if I talked to you? After. To recognize where you are not.”

“What, looking for more excuses not to shut up? It could be a party. Just me, you, your smart mouth and my inability to react in a sane way to post-coit.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

Every syllable drenched in anger. “... Yes, Abra. It would help.”)

Andrea sits at the foot of the bed, not willing to leave Nina alone out of her sight, but needing physical space from her, toying with her lighter. A compromise. For days where she can tolerate staying in the same room. Nina still out of breath—wishing she could do more, wishing there wasn’t a need to do something in the first place, hating the cruelty Andrea was exposed to between childhood beds and two more already grown up, but waiting for her as always after Andrea has had an orgasm despite having to pee and feeling dirty between the slick and the sweat and the squirt.

After a while Andrea said, “We need a bath. Get up,” already composed. And to the bathroom they went.

Andrea prepared the bathtub and the bubble bath. Nina peed in the toilet. Andrea undressed completely and Nina removed her shirt and sports bra before the two climbed into the bathtub full of bubbles.

Half an hour later, here they are still. Andrea’s back leaning against the porcelain and Nina’s back leaning against Andrea.

Andrea runs the body soap—the special one for sensitive scarred skin, with the aloe vera—between Nina’s boobs until they’re covered in foam, and changes direction, concentrating then on Nina’s arms, and then on her hands. Every cut and burn and gash.

Nina sighs. The water is warm.

“Hmm?”

“Weird,” Andrea clarifies, still bathing Nina. She nudges her with one of her knees and Nina, understanding without the need for words, moves forward enough for Andrea to reach behind her. Andrea kisses where Nina’s spine begins when she’s finished, tasting drops of water. Nudges her again. Nina leans back against Andrea and Andrea continues to sponge down Nina’s torso and stomach and even below. “Your own words. You mentioned that sex is weird. Why is that.”

Nina frowns, shrugs with one shoulder. Considers how to explain it.

Andrea doesn’t smell of violence.

It’s more surprising that she didn’t interrupt their fucking to interrogate her except that Andrea trusts her yeses, can tell when Nina is a red light and not a green one miles away. Progress, or something close to it.

But Andrea wouldn’t have asked if she wasn’t interested in an answer, so.

“It just is.”

“Is it? Useful.”

Andrea reaches that corner where her hip meets her legs and Nina opens them, not hesitating. Splashes some water out of the tub. The sponge tickles her on her inner thighs and a shiver or maybe five escape her. On an unusual act of generosity Andrea does not comment on it.

Nina doesn’t take long to turn around. Another splash. Now facing each other Andrea tugs slightly at Nina’s loose, untangled kinky hair. She pushes it behind her ear. Leaves her palm there.

Once, Nina told her that she was giving her full permission to touch it because Andrea treated it like everything else in Nina.

Not like unknown or even not-so-unknown white people. Like Katelyn with well-meaning but insensitive compliments that made Nina uncomfortable. None of them noticing her agitation in the air, or maybe not even caring. And Nina putting a leash on her short fuse because it may not be the world that is cruel but it is the one that is prejudiced and both Nathan and Mary were many things but at least they did teach her that without the need of fists involved—a Black person who speaks unfiltered among whites is a Black person more likely to experience a hate crime for any idiotic reason even a non-physically violent one. But more importantly because Nina tries to be better than her parents and there are few things she dislikes more than a bully and with few calculated exceptions she only draws the sword of her own tongue in her panic or against nosy reporters—vultures who seek to provoke her for any piece of carrion—but never unnecessarily, and even in all of those times always in self-defense or someone else’s, never unprovoked. And Katelyn was Aaron’s and Aaron was a jerk on good days but he was Nina’s anyway.

The way that with what could be mistaken as an affable smile she ended up saying to Katelyn, “Thank you. Yes, it’s natural red, no, I don’t dye it, not anymore. Its texture is 4B. I’m so sorry that no one has ever fawned over your naturally straight golden hair like a new “discovery” of the British museum everywhere you go but with all due respect if you ever ask me about mine again so impolitely in the middle of an unrelated conversation I’m going to cuss you out,” until Katelyn, gasping, shut her mouth and averted her eyes, ashamed.

And Andrea, aware of what it meant—this permission, this gesture—glared razors at Nina when Nina gave it to her but understood in her own way—with a life of her own plagued with being called ‘Chink’ in a derogatory matter by other kids in the system despite not even being of Chinese descent from her father’s side because prejudice comes hand-in-hand with ignorance—and she began to touch it.

Running her fingers over it absentmindedly, whether it’s braided or combed. When they cuddle alone, mostly. Sometimes pulling on it to get Nina’s attention. Not with the intention of hurting-hurting. Treating it like it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Her hair for once not a political thing in the presence of a non-Black person just—hair.

Inevitably, Nina glows. She smiles joyfully at Andrea. Watches her in silence. The pink on Andrea’s cheeks from the temperature of the bath. The gold of her gaze, half-spent coins.

She’s observed back by her. A unimpressed expression on Andrea that betrays nothing.

Andrea doesn’t take long to grab another bar of soap and hand her the sponge and Nina cleans her, methodical and without lust. Her touch firm to avoid tickling. Andrea actively dislikes tickles and therefore Nina dislikes them too, in solidarity.

It goes like this: collarbones, boobs, upper arms, biceps, forearms, torso, after a brief non-verbal confirmation tummy, with another silent confirmation knees and finally legs. Nina doesn’t offer to touch near her soft dick, and Andrea doesn’t ask. But Andrea does turn around so Nina can sponge her back, Ninaʼs hand not getting close to Andrea’s ass neither.

More splashes of foamy water.

Andrea’s shoulders are relaxed and her breathing is steady. She smells of gratitude and calm and here, with her back to Nina, not a hint of mistrust or distress, Nina feels her affections for Andrea splint her up like ripe fruit being chewed in the spring.

It’s overwhelming.

Nina blinks, her eyes stinging but still dry, unwilling to cry over something as banal as taking a bath with Andrea. Even if these sentimentalities are the opposite of cheap and could fill an entire binder. Secret code: this is happiness. She still has the memory of their first shower together. Nina, in pieces. Wound and wounded, duct tape and plastic bags sticking her together. Andrea, immovable. Andrea, also fractured by what happened in Binghamton in less visible ways. Just taking off her shoes. Drenching her clothes under the spray of water. Staying. Don’t always me. Staying some more.

The showers and baths that followed—weeks and months and years later, increasing in frequency.

The nothing that is something that is everything that is hate that is devotion that is curse that is medicine that is miracle that is: Ninety percent of the time I don’t want to kill you, I love you Nina Josten—and Andrea then removing her armbands, ending in a shirt and pants, and then her pants, ending in a shirt and panties, and then her shirt, ending in matching underwear, and then her bra, ending in panties, and then—the severe: don’t look. (Or else.) More showers. The less growled: open your eyes. (I will not beg.)

Andrea completely naked, pale skin for miles. Muscle and fat and the kind of softness you gut out of a fish. Her eyes angry and her posture stiff. One hundred and one going to one hundred and two. Human. Through lines on her wrists, screaming: fragile, handle with care. And Nina. Nina completely gone for her with enough common sense not to thank her despite the lump in her throat, simply passing her the body soap. How Andrea loosened because of it, just a millimeter.

The contrast between then and now. Two months. How far have they come. Time that no longer preys on itself, hopeless.

It surprises Nina.

To wake up every morning reminding herself for two minutes who she is and where she is. Let her fear burn down to the filter without taking a drag. And think, afterwards. We can have a future. Our future can grow old.

Briefly, Nina leans her forehead against the back of Andrea’s neck, near a mole. She scents Andrea and inhales back her wet earth and cocoa. Tries not to tear at the edges. Andrea doesn’t tense up but Nina has no plans on pushing her luck.

When she’s sure she won’t break down Nina distances herself. Clears her throat. “Done.”

Again, Andrea turns around. Her gaze narrowed, surely catching something on Nina based on her scent. Ah, well.

They wash off the soap, one from the other. Andrea cleans herself on the places that Nina did not. Nina washes Andrea’s hair. She agrees to let Andrea return the favor, lets Andrea rub her scalp—although Nina prefers to pre-poo herself with her coconut oil first, parting alone her hair into sections.

When they’re clean instead of chiding her Andrea taps her own chest and Nina turns her back on her and leans against her again. Andrea hugs her from behind, wraps her legs around hers. After a minute of silence she nibbles Nina’s earlobe.

“I am still waiting for a satisfactory answer,” she quips.

Try as she might Nina can’t smell anything on Andrea besides her Alpha’s pheromones but those are never absent so they don’t count.

If she were angry—if she were, Andrea wouldn’t hold her in her arms.

“I was just thinking out loud,” Nina admits, a little cautious. Just in case.

Here is a memory, wrinkled like a dollar bill in a pocket. Nathania as a child, inside the open coffin that was her room in the house of Baltimore. Nathan disappointed by her designation from birth and also for not being born a male, showing her his fangs and how to bleed better and fear older men. Mary visibly grateful that she wasn’t an Alpha but crying tearlessly that she wasn’t a Beta either like herself, whenever Nathan and company were busy. Swearing at her at any opportunity, “You are not weak for this. This does not make you weak. Your father is lying, Lola Malcolm and her brother are lying. My sweet omega dawta, how could you be anything but strong?” And Lola cutting her with joy, near her navel. Lola lifting her by the chin, until she was standing on her tiptoes. Lola with her red lipstick and strange comments and mischievous gaze and five sets of polished knives well set on her and an unbearable stench of Alpha, sing-songing—Cute omega, our little Junior. The identical reflection of Daddy. What pretty eyes you have, what pretty hair color you have. You’ll grow up a heartbreaker, yea, I can see it. Mark my words, little bird. Too bad that by the time I’ll be finished with you in a couple of years no classy Alpha will want to mount you when they see your battered body. Although, on the other hand— you don’t need to be pretty to be useful to us, it’s enough that you have a healthy womb, right?

Here is another memory. Abra older but not by much. Evading metal traps in big cities and carrying a gun in her backpack, her nails bitten off due to her constant anxiety. Looking curiously at the boys, listening curiously to the girls—Bernard kissed me and it was so embarrassing, I thought my stomach would explode with butterflies! What if he wants to be my mate when we’re adults? And out of the same curiosity that grows like a giant but without a castle or golden eggs she not turning away when the shy Indian Alpha boy who is a real exchange student tells her, blushing, “You are v-v-ery pretty and you-u smell s-s-s-o good Alex,” even though she only smelled like fake Beta and laundry detergent, and shyly kisses her in the schoolyard for all of them to see. Because she’s curious, because everyone does it, because he’s polite and stutters his French but sings fluent bhajans proudly. And at the contact of lips on lips she feels—nothing. Maybe bewilderment. All that fuss over this? Where are my butterflies? I think I lost them.

Here is another memory. The first lesson. It takes two more lessons for Abra to learn well. But here. The first. In Lyon, France. Mary’s nails on her neck where Mary buried them—Christ’s nails at his crucifixion, too close to Abraʼs scent glands. The bloody cross, the itch from a slap, the swelling on her cheek, the scratches on her neck, the privacy the motel room provides them so that they don’t cause a scene in public. Mary who emanates fear and fury and this fury and fear that suffocate her and are impossible to forget, contrary to the lips of the shy Indian Alpha boy. She didn’t even ask him his name. And Mary’s devastating hug, when all was said and done. Her fingers on her skull, she a child in a cauldron, melting off. Hugging Mary too, regardless. So sorry. Willing to atone. My mistake, my mistake. A metallic taste in her mouth and blood on the pavement where she spat it out. What was a tasteless kiss compared to Mary killing in her name even though she had no name, over and over again, keeping her safe? Compared to how Mary kisses her on both wet cheeks? A harmless kiss of someone she does know. And then Mary mutters, “Enough,” and, “That’s enough,” and, “I didn’t want to hurt you. You know I never want to hurt you. I would never hurt you for no reason,” and, “It’s all for your own good. Mi gyal. Mi darling. Mi dawta.” Reeking of guilt but not apologizing because a mother doesn’t know how to say sorry to her children after ruining the life she gave them. Mary as a mother, Mary as a punishment, Mary as mercy—You do not kiss boys. You do not show them your nape nor your neck. You do not bend for anyone or get into their beds. You do not allow yourself to be seduced by their deceit and their lies. You survive, Abra, and an omega girl who kisses boys is an omega girl who is dead. Understood?

“I was just thinking,” Nina reiterates. “How sex is as vital as drinking water for others. How sex is had by others to reproduce. How sex is had by others for fun. How sex is had by others as this casual thing, no strings attached. How sex is had by others until marriage and reserved as some sacred duty. How apparently your life is unfulfilled if you don’t have it and if you don’t have it often. How as omegas we are taught from a very young age that it will be a big part of our lives, that we were born for it, that our worth is inherent to our heats and ability to give birth to pups. And yet for me sex was just as important and entertaining as reading a gossip magazine, which is to say, nothing at all. I doubt my pheromone suppressants played a part in that,” she looks at her bullet scar, on her periphery.

“But at your side I get thirsty at the most unexpected moments, and everything we do matters because you matter to me, and I want to laugh when we’re in bed together sometimes for how I feel so happy with you, and I think I can understand it, all the hype about it. If only because of you. Just you. But that’s weird, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be like that. I think. I think it’s not very common.”

Andrea enjoyed sex, before meeting Nina.

She told her.

That is one thing they do now, or try to do. Communicate with each other. No need of a truth game nor deals.

So Andrea told Nina. How she stayed away from all omega girls and most of other Alpha girls and had no illusions of procreating but still learned to enjoy sex. Alone and mostly in the company of Beta girls, inside juvie closets and down the stairs in high school and in back rooms at clubs and never in a bed, hers or otherwise, using her tongue and her fingers. Just touching not touched. Because she wanted to enjoy it in whatever capacity was possible to her—on her own terms. Because she was interested in it when so little catched her attention nodaways. Because Andrea had had been raped, more times than Andrea could count, and Andrea could count them all, but rape is not sex and sex was—something to reclaim, and desire. To Andrea.

They are not the same.

Sometimes Nina can’t stop thinking. Small confusing things in the big framework of things. Her brain a hamster running on its wheel, hour after hour, beyond its limits, despite not having any destination. Betsy could help her identify them if it didn’t feel stupidly childish to admit them out loud to her. What Nina reluctantly talks about with Betsy is how she can’t eat red meat anymore because she gets panic attacks—so can Betsy go along with Nina’s own suggestion that Andrea maybe should buy white meat and fish and only allow her in the kitchen when the stench of burning has gone—since a Foxes barbecue late in her freshman year went awry, not this. The catastrophes and trauma and healthy coping mechanisms are more appropriate topics to discuss in therapy. And it’s not that she’s necessarily ashamed of this either, it’s just.

Andrea’s arms give her a squeeze. They take her out of her spiraling. Nina can sense the hints of something sour in the air.

“Andrea,” she hastens to say. “Andrea, it’s nothing. I mean. It doesn’t mean that my past consent has disappeared or changed. You have not forced me nor have I forced myself. Every sexual thing we’ve done— I wanted it. I want it. If we do more it will be because I want that too. I would never dare—”

A familiar weight on her neck. Gift-wrapped fingers. Nina’s panic stops. Nina stops.

One, two, three, four, five— Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf— wan, too, trii, FWOHR, fightv—

She doesn’t apologize.

Andrea would pinch her.

“I know. You wouldn’t let me let me be. Calm down,” she answers in her ear. No hints of sourness whatsoever. Nina borrows some of that steadiness and a breath. Andrea hides her face in Nina’s nape, over her scent glands. Returns her hand to Nina’s torso along the other one, fixing their embrace.

Her breath makes Nina shiver.

Nina touches Andrea’s forearms reverently, slowly enough not to startle her. Writes one-hundred and two in between each thin self-inflicted cut. Their last percentage.

Minutes tick by and just when Nina assumes that that’s all it’s going to be said Andrea speaks again. “Just because it’s unusual does not mean it is necessarily bad. Or a bad-weird. We are not the example of normality. If you beat yourself up over your differences with other people it will just be a waste of time.”

And, sure. That is technically true.

Even so—

“You don’t mind, then?”

“Pray tell, why would it bother me that I was your sexual awakening and the only person on Earth who makes sex not boring for you,” Andrea scoffs without inflection. And then licks a line from the bottom of her neck to upwards because she’s a jerk.

When Andrea puts it like that it does sound stupid.

Nina’s heart is ablaze, however.

And Nina feels—stupid, and happy, and cared for. Hopes it’s the same for Andrea. Not the stupid part, but. The rest.

“I never asked,” Andrea says, eventually. “About the specific mechanics of your sexuality. Your not swinging. Only you, you say. What does it mean? Satisfy my curiosity. Let’s say I have a clone. Would you say yes to her, allow her to kiss and fuck you, and enjoy her?”

“You don’t have clones,” Nina complains, puzzled. “Either way she would be her own person. Obviously the answer is no.”

“Mhm. What about Aaron. Have you felt attraction to him, same DNA and pheromones and all? You know. A rose by any other name would still be a rose.”

It startles an incredulous laugh out of Nina, “What? How dare you. A rose by any other appearance would be a chrysanthemum. Even though Aaron is an Alpha too and your identical twin it doesn’t mean you are the same. And no, it has nothing to do with you being a girl and him being a boy, or vice versa. Gender doesn’t matter to me.”

Andrea ponders it. “It is the scent, then. Something that no one else has. Something unique. Oh, she’s the one. Mating Instincts: Activate.”

Confused, Nina frowns.

“I... I don’t think so. Now it brings me comfort but your scent used to annoy me and make me uneasy. It’s—” she lets go of Andrea’s forearm and gestures in the air, her brow still furrowed, “—it’s you being you. Alpha, yes, but— not just an Alpha. Irrevocably Andrea, most importantly. My Boonoonoonoos. I don’t know.”

Andrea rumbles, decidedly not unhappy. Nuzzles into her.

The foam is almost all gone in the tub.

“Only you. As if excluding yourself. Not even counting yourself. Sex with others will not be an option but your body belongs to you before anyone, including me. Is masturbation really so unsatisfying,” Andrea asks even though they already know the answer.

It was Andrea, after all, who gave Nina her first orgasm in her life. Reshaping Nina’s world just by rubbing her clit. Not even putting her fingers inside her folds. Not yet, anyway.

Maybe in kindness.

Of going from Sex? Uhh to Sex? Oh! The discovery of the century. Andrea deserves an award for that. Andrea deserves a lot of nice things. Nina would sell one kidney for Andrea to buy her another ridiculously expensive sports car if Andrea shows even the slightest interest.

“It’s horribly ordinary,” Nina agrees, some frustration peeking out of its hiding. “I’d be less bored being questioned by the FBI indefinitely than I would be fingering my pussy on my own. I can’t even cum.”

“Dramatic much? You always cum fast, with me. Unless I deny you your orgasm.”

“Uhm. Yeah.”

Uhm. Yeah. The sky is blue. The grass is green. Andrea has never failed to make her cum embarrassingly easy. Nina melts in her hands. She feels seen by them—whenever they touch her. Even in non-sexual ways. Especially in non-sexual ways. Andrea’s hands know her just like Nina’s own know Andrea. All facts. Indisputable. Uhm. Yeah.

Nina never bothered to look further into it.

At one point she’s not actively interested in kissing anyone. The next she’s only interested in kissing Andrea. The how’s and why’s and when’s never mattered as much as the reality of her attraction, that it was there, that Nina could explore it with someone who had nothing to gain from her pain and therefore wouldn’t harm her. Her certainty that she was going to die soon may have influenced Ninaʼs total disinterest in having a sexual crisis when her hormones woke up from a long hibernation like fox cubs but.

“Is there a reason for all these questions?”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Abra. I am feeling adventurous,” Andrea says nonchalantly. “It was you, besides, who mentioned that our sex life was weird.”

Ah, so it is Nina’s own fault. You reap what you sow. Ugh.

“I never said it was our sex life. And you said it wasn’t a bad-weird,” she accuses.

“It is not. It’s Nina-weird. Nina-good-weird. Like your talent for always throwing darts to the center of a dartboard and how that brings Kevin to tears when he predictably falls victim to his own failure when trying to surpass you later.”

Nina huffs. “Okay. I really don’t know,” she insists. “Your presence does factor in but I’m undecided in what way. It’s like. In math a number by itself is just a number, right? Useless for anything else. Any mathematical operation requires at least two. You are that second number that gives me value. We are— a sum. And if you were any other number the result of the sum would change and it would not be the desired one. Does it make sense?”

Andrea nibbles near the beginnings of her spine, silent. Nina’s heart goes boom, boom.

“The times when I could use my emotional constipation as an excuse behind “I hate you’s” and a percentage every time you decide to bleed your feelings into me with no warning seem more and more nostalgic by the second,” Andrea sighs dramatically, as if she were deeply tired. “Yes, Nina. It makes sense.”

“Okay. Good. Are you going to finally reveal the point of this conversation to me or—?”

Andrea shakes her head, still leaning on Nina. Nina suspects that it makes it easier for her not to have to look Nina in the face when discussing all of this. Even Andrea has her limits, for all her emotional growth.

“I am curious,” she repeats cryptically for the third time. Andrea doesn’t like to repeat herself, usually. She is clearly thinking. Not her typical: I’m thinking of burying you alive, but her more sensible: I’m thinking what should be thought, as if she could conjure up a cigarette into thin air to complete the picture and ease the process. Thinking Woman, what a decent title. “Time is up. I don’t want you catching a cold. How do you feel about the scientific method?”

Nina blinks, unmoored. She lets herself be moved by Andrea so they can get out of the tub. Andrea dries her body with a towel, dries herself, drains the tub, dresses them each in clean underwear.

Nina takes Andrea’s comb, in a suggestion, and Andrea gives her permission to her brush her hair, nodding.

It’s soft to the touch, the strands thin and straight and pale. Nina brushes her bangs to the side, reveals where a whiskey bottle scar hides. She leans in, giving Andrea time to move away. When she doesn’t Nina plants a little kiss on that scar. Andrea closes her eyes, exhales deeply, opens them. Looks at Nina like Renee looks at her bibles on every Sunday. Willing to have faith. Rapt and purposeful and—Nina should hurry up so they can finish dressing up and she can fix her own hair. Knotless braids would be nice, she thinks. Or maybe afro-buns.

Nikki has classes until late but Kevin won’t take much longer in coming back from his solo practice, taking advantage of every minute on the court with graduation just around the corner. His and Matt’s.

That thought deflates her.

It’s sad.

More Foxes leaving the fox’s den. Abandoning her. No, no. No one abandons anyone. Just because someone doesn’t live near you anymore doesn’t mean you don’t continue to live within them. Dan and Renee and Allison call her often, are the reason Nina charges her cell phone at all. Kevin and Matt will do the same. Or—not Kevin, constant phone calls would be a distraction from Exy for him, but he will send Nina e-mails and Nina will hate them fervently—why e-mails, Kevin Day—but will reply to each one punctually.

Andrea puts her fingers around the nape of Nina’s neck, like an anchor. It jolts her.

“Earth calling Abra. Do you copy me?”

“I’m f— I’m alright,” Nina flounders. And sets Andrea’s brush aside. Rocks on the balls of her feet. “I just got distracted for a moment, you were saying...?”

Andrea fixes her with one of those stares that no one would mistake for exasperation unless you were fluent in Andrea Josephine Minyard after ten intensive courses in the language. It is just as effective even with Andrea wearing just a black bra and panties and armbands, somehow. Nina blames the dopamine of their shared bath for her sudden urge to kneel in submission. She stands still.

“Scientific method. Experiment, cause, effect,” Andrea wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. Agreeable to ignore that Nina almost said the forbidden F-word. Only Andrea makes such a gesture work, keeping her blankness in both face and voice. She taps Nina’s pulse twice, gives one step forward. “Gee Brain, what are we going to do tonight? The same thing we do every night, try to take over the world!” Grabbing Nina by the chin Andrea pulls their faces closer. Gives her another kiss, full of teeth and heart. Nina is weak in the knees, her heartbeat does circus pirouettes. And now, ladies and gentlemen—Andrea throws one of Nina’s blouses at her face when they pull apart, it reads I AM NOT A LESBIAN BUT MY GIRLFRIEND IS in bold pink letters. Andrea’s lips are swollen. “Prime time to do some science, Pinky.”

X

They don’t do any science. Not for long time.

Soon it’s Kevin and Matt’s last game as Foxes and because Nina was willing to be kidnapped and tortured for them she gifts them one last victory in the championships in a home game as well, as their captain, not without a lack of effort on part of the freshmen. For her part, Andrea shuts down the goal like a dream, Nina not even having to ask her, and kisses Nina later against the lockers at the end of the game in the empty room, hostility to the tenth. Not bothering to remove their gears just their helmets.

Mouth over mouth. Triumph in the air. A grumble from Andrea, her kissing technique interrupted, “Stop smiling.”

Nina’s joy so high it could be a skyscraper. She can barely stand up. In response a girlish laugh bubbles up from Nina and she is pressed harder to the metal of the locker by Andrea, her knee between her tired legs. Andrea lifts Nina off the ground effortlessly. And she too is covered in sweat. Her arms must ache as well. But Andrea is the lighthouse to Nina’s waves. Holding her up without a complain. Wanting to kiss her senseless. Her eyes almost black instead of hazel, all dilated pupils.

Nina shakes her head, bites her own lip—her belly tingling with euphoria and admiration. “Or what?”

Sooner still Kevin and Matt graduate and Wymack and Thea clap louder than anyone when Kevin is called to receive his diploma, and Dan yells proudly next to Randy Boyd when it’s Matt's turn.

The first thing Dan did when he saw Nina after all this time was to run up to her and throw her arms around Nina, a hug straight out of a movie that Nina returned on automatic with the same fervor. Almost every vertebra in her spine bursting open from the force of Dan’s affection like flowers growing on asphalt. Each petal-vertebra a statement: still here, still yours, still family/pack/home.

She said, feelingly, “Hey Nina. I’ve missed you a lot,” and, backing up a bit, now grinning mischievously. “Still causing trouble to the rookies and our dear old man, hot stuff? Don’t let Wymack know I called him old.”

Nina was only a bit sheepish. Just a tad. She fauxed innocence, “Whatever you mean? Only when they ask for it. And none that Coach can blame me for.”

And it had been months but Fox recognized rabbit-fox and Dan still smelled of pepper and Beta so Nina basked in her warmth—in the lack of blood in her own mouth—before Dan gave her back to Andrea with a nod as a non-hostile greeting, winking at Nina. “Gotta go to cheer my man up. I’ll see you later, Alligator.”

That Andrea deigned to come is an achievement in itself. She refused to stay alone in Fox Tower when Nina suggested it though.

It’s been a series of back-to-back bad days for Andrea. She sleeps alone again on the bottom bunk and smokes like a chimney until the sun goes down and throws knives into the middle of the door, always hitting the mark, much to Nikki’s chagrin who always calls Matt to fix the doors. Not being able to beat the shit of Renee to release stress since Renee graduated last year. The only consolation is that they don’t escalate to Bad Days that require Betsy’s mandatory intervention, but just barely.

Today is the least bad day so Andrea holds Ninaʼs hand through the entire ceremony from start to finish—playing with the colored duct tape Nina uses as rings, not paying attention to anything around her except Nina’s fingers. They’re both in the middle sitting on plastic chairs with the rest of the Monsters plus Thea and Wymack and Abby and Betsy, and Nina ends up watching Andrea more than the graduates despite her best efforts.

Andrea looks, for all intents and purposes, bored to death. Dressed for a funeral in a lace top and leather pants and platform boots, all black, sunglasses included. She stretches out a leg and causes at least three students to stumble when they walk by and doesn’t clap for neither Matt or Kevin, not like Nina does, but she does look their way as opposed to the others.

“You often remind me of a vampire,” Nina remarks, a bit captivated. “Are you going to drink the blood of everyone here?” she asks, honestly curious when the last speech is over.

“This is the skin of a killer, Nina,” Andrea deadpans but ends up shaking her head in denial. “Too many witnesses,” her gaze hidden still behind sunglasses she carelessly draws うさぎ in hiragana on Nina’s palm—with expertise—even though as a Yonsei who never meet her father Andrea doesn’t know much about her diaspora except bits and pieces of the language—only learned this particular word out of spite after meeting Nina, and then. “Watch out. Here comes Matt The Man, to steal you on a white horse and ride into the sunset. Someone tell that poor guy that he is in the wrong fairytale before his heart breaks over the pages.”

She’s right. Sort of. There is no white horse but there is Matt heading towards Nina.

He greets her with a casual, “Heyyo, little sister,” and a smile as big as his height. No longer having his ridiculous hat on his locks are out in the open. That same morning Nina helped him put orange and white beads on them. Mary didn’t teach her how, too flashy the beads for their hair in their non-life on the run, but Renee did. They are, objectively speaking, a decent job. Neither Renee nor Allison could attend. With Matt’s blessing Nina sent pictures of the result of his hair to both of them before the whole thing started.

She instantly received separate responses:

Renee W. [08:18]

lovely job Nina 😊 take photos of the ceremony if you can? my best wishes to you and Andrea

and

Allison R. [08:19]

👍🏾👍🏾🔥🔥 you talented fucker i wish u could do mine next time. Alas im tragically beautifully too Desi for it, Allhamdulillah

Allison R. [08:24]

...say hello for me to the rest of the Monsters and ur girlfriend Bela Lugosi. Or whatever

Nina J [08:24]

Thank you.

Nina J [08:24]

:)

Now Matt asks, bowing his head playfully, “Nina Josten, would you do me the honor of accepting one last spinning hug in the name of our friendship, until we meet again?”

And Nina, amused, lets Andrea’s hand go with a squeeze. Jumps to her feet. Extends both arms. She’s wearing her armbands covering everything from her knuckles to her upper arms.

It may not be the correct fairytale but a hug from Matt has never killed anyone. There are worse ways to die, anyway.

That’s all the permission Matt needs.

He picks Nina up and gives them a joyful spin. Just as protective as Dan but a bit more delicate. Nina closes her eyes, surrounded by Alpha and leather boxing glovesʼ scent. Not breaking their embrace Matt whispers, less humorous, “Do not be a stranger.”

Nina already misses him. The kind of missing that a body does with its organs on the lose.

When Andrea used to harass her for entertainment and suspicion and when Kevin used to crush her with his criticism and expectations and when Nina had to mistrust even her own shadow Matt took one look at her—skittish and awkward and with more secrets than days left to live—and unselfishly decided to become a friend, her friend. Just as he decides every day to have a pleasant attitude and show off his track marks shamelessly and love Dan with respect. A conscious decision, from day to day. Nice by choice. Not because he was born that way, or because he doesn’t physically have a single bad bone in his body, or because he is inherently pure, or because he is naive. Not for satinizing himself so that the whites can ingest him easier. None of that bullshit, no. Matt Boyd, baggaged with all his personal anguish and flaws, yelling, “FUCK YOU!” cheerily to the world, “I’M GOING TO BE A NICE HUMAN BEING FOR MYSELF.” But not hesitant to throw fists either, if he deems it fair.

For all that and more she hugs him back. Her feet don’t touch the ground.

No blood in her mouth, yet.

“I won’t,” Nina swears, choked.

Kevin takes advantage of that moment to approach them. His tunic sleeves are rolled up, a first and recent Ahu Ahu Mataroa on his left arm that he didn’t even have to get drunk to have the courage to get tattooed, of course accompanied by Wymack. As the first time, he took Kevin with his own tattooer. Like father like son. If Kevin continues to get Māori tattoos and grows his hair out and a beard, Nikki is going to have an aneurysm.

He demands a hug from Nina as well. “It’s just appropriate,” Kevin argues.

Nina rolls her eyes, fond despite everything. Just like her game she gives it to him. Subtly she inhales Beta scent and old book pages and agalochus wood. Kevin doesn’t bother to duck down either. Nina’s feet are still off-ground until they are not. Kevin puts her back on the ground and pats her shoulders. In the daylight he clearly looks proud of Nina. Nina is left feeling gleeful due to this—to Kevin’s pride on her, for once very blatant and not hidden behind haughty scorn.

“I’ll send you e-mails,” he reminds her.

Thank you for giving me your game.

“I’ve never heard of Hotmail before,” she says.

You are welcome.

Then Dan reappears and brazenly kisses Nina on her cheek, cackling loudly. She leaves an orange lipstick stain on Nina—like the dent from a bullet, and goes straight to Matt. She’s engulfed in his arms. Dressed in her best clothes, the vibrant green fabric of her qipao of the highest quality, every detail of the patterns embroidered on cotton and with frog buttons Dan looks radiant. Her hair gelled back instead of in a traditional bun, as it remains extremely short.

“We believe you, Húlí,” she says. Matt, resting his chin on Dan’s head, nods along with impish seriousness. From that distance and position it’s not very noticeable but they have mating bites to match.

Kevin makes a constipated face, sputters. “Who is this 'we'?”

Also already standing Andrea puts her sunglasses in a pocket. Still looks bored. She doesn’t speak to anyone but as soon as Nina returns to her side Andrea licks her thumb and rubs Dan’s lipstick away, slipping too her leather jacket over Nina. Overshadowing the scent of all three and replacing it with her own.

Nobody makes a comment about those actions which is wise—in Nina’s opinion. This, likewise, is part of progress. It’s their effort to understand that Andrea is not like the rest and not judge her for it that counts. That doesn’t stop Nina from rolling her eyes again, good-natured. From clinging to the jacket.

When Matt nods in their direction Andrea nods back after exactly one minute. Just the right amount of time to make Matt uncomfortable. And when Kevin offers Andrea a hand in parting—the same hand that was broken and put back together, a Prometheus pecked by ravens until it died no more, the King is dead long live the Queen—Andrea does not hesitate to look him in the eye, serious as ever. With grim respect and complicated gratitude. She gives Kevin a firm shake.

Just one.

X

The next time Andrea brings up the subject of Nina’s sexuality is during summer. Summer vacations.

The facts are these: Kevin has already moved into Thea’s apartment in Washington for his contract with the D.C. Rotwillers before Exy’s pro season starts to get acclimated to the city and its stadium and spend quality time with Thea. Aaron is visiting relatives of Katelyn for two weeks, he calls Andrea every day only to have Andrea hang up on him as soon as Aaron grumpily announces that he’s still alive and is himself in his own body and no, he hasn’t been replaced by an evil clone—that’s your job, big sister—nor is he a hostage to Katelyn’s family, what the hell Andrea. Nikki took a taxi that morning to pick Erika up from the airport with an hotel room already booked, yelling from the front door, “I stole some of the lube you girls keep in the bathroom! Don’t wait up for us! I’m going to make sweet, sweet love to my future wife. Mhaw!”

The facts are these: they have the Columbia house to themselves.

The first thing Nina notices as she returns barefoot to their room carrying two coffees with cream—one cup with zero sugar cubes and the other one eight—is the open laptop on the edge of the bed.

Not ominous at all.

“What’s that?”

Nina side-eyes without censure the used clothes, DVDs, CDs and trinkets scattered haphazardly over the chair, the desk, the bookcase, and the floor next to the closet, the bed.

It’s not obvious even to those who know her, or maybe it is, but Andrea is neat in her mess. She doesn’t bother keeping her personal space organized. Not since she got out of foster care and there weren’t any more adults shrieking at her that if she didn’t clean her room at this very right instant she’d go to bed with an empty stomach. Nikki, without much authority as a Beta, was quick to consider it a lost cause and left Andrea be.

Nina tries not to let the chaos affect her much even if she herself keeps each of her socks in their designated place, both here in Columbia and at Fox Tower. Contrary to how to decorate hair with beads Mary did taught Nina the importance of order.

Among other things.

Andrea neatly ignores Nina’s valid question. She does grabby hands until Nina hands her a mug and then drinks her coffee. Sitting on the mattress, her legs spread in a V. Andrea is barefoot too, toenails painted in black. She’s wearing pajama bottoms with prints of cartoon kitchen knives and her dark blue lace bra—the one that highlights her boobs the best. And nothing else. Devoid of armbands and makeup Andrea’s short hair is carelessly tied into a high bun.

It’s the peak of summer.

Days are hot. Nights are hotter. Andrea may be the hottest of them all.

Nina is not even thinking about sex appeal. Andrea just doesn’t run cold. Aaron’s feet are cold according to a passing comment from Katelyn but Nina would rather not play Exy for a decade than hear more about that.

“This is a laptop,” Andrea says, interrupting Nina’s silent staring. “The next evolutionary step of a computer but portable. Technological magic. Developed in 1981 the first laptop was called the Osborne 1 and—”

“I know what a laptop is. What is it doing in your bed?”

“Our bed,” Andrea corrects, placing her empty mug on top of the nightstand. Nina finishes hers in two gulps and carries it to the tabletop desk along with Andrea’s. Pushing aside an unopened package of M&M’s, a lone cigarette, a car magazine of some make or another. “Do you remember what we talked about? The scientific method.”

The hamster falls out of its spinning wheel, astounded. Nina stops, halfway to her—their bed. One knee bent on the sheets and the other leg straight, hands planted in front. She looks towards Andrea.

Andrea raises minutely an eyebrow, the one that’s pierced.

They had that conversation months ago. Nina remembers. Of course she remembers. The day Nina stops paying attention to Andrea’s words and starts to forget them is the day Nina dies.

“What about it?”

“Do you want to try.”

“Now?” Nina asks at the risk of sounding dumb.

“Let me check my busy schedule. Unless you want to book an official appointment for tomorrow, yes. Now.”

“With a laptop?”

“Not the laptop. What the laptop can play.”

Andrea is being far too patient.

What a laptop can play is—porn, apparently. A pornography website. Andrea opened a porn website in several of the tabs of the internet. Hotknots dot com.

Nina is speechless. Still.

Andrea snaps her fingers in front of Nina’s face. Nina is helpless to her call. “That’s a first,” she comments idly. “Do I get a prize for shutting you up?”

Oh. Oh, Andrea thinks herself so hilarious. Nina would snark something witty and mean back if she wasn’t suddenly so worried. It goes like this: she’s not going to treat Andrea with kid gloves. She will not. She has not. But Nina has to make sure.

“Tell me this isn’t solely for my benefit at your own expense.”

Andrea’s posture changes. It’s subtle. Not so lighthearted anymore. She shuts herself. Her scent blank, giving no clues. Andrea must have understood. Who is she kidding? Andrea always understands even what she doesn’t and Nina must explain. It’s the same in reverse.

They look at each other, neither saying a word. Eventually Andrea clicks her tongue.

“Come here,” when Nina crawls over to her Andrea wraps a hand around Nina’s throat. Her voice is icy. “As long as we avoid porn with male Doms and female subs regardless of their designations and anything related to the categories of roleplay of incest or rape and that involves knife play, age play and race play we’re alright. Peachy, even.”

“You know they’re going to beg, right? They will beg with that word. I don’t—”

“We’ll put subtitles and the dub of a language that I don’t speak. Do not project your insecurities onto me,” Andrea warns. “I suggested it,” she adds, less curtly. “I have been thinking about it. I selected three videos that shouldn’t trigger either of us, assessed them by myself. They are mediocre but harmless. I am saying yes to watching shitty porn with you. If your answer is a hard no that’s another matter. So give me your answer. And no lies. If you try to deceive me I will know.”

She smells honest.

Her body relaxed, as relaxed as Andrea can be being who she is.

Nina falls silent.

There are worse things to do than watching porn with Andrea. Like baseball. Andrea might want to watch baseball with her. That would be terrible. As terrible as being drugged against her will by Andrea in a goth club of dubious reputation. Maybe worse. Not that she’s opposed to the idea either. It was just—unexpected.

Nina squares her shoulders. “Yes.”

“What was that,” Andrea says, still holding Nina by the throat. Her cool gaze fixed on her. “I didn’t hear you right. Do you mind repeating it, mein Leben?”

Nina flushes. She glares at Andrea. Andrea using pet names in German is a low blow—it means that Andrea recognizes that she has already won. That she’s bragging.

Damn her.

“I hate you,” Nina lies, uneven.

“You love me,” Andrea squeezes, not strangles. Discreetly soft. “Stop stealing my lines otherwise I’ll have to sue you for copyright infringement. My, my. Don’t be shy with me now. You are on very thin ice, Red, it can crack at the thinnest word after all. Your answer?”

Nina knows—she knows that she stinks of tangerines and saltwater.

The facts are these: It is always yes with Andrea. Because Andrea recognizes the importance of a no.

Nina surrenders.

“Yes, Andrea,” she repeats, less doubtful.

Andrea waits. Feels Nina’s pulse—the truth in it, beating. Once satisfied Andrea unwraps her hand, finger by finger. She points to the space available between her outstretched legs, lazily. An invitation, take it or decline it. Nina takes it. Lets out a breath and settles in front of Andrea.

The laptop screen in her direct view, Andrea a heater behind her back.

Nina clicks play.

“Experiment number one, take one,” Andrea mock-whispers, hooking her chin over Nina’s shoulder.

And so they’re looking at porn dubbed in Mandarin.

How romantic.

The first video is—fine. Not her forbidden Fine but fine-fine. Average-fine. I stepped in a puddle and got a little of mud on my shoes-fine. In the video there’s a tall Alpha woman in a latex outfit with lots of chains, her boner very clear, and a man—Alpha? Beta?—at her feet, crawling toward her only in lingerie, already half-hard too. They are in a luxury hotel room with a pink heart-shaped bed. The woman croons at him and calls him a good boy, allows him to nuzzle her legs with his nose. He doesn’t do anything until she lets him.

Nina wonders if it would be rude to take a short nap. Andrea chooses that moment to speak. “What do you think of her muscles.”

She says the first thing that comes to mind, which is, “Uh. They are big.”

“As big as mine? Don’t they make you horny just by looking at them?”

It’s a light switched on. Nina gets it. The scientific method. To do some science. Experimentation. Andrea investigating why Nina is attracted to her. She still doesn’t understand Andrea’s sudden fixation on this but Nina decides to play along. Squints at the screen. And thinks it through.

“Not really,” Nina doesn’t mention Andrea’s height difference with the woman at the risk of getting thrown off the bed. “She looks more like a bodybuilder. Not as unyielding as you.”

I wouldn't feel safe around her, she thinks, not with a complete stranger who could snap me in half like a toothpick and with me so vulnerable.

Peripherally Andrea frowns, not pleased. “What about the praise kink. The gentle domination. Focus on what she is talking about. Is it words of praise? How does she guide him in intimate moments?”

The woman is sugary. Sighs, “How handsome you are, my princess.”

She gives orders to the man and expects him to carry them out. And the man pleads and pleads for permission but does not attempt to take anything that has not been explicitly given.

Nina remains indifferent. Nothing the woman says is directed at her. She’s not participating in the Scene. As far as the woman is concerned Nina does not exist. The man, however. Not the man himself but the submission of the man—that hits uncomfortably close to home. Uh oh.

“No,” she admits, though.

Andrea is a bit meaner. Andrea manhandles her around and Andrea can hold her up against walls with ease and Andrea is callously sweet and Andrea says, “Don’t touch until I tell you,” and says, “If you don’t keep quiet I’ll have to put a bandana over your mouth, little fox. Is that what you want, hm?” and says, “Only here, Abra” and that. That.

Nina rubs her thighs together. She hopes that if Andrea notices she doesn’t think anything of it. No matter how unlikely.

“Mhm.” Still unsatisfied Andrea drums her fingers on Nina’s stomach. Casually. As if she didn’t realize she’s doing it. Every cell of Nina concentrated on that little point of contact. Nina mentally counts backwards from twenty to zero in French, stuttering every number.

“This is more of the same. Play the next one. Experiment number one, take two.”

Nina closes that tab and clicks play again on the next one. The second video starts on an Exy court or what appears to be an Exy court set. There are two men standing. Two men wearing non-descript uniforms and gear. They are a striker and a goalie and—

“Oh fuck you.”

Andrea blinks innocently. She’s so full of shit.

“What.”

“Don’t what me. Their racquets are from Lacrosse,” Nina protests, indignant.

On the screen, the men pretend to score and block. They make a bet. If the goalie can stop five points, the striker will let himself be fucked on the open field. The striker doesn’t even handle his racquet well. He misses every shot, not by accident. More focused on wiggling his hips as a runway model.

It hurts her on a psychological level.

“Are you trying to kill me? Is that what this is about?”

Andrea shakes her entire body. Her version of a laugh. She keeps her face hidden in the crook of Nina’s neck. How scandalous, really. “If only. Is it the incredible goalkeeping ability? That I’m a stickball prodigy? The suspense of not knowing whether you are with me just because of my ability to play this hellish sport is killing me,” Andrea says.

On the screen the striker has lost and now, both men—omega—are naked, scissoring each other on the floor full of germs, moaning as if in heat. Porn star moans. All pretend. Faked. So clinical and not emotional.

Nina doesn’t pay attention. More concerned because Andrea’s hands are too close to her belly button.

“I am not in love with you just because you’re the best goalie in NCAA Class I,” Nina belatedly denies.

“You say that and yet you have this ridiculous habit of getting all hot and bothered when I shut in the goal.”

Andrea rubs a circle. On Nina’s hip bone. There is no way that she doesn’t hear Nina swallow, that she doesn’t smell her horniness, that she doesn’t feel Nina open her legs a bit to give Andrea better access. If Andrea puts her hand lower—

“Has it occurred to you that if that were true I would have fallen for Kevin. Or... or literally for any pro Exy player on the leagues.”

Andrea feigns to debate it. “Well. Guess I won’t have to gruesomely murder the best stickball players all around the world to keep your affections all to myself. Kevin, too, will live another day.”

“How lucky of him, I’m sure he’ll appreciate knowing that. I appreciate too that I won’t have to plan your escape from prison either and live on the run again, thanks for asking.”

She feels Andrea shake again, laughing without a laugh, at least not one with a sound. Andrea doesn’t even smile on good days.

“Is it correct to assume that nothing in the video appeals to you, then, oh mighty Nina.”

“This is my appealed face.”

“Smartass. It was worth a shot. Not one towards a stickball goal, however,” Nina covers an amused but exasperated smile. Andrea tilts her head this way and that. “Moving on. Play the last one. Experiment number one, take three.”

Nina is fast to put distance between them to close that tab and play the latest video, trying to calm down. She’s reluctant to resettle into the same position with Andrea but Andrea would be more suspicious if Nina acts timid now.

Maybe the video will serve as a distraction.

These are the facts: Andrea is far from stupid.

When Nina comes back to her side and leans against her Andrea places a hand on her belly not with double intentions and Nina can’t help but exhale loudly—her entire body taut, this painful thud on her sternum, a long-distance shot from the safety of a high window—and arch into Andrea’s touch. Just for the fraction of a second.

They both freeze.

On the screen, an omega woman strips as a Beta watches her—another woman who for reasons beyond Nina’s understanding acts as her bodyguard and has just saved her by dismantling a bomb to prevent it from exploding on her breasts, which calls for celebratory sex for not having brutally died, or something.

Nina wishes the earth would open up and swallow her and spit her out on the other side of the planet.

Her wish is not fulfilled.

Andrea is the first to regain her composure. She sniffs Nina openly. Prevents Nina from pulling away by hugging her from behind, her legs in a lockdown. Nina stiffens. Wracks her brain for a convincing believable excuse, but then.

“You are horny.”

But then.

It’s useless to deny it, isn’t it?

“Not because of your shitty porn,” it’s her lame excuse.

“You are horny,” Andrea repeats, flatly, and perhaps a little perplexed if her scent isn’t deceiving, “but not because we’re watching porn.”

“Andrea.”

“What is it.”

Now the Beta woman puts a finger inside the omega woman who she supposedly successfully protected. Andrea’s fingers are much less skinny, full of calluses. Fox fingers. Survivor fingers. And she’s behind Nina, so close and so far and so solid—

“I—”

“Abra.”

“It was you. It is you. Satisfied? I’m horny because I’m with you,” Nina blurts out defensively.

Shame is quick to appear, as quick as Nina running from the Devil for half her life. Despite knowing better she cannot help but be pessimistic.

This is it.

This is when Andrea finally has a valid reason to judge her.

But a second passes, and then a second one, and then a third. And there is nothing. Andrea does not make fun of her nor does she accuse Nina of being a liar. That she’s weird-weird because she doesn’t find porn appealing or stimulating. That on the contrary the mere presence of Andrea is enough for Nina to overheat.

“... 'It was you',” each letter enunciated with deliberation. Andrea tightens her hug. “I’m going to release you now. Promise me you won’t run out of the room to avoid this conversation.”

Nina debates her options, still not letting her guard down completely. Not knowing what to expect. She hates not knowing what to expect. But that’s unfair. This is Andrea. Nina trusts Andrea more than she trusts her own brain. And Andrea already knows that Nina only swings for her even if only in theory. Isn’t this just concrete evidence of that?

“I promise you I won’t run out of the room as soon as you let me go to avoid this conversation.”

Andrea lets her go. Despite the summer heat Nina feels strangely cold. Until Andrea turns her around and they’re face to face, squatting on the mattress.

Nina has seen Andrea angry, furious even. Her rage brutal and chaotic and uncontrolled—this beaten dog that tears apart arteries like chew-toys and snarls at any muzzle and leash. The kind of rage of an eye for an eye and two lungs and a kidney. This not that. There is something about Andrea’s focused, calculating expression, though—a black hole of intensity. It could make Nina shudder, drip like the sea.

In the background the Mandarin-dubbed porn video continues to play.

“We are going to try something else,” Andrea announces, measured.

“Okay.”

“I am going to ask you a few questions and you are going to answer them honestly.”

“Okay.”

“And I want you to touch me in the meantime, but only where I say.”

“Okay.”

“Stop saying 'okay.' Give me your hands.”

The hamster collapses, not dead, but exhausted. Its spinning wheel stopping briefly.

Nina does as she has been told. Andrea places Nina’s hands in her white-blonde hair bun. Keeps looking at her, shrewdly. And then asks, in a hush:

“Is it the hair?”

“Your hair.”

Andrea moves Nina’s hands to her pink lips.

“Is it the mouth?”

“Your mouth.”

Andrea moves Nina’s hands to her pale neck sploshed in purples, ghosts of Nina’s tongue.

“Is it the neck?”

“Your neck.”

Andrea moves Nina’s hands to her very, very big boobs.

“Is it the tits?”

“Your tits.”

Andrea moves Nina’s hands to her broad shoulders.

“Is it the shoulders?”

“Your shoulders.”

Andrea moves Nina’s hands to her beefy arms.

“Is it the arms?”

“Your arms.”

Andrea moves Nina’s hands to her scarred forearms.

“Is it the strength?”

Nina bites her lower lip. Andrea’s eyes flick down, then up.

“Your strength.”

Andrea moves Nina’s hands to her clothed dick, already half-hard. She leans forward to brush their mouths together. And Nina falls backwards, overwhelmed. Andrea climbs on top of her, a woman on a mission. Her hand still holding Nina’s over her dick, through her sweatpants. Hardening more and more and more.

“Is it the dick? The mood swings? The violence? The motherfucking tongue?”

“Y-your dick. Your mood swings. Your violence. Your motherfucking tongue.”

Nina grows wet. The entire room reeks of wet dirt and cocoa—of Andrea’s possessive streak, the sum of its parts. Andrea doesn’t look particularly different. She doesn’t emote. She’s just as expressionless as usual. And yet. There’s a wild glow to her. In anyone else Nina would dare to refer to it as wonder. As if Nina was inconceivable and Andrea couldn’t wait to eat her alive, give her another permanent home in her stomach.

Hello, lion. It’s been a while.

That prospect shouldn’t turn Nina on that much, but it does.

“It is me,” Andrea hoarsely says. “You like the sex we have because you like me. You like the things you like about me because you like me. You like me because I am me.”

“Now who’s being stupid?” Nina means to snark but it comes out entirely too fond. She ends up nodding. Her pussy drenched in slick, gushing out of her. Nina’s mind is spinning around—her long cornrows splayed on the satin pillow Andrea bought especially for her.

Almost nothing remains of Nina’s composure.

The facts are these: Andrea kisses her, roughly. And the rest of the world fades away.

Forget the mattress, the sheets, the bed, the floor full of clothes, the porn website still open, the locked door, the room, the date on the calendar. There is only Andrea’s lips, Andrea’s teeth, Andrea’s spit, Andrea’s tongue, Andrea’s taste. The way she kisses Nina like a knife. Ripping through the meat. Absurdly loving.

Nina’s hands are in her jaw. Holding on with everything she has. Andrea has placed them there. She leans on her elbows hovering above Nina. Rolls her hips over her hips. Once. Twice. Hard. She’s hard because of Nina. It feels as if their hearts could burst out of the ground at any second, in tandem. Nina has to let her know—she tries—

“Andrea. ’Ndrea. ’Rea,” between one drawn-out messy kiss and the next.

If it’s an option—

“Tell me,” Andrea says, low. Catching up immediately. “What do you want, baby blue?”

Nina can’t form the words. They elude her. She whines. A small, slippery sound. More weight. Andrea maneuvers herself, wraps her fingers around Nina’s throat again—thumb under her chin, menacing.

For such offense Nina would have bitten anyone else’s hand.

Andrea is not anyone else.

“Tell me,” she insists, with feeling.

The intersection of their bodies and the maddening friction and the hungry warmness and the stickiness on her own thighs and Andrea’s intense scent and her kisses and her kisses. Whatever. Whatever Andrea is willing to offer.

Nina babbles exactly that, into her ear, “For you to feel good too,” and licks Andrea’s earlobe, sucking on more than one of her earrings, the metal cold on her palate, motivated by how Andrea is rocking faster, pressed against her hip. “My cya—? Wi cya—? Anything is fine with me. I think. If you want it— A’ndrea. I want— Nuhting yuh wa.”

Anything within reason.

It is the certainty that Andrea will not take more by force than Nina can willingly give that motivates her to make statements like this so often with her.

Suddenly Andrea stops the movement of her hips. Her breathing is notoriously labored. Nina doesn’t take it personally despite the restless drumming in her blood. She releases Andrea’s jaw, her hands falling to her sides.

The facts are these: Sometimes Andrea doesn’t want to be sexually touched or undressed when fucking. Sometimes Andrea does want to be touched sexually but she doesn’t want to undress while fucking and she doesn’t let Nina look, keeping her pants or panties or blouse on, with Nina’s hand crammed in them and Nina’s eyes firmly closed or covered with a blindfold. Sometimes, and this is recent, Andrea wants to be touched sexually and she wants to undress while fucking and she wants Nina to see her naked in this kind of context. Nina never knows what it will be. She is never disappointed regardless of Andrea’s choice.

There is a beat of silence, and then Andrea is sitting on Nina’s belly, her thighs encasing Nina’s slim waist. She watches her from above, making calculations. Her hair bun disheveled.

“Me,” Andrea reiterates. Her voice dark. Darker. Darkest. “You want me. Nobody else.”

Another nod. Nina has nothing to lose. She shows Andrea on purpose the vulnerable side of her own throat. “There is no one else, Boonoonoonoos.”

Her reaction is instantaneous. Andrea fists Nina’s shirt, gives it a little tug, drags a fingernail across the exposed part of her stomach like a scalpel—already resolved.

“I want,” Andrea interrupts herself, licks her own lips, “I want to fuck your tits.”

Nina’s body is this stripped live wire in shallow water. It short circuits. She fights a shudder to no avail. Her pussy contracting into nothing.

“Yes. That’s— yes.”

“Off,” Andrea tugs again at the cotton of the fabric, more insistent. “Take this off.”

Deprived of any sensible reason to not obey her Nina squirms from right to left in what’s definitely not seductive movements, undresses herself by removing her baggy t-shirt and sports bra. Soon enough she is naked from the waist up, a myriad of light brown interspersed scars all over her torso and arms and hands. They say: weak, but not weak enough to die by the hand of another, so maybe just a bit strong.

Her chest already rising and falling like a swing.

It would be embarrassing—how affected she is by a couple of kisses—if not by the fact that Andrea enjoys her reactions. Maintaining eye contact at all times Andrea lowers her sweatpants and panties, lets her cock spring out and slam obscenely against her belly. Its head pink going to red, dripping white at the tip. Andrea takes herself in one hand, a tight grip. Barely holding back a pleasant hiss.

The room reeks of, I trust you. Of, I love you. Of, I have you. Of, I’ll keep you.

Raggedly, Andrea drawls, “You can see. Today. Squeeze your tits together,” and gives Nina one more brief kiss, on her eyelids this time.

It’s big. Andrea’s dick. And thick. It feels wonderful. Inside her lips, between her thighs, on her throat, in her hands. The knot makes it bigger. Nina can only imagine how it would feel inside her pussy though more in detached curiosity than active interest. She doesn’t answer Andrea verbally. Instead Nina cups her own boobs and squeezes them together and doesn’t have time to grieve over their size or lack of, how tiny they are compared to Andrea’s. Not when Andrea inhales and still holding her dick she guides it and slides it between them.

Forest fire flames scorch wherever they touch and Nina is unable to contain a keen. Victorious and defeated. Squeezing harder. Earning another hiss from Andrea. A growl.

“Here,” Nina croaks before she can reconnect her fuses, “I welcome your touch here. Couldn’t you love me here?”

Andrea does, her eyes flashing.

In less than the blink of an eye Andrea slams her hips forward, and then backwards, and then forward again. She builds a slow but consistent pace. And then she’s fucking Nina with dedication, in earnest. Smearing precum all over Nina’s hard nipples. The sweat on her boobs interspersed with even more precum.

Nina likes to stare at Andrea, all the time. These moments are no exception.

She has every itineration of Andrea’s face memorized already and still Nina looks her fill like it’s brand new, every single time. Here are Andrea’s cheeks and collarbones already flushed—blood on the scene, strawberries lying on marble. And here are her little harsh gasps and weighted grunts and breathy moans trailing from her mouth, even though Andrea is naturally quiet and if she makes noise at all it’s just to turn Nina on because apparently Nina has a voice kink and Andrea has always been an instigator at heart. And here is her gaze, intent. Her gaze, sharp and fervent and bright, pinning Nina down. Her gaze, unweaponed.

The facts are these: She’s the sexiest sight Nina has ever seen—Andrea on top of her. Andrea sets her ablaze. Because it’s her Nina is not ashamed to groan and whine and gasp in return. Of being shameless. Eviscerating her own armor and loving her and being loved by her.

Her pussy throbs. She feels dizzy.

Just because it’s Andrea—

Just because Andrea sees her and is letting her see her being unfolded too—

Andrea goes on and on. More abrupt. With less finesse. Close to the orgasm. A barely noticeable frown on her brow. Because it hurts. Because it doesn’t hurt. Because it will never hurt again. This, Nina swears. She doesn’t stop her thrusts but Andrea brings her right arm behind herself until she finds blindly Nina’s pussy and circles her clit and. And.

Nina aches.

Tries to hold back tears, overwhelmed. It is growing. The fire. Inside her. Climbing up. She can recognize it. At this rate she—she’s going to—

“I’m gonna cum,” Nina mewls.

Andrea strokes her faster—wider strokes, with her entire palm. Never looking away from Nina. Still with her dick nestled between Nina’s boobs, sliding in and out and out and in. She feels so hot in the summer heat. Andrea’s balls rubbing against Nina with each thrust every couple of minutes. Andrea’s boobs bouncing with gravity despite her bra.

“Good,” she rasps, visibly affected. And pinches Nina’s clit, twists it. “Do it, Abra. Let me see. Let me see when you cum for me.”

Just like that Nina squirts. She gasps loudly. A full-body quake, and then two, three, four more. Body arching.

She curses in Patois.

Andrea cums right after her. Quietly. She goes still, her shoulders hunched up, Andrea curling on herself. Spurts of cum fall all over Nina’s chest, near her chin, her throat, her open mouth. The only evidence that Andrea is done.

Their descend of the cusp of pleasure is slow but not too slow.

Andrea pulls out of Nina and wordlessly tucks her already soft dick back into her sweatpants. Immediately she starts caressing Nina’s scars, anywhere where her skin is jagged, where her skin is Nina’s. Soft because of scar cream. Nina loosens the grip on her boobs, notices the marks of her own fingernails in them, the lack of background sound. If she cranes her neck the dark laptop screen is in her line of sight. The last video must have finished playing a long time ago. Nina didn’t even noticed when.

She begins to say, still shuddering, “Do you want me to—”

But Andrea bumps her forehead with hers, her eyes firmly closed, fingertips still touching Nina with gentleness.

She interrupts Nina, tone strained. “いや (Iya),” Andrea grits out, and clears her throat, “いや (Iya),” after a pause, still struggling to talk, to talk her wants but wanting nonetheless, “You can stay. I can stay.”

The words soothe her. Nina lays on the bed now calm.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, we will stay.”

Both still breathless.

Nina feels warm. Dirty and warm. Dirty and filthy and warm. The warmest. She doesn’t touch Andrea back nor does she attempt to. Her scent of tangerine and saltwater like a non-corporeal hug for her. It has to be enough.

She talks about cats and square roots of a matrix.

The minutes pass like passers-by.

When Andrea has calmed down she opens her eyes and looks at Nina, all collected and apathetic again. She smells like contentment, though. Hasn’t retracted her touch. And then Andrea rolls to her side and lays beside Nina. Close. Very, very close. She reaches out. Places a hand on Nina’s plump lips, tapping at them. Nina kisses Andrea’s thumb. Cradles said hand with care against her own left ventricle.

“Just me,” Andrea confirms almost tenderly, one more time. Smugly too, now that her surprise has passed.

And in her heart Nina smiles big, not fearing the smile of a dead man—knowing it a Truth.

She leans in and gives Andrea a peck, giddily. “Just you.”