Archive of Our Own

It was supposed to be a birthday gift.

A silly one, admittedly. Shameless, maybe. A small fantasy Mydei had once half-sighed, half-mumbled against her neck in between the burning throes of lust and passion as the tip of her pink strap nudged insistently against her clit.

“Bet you would look gorgeous in lingerie.”

Phainon’s answer had been merely a broken moan. If it was either from the heat in her girlfriend’s words or the feeling of the strap entering her in one single merciless thrust, she could never tell. Both, perhaps. And that had been the end of it. Mydei probably doesn’t even remember it.

But Phainon does, not quite obsessively—as she’s quite prone to be—but, rather, insistently, like a pebble stuck in her shoe. The memory always rears its head back once desire comes to satisfaction and her girlfriend lays dormant in her arms, wrapped in one of the many lingerie sets she so loves to wear when she fucks her.

There, in that strange space of time once today is done but tomorrow hasn’t come; Phainon, warm and loved, passes one of the hands that had been absentmindedly braiding Mydei’s hair over her body in a soft caress, feeling the soft silk of the lingerie, and, almost hopefully, thinks ‘maybe we could match?’

Before she catches glimpse of the burn scars that spread over her own body like rust, that is, and that tentative hope withers and dies.

Her body is unappealing, as it is. No matter what Mydei says, Phainon never once thought of herself as something that could be gorgeous, much less beautiful.

At least, not ever since she nearly burnt down to ashes.

…But Mydei wanted, and so the memory lingered, because Phainon could never not care about what Mydei wished for. Whatever she asks, she will give; her heart, her eye, her body, everything and more. She would find a way to give her a star, if she so desired, even if it meant burning up for good.

Two weeks before her birthday, on a rather unimportant Tuesday afternoon, the wooden cabinet in Mydei’s closet opens with a low rumble followed by a loud ‘squelch!’ that has Phainon’s remaining eye snapping nearly frantically towards the room’s door.

It is still locked, but that doesn’t stop the frantic pounding of her heart against her brittle ribcage, nor the knowledge that her girlfriend won’t be coming back until night arrives; something about a work meeting, she had said, though Phainon is pretty sure is just an excuse for her and her mother to scream at each other.

She shakes her head and turns back to the cabinet.

An array of different sex toys lay neatly upon the wooden surface. Vibrators of varying shapes, muzzles, nipple clamps, a rose toy, a couple double-ended dildos, a pair of puppy ears and a tail she’s pretty sure weren’t there last time she checked and a bright, colored array of straps of different sizes that have only gotten more and more intimidatingly bigger ever since Phainon asked ‘is it in yet?’ the first time they had sex—which is unfair, if you ask her. She wasn’t even trying to be cheeky, but Mydei had taken it as a personal affront, either way.

Next to them, a bunch of elegant and rather provocative-looking sets of very expensive lingerie rest in organized rows. All Mydei’s, of course. Her hands hover awkwardly over them, eye flicking briefly towards the door before going back to the cabinet.

She can’t help but feel as if she were doing something that she shouldn’t, like a child reaching towards the cookie jar before dinner.

Stupid, really, because Phainon just wants to see how she looks in it before deciding whether to surprise her girlfriend, and she’s way too shy to go to a lingerie shop. Not to mention she’s no longer allowed to order anything online after falling one many times too much for some scam.

With one last glance at the door and a deep breath, she starts pulling some of the different sets out, inspecting them carefully before gingerly setting the ones she won’t try down on the bed.

…Which is nearly all of them.

Not because they are ugly, no, of course not. Mydei’s taste is always impeccable. But, rather, Phainon comes to the quick, embarrassing realization that none of these will fit her.

She’s just—just way too big.

The people of Aedes Elysiae have always been tall, nearly the size of Mountain Dwellers, for reasons nobody quite understood. Even though Mydei is no small woman by any means, Phainon has always been double her size.

It’s cute, actually. It means Mydei has to stand on her tiptoes to try to kiss her whenever she isn’t wearing heels and Phainon is feeling cheeky enough not to bend; and also all of her clothes swallow her girlfriend; and also she gets to big-spoon her most of the time; and also, and also, and also—

There are a lot of perks, it’s what she’s getting at. Though, not being able to wear any of Mydei’s clothes is not one of them.

Phainon sighs, now disgruntled, and keeps rummaging around the cabinet with a lot less care than she did before, shoving lace and silk out of the way.

Eventually, she stumbles upon a white, rather simple-looking set with a frill and little pink bows. It edges more on the side of cute rather than sexy, which is probably why she doesn’t remember Mydei wearing it more than once.

That, and that it looks a size or two too big for her.

Mm.

It’s still not quite big enough for it to fit comfortably on Phainon, no, but…

She takes it out, ignoring the pair of white stockings folded underneath that don’t look nearly elastic enough to cover her thighs without ripping, and rolls the fabric between her index finger and thumb. The material is not nearly as soft in her hands as the other sets were, she notes, but the fact it looks to be cheaper actually helps to reassure her.

At least, she thinks, taking one last fleeting glance towards the door, I can afford to replace it if I break it.

The sound of rustling clothes is quiet in the well-lived coziness of Mydei’s room, so different from her own, but it still manages to drown Phainon’s nearly non-existent breath. Pointedly, she avoids looking at herself in the full-length mirror standing proudly in the corner as she undresses.

The set’s underwear is barely anything more than a couple of strings of lace held together with little pink bows. She looks at it dubiously, for a second, giving it an experimental stretch just to see how far it can go before slowly, hesitantly, sliding it on.

She winces.

It’s too tight.

The elastic digs harshly into the scars around her hips, still tender even after all these years, and the string around the crotch area sticks awkwardly into her lips. She tries moving, just to let out a hiss when the material shifts and scraps against her skin.

“...It’s fine,” she murmurs to herself, though the words come out smaller than she would have liked. The words aren’t hollow, despite that, because it’s true.

Pain is a constant for Phainon—she relinquishes it, almost, makes her feel alive, and that’s fine. She’s fine. She’s alive even when she shouldn’t.

But she still can’t help but knead softly at the skin around the elastic in an attempt to get rid of the burning ache.

It’s stupid.

She drops her hand, and, still avoiding her reflection, moves to grab the top. It’s a simple thing, a mere brassiere with a long sheet of silk falling from the bottom that reminds her of a skirt, ending with a puffy frill.

Phainon passes her arms around the straps with little trouble. She allows herself a minute to enjoy the way the silk feels over her skin before moving to hook it behind her. A tug, two, three and after the fourth one, it closes with an almost neat ‘click’that echoes way too loudly in the room.

She coughs.

She can’t get enough air.

Her mouth presses into a thin line at the realization, feeling the way the fabric digs and digs deeper into her scarred chest whenever she tries to take a breath. It hurts, too, but, with a shallow intake of air, she ignores it and turns herself towards the mirror.

It looks… bad.

The long, flowy piece of transparent silk that should probably go a little over her hips barely manages to reach her belly button and the cups of the bra aren’t big enough to hold her breasts. It squashes them tightly, making them look, ah, plumpier than they really are, and she has to adjust it so that her nipples don't slip out.

As for the panties, they really, really don't cover anything.

With some embarrassment, she has to pull out some of the fabric clinging deep into her pussy, and the sensation of the material scrapping over the scars extending in her Mount of Venus has her hissing.

She turns around, intending to see how it looks from behind, just to turn around with a yelp and a red face. The way in which the panties dig into her ass is nothing short of lewd.

Disappointed, she sits on the bed, wincing when it only makes the elastic tighten around her skin.

It’s not like Phainon was expecting the lingerie to fit her as well as it did Mydei, with her voluptuous curves and sun-kissed skin, because the thing is very much not meant for someone her size. But a little part of her had been expecting to at least look cute and not this—grotesque.

The places in which fire once caressed her body have turned into a mix of scarred reddish-browns strewn over her like disjointed patches of cheap, rotting leather sewn deep into her skin. From her hands, to her chest, her hips and her legs, even her face wasn’t spared.

The delicate lace only makes them all the more apparent, and the unmarred skin is, somehow, even paler than the whites of the lingerie. Sickly and brittle. Some of her veins can be seen with stark clarity.

Tentatively, Phainon tucks the hair covering the left part of her face, but she finds that she can’t bear the sight of the empty eye socket in the mirror and, immediately, covers it with a hand.

No amount of pretty clothes can change what she has become.

The thought is stark, nearly violent, and Phainon very nearly rips the lingerie out of her body, mangled, ugly thing—Titans, how can Mydei even want her like this? How can she bear the sight? How can she bear to caress her when it would be kinder to caress a scrap of sandpaper?

Why did she ever think this was a good idea? To think she could be pretty. How silly. How stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! It’s not even a word anymore. Gifts are supposed to be nice, and she would make for an awful gift, she realizes.

But whatever. Whatever! It’s whatever.

She doesn’t care.

━━━━━━━━━━

The ugly bunny-shaped clock on the wall reads seven three one when Phainon hears the familiar rumble of Mydei’s motorcycle coming from out of the apartment. A low bru-bu-bu-bu—plack! as something clatters in the engine once it turns off.

It’s an old, well-loved thing, one of those models that look taken straight out of some movie from the 70s and make her girlfriend look a little bit like a delinquent. It’s on its last legs, too, but Mydei refuses to change it solely because it was one of their last gifts her dad gave her before he died.

Phainon shifts her eye from where she’s staring at the little iron chimera in the bottom of the pot towards the window to watch Mydei as she checks the engine. Then, she turns off the stove and pads over to the bathroom.

A couple minutes later, just as the water is starting to warm, the turning of keys in the lock finally arises and Phainon walks back into the living room just as Mydei is entering.

“Welcome back,” she calls; brow furrowing at the sour expression pn her girlfriend’s face as she kicks her shoes off. “I take it didn’t go well?”

Mydei lets out a long sigh. “I really don’t understand what’s that woman’s problem,” she grumbles, walking further into the apartment and dropping her purse on the couch. “It’s like she wants that company to sink—which is fine. Tsk, but why does she have to act as if it was my fault?”

A sharp spark of guilt strikes her like thunder.

Before she gets the chance to apologize, though, Mydei walks towards her and burrows her face into her chest, arms sneaking around her waist. Instinctually, Phainon returns the hug and relinquishes in the long, satisfied sigh her girlfriend lets out.

“Smells good,” she mumbles. “What are you making?”

“Dinner.”

Mydei huffs, a little tired, and pinches her hips. “Don’t get smart with me, doll.”

“I am always smart,” she replies, feeling her cheeks warm at the pet name. They have been dating for five years now and she still can’t get rid of the little butterflies pullulating her chest whenever Mydei is sweet with her.

“Mm-hm.”

“Rude,” she sighs. “It’s just chicken soup.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It’s nothing special,” Phainon shrugs. “And I also drew you a bath.”

“That sounds nice too.”

She makes no move whatsoever to disentangle. On the contrary, her arms tighten around her waist, tension sweeping out of her bit by bit with each second that passed.

Phainon can’t tell why exactly she takes so much comfort in her arms, now that she smells like medicine and ash, but she’s glad she does, anyway.

After a minute or so passes, Phainon bends down and picks Mydei up.

She can feel the frown against her neck. “Don’t strain yourself.”

“I’m not,” she replies, resisting the urge to wince at the way her joints seem to lock in on themselves. Mydei isn’t heavy for her, not exactly, it’s just that Phainon tires so, so easily nowadays. It’s frustrating. She used to be able to carry her girlfriend for miles. “I’m fine.”

“Phainon.”

“I am,” she bites out, and the words come out harsher than she intended. “Sorry. It’s just—we are here, see?” She places Mydei down in the bathroom where the steady sound of water filling the bathtub covers the deep intakes of breath she has to take; and, not wanting to look at whatever expression Mydei is making, she turns around. “I will—”

A hand closes around her wrist, firm enough to keep her in place yet soft enough to not aggravate the scars on it.

“Wash my hair.”

“I…”

“It’s not a question.”

And with a gentle tug, she pulls Phainon into the bathroom.

Mydei pulls some wipes from one of the white shelves hanging on the wall and starts wiping her makeup off, unbothered by the way Phainon hovers awkwardly behind her.

“The water is going to spill over.”

Phainon blinks, “Ah.” Her eye drifts to the bathtub, where the water keeps rising with a steady sound. “Right.”

She closes the tap. Then, not sure on what to do next but not wanting to keep still, she pulls some of the white towels and bundles them next to the tub, telling herself that it is for the floor to not get wet, before kneeling on them.

She sinks her pinky into the water, hissing at the burn and immediately shoving the finger in her mouth to soothe the scalding. It’s nearly boiling, just like Mydei likes it.

“This can’t be good for your skin,” she mumbles.

“Heh.” Mydei chuckles. “The people in Kremnos used to bathe in the lava in which we forged our weapons. This is nothing.”

Phainon scoffs, turning around to glare at her.

Mydei chooses that exact same moment to let her red bra fall onto the floor.

Without the pressure holding them up, her big, soft breasts bounce lightly and her gaze immediately sets on them; tracing the pattern of the tattoos there with her eye and feeling her mouth dry when her brown nipples slowly start to harden under the attention.

“My eyes are up here.”

“Uh-uh,” she replies absentmindedly, eye trailing even lower to the rest of her very naked body. “You are so beautiful…”

Another chuckle.

The water ripples and rocks in gentle waves when Mydei sinks into the bath with a long, satisfied groan, closing her eyes as she lets her head fall onto the blue tiles behind her.

The lightbulb in the bathroom is an old, yellowing thing that flickers precariously from time to time. It casts a soothing, warm glow all over Mydei’s body as the white steam of the hot water curls around her.

Phainon places her arms on the edge of the bathtub, resting her head on them as she simply looks at Mydei, at the straight, elegant slope of her nose, her plush lips, the narrow shape of her eyes that makes her look a bit like a cat. Soon enough, the heat from the water makes her sweat a little, and a small bead of it makes its way from her temple to her clavicle.

Almost in a trance, Phainon finds her arm extending forwards, just for her hand to stop mere centimeters away from her face. The scars on her fingertips look softer under the yellow light, but still rotten, and, for a second, the sudden, irrational fear that the scars might extend through Mydei once she touches makes her hesitate.

But she is Mydei’s and Mydei is hers, and—even if she doesn’t understand why someone as wonderful as Mydei would want to belong to something like Phainon—as long as this truth remains, she can’t help but indulge in little greeds she does not deserve.

Slowly, she cups Mydei’s cheek. The wounds on her hands can’t make her touch anything but coarse, but her girlfriend simply sighs and leans further into the touch as if it were second nature.

The breath that comes out of her is shaky. Something climbs all the way from her chest to her throat. Her heart, maybe, all jagged shapes and broken ends, to swallow it back feels like gulping down on razor blades.

Her thumb caresses Mydei's cheek softly before her fingers move to trace the rest of her face. The skin under her eyes, the expanse of her forehead, the shape of her eyebrows—a small edge of tension remains on the space between them, soothed quickly under her touch, before she traces the long slope of her nose.

“You can sit on it later,” Mydei says.

Phainon freezes, mind going black before squeezing her nose harshly. “How can you say stuff like that with a straight face?”

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” she answers, grabbing Phainon’s hand and placing a kiss in the middle of her palm. “I like your pleasure.”

“...Don’t you forget I nearly snapped your neck last time we tried that?”

“I have been working out.”

“I’m not sitting on your face,” she says, rolling her eyes at the faint ‘hmph’ coming from Mydei. “Stop making that expression—and tilt your head back, won’t you? I’m supposed to be washing your hair. The water will get cold.”

Mydei does so, still looking rather disgruntled while Phainon reaches into the sink to grab the little glass with little ducks drawn on it where they keep their toothbrushes.

The water is still a little bit too hot for Phainon, a faint scalding arising as she sinks her hands into the water. She doesn’t let it show, focusing instead on massaging Mydei’s scalp with her fingers and further wetting her hair with the little glass’ help.

Bit by bit, a comfortable silence settles into the bathroom, aided by the faint sound of their breaths and the occasional trickling of falling water. She makes sure none of it goes over Mydei’s face with meticulous, nearly obsessive, care.

If she asks, Phainon would tell her it is so that the shampoo does not fall over her eyes, but, in reality, it is to avoid waking any unwelcome memories in her girlfriend. She nearly drowned, once, something about her mother leaving her alone in the bathtub when she was a child, and although Mydei doesn’t fear water, a flash second of panic always arises in her eyes when it goes over her face.

Mydei won’t ever ask, though, and even if she did, she would be able to make out the lie pretty easily. She wouldn’t call her out, but she would know, and Phainon would know that she knows.

Mydei’s breathing starts to slow down bit by bit, eyes fluttering close. Phainon doesn’t let go immediately after she finishes, choosing instead to play absentmindedly with the hair as she stares at the faint bruising underneath her girlfriend’s eyes.

She looks tired.

“...Mydei?” She tries, tentatively, waiting for the sleepy hum of acknowledgment to arise before continuing. “I…I have been feeling—I have been better, as of late.” A pause. Mydei’s expression sours, and Phainon brings her hands to her lap. “And I think I don’t need to—”

“We have talked about this, Phainon,” she interrupts, harshly, eyes snapping open. “You are not giving up treatment.”

“It’s been more than a year.”

“It’s been barely a year.”

“More than enough—”

“More than enough? You nearly died—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she snaps, face twisting into something ugly—uglier. “And it’s—it’s fine now, alright? I am fine. I am not dying. You don’t have to—”

“Khaslana.”

Phainon’s mouth closes with a sharp, neat ‘click!’

The hand that Mydei had been resting on the edge of the bathtub rises towards her and, delicately, tucks the long strands of hair covering her face behind her ear, exposing the mangled flesh of her empty eye socket underneath.

Mydei doesn’t look repulsed by it, nor pitying, she never does. A part of her thinks that’s worse.

“You are not fine,” she says, plain and simple. Phainon’s fingernails dig into her palms. “But you will be—if you just let yourself get help.”

She scoffs. “The only thing people have been doing is helping me.”

“Because you need it.”

Need, ha.

“I feel like a leech.”

“But not an idiot?”

“And a moron, too! A fool, a stupid and everything in between! Is that what you want to hear?” She all but snarls. Briefly, she thinks that the room smells of ash, that she can feel body burning away once again. “If you think that me wanting you to be happy makes me that stupid, then I—”

“Whatever makes you think I am not happy?”

“How can you be? The only thing I have been good for is—!”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t, what?”

“Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?” She snaps, not sure what she’s babbling out any longer but sure in the knowledge that she wants it to be ugly enough that Mydei realizes she should just leave her to rot. “That I should not be—“

The sound of splashing water is unusually, deafeningly loud in their little bathroom. It echoes off the peeling blue-tiled walls, along with Phainon’s small yelp of surprise, as Mydei rises and pulls her into her chest.

The water has gone lukewarm by now, but the heat still radiating off Mydei’s body makes her feel as if she were on fire.

It wouldn’t be a bad way to burn, Phainon thinks.

“...I don’t know what you were going to say,” Mydei breathes out, and from where she is burrowed in her neck, Phainon can’t tell what sort of expression she’s making. Perhaps it’s for the best. “But I’m glad you are alive.”

“But—”

“Stay,” she very nearly begs, arms tightening around her. “I—I can’t lose you too. I just don’t know what I would do without you.”

Keep going, a part of her mind whispers, live free of the burden I have become.

She doesn’t say it, can’t bring herself to. The sudden, inexplicable burst of anger that had swept into her in violent strokes has promptly extinguished like a campfire running out of wood, leaving behind only an empty, fractured husk.

She throws her hands over her girlfriend’s shoulders, uncaring how it further dampens her clothes, latching onto her with a latent, quiet desperation pulsing through her like a hollow second heart. For all she wants to push Mydei far, far away from her, the thought of her leaving Phainon behind is so terribly, unbearably painful that sometimes she wishes to carve her chest out and climb inside—rot and all.

Hell, Mydei would probably carve open her chest herself if Phainon asked.

It’s only because of her that she came back to work under her mother, because her treatment has been long, expensive and Phainon, in her childishness, did not want to ask more of Aglaea than he had already given her.

“...Your birthday is coming up,” she answers instead, because there’s nothing else to say. Phainon won’t ever be able to convince Mydei to leave her, and Mydei won’t ever be able to get rid of Phainon’s guilt over merely existing—not as long as she works with her mother, and she is not quitting anytime soon, not as long as Phainon isn’t fine. “Is there something you want?”

Mydei lets out a hum, her fingers card through her hair.

“Anything is fine.”

Briefly, the image of herself in lingerie flashes through her mind, distorted and mangled, like catching sight of your reflection in a funhouse mirror. “Anything, uh.”

The words come out way more bitter than she realizes.

━━━━━━━━━━

It doesn’t bother her.

It shouldn’t bother her, not really, but it’s like the reflection that looked back at her that day etched itself in the back of her eyelids along with a constant, perpetual thought, almost cruel in its certainty.

She would have looked good before.

It’s been hot, these days, but the long sleeves and long pants become a constant for her, as well as the medical eye patch over her missing eye. Anything as long as she doesn’t have to see the scars eating away her flesh and, briefly, she starts wondering if she should try wearing a fake glass eye even though last time she tried she hated its sensation.

Mydei catches on, because of course she does.

Then again, Phainon isn’t exactly being subtle. Foolishly, though, she had hoped her girlfriend wouldn’t call her out on it; and, to her merit, she didn’t—for a while, choosing instead to watch her with narrowed eyes.

Up until a whole week has passed.

“Did you try it on?”

She doesn’t even have the decency to wait for Phainon to finish drying her hair before bed.

The noise of the hair dryer blowing air against her ear is nearly deafening, but, somehow, the sound of Mydei’s voice is crystal clear even when she’s all the way in her bedroom. Her tone isn’t accusing, but Phainon still feels her chest fill with something like resignation.

Her finger nudges the little switch at the side of the hair dryer and, with a rumble, it starts to blow air with more intensity, getting louder, like static in her ears and, “What did you say?” she asks, voice soft.

A couple of seconds pass before it is repeated, “Did you try it on?” once again, closer, this time. She does not turn to look at Mydei.

“Try what on?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

The hair dryer does not have a higher intensity. Her lips press.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Ha,” Mydei barks out. “And you expect me to believe that?”

The air keeps blowing, pushing her hair to the side. Her missing eye peeks from under it from time to time, staring at her mockingly in the bathroom’s mirror.

“You could at least pretend,” she sighs.

“Because that has worked so well for you.”

“I’m fine.”

Mydei doesn’t reply.

Phainon clicks her tongue and turns the hair dryer off, intent on ripping off the band-aid in one swift, painful move, but as soon as she turns around, whatever words were climbing up her throat vanish like cigarette smoke.

The hair dryer slips from her hand.

On reflex, she scrambles to catch it in a wave of panic. She doesn’t manage to do so, however, and the thing falls right on her bare foot.

A sound between a hiss and a yelp escapes through her teeth at the sudden burst of pain. Unthinkingly, she takes a couple of steps back, forgetting the presence of the bathtub behind her and, before she knows it, she’s tumbling down right into the thing, long legs dangling on the edge. It’s a good thing the shower curtains weren’t drawn.

“All these years and you are still as clumsy as ever.” She hears Mydei say. The words are chastising, but her tone is almost fond.

“...I can’t help it,” she mumbles out, suddenly feeling much like the love-sick teenager she once was. All sweaty hands and a pounding heart, butterflies rampant in her stomach and a burst of something dangerously close to want gathering in her throat. “Not when you look like—like that.”

Mydei’s voice is amused when she asks, “Mm? Like what?”

Phainon swallows, eye shifting upwards almost shyly.

The lingerie set that had looked so atrociously bad on her own rotting body fits Mydei’s like a glove. Alluring and breathtaking. Her girlfriend doesn’t tend to use white, and Phainon is surprised to see how well it looks on her, though, seldom there is anything that doesn’t look on Mydei, she knows, with a small, twinge of jealousy that gets buried under the sea of self-loathing said feeling causes her.

It’s a bit big on her, but the considerable size of her bust fills the bra’s cups nicely, squeezing her breasts together and making the little black mole on the side of one poke temptingly at her. Her well-defined muscles and spiraling tattoos poke from under the lace, and the long, flowy sheet with its puffy frill ends a little below her crotch, right where the white stockings begin and make the meat of her thighs bulge.

“Do you like it?” She asks and Phainon nods, far too awe-struck to notice the calculating glint on her girlfriend’s eye. “Put it on, then.”

She jolts. “What? No, I—” She tries, but Mydei’s hands are already moving from where they were settled on her hips to her back to unclip the bra.

The underwear falls to the floor.

The room goes silent.

“Um.”

“It stretched out,” Mydei replies, unconcerned.

A harsh, sudden spike of embarrassment overcomes her.

“Ah, ha, ha,” she chuckles, tense. “Are you calling me fat?”

“If anything, I think you should eat a bit more.”

At the comment, Phainon belatedly realizes that the fabric of her loose hoodie rolled up against the wall because of her fall, leaving exposed the expanse of her torso, all marred skin and the faint edge of her ribs. In one harsh moment, very nearly ripping the cloth, she pulls it down.

“...Phainon.”

“It’s nothing,” she says, so low that she’s not even sure if Mydei even heard her. “I will buy you another one.”

Mydei scoffs.

Phainon starts pickling at the skin around her nails with her thumb.

“And why would you do that? I would rather have you buy one for yourself if you want to—”

“I don’t.”

A pause.

“But you wore this one.”

“And I ruined it.”

Yet another pause.

“...Sorry.”

Mydei sighs. The sound makes Phainon dig her nail hard into her skin. The small, sharp sting of pain is comforting, somehow, and she stares at the small pinprick of red slowly appearing around her nail.

“It’s fine,” Mydei says at least. “Though, you did realize it wasn’t going to fit you right?” and, probably realizing she sounds a bit harsher than she intended, she starts to add, voice softer, “It’s just—”

“I know,” she interrupts. “Can’t exactly fit into anything my adorable girlfriend has when she’s so tiny.” It’s supposed to be teasing, but the words come out hollow, like a puppet going through the motions.

But Mydei lets out a disgruntled sound, repeating the word ‘tiny’ to herself with so much disdain that it actually manages to make Phainon crack a smile.

The pressure against her skin lifts, and she watches how a thin line of red runs to the pad of her finger before slowly drip-drip-dripping into the bath, like small spider-lilies coming to bloom.

After a couple of seconds, she lifts her eye back towards Mydei just in time to see her long, muscled legs stepping into the bath before sitting down on her lap, effectively straddling her.

She grabs her hand, inspecting the bleeding finger with a frown.

“Tell me why you tried it on, then.”

Phainon blinks, flushed head-to-toe, and does not fully register the question.

“Ah?”

“The lingerie,” she repeats, bringing her finger closer to her mouth. Almost in a trance, Phainon presses the pad over her plush, soft meat of her lower lip, smearing her own blood on it like lipstick. Mydei’s breath becomes charged. “Tell me why you tried it on.”

“...Do I have to?”

“It’s clearly bothering you.”

She shrugs.

“It’s noth—”

Mydei takes her finger into her mouth.

Phainon’s brain short-circuits.

She stammers out something, she thinks. She’s not sure what. Her eye is glued to the way Mydei’s lips, plump and still shiny with her blood, close around her long, pale and scarred finger. Her mouth is warm, very warm, hot and wet, and she can feel her tongue slowly swirling around the digit with movements her core knows all-too well and she can feel the way it clenches and unclenches over nothing.

She’s so distracted by the sight that she does not realize when Mydei’s other hand sneaks under her hoodie and one very long, very sharp manicured nail starts digging into the hidden nipple inside her flesh.

She cries out, body jerking, but it only serves to press Mydei more firmly into her. The tub—is a tight fit. Phainon’s body is nearly folded in half and Mydei’s legs are bent into an awkward angle, pressing harshly against her ribs and both of her breasts squash together.

The mouth around her finger, the hand in her chest, the body’s heat. All is very, very slowly turning into far too much for Phainon. She has always gotten overwhelmed rather easily in this sort of situation. A fact that Mydei has always loved taking full advantage of.

She lets go of her finger.

“Why?”

Her head fills as if it was slowly being filled with cotton, and the words escape her before she even has a chance to think.

“I thought it would be a good gift.” A pause. “For your birthday…”

Mydei’s pupils dilate.

It’s the only warning Phainon gets before Mydei smashes her mouth against hers.

It’s an eager thing, nearly violent, teeth clattering before their lips actually meet. The force behind it enough to make Phainon slide off the wall and fall into the bathtub with a loud ‘blam!’, head cushioned by Mydei’s arm, long legs bent awkwardly. She doesn’t fit in this thing either.

“Titans,” her girlfriend rasps out, adjusting so that she’s fully on top of Phainon, arms bracketing her head. “You are as sweet as a button.”

She kisses her again, still eager, though not quite as violent, with a desperation—no, a need that tastes like toothpaste mint and the metal of blood. Mydei’s tongue plunges into her mouth as if she wanted to fuck it, as if she wanted to replace all traces of Phainon’s spit with her own.

She moans at the thought, hands burrowing deep into the back of her girlfriend’s head and pulling her even closer into her. The pressure starts to hurt, but none of that matters, not when Mydei starts sucking Phainon’s tongue into her mouth, not when every breath Phainon takes is each and every one Mydei exhales.

It might be minutes, it might be hours, time melts and stretches apart under the sudden surge of lust, but, eventually, they part. Chest rising and falling erratically where their hearts beat in the ba-thump-thump-thump! rhythm of a drumming rabbit.

One of Mydei’s hands goes under her to cup Phainon’s crotch with her palm before giving it one hard squeeze through the cloth of her fuzzy pajama pants.

“Ngh!”

“Already this wet?”

“I, ah, wait,” she says, feeling Mydei’s hand slowly sneak under the waistband. “I just showered…”

Mydei raises an eyebrow. “Let’s take another one then.” Before kneeling up and reaching towards one of the taps.

The shower head above them rumbles. Phainon closes her eyes, bracing for the water to spray into her face, just to hiss and spasm when a burst of ice-cold water falls onto her feet from the faucet instead.

“You—” She starts, just to cut herself off when Mydei immediately pulls the hoodie off her with dexterous hands, throwing it carelessly into some corner of the room. “That really got you going, uh.”

“Of course,” she answers without an ounce of shame. “The image of you all wrapped and dolled-up for me,” she licks her lips and bends to leave a trail of kisses all the way from her clavicle to the skin behind her ear. “Sounds like something straight out of a dream.”

Something in her stomach churns at her words. “It didn’t look go—Ah!” She cries out when Mydei pushes her down into the bathtub again, back arching at the cold sensation of the water against her back.

“Something in black, maybe,” Mydei continues, ignoring Phainon’s words. “Or maybe in those deep purples you like so much.” Her mouth latches onto her breast, biting harshly before giving a long, deep su—ck! as she pulls her head back until it pops out with a loud, wet sound. “Though, now that I think about it,” her eyes narrow in satisfaction, watching the pink of her areola turn red. “You would look great in the colors I prefer.”

She has already latched onto the other before Phainon can even think of a reply, lapping and sucking with a single-minded determination that makes her look as if she were trying to coax out milk.

Her other breast is not left unattended, as a hand comes to tweak and pull at the nipple that had appeared and hardened in her excitement. From time to time, a long, perfectly manicured nail scrapes at the edge of the burn scars littered there, making Phainon buckle desperately in a mix of pain and pleasure.

Soon enough, she’s lost in the sensations. Overwhelmed. Worries and thoughts and stupid nothings forgotten. Her body feels as if it was burning hot, hot, hot under Mydei’s diligent ministrations. Against the cold water quickly enveloping them, it’s a wonder how steam doesn't come out.

“Phainon, sweetheart,” she calls, and Phainon blinks dazedly, neck cranning down to see Mydei looking at her, looking like some sort of contented cat from where her head is sandwiched by her breasts. “Won’t you let me see you like that?”

Yes. No. She does not know.

“The elastic dug into my scars…” she tries, half-heartedly.

“I will get you something that fits, not like this cheap thing.”

“...Is there really anything my size?”

“Of course, there is. I have checked.”

“You have?”

Mydei lets out an amused sound, stretching forwards to plant a kiss under her jaw. “Oh, Phainon, you have no idea,” she says against her skin, making her shudder. “How much I have fantasized about it.”

Something warm pools down in her stomach, soft and giddy, like poison. Tentatively, her hands settle on Mydei’s hips and, almost shyly, she asks, “Really?”

“Do you really have to ask?” Her hand slides from her shoulder to her hip. “Your body.” The other squeezes her neck lightly. “Your voice.” And then it presses against her chest. “Your heart.” She pushes back some of the hair sticking to her face. “Your face, your everything, Phainon. I want it all.”

She picks her hand and, like some sort of royalty, presses a kiss as delicate as the flutter of the wings of a butterfly before she asks, “Won’t you concede me this whim, then?”

And, really, when she asks like that, how can Phainon ever hope to deny her anything?

━━━━━━━━━━

The shop Mydei brings her to is a little thing on the second floor of a quaint yellow building next to a love hotel with a rather tacky name. It has a name Phainon can’t quite pronounce and, despite being settled next to a hair salon and a furniture store, looks rather expensive.

Phainon lingers at the entrance, looking at the pink interior design somewhat apprehensively while Mydei walks inside as if she owned the place.

There’s not many people inside, she notes, drying the sudden sweat gathering on her palms in her long, pleated black skirt. Mydei had chosen it for her, had tried to make her look nice for reasons Phainon can’t quite understand when most of her clothes will end up on the floor, either way.

Ha, she even pulled that lavender lipstick that Mydei loves so much but she barely uses—not because she doesn’t like it either, but because it is expensive. She’s allergic to most components in normal make-up, a fact they both realized in a rather disastrous first kiss.

Perhaps it was to match? Her girlfriend always looks nice, even now, wearing only a simple top tank, a blue jacket with a badly embroidered flower Phainon had once tried to sew, a short, plaid skirt, she looks like something straight out of a model magazine.

She looks at herself in the reflection of the glass sliding door, adjusts her hair so that it covers more of the white, medical patch above her left eye, and, finally, goes inside.

Just to watch the lady at the counter making heart eyes at her girlfriend.

Wordlessly, Phainon walks up to them and loops her arm around Mydei’s. It’s the most effective way to deal with this sort of situation, she has come to find, although the amused chuckle the person at her side always lets out is always unwelcome.

The lady at the counter shots her an irritated glance, before giving a double-take and blurting out, “Dang. You are huge.”

“Um,” Phainon blinks. “...Yes?”

“…Yeah,” the lady breathes out.

“Do you have anything her size?” Mydei interrupts.

The lady lets out a distracted ‘uh-uh.’ Her gaze shifts towards Mydei, then to Phainon, back to Mydei before settling fully on Phainon. A second or two pass before she seems to finally process the question and a full-body blush extends through her.

“For her?” She squeaks out. “I, yeah! Yes, of course, try checking in the—actually, you know what? I will just—lead you there myself!” She finishes, scrambling to get out from behind the counter, ignoring the poor girl who had just stepped forward with some clothes to buy.

Soon enough, Phainon finds herself staring at a wide array of large lingerie sets, some for people even bigger than her (“Those Mountain Dweller gals aren’t exactly small, you know?”) that vary from cute to sexy to downright scandalous in all shapes, fabrics, colors and everything else a person could ever want.

But Phainon does not know what she wants.

Her eye roams through all the different sets with palpable doubt. Where does she even start? There’s just—way too many options. Will she even look good in one of them? After all, her scars…

Mydei places her hand on the small of her back. It’s a small action, barely a nudge, but the faint spark of warmth spreading through her skin past the cloth has her letting out a shaky breath.

“Is this your first time buying lingerie?”

Phainon turns her head down to see the lady. She doesn’t even reach her chest.

“...Is it that obvious?”

“A little bit—not that is a bad thing, of course!” The lady adds when Phainon’s face drops. “A lot of people get nervous, ha, ha. It’s normal. But, uh, maybe I could help you pick something? Say, uh,” she clears her throat, tucking some hair behind her hear, before not so subtly, asking, “What made you want to—?”

“It’s for her girlfriend,” Mydei interrupts, dragging Phainon closer towards her.

The lady deflates like a balloon.

“...I will leave you to it,” she sighs, forlornly, and goes back towards the counter with shuffling feet and one last wistful glance.

It takes some time, and considerable coaxing by Mydei, before Phainon ends up choosing a dark purple set with some golden motifs and a long black ribbon that ties around in the back before Mydei all but shoves her inside one of the small fitting rooms in the back.

The sight of the wide mirror completely covering the back wall of the little room makes her wince.

She turns around, staring hard at the cream-coloured curtain before slowly stripping naked, folding all her clothes neatly and placing them on top of the little stool placed in the corner, next to the boots she hadn't bothered untying before kicking them off.

Phainon takes the underwear, absentmindedly rolling the fabric between her thumb and index finger. It feels light, she thinks, before sliding it on. Then, she grabs the top, unties the ribbon at the back, and puts it on.

The hook cli–cks with a neat sound. It’s a bit tight around the edges, though she ignores the sensation in favor of redoing the ribbon behind her—or trying to, at least, because she soon discovers the best she can do in that position is a knot.

A knot she can’t undo.

She strains her arms, tries once, then twice and thrice again. The knot only gets tighter and tighter with each try.

Phainon clicks her tongue, annoyed, then embarrassed before sighing and poking her head out from the changing room with Mydei’s name on her lips, but she falters when she doesn’t find her girlfriend waiting for her outside.

“Do you need any help?”

She jumps, head whipping around to the side to find instead a worker with a kind smile that soon turns pitying once her brown eyes shift down towards her exposed skin.

Phainon’s hold on the cream-coloured curtain turns tight, knuckles going white under the sudden spark of anxiety, and she drags the fabric up to further cover her up until the only thing visible is her good eye.

“...No, thanks.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Phainon says, voice clipped, before promptly closing the curtain. “I’m fine.”

“But—”

“Don’t mind her,” the pointed ‘click-clack, click-clack’ of Mydei’s sharp heels accompany her voice and Phainon can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. “She’s shy.”

“I’m not shy.”

She didn’t use to be, at least.

Mydei doesn’t acknowledge her defense, instead, rather swiftly and very rudely, pushes her back and gets inside the fitting room with her, carrying along her purse and about a hundred thousand different cloth-hangers with a hundred thousand different sets hanging in her arms that look way too big to be something that she chose for herself.

“Don’t you think you are getting a little too excited?”

Mydei does not reply.

She blinks, eye shifting away from the clothes, just for her breath to cut short at the expression contorting Mydei’s face into something damn near wild, like a starving lion resisting the urge to pounce. Hungry, ravenous.

Phainon has always liked that look.

She tilts her head to the side, on the angle she knows makes her look pretty (or used to, she’s not sure anymore and tries not to think about it) and lets her lips pull upwards as she says, “Seems you liked it.” It is supposed to come out coyly, perhaps even sultry, but there’s a terrible, palpable edge of insecurity to it that makes her voice tremble on the last syllable and makes it sound more like a question.

“Like,” Mydei snorts, as if the word was ridiculous, golden eyes roaming each and every surface of her body. Somehow, she feels more exposed as if she was fully naked and she has to resist the urge to rub her arms. “Turn around, angel, let me see how you look from behind.”

The mirror is still behind her.

But Mydei wants.

With some hesitance, Phainon turns around. Eye firmly fixed on the floor, tracing the little hearts dotting her socks, the cracks on the marble floor. Everything and anything to avoid looking at herself.

“Mm? Whatever happened to the ribbon?”

“...I couldn’t tie it.”

“And you went for a knot?”

“I tried, alright? It’s hard to do it backwa—ards,” she chokes out, body tensing when two hands settle right on top of her shoulder blades.

“Sounds like an excuse to me,” Mydei murmurs, slowly dragging her hands down her back.

Her voice comes out shaky. “I would like to see you try it.”

“Ha,” Mydei chuckles, and the hot breath that hits directly against the exposed skin of her back has goosebumps clawing up her spine. “Maybe I should. Though, it seems you tightened this a little too much.”

Teeth scrape against her skin.

Phainon lets out a high-pitched yelp in surprise as her back arches. Mydei’s head shifts in small movements behind her, pulling and twisting the fabric as she tries to untie the knot. Her long hair, so reminiscent of a lion’s mane, tickles her skin, but when she starts to squirm a gritted out ‘stay still’ is enough to have her whole body locking into place.

For what might be minutes, might be hours, the only sound that resonates in their little room over the bubbly pop music of the shop is the frantic thump-thump-thumping of Phainon’s heart trying to burst out of her brittle ribs as her whole world reduces to Mydei’s soft grunts and each and every hot exhalation of air dissipating into her skin.

She completely misses the loud clattering of the cloth hangers being thrown onto the little stool.

Eventually, she feels the fabric loosen around her chest and the long ends of the ribbon come to fall and caress her sides.

Then, Mydei places a kiss on her back.

Phainon’s breath cuts short, feeling soft, plush lips pressed firmly, deeply into her skin before separating with a loud, wet ‘muack!’ and, immediately afterwards, a tongue replaces their place. Soft, cold, and so terribly wet, and, yet, it burns and scorches her skin as it drags itself over all the ridges of her spine.

Against her ear, Mydei asks, “How does it feel?”

“Hot,” she breathes out without thinking.

Her girlfriend lets out an amused sound. “I meant this, sweetheart,” she says, sneaking her hands underneath the lace’s elastic.

Phainon can barely focus on anything else than the feeling of her thumb absentmindedly rubbing at her skin. “Fine.”

Mydei clicks her tongue.

“You always say everything is fine,” she replies. Her voice is level, but her nails dig dangerously into the scars on her hips. Phainon swallows back a moan. “I need you to be more specific here. Is it too tight? Too scratchy? Do you not like it?”

“No! No. It’s fin—It’s nice, I mean.”

“Why won’t you look at yourself, then?”

Ah.

Of course, she would notice.

Her only eye cracks open with a sort of slowness that betrays the ugly, nearly urgent panic sliding through her like ice, clashing horridly with the still burning path Mydei’s tongue left through her spine. The popcorn ceiling above is horrid, too.

Mydei’s hand closes around her cheeks before pulling her face down towards the mirror.

She squeezes her eye shut.

“Look,” Mydei demands, and Phainon thinks of ripping off the fingers near her mouth with her teeth, like a rabid dog about to be put down. Sometimes she thinks she’s far too violent for love. “Tsk, since when did you become such a coward?”

“I’m scared, alright?" Phainon spits and her heart along with it.

Mydei freezes.

It would be nice to say to the world along with it, but it has never been that considerate to stop for her. Not now, not then. She burned on the 23th and only stopped on the 17th.

She had missed Mydei’s birthday.

And now she can't even do this for her.

“...Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Mydei grits out and her forehead comes to rest on her back. Her hold on her face falls and settles above the space where her heart should be. “I was the one that…” A pause. “I shouldn’t have been that harsh.”

“It’s fine.”

“Again with the fine.”

“It is fine,” Phainon insists, craning her head down to look at her socks again. “You are right, in the end.”

“Phai—”

She does not want to hear it. “Do I—” she tries, falters, it’s embarrassing to even ask. “Do I look nice?”

Mydei doesn’t even hesitate. “More than nice.” She places a kiss on her shoulder blade. “Gorgeous.” One on the other. “Lovely.” Another on her spine. “Pretty.” And yet another on her neck, pushing the strands of white hair covering the edges of a sun tattoo that burned too. “There ain’t enough words to describe how beautiful you look.”

“...The kremonan dictionary is already pretty limited as it is.”

“I will add to it. A hundred thousand adjectives if that’s what it takes you to believe me.”

Phainon turns to look at herself in the mirror.

She looks—

“Gorgeous,” Mydei repeats against her ear before placing a kiss on the space behind it.

Well, she doesn’t look bad.

The scars are there. The scars will always be there. Burning, rotting. But the only thing Phainon seems able to focus on is the dark purple hues of the lingerie hugging her porcelain body, along with the little golden details sparkling under the light.

It fits her… rather nicely, come to think of, and it doesn’t irritate her wounds. In fact, the soft, light fabric of it almost feels soothing. Slowly, she turns around and cranes her neck to see how it looks from the back.

Her breath hitches.

Her back is littered with a hundred thousand kiss marks.

A hundred thousand marks of love. All red and vibrant. Shining like the stars in the expanse of the night.

Mydei’s hands sneak around her waist, and Phainon watches with rapt attention through the mirror as her fingers grab the long, flowy ends of the black lace around her sides before tying it loosely into a ribbon.

“There,” she whispers, placing her hand on her waist. “All-wrapped up.”

Phainon turns towards her.

The look on Mydei's face is still wild, with red lipstick smudged and eyes so dark that merely a thin ring of gold can be seen, like a black hole; all-consuming, all-devouring, but there’s an all too palpable look of pure, unaltered yearning sparking through the hunger, like a sailor lost at sea staring at the moon; all-adoring, all-loving.

“You are smiling,” Mydei says.

Phainon touches her mouth, feeling the light curve of her lips. “I suppose I like it,” she answers.

Briefly, she realizes she actually feels pretty.

Her head shifts towards the other sets Mydei had brought littering the floor.

She can’t bring herself to say she wants to try them all. So, she asks, “Would you… want me to wear another one?”

“Want?” Mydei laughs, grabbing her wrist and guiding her hand underneath her skirt so that she can feel how her girlfriend’s pussy is very nearly soaking. “Phainon, you have no idea how much I have been wanting you now.”

Phainon’s face burst into reds.

Her eye shifts towards the cream-coloured curtain. Distantly, she wonders if the woman from earlier is still standing outside, waiting, and is with that same wonder that she slowly starts to rub her hand along the expanse of Mydei’s cunt.

Naughty, Mydei mouths.

Despite this, she starts to move her hips along the movements of her palm, breaths getting quicker as she uses Phainon’s hand to chase her own pleasure. She watches, mesmerized, the way in which Mydei’s skin reddens, the way in which Mydei’s lips part, the way in which Mydei’s flutter, the way in which Mydei’s hole clenches, the way in which Mydei, Mydei, Mydei.

It’s always Mydei, in the end.

“Try a, ah, red one, next,” Mydei says between pants, stepping back. Click-clack, make her heels.

Phainon’s hand is still warm. Damp. She swallows.

Only to be met with Mydei’s naked pussy.

The set slips out of her hands, sliding onto the ground next to Mydei’s discarded panties

“I like that one,” Mydei says from where she’s sitting on the stool. Skirt hiked up, finger tracing the edge of her labia, wet and glossy. “Looks sexy.”

“Sexy…” Phainon repeats, not fully registering what’s happening in front of her until a drop of slick slips out Mydei’s cunt and trails down her leg onto the floor. “Here!?” She yelps out, sounding too much like a squeaky toy being stepped on.

Mydei raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t have a problem with trying to get me off a couple minutes earlier.”

“...It’s different.”

“It’s really not.”

“It is!”

“Come on,” Mydei says instead, kicking her lightly. The movement makes her pussy stretch open further for a wink. “I want to see you.”

“Ah, um, I—” It should be fine, right? If Mydei wants… “Alright?”

It should be fine.

Phainon stands up, gives one last look to the cream-coloured curtain as if someone might burst inside any second now before turning back to her girlfriend and, maintaining eye-contact, slowly slipping off the underwear.

Mydei’s middle finger shifts towards her clit. She doesn’t move it, not yet, simply waits patiently and stares as Phainon reaches behind her with trembling hands. This time, the ribbon undoes easily by pulling one of the ears, and, with a soundless movement, the bra un-clicks and falls unceremoniously onto the floor.

On another occasion, she might feel bad about treating clothes that aren’t hers this way, but, right now, the only thing she can focus on is the way in which Mydei’s eyes immediately lower towards her breasts.

The red set has a more intricate design than the last one, though it is still fairly simple to put on. First the bottom, then the top. It’s definitely more daring than the last one, but the wine red color only makes the scars around her body more apparent.

“Looks nice,” Mydei sighs. Through the mirror, Phainon sees how she has started to rub her clit in slow, languid circles. “I knew you would look good in red.”

Her eyes drift to the wounds spreading through her skin. “...You think so?”

Hers.

Something warm starts to pool down on her stomach. Warm, heady, a little giddy. It feels nice. A faint, red tint is starting to ever so slowly cover her skin like paint dissolving in water. Hers, she thinks with a certainty she doesn’t fully deserve but has anyways, Mydei’s.

She turns around to see how it looks from the back. The kiss marks on her back match the lingerie’s color. It’s a shame she hadn’t bitten.

“The black one next,” she jerks her chin to the side, pointing in its general location without stopping her movements.

Phainon looks around for the set she is talking about, and spots one buried under a cow-printed bikini set that Mydei looks wholly unapologetic for, even though the last time Phainon not-so subtly implied Mydei should wear one, she got laughed at.

“Hypocrite,” she mumbles under her breath. “I’m not wearing that one.”

“Not even for my birthday?”

“Call it retribution.”

She bends down to pick the set. At the sight, Mydei lets out a low groan of appreciation and her whole body shudders at the sound. Her girlfriend’s movements around her pussy have started to turn faster, cunt getting wetter, and Phainon knows this not because she sees it but because she hears it. Under the loud pop music of the store, a faint, innocuous and dirty squ–elch can be found.

Phainon swallows.

She’s not yet sure which one her girlfriend is referring to, but, deliberately, she makes sure to pick up the wrong one, a deep blue one, before straightening up.

“This one?”

“Does that look black to you?”

“Oh, right,” Phainon tries her very best to look innocent. “Now that you mention it…”

Mydei raises an eyebrow, looking very much not convinced. Sque–lch, arises through the music and Phainon’s eye flickers to the place where Mydei is slowly starting to tease her own entrance.

“The one with the stockings, sweetheart.”

Phainon drops the set carelessly, turning around and, boldly, with a surge of confidence she’s not exactly sure where it comes from, bends down in a way that could not be described as anything other than shameless, nearly pornographic. Ass high, making sure the lacy underwear digs tightly into the skin around her ass and hoping the lips of her pussy show through the fabric. Titans, how embarrasing.

Mydei chokes out a moan.

The sound is loud. Nerve-wreckingly, so. It pops the little bubble that had settled over them and, suddenly, Phainon is hyper-aware and overly-conscious of the place she’s standing on. A little fitting room with a cream-coloured curtain in a shop with tacky pop music and other people.

People who can hear them.

People who can walk in on them any second now.

All it would take is an accident, a second of distraction. Some girl wanting to try something on not checking the booth is occupied and everyone would know; everyone would see Mydei touching herself because—because—

She couldn’t help but want Phainon.

“Miss?” A voice comes from outside. The worker from earlier. “Is everything alright?”

Mydei fakes some coughs, and it should be indecent—it is indecent, how Mydei answers to the lady without relenting on her movements—once languid, now faster, rougher, edging on frantic

The veins in her arm strain under the effort, muscled legs spasming as her toes curl. Mydei looks like she’s starving, eyes fixed onto her, drinking greedily on the sight of her body as if she were some sort of feast to ravish, uncaring of the slick leaking freely onto her skirt like a fountain.

She pictures the fingers entering in and out, in and out with a quiet squelching sound in her own cunt. Mydei’s tongue on hers, or on her neck, or on her breast, or on her empty eye; hot and wet, swallowing her whole, even as the woman opens the curtain and everybody sees the way in which Mydei wants and wants and wants her so openly, so des-per-ate-ly, despite the burns, the rot, the—thing she has become.

Her thighs rub out of their own volition.

Something must be wrong with her.

But Phainon does not want to think about that. She does not want to think at all. What’s good, what’s wrong, the ugliness, the scars, the eye, the rot, the leeches, the bones and the ash, she does not want any of it.

She just wants—

“Tell me you want me,” Phainon whispers, looking up at Mydei. When did she kneel? “Tell me—Tell me you love me.”

Her voice is raw but she doesn’t cry. She hasn’t cried ever since the 23th. She doesn’t think she can. She doesn’t think she remembers how, but she remembers dying.

Mydei, too, had died once. More than once. A child in a bathtub. A father in a morgue. Four friends in a car. The fifth in her arms. If Phainon were to go, she wonders, would that be the last?

Mydei’s hand tucks the hair covering the left part of her face behind her ear before bending down and placing a kiss on top of the eyepatch. The gentleness burns.

“I want you,” Mydei breathes out. She might have come. She’s not sure. Her chest raises and falls in erratic bursts, face flushed, sweat falling. She’s beautiful. She’s everything. “I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“...I’m sorry.”

“I love you,” she repeats, firmer, this time. “I will keep repeating it until you believe me.”

“I do believe you.”

“Do you?”

Yes. No. The leeches and the rot. “I don’t know,” she confesses, placing her forehead on Mydei’s knee like a dog begging for scraps, just so that she doesn’t have to see the expression she’s making. It’s unfair, she knows. “I don’t want to think.”

Mydei does not reply.

“Tell me what to do,” she pleads. “Anything. I will do it. Just keep—keep going, keep looking at me like that.”

Want me, want me, want me, want me.

The world seems to falter, for a second.

With a ‘click’ the brassiere of the lingerie unhooks.

“The black one, then,” Mydei repeats against the shell of her ear. “The one with the stockings.”

Obedience comes almost instinctual.

The red set comes off from her body and slips onto the floor like spilled blood.

The black set Mydei wants her to wear is an elegant thing. Gothic in design, with loopy edges sewn in lace that resemble a spiderweb. The top is a tight-looking corset with some garter belts dangling on the bottom while the panty is barely anything other than a couple of suggestive-looking strings.

One of her feet is burnt. The other is not. It is weird to feel the cold sensation of the tiled floor only spreading through one of her soles when she takes off her socks. Phainon ignores it, picking up the stockings and sliding them on slowly, almost sensually.

Mydei tracks the motions like a hawk, but Phainon can’t find it in herself to rejoice in the attention like she used to. From one moment to the other, it feels as if this body has stopped being her own. These hands, these legs, this heart, it all feels so far away, none of it is hers—only the rot, always the rot, the burn and the ash.

What day is today, anyways?

“Phainon,” Mydei calls. She stops from trying to tie the long strings of the corset in the back. Hm? When did she put it on? “Come here, I will do it for you.”

Obedience comes instinctively, this time.

Walking feels a bit like floating. One foot in front of the other and turning around makes her head dizzy. She thinks she recognizes the thing draped in lace in the mirror, or maybe not. A corpse in decay. Something tugs faintly at this back, once, twice.

And then in one single brutal motion it tightens.

Phainon snaps back into herself like a body hitting the floor. A choked, breathless sound leaves her mouth as all air leaves her lungs at once. The fabric scrapes crudely against her scars, digging mercilessly against her ribs, so, so mercilessly that she thinks she can feel the brittle bones cracking underneath her.

“Stay with me,” Mydei demands. Her voice seems to pound in Phainon’s chest, along the wild ba-thumpthumpthumpthump pulsating in harsh spikes all over her body. From the space behind her eyes to the very end of her toes.

She tries to choke out something, Mydei’s name, maybe, she’s not sure, but everything dissipates like smoke on her tongue when the lace tightens even more around her, crushing her chest.

It hurts.

Her chest heaves and rises in quick, erratic motions as her body tries hard to get some air. Little gasps and soundless gurgles escape her. It hurts. The popcorn ceiling above blurs and un-blurs. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Oh, she can’t get enough.

“Har—“ she tries to beg, but the word is barely an exhalation. “—der, ah, agh, My—Mydei.”

“You will take only what I give you,” Mydei answers, voice commanding. “And who said you could speak?”

A laugh escapes her. It’s an airless, delirious sound—ugly almost. Adrenaline climbs and spreads like electricity in her veins, making her whole body tremble in some twisted version of ecstasy.

Her head starts to spin, legs going weak, but before she can collapse, Mydei loosens the grip

Phainon falters, body stumbling forward with shaky steps and she catches herself with the mirror. Air rushes violently into her lungs with every breath she takes and it burns.

In the reflection, she can see that red has fully spread through porcelain skin well past her face down to her chest and shoulders, contrasting with the black lace. Her eye is dark, uncannily dark, like those of a doll, blue devoured by her dilated pupils. Strands of her hair stick in random directions, some sticking into her sweaty face.

Her gaze drifts down, towards her thighs, meat bulging out from the stockings pressing against it, and she’s not surprised to see them glistening with arousal under the artificial lights of the mirror.

She—it’s embarrassing, but she never has been able to get off if it doesn’t hurt. Mydei knows this all too well.

It’s the reason, perhaps, why she tightens the straps around her back again before she can catch her breath. It’s not crushing, not this time, but it is firm enough that her lungs can’t fully expand.

“Lift your leg,” Mydei says, black panties in hand. They still have the price tag and, at its sight, Phainon grasps at the last vestiges of shame to shake her head. “You said you would do anything I wanted. I want to see you with this on. Lift your leg, Phainon.”

Her tone is firm, nearly harsh, spoken with the sort of confidence that only a king who knows will be obeyed would have. It would be arrogant—were it not for Phainon’s obsessive desire to be good.

She lifts one leg, then the other, feeling Mydei slide the panties on. A spark of resistance, or perhaps simply of shame, flickers to life and she whispers, “But I’m wet.”

“Angel, you have been dripping for a while.”

Mydei pulls the panties all the way up—far, far up, fabric stretching past its limits and dig-dig-digging between her lips and crushing mercilessly her clit. It’s an intoxicating sensation, deliciously painful, addictingly pleasurable.

Her hips twitch, torn between grinding into the feeling or jerking away from it, and her hands fly to grab Mydei’s wrists in a death grip—not to push her off, but to simply hold her, to hang on to something tangible.

When Mydei speaks again, her voice is a mix of lust and awe.

“Titans, you are a mess. Look at you,” she says, and when Phainon’s eye manages to focus, it’s to find golden ones fixed hungrily on the dark stain slowly spreading through the fabric. “Do you want this so badly? Ha, you are leaking all over the clothes…”

“You were the one that want—ngh!”

Mydei’s smile is mean as one of her long, sharp nails digs into her clit with the precision of a scalpel. “What were you saying?” She asks, now rubbing at the little nub with three fingers, soothing. “Mm?”

Mm, what? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. It feels good—it feels way too good

Heat spreads through her like poison, tainting, wanting, scorching. She tries to thrust further into the pressure; guide Mydei’s fingers further below and into her, but her girlfriend tenses her arm, refusing to yield, as her other hand steads her hips still

“You want more?”

“Uh—uh-uh.”

“Oh? Here? How shameless.” Hypocrite. Titans, Phainon hates her. “What if somebody hears us?”

A gush of slick spills right into Mydei’s palm.

Phainon’s back collides crudely against one of the flimsy, cardboard-feeling walls of the fitting room with enough force that she worries she might straight up break it, up until two hands grab onto both sides of her face and pull her head down harshly. Her body nearly bends in half before Mydei’s lips smash against hers, hungry and all-devouring, stealing the little air she could barely take in the first place.

It’s a short kiss but no less intense. The red of Mydei’s lipstick stained with Phainon’s lilac.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Mydei whispers against her mouth, her exhalation hot on her lips, and Phainon has to grab onto her shoulders to steady herself.

Through the fog of pleasure, Phainon can distantly notice that she’s standing on her tip-toes, heels long discarded, but she can’t quite muster the amusement when her entire being seems to be melting.

Mydei lets go of her face, hands trailing slowly, wantonly, through the curves of her body. She continues, voice low, “To have everyone's eyes on you…”

Click, makes the first garter belt.

“Seeing how beautiful you look…”

Click, makes the second.

“Underneath me.” Her hands settle on her waist, warm and heavy. Mydei looks her up and down with heavy-lidded eyes, assessing, wanting and Phainon watches as a shiver runs up her spine. “Fuck,” she breathes out. “If I had known how wrecked you would look, I would have brought one of my straps. So, that way, everyone would know how your lewd, tight pussy drips all over the floor like a whore.”

Phainon’s grip on her shoulders tightens, blunt nails digging into sun-kissed skin. “Mydei—”

“That’s right,” she says, placing a kiss under her jaw. “Keep singing for me.”

The hands around her waist, the breath against her lips, the lace on her skin, the arousal in her core. The world is starting to blur and lose focus around the edges (might be the lack of air). All she seems to be able to notice is Mydei. Mydei’s mouth, Mydei’s hands, Mydei’s arms and Mydei’s want.

Mydei, Mydei, Mydei, Mydei, Mydei.

The cream-coloured curtain flutters.

“We shouldn’t…”

“But we are, anyways.”

Mydei sinks to her knees, looking up at her with adoration she does not deserve, like a follower looking at the remains of an effigy of a long-fallen god.

In a motion that’s too obscene to be described as devoted but too tender for it not to be, Mydei presses her tongue flat against Phainon’s weeping cunt as if it was something holy and not rotten.

For a while, she seems content in staying like that, letting some of the warmth of the appendage sweep directly into her core, making more of a mess the black, lacy panties. It’s not until Phainon starts to squirm that Mydei presses her mouth fully and su–cks! gathering as much slick as she can through the fabric.

Phainon’s hands fly to cover her mouth even though the gasp that escapes her is soundless.

Amused at her reaction, Mydei keeps lapping at her cunt, still gently, still teasingly, seemingly taking great pleasure in getting her more and more worked up with such fleeting touches.

“Mydei,” she calls behind her hands.

Her girlfriend lets out a long, deliberate ‘hm?’ against her pussy.

The vibrations of the sound spread and reverberate through her body like a bolt of electricity and a muffled moan escapes from her.

“What is it?” Mydei asks when she doesn’t continue.

“I—“ she tries and jerks when Mydei drags her tongue all the way from her perineum to her clit. A shaky breath leaves her, and the lace digs point-ed-ly against her ribs when she tries to take another. “I want—Can I please—? Ah!”

Mydei sucks harshly on her clitoris.

Her teeth dig hard enough into her lips to draw blood, barely stifling a high-pitched cry at the sensation. Her knees buckle underneath her, body nearly slamming against the floor if not for Mydei’s hands on her.

“Please, ha,” Mydei repeats, voice rough, grabbing one of Phainon’s legs and throwing it over her shoulder. “How can I deny you when you ask so politely?”

She doesn’t give Phainon a chance to answer.

In one surprisingly swift motion, Mydei grabs her other leg and throws it over her other shoulder, hauling her body upwards. Her hands fly towards the walls, blunt nails digging and scratching frantically at the material and, on reflex, her thighs tighten around her girlfriend’s head.

Mydei lets out a muffled moan.

Phainon turns her eye downwards once she’s no longer sliding off the wall, just to see Mydei’s head completely swallowed by her thighs.

Phainon blushes.

“Sorry,” she coughs, shifting so that she can stop crushing Mydei’s poor head, but as soon as she tries to do so, Mydei’s hands shoot up to her thighs and press them tighter.

Mydei’s face shifts upwards, cheeks squashed by the meat of her thighs. She looks too much too proud of herself. It’s embarrassing. “Keep them like this,” she says, eyes shining. “You are not allowed to move them, you hear me?”

Again, she does not give her chance to reply, twisting her head to the side and biting the bulging meat there.

Her legs jerk, tightening more around Mydei, who lets out an encouraging noise before scraping her teeth right against the edge where skin ends and one of her scars begins in a way that, for a second, makes her believe she might just rip it off like a band-aid.

It wouldn’t be bad, Phainon thinks, hips bucking, to be unmade under Mydei’s wants.

Scars ripped, muscles and tendons exposed, devoured, and swallowed, bones crushed, rot purified. All in a twisted, delirious expression of pleasure and obsession. No, it wouldn’t be bad at all. It’s almost uncanny how much she desires it.

Maybe Mydei desires it, too.

It sure looks like it, what with the ongoing, nearly fanatic attention she lavishes her thighs with. Mouth sucking, biting and lapping until the skin starts to go tender—the pale, unmarred spots dying in an array of hickeys and bruises, reds and purples, faintly smeared with lipstick; the dark, black lace hugging her legs making an obscene contrast.

Eventually, Mydei’s mouth starts moving higher and higher, until it reaches her throbbing pussy once again.

Her lips hover over the wet, sopping mound. In a way that can’t be anything but deliberate, Mydei lets out a series of long, winded breaths, making sure Phainon can feel each and every warm exhalation against her core—as if she was fanning up a flame. Hotter, wilder, stronger.

Phainon’s toes curl, legs flexing, body trembling in a way that could be described as near violent out of mere anticipation.

A gasp escapes her when she feels teeth scrape at her folds as Mydei attempts to drag the lace of the black panties to the side. Unsuccessfully, might she add, because her girlfriend seems wholly unwilling to let go of her thighs, and she feels the fabric shift and dig into the meat of her ass once, twice, then thrice.

Hesitantly, Phainon lets go of the wall, letting her full weight rest onto the other and something in her belly flutters both in awe and arousal at the way Mydei doesn’t struggle to hold her one bit.

With trembling fingers, she reaches down to pull aside the lace covering her cunt herself.

“...Please.”

It’s barely an exhalation, the beginning of a whisper, the end of a plea. Something quiet, something tender, something undeniably needy.

Something only for Mydei to hear.

Mydei nips at her fingers lightly before sinking her tongue into her in a slow, almost delicate movement, something all too reverent for the obscenity of the act, all too intimate for the filthiness of where they are.

There’s a quiet desperation in Mydei’s movements, a quiet, all-devouring hunger that, somehow, doesn’t stop her from eating her out like a feast to be enjoyed rather than merely consumed.

With closed eyes, Mydei’s tongue thrusts deep into her cunt, exploring her pulsating walls and very nearly rejoicing whenever she clenches down; lapping at her folds and tenderly taking her clit into her mouth and sucking it until the sensation spreads through her body like static.

She’s so gentle it’s nearly unbearable. Overwhelming. Almost a sort of cruelty, Phainon thinks, shaking with something more than the pleasure piling down layer by layer, chipping away her walls one by one.

Wet, sucking noises fill the space, along some faint moans barely muffled by her hand. Phainon is not sure if they can be heard, doubts the tacky pop music is enough to cover their need, but she doesn’t care. It’s just—too good. Too much. All there is in the world for her is the pressure in her chest, the feeling of Mydei’s tongue inside her, her breath, her want, Mydei, Mydei, Mydei.

Her head lolls to the side, suddenly too heavy for her to support. There’s some movement, she faintly registers, the mirror reflecting all their actions back at them like a silent witness.

Phainon’s gaze, blurry and unfocused, drifts past her own body like an afterthought, latching instead onto Mydei.

From behind her thigh, the only thing that can be seen from Mydei is a bit of her hair, bobbing up and down with vigor. A ring of purple has bloomed onto her wrist from where Phainon had grabbed her earlier, and below, under the hiked-up skirt…

Her bare cunt is steadily leaking onto the floor.

Phainon stares, transfixed, almost.

It’s a lewd sight, perhaps even more lewd than herself—not that she dares, nor cares to check—under the bright, fluorescent lights of the store, her release seems to shine, steadily wetting more and more of the floor, as if she could feel every caress inside herself too, as if Phainon’s pleasure was more than enough to bring her to completion.

She wants me.

Her heart sings.

Even now.

She wants me. She wants me. She wants me. She wants me. She wants me. She wants me.

Mydei bites onto her clit.

Not harshly, not particularly, but the faint pressure of her canine digging into that tiny bundle of nerves makes a white sharp burst of light explode in her head as pain mixes with pleasure; and a sound more akin to a wounded animal than a person leaves her mouth, loud and brittle, nearly pitiful.

Her back arches when Mydei’s mouth closes around her pussy and su–cks! in an attempt to drag more slick out of her, though it only serves to push herself more firmly into her.

She bites down on the meat between her thumb and her index finger in an attempt to keep herself from wailing as Mydei’s insistent ministrations extend her orgasm on and on, for a lifetime or two, perhaps even three.

Phainon is not sure when it ends, she’s not even sure if it ends. Her head feels as if it had been stuffed full with cotton, mind floating in a far away high she does not know, nor want, to get down from.

She’s still aware of the world around her, but just barely, distantly, de-tach-ed-ly. She’s aware of the pressure of the lace that does not allow her to breathe correctly. She’s aware that, carefully, reverently, her body is lowered and settled onto Mydei’s lap. She’s aware of the warm, hot mouth pressing firmly against her own and forcing a fraction of her own release past her throat. It doesn’t taste like anything, she thinks, she’s not sure. Mydei is very warm.

A hand settles on her chin and shifts her head to the side, and she’s not aware of that, not particularly, not until her gaze settles onto her own blessed-out expression in the mirror.

Phainon shakes her head, attempting to dislodge herself from Mydei’s hold. Her girlfriend’s grip does not tighten, but it doesn’t loosen either.

“Look,” her girlfriend says. Her voice is calm, perhaps could even be described as soft, but Phainon is well-aware it is a demand, still. “Look how beautiful you are.”

Beautiful.

A part of Phainon wants to argue. It’s embarrassing. It’s a lie. Beautiful, noun, something that she once was. Before, before, before. But it’s hard, somehow. She feels good, the world around her is hazy and thoughts and words seem so, so far below, muddled, so dis—tant.

It’s too much work, too much cruelty, and Mydei’s arms around her are warm and solid and safe and she does not want to think, not about the rot, the burns, nor the shame. Nothing at all. She just wants to do whatever Mydei says, give her whatever she wants. She already looked once.

Beau-ti-ful.

…And perhaps, just perhaps, she just wants to believe Mydei.

A little hesitantly, her gaze shifts back to the mirror.

“Good.”

She doesn’t get the chance to process the sight. Phainon heaves, eye squeezing shut, feeling as if she had been punched right in the gut. That one word more intoxicating and more addicting than any drug could ever be. Her hole clenches around nothing, still hungry, still greedy; always, always, so greedy.

“Mo—” Phainon tries, but she lacks enough air for even such a small word. She swallows, tries to breathe, feels her lungs constricting against the lace. “More.” It’s barely an exhalation. “I—ah, My—Mydei. Ple—please, I—”

Mydei kisses her, light, chaste, barely a peek, just enough to shut her up. “Calm down.”

“Myd—”

Another peek.

“I will give you what you want, doll. Whenever you want, however you like,” she says, kisses her again. Her lips are still shiny with Phainon’s own release. “I will make you feel so good, you will forget everything but my name. You just have to do as I say.”

Mydei’s hand raises, tucking the hair covering her face behind her ear.

“So, just breathe, alright?”

Slowly, her girlfriend maneuvers her until her back is pressed flush against Mydei’s chest, head on her shoulder. Her size makes it a bit awkward, even with her legs bent like the letter ‘M’ doesn’t stop her feet from colliding against the mirror. With some coaxing, she presses her soles against the thing.

“Breathe,” Mydei repeats, sneaking her arms under her armpits and squeezing her breasts. “And keep looking.”

She does.

It’s a lewd sight, edging on indecent.

The look in Phainon’s eye is vacant, not-quite-here but not-quite-there, with only a thin ring of blue peeking around her pupil. Her lipstick is smudged, too, and the skin around her mouth is shiny with either spit or slick, probably both.

Her face is flushed red in uneven splotches, and so is the rest of her porcelain skin, contrasting strikingly with the deep black lace hugging her body. It shows much of her curves, come to think of, and the sweat only makes it stick further into her.

Her nipples, usually hidden things, now poke and strain against the lingerie, shameless in their desire for attention. Meanly, Mydei digs one of her long, sharp nails into one of the little buds before bringing her fingers around it and pinching and twisting it. Her other hand gropes her other breast harshly, much of the fat bulging out from her fingers.

It’s nice, of course, but it doesn’t pull much from Phainon other than some sighs and gasps.

It’s just—not enough. She wants Mydei’s hands somewhere else.

Her impatience must have shown in her face, because the smile that paints itself all over Mydei’s face is nothing short of devious.

One of Mydei’s hands lets go of her breast and all, so slowly drags itself over chest, her stomach and her navel, leaving goosebumps all over her body, before slowly sneaking under the soaked panties sticking into her pussy.

She’s not kind, not one bit, not as she pinches her clit.

Phainon nearly screams.

The sound gets stuck somewhere in her throat, muffled tightly under bitten lips. Her body spasms crudely, like a fish out of water, but even then Mydei doesn’t let go of the little pitiful thing. The sensation is far too painful for it to really be pleasurable, but Phainon still can’t get enough.

“How sensitive,” Mydei hums, before shifting from pinching to rubbing at her clit in slow, languid circles that aren’t soothing in the slightest. “We should get this pierced.”

Her clit?

Pierced!?

That’s—!

“Wa—wait,” she pleads, hands scrambling to grab onto Mydei’s wrist, as if she might just do it right now.

Mydei’s smile gets wider. She’s an evil, evil person.

“Think about it,” she continues, almost conversionally, while pulling down the fabric of the black panties a teensy bit. “A little silver ring in this cute little thing,” she flicks her clit, hard and throbbing, and Phainon gasps. “Shifting every time you move.”

Mydei’s mouth presses against her ear. “You wouldn’t get the chance to forget to whom you belong then, right, angel?” She whispers.

Phainon’s hips jerk, seemingly torn between pressing further into her finger or escaping from, body twitching with oversensitivity. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again, but nothing other than a soft moan leaves her.

Through the fog in her head, her mind conjures the image Mydei is describing. The pain, the burn, the pleasure, the feeling of the cold metal tugging and pressing against her clit, the sight of Mydei’s teeth around it before she pulls it.

Yours, it would mean, something only they would know, and the obscenity of it has its own kind of intimacy. Perhaps they could get a ring with a tiny red jewel on it. Perhaps another with a blue one for Mydei.

The over-saturated fabric of the lingerie can no longer soak more of her slick, and the gush of it that releases from her pussy spills down her tights, making them shine under the fluorescent lights of the fitting room; making the bruises and hickeys and lipstick marks left on them seem even darker.

Titans, she’s a mess.

Her gaze shifts to Mydei, all proper and composed. Phainon could even think of her as unaffected if not by the dark, nearly wild look in her face as she sucks hickeys on the expanse of her neck and the faint wetness spreading through her lower back that’s pressed against her crotch.

“Hm,” Mydei lets out, bringing a hand to push at the hair covering the remnants of the sun tattoo on her neck while the other teases her entrance. “It has gotten long.”

She used to keep it short, she remembers, somewhere above her neck. Now it’s past her shoulders.

Phainon stares at her reflection, at her hair, at her body, at the lace, and asks, “Does it fit me?” Though she’s not sure what she’s referring to. Everything, nothing, all and none. She does not know. She just wants—

“It does,” Mydei replies. “But not as good as pleasure.”

Mydei’s long, sharp nail it’s the first to enter her.

“Ngh!”

Phainon’s body bolts upwards before Mydei’s arm around her chest all but slams her against her chest. Her teeth dig into her lips once again, hard enough that she actually tastes copper, but not enough to muffle the strangled squeal that escapes her.

Her breaths come in short, sharp spikes that make her lungs burn as if she were drowning despite it being a surprisingly gentle intrusion. Mydei’s motions slow to avoid hurting her, though it really only serves to drag the moment, and it seems like an eternity has passed before her finger finally enters her.

The popcorn ceiling is still very ugly, Phainon thinks deliriously, struggling to keep her eye open.

A hand grabs her by the chin and forces her to look at Mydei. It takes about ten seconds for her image to un-blur.

“—Again, didn’t you?”

Phainon blinks once, twice.

“...Uh?”

Mydei licks at the blood on Phainon’s lips. “Hmph, I will have to get you a muzzle if you keep biting yourself like this.”

Phainon keens. Loud and long, animalistic, almost. She can’t help it, it just escapes her.

A mouth smothers her own so suddenly that their teeth ‘clack!’ together harshly. Mydei swallows the rest of the sound with something akin to thirst, and she doesn’t let go even when Phainon is left without air.

Her hand pads around the floor, body tilting back slightly. It makes her finger sink deeper into her and the resulting sound is swallowed too by Mydei’s mouth.

When they part, a thin string of saliva connects them for a second longer before it breaks, spit falling onto Phainon’s overheated skin.

A second finger makes its way inside her and she’s wet enough to just take it. At the same time, something is shoved deep into her mouth before Phainon gets the chance to bite her lips again.

“But this will do for now.”

Mydei’s bundled-up panties are in her mouth. Through the fabric, she thinks she can taste the leftovers of her release.

A whine leaves her mouth, muffled by the soft, white cotton.

Mydei smirks.

In contrast to the gentleness she showed when entering her, she’s entirely merciless as she starts to thrust her fingers in and out, in and out, in and out of her pussy with wet squelching noises. Her nails scrape her walls crudely while the pad of her fingers rub against them in a nerve-wracking combination.

It hurts, it feels good, it stings, it’s great. It hurts, it feels good and she wants more, more, more.

Her heart, hollow, burnt-up thing, beats frantically against her chest with enough force that it feels that it might burst any moment now. Breaths coming out in erratic bursts. All moans and whines and sighs muffled under the panties in her mouth.

Phainon is not sure exactly when did she start to move her hips in tandem, chasing more and more of that feeling, but she doesn’t particularly care. Nothing matters outside of Mydei, outside of how good she’s making her feel as a faint pressure arises from her navel, hot and itchy and almost, almost there.

Just a bit more and—and—!

Mydei stops.

She chokes out a sob, hips grinding down on the fingers desperately. She’s close. She’s so, so close. She just needs a bit more to tip right off the edge and Mydei isn’t giving it to her.

Around the panties, she tries to say, “My—mphf!” Before she gags as a hand slaps around her mouth, pushing the fabric deeper into throat.

She grabs onto Mydei’s wrist, attempting to pry the appendage off, but her girlfriend simply shushes her.

“Someone is coming,” she whispers.

Phainon freezes.

She strains her ears, above the low ringing in her hearing, like the buzzing of a bee, that she only now notices had been there. The first thing she registers is the tacky, pop music echoing through the shop, and the second, footsteps.

Her grip on Mydei’s wrist tightens.

“Um, excuse me?” Somebody calls from outside. “Is everything alright in there?”

Mydei’s gaze darkens, flickering to the cream-coloured before making eye contact with her through the mirror. One second too long passes, perhaps even two, where she seems to consider something.

And then, slowly, almost tentatively, she starts to move her fingers in a scissoring motion.

Phainon’s head falls back onto her shoulder. Her other hand scrambles for purchase and clings onto the back of her girlfriend’s head, gripping the hair there with so much force that it must sting.

“Why woul—” Mydei immediately breaks off and clears her throat. Her voice is rough, terribly so, like a parched man left behind in a desert. Phainon starts quivering. “Sorry.” She clears her throat again for good measure. “We are fine, yes. Did you need something?”

“It’s just you two have been in there for a while…”

A third finger starts rubbing against her entrance. “Do we need to get out?”

It shouldn’t be this hot!

Something must be deeply, truly, terribly, awfully wrong with Phainon to find this situation so damn arousing. Yet, there’s something about it, about all this, about the depravity, the imprudence, the danger, the—the ease in which Mydei uses her that has her cunt clenching and a clear stream of slick to slip out of her.

They could be found any second now. There’s nothing stopping whoever is out there from simply drawing the curtain and stumbling upon the sight of Phainon, flushed and leaking, drooling around a pair of panties as her girlfriend fingers her open.

“Not—not really,” the person aside continues, unaware. Titans, they are awful. “The shop is pretty empty today, so there isn’t anyone in line for the fitting rooms but, uh, I was just wondering if your friend, is alright?”

“She is.”

“Really? She didn’t seem too well before.”

Mydei takes the panties out of her mouth.

It takes all her might for a moan not to slip out.

“...I’m fine,” she answers, but it sounds far, far too breathless. “It’s just that my… friend,” she continues. Mydei’s eyes narrow. “Brought too many clothes.”

“Right, uh, are you sure you are alright? You sound a bit…”

“Yes, I am fine. It’s just—!” As she talks, a third finger methodically enters her and her eye rolls backwards. Full, she thinks, she’s too full and it hurts and it feels good, and she only manages to choke out a simple, “Dizzy.”

She might be melting.

“Don’t worry,” Mydei replies, perhaps replying to something Phainon didn’t manage to catch as the panties are shoved back into her mouth and the thrusting fingers inside of her. “It’s something that happens. I will take good care of her.”

Mydei thumbs her clit.

Phainon pulls on strands of orange hair harshly, earning a pleased hiss from Mydei right next to her ear. She picks up the pace as a reward, or so she believes, maybe, she’s not sure, she’s not thinking straight anymore. Fuck, it feels good. Nails drag on her insides.

“You got so tight,” Mydei grits out. Squelch, squelch, squelch comes from under her. “Does the thought of someone else seeing you get wrecked get you wet?”

Phainon chokes out a sob.

“Of course, it does. Someone as pretty and beautiful as you deserve to have everyone’s eyes on you.”

She’s close, close, close, close—!

“Unfortunately,” Mydei rips her fingers out of her pussy in one brutal motion. “You are for my eyes only.”

Mydei slaps her pussy hard.

Phainon does scream, this time, voice muffled under the panties as she squirts like a fountain, some slick even landing on the mirror. Back arching, toes curling. Pain is the only thing she’s able to register before the sensation reduces to a low, simmering sting, like a hundred thousand ants crawling all over her.

It’s too intense of an orgasm, pleasure liberated and decompressed in too sudden of a manner, too violent, too urgent. It strikes her like thunder, elevates her to new heights before she comes crashing down bad.

And, for some minutes, some blissful, short minutes, her mind goes completely empty.

The world becomes fuzzy, a little bit hazy, a little bit distant, but Mydei is warm, all around her, her hold secure and safe. Phainon is more than content on staying on her arms, right where she belongs. Her only eye traces patterns that don’t really matter in the ugly popcorn ceiling above for a minute or two before she closes it.

Good.

It’s good.

She feels good.

Loved, even.

A finger taps her cheek a couple of times.

Phainon’s eyelid flutters open.

Mydei raises an eyebrow.

“Still gone?”

“...Mm.”

Awareness trickles down to her layer by layer, like honey trickling down her body.

Her legs and crotch are still a sticky, lewd mess, but the tight feeling of the lingerie around her chest is gone, replaced by the soft fabric of her shirt, and Phainon allows herself to linger on the deep rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall of her lungs.

With careful movements, Mydei unties and takes off the eyepatch, faintly damp with sweat, and tucking it into her purse before taking a new one from there.

Phainon blinks.

She peers down onto the black purse settled on her own lap. There’s a pair of sunglasses, a wallet, sunscreen, make-up instruments, a couple of keys, and a cheesy, romance book Mydei carries everywhere but never actually reads. There are also some painkillers, one more medical eye-patches, about two epipens (one for seafood, another one for peanuts) and a blue inhaler that always makes Phainon scoff because she hasn’t had an asthma attack ever since she was like fifteen but Mydei always insists on bringing because…

Because she can’t help but care for Phainon.

An emotion with no name but raw all the same wells over on her chest, squeezing her heart harshly and squeezing it harder when Mydei tilts her head back and places a kiss on her burnt eyelid before placing the eyepatch.

She’s a hard person to love, Phainon is well aware, and she knows it has only gotten harder after everything, but, somehow, someway, it has always come easy to Mydei, as if loving her came naturally, effortlessly.

It makes all her worries seem a bit…silly.

Mydei pulls a tube of red lipstick from her purse—one of those expensive brands that don’t make her skin feel as if it might fall off and tilts Phainon’s chin slightly before applying it over her lips gently.

Suddenly, her heart feels way too big for her chest.

“I love you,” Phainon breathes out.

Mydei blinks once, twice, and then, as if she hadn’t fucked her within an inch of her life in a cramped fitting room, blushes bright red.

“How—” she stammers out, actually stammers. “How can you say such stuff with a straight-face?”

Phainon laughs.

And for Mydei, that sound is the whole world.