Into the Clearest Sea
Octavia crouched down, put her right arm behind Bon Bon's knees and left arm behind her back, then lifted, her tail coming out of the discreet opening in her trousers. The smaller girl give a little squeak. "It's quite alright ~ I swear that I've got you, love." Bon Bon brought up a hand and rested it on Octavia's forearm, the soft white cotton yielding to her touch.
"I know you do, just ... wherever we're going, watch out for doorways, hon." Octavia walked them across the few paces of her apartment's living room, and carefully stepped sideways into her bedroom, making sure not to bonk her girlfriend's head in the door frame. Alicia, the cello, was on its highly padded instrument stand, and a sheet of music in a book on the music stand rippled and wavered in the air conditioning. Octavia stopped at her bed and looked to Bon Bon, who looked back to her with large, curious blue eyes. Heat flowed into both of their cheeks. Somewhere outside, a loud motorcycle was revving high down the road and sprinkler water pattered on the small barred window.
Octavia bent down and placed Bon Bon on her bed, and for a moment, only looked with a bated breath. Her lavender-stripe pillowcase dented softly at Bon Bon's hair, the curls but flattening, but a few wisps dancing in the air current from the vent. The girl's face, distorted only a few minutes ago in frustration about the day, was calm and still, her eyes looking straight into Octavia's, not piercingly or even curiously, but in that way one look when they're not aware they're holding a breath and wondering ... does she? Will she? Is this ... ? Bon Bon's frilly vanilla sundress sunk and rested, almost contouring her body from her collarbone to where it slid back as Bon Bon bent and lightly raised her left leg, the white, tiny lace trim sliding up an inch, her skin from the beginning of her thighs to the frilly pink lace trim of her blue socks giving goose bumps at the cool air in the room, and Octavia's front teeth began to chitter. "S-Sugar? You okay?"
Octavia took a deep breath while looking into Bon Bon's eyes again, and thought to her itself what it looked like. She had done this many times in her fantasies, as many times as she had ever hoped Lyra would do the same ... carry her to the bed and tenderly unwrap her, treating each button like live robins' eggs, each fold of clothing as frail, if yielding, as an old mother spiders most elegant and perfect web. She had leaned down from this point in the fantasy so much with her eyes closed and the shower on ... with her face against her pillow when the winds and rains rattled the windows ... with her arms around Lyra when they're in the dark. ... The look in Bon Bon's eyes may have been questioning, but Octavia knew that those seawater-blue eyes could see ... everything. Octavia knew that in that silence between them that Bon Bon was watching every thought about her that had ever led Octavia to bite her pillow, grasp her comforters, and whimper in the lonely dark of the one-bedroom apartment. "I ... Y-Yes. Yes, I'm quite ... well. J-Just ... a moment, please."
And so she turned without another word, her back strong and proper, the collar on her suit blouse well-pressed, and with a shaking hand, shut her dark curtains over what little light left in the day the blinds didn't block already, and when she turned to face Bon Bon, all the wonderful, vivid colors about Bon Bon still were soft in the dim. Octavia, her hands cold and trembling, continued with some of her polite, thoughtful bearing ... and closed the door. When she looked to Bon Bon again, her back jerked straighter and she blinked. Bon Bon had moved, scooted to the corner of the bed at the headboard and wall, crossed her right leg under the left knee of her extended leg, and even in the dark, Octavia could feel two eyes as sweet and heavenly blue as saturated blue snowcones in the sun. There was anxiety, and Octavia felt colder in her own body at once as she imagined Bon Bon voice: 'Am I ready? Does she assume I am? Does she love me? Will she love me if I let her lust me first?' Octavia became aware of her teeth burying into the insides of her lips. This ... "I-I promise ... Bonny, that this isn't anything untoward! I-I ... I recall what we agreed on when w-we three said ..."
"Hush, Sugar ..." A whisper was, by definition, a vocal sound made without vocal cords ... without the voice, and yet, in that whisper ... she felt a voice in her chest, a warm static sensation spreading like two hands of fingertips pressed into her skin and softly gliding over her as she took her next heavy breath. "... It's-s going to be okay ..." Pained from the bite on the inside of her lip, it trembled more as she took a step towards that white-lace trim and Bon Bon ... the first girl's name she ever whispered and whimpered to an empty room and a lonely bed in a dead hour of the night. Her body was going on its own, slowly, but surely to the gravity between the two girls. Octavia swallowed. In the dim, she winced even as her feet carried her another step. This wasn't right. This wasn't balanced! She wanted to do this ... first and most. If she had this now, what would bridge her over what Lyra wanted from her so much? If she descended on Bon Bon and had the softest, most vivid pick of the roses in the garden, could she return and say she loved any stubborn blossom?
"I-I ... " And she met with the sensation of a cool scarlet silk sheet gliding over the contour of her rear and flowing up her spine.
"Shhhhh ..."
She lifted her left knee and lowered her left hand into the pillow as she got onto the bed. Neither looked away. The wool of her slacks twisted around her knee and the tuck of her blouse came out as she laid have on her side, and half on Bon Bon's sternum as she looked up the outline of Bon Bon's breasts into Bon Bon's eyes as she wrapped her arms around her hips. For a moment, she did nothing further but tremble lightly, one of Bon Bon's legs trapped on the inside of Octavia's thigh. Bon Bon lifted a trembling knee just a little, and a shudder waved out from her from her toes in her formal socks to her elbows in her rolled up sleeves. No ... no no no, she thought, not yet. ... Oh ... oh goodness, she wasn't ready to feel that pressure for real ... not for real. She was ... missing something. This wasn't right, right yet. This wasn't the time. Not yet! Not yet. Then Bon Bon reached down, her nails the colors of cotton candy and kisses, and slowly moved Octavia's bangs out of her eyes and began to run through her hair. A held breath finally was released and her chest fell against Bon Bon, and her shoulders limped. The cold scarlet sheet was traveling down from Bon Bon's touch on the back of her neck down her spine, pressed to her and so chilly as it cling under her as it wove under her bottom. She had to fight to keep the lids of her eyes open to stay looking up still. Bon Bon, she thought, I'd fight with all my life to make you my love forever ... I'll stop this ... we'll talk. Bon Bon pressed her to her, and then with a magical jingle, Octavia felt Bon Bon's own tail fluff and curl its way into the world, a gift of the Fall Formal on them all. A stuttered breath traveled down Bon Bon's hand to Octavia's warming scalp.
Warmth ... Octavia felt the softest warmth seeping through two plys of cotton, and held alone with that sensation, a thought came clearly. 'I know what to do. I know what I've denied her now.' Another pound of tension released from her lungs and she took in a breath the scent of misted sugar. Again, her body moved without her control, and she loosened her hug on Bon Bon's body, then began to slide her down to her. Yes, she thought, in voice trembling and chilled. I'm doing the right thing!
She felt the cool of Bon Bon's breath when at last they were nearly eye-to-eye when a certain calm approched. A smile began to form then, though her lip still trembled. "W-What a fool I've ..."
"Shhh ..."
"No ... I ... I know a-all that I want." Bon Bon put a her hand on her shoulder in support, the pressure not restrictive, but Octavia turned, tugged at the tucked end of the comforter, and pulled a side of the comforter up behind her and over them like a black wing, bringing her arms under Bon Bon's and holding them together by her back, then scooted forwards while pulling the comforter more deeply around them, cocooning Bon Bon against the wall in arm and bedding, all while looking still into the questioning blue.
"Hon, y-you ... it's okay, you ... "
"No ... it doesn't become well until ... I show you ... this ... this ..." And then she neared, the comforter marking the line between warmth and goosebumps, and with one last moment of those eyes, she closed hers and began to gently pull Bon Bon the last inch. Bon Bon found her with her hands at her shoulders and pulled to do the same.
Her lips were so warm and so ... unrivaled by silk or bubbles of fine lotion or a feather's grace from a newborn angel ... she only initially only able to feel the kiss by the lack of roughness, by lack of pressure ... and the taste of cake-batter-flavored lip gloss. When she felt the warm pressure, she tilted her head and let her arms stop there. She pressed just a little, My love, she thought. This kiss ... this is how I thank you for reaching out across the cold. This is how I ... how I tell you that I don't believe we're going to be anecdotes in a tale of fragile young love. This is ... this is how I tell you that I believe you can make something that lasts forever. I'm here. She brought a hand into Bon Bon's hair, and her own strange, magical tail sought and wrapped around the curls of Bon Bon's.
An exhale from their noses cooled their glossed lips as they parted. At the moment their eyes opened, a shudder passed between them, and Octavia pulled the comforter even more. Bon Bon momentarily grabbed them and helped. "Just one crazy girl right now," she whispered. "A girl-ritto? W-What ... what comes next? O-One way or another ...." Octavia brushed her lips on her girlfriend's and then pressed them together, inhaling, tasting, that gloss. This kiss was longer, a flood of all sensation: the air over her neck and cheeks, the indistinctness of one's own heartbeats as their chests were against each other as to whose heart was whose, lift of a breath somehow felt like it was pulled by one lung shared between them ... Octavia opened her eyes again. Had they been in that kiss for seconds? Hours?
"Love? I ..."
"Shhhhhh ..." Bon Bon gently, slowly caressed her hands down the lengths of Octavia's arms. She hugged Octavia's hands with her own and lifted them gently, hovering them downwards between their clothes and the tight comforter, then much later than Octavia anticipated. Bon Bon's hands pressed on the back of her own, and in a second, she felt cool, soft skin prickle a little at her touch, the wisp of lace trim at her fingertips. "Oct ... Octavia." Without pause, Octavia blinked and searched the shimmer of the other girl's eyes, her own so nervous. "I-I know you l-love me, hon. B-But ... trust me to t-trust you. P-Please ... it's okay ... I ... I w-want this too." Octavia leaned back, and with a trembling hand, tugged slack and looseness in her bow tie, breathing herself calm. Bon Bon didn't wait for a pause to linger, tugged the tie free and tossed it aside, put Octavia's hands back on her bare legs and started to undo the buttons of Octavia's blouse, their bodies both shivering.
Octavia had imagined this happening almost to the detail, and imagined every detail to come in the most formal precision, and now that this ... this was going to happen, she wondered if she was right. She turned out to be wrong in every scenario. She did not take away a recalling of all the mannerism and technique of what happened. She would not have images of the particulars in her head when she next looked to Lyra's spritely smile. She would remember the taste of cake ... the way her ear felt when her name was whimpered into like a spell wrapped around her very soul, coloring her every sky. She would remember the warming sheets under her fingertips, she would remember the muffled sound of Lyra's ringtone from a mobile phone fallen under the bed, and she'd remember wisps of pink and blue. She wouldn't later reflect on the skin and body and all-consuming heat of this girl she loved. She would reflect on the two eyes blue the color of a dream's deepest wells. She would reflect on those when looking out to the stars for endless years. She would remember first sound, of chickets outside, after her and her maiden of sweets give their most urgent, final gasp, their fingers lacing together in the calming shudders. She would have all this blanketing her heart, and when Lyra would ask her the next day why nobody had picked up the phone, Octavia would be quickly short of breath, and utter, "I dropped mine on the way into the clearest sea."