Tell Me How I Look
by December Seas • June 19, 2020
f/2s, mixed race relationship (chinese/japanese and black/chinese/tongva), ptsd, on again off again relationship, aromantic character, sapioromantic character, trans woman character, gorgon, praise kink, laughing during sex, pondering the metaphysics of vampire reflections, petrification as temporary bondage. 6,600 words.
Meg spends the weeks after her encounter with Blanche in a self-destructive spiral. She smokes more than she should, drinks herself sick, breaks her veganism to have a cube of pig blood to see if maybe that’s the problem: anemia and protein deficiency, not her own mind.
(She regrets the pig blood. The texture is like diabolical tofu, and all it does is make her throw up, right there in the claustrophobic bathroom of the one spot that serves dim sum well into the evening.)
She tells herself she’s just on some kind of binge. She’s stressed, that’s it. Tired of being the only vampire in a room of rich fashion bitches who will wear vampirism like a costume for photo shoots but walk out human. That’s the trouble when you’re a vampire fashion photographer. You don’t appear in the photos, or in mirrors. You are invisible. You can only be behind the lens, and even then, most people don’t bother to find out who took the photos for the magazine spread.
But no matter how much it sucks to be a vampire on Melrose, Meg knows in her heart that it’s not the work that’s getting to her. It’s that night with Blanche. What an utterly befitting name for an unashamed White supremacist. Meg may have stayed strong, been the one to break Blanche, may have even enjoyed doing so, but the hate and contempt Blanche had had for her, the way she became utterly nothing as she called her a chink, over and over again—that lingers with her. She never thought the word could have done as much to her as it did. She’d rarely faced it herself, having grown up around other Asian Americans. It doesn’t hold the same power and weight as something like the N-word. And yet, hearing Blanche spit it out, as if she were a cockroach on her tongue…
Toss it onto the PTSD pile. Just another rite of existence.
Still, as she stumbles out of another bar and vomits into an alley smelling of piss, there’s a voice in the back of her head that is very much aware of what she’s doing: making more and more of a scene in the desperate hope that someone will see the pain behind her bad decisions. When the pounding hangover catches up to her the next day, Meg knows that she can’t keep going on like this. Vampirism negates much of her mortality, but it doesn’t do anything to relieve the everyday torture of existing. All self-destruction will bring her is more misery. Much as she loathes to do it, Meg takes out her phone and scrolls through her contacts list, wondering which person would be the best to reach out to.
She hesitates when she gets to Isadora’s contact entry. They’re currently in the off again phase of their on-and-off relationship, partly because Isadora’s busy as hell as a computer programmer, and Meg often travels for photo shoots, leaving her little time for other people. The other part is that Meg’s always felt a bit too fucked up to hold down a long-term, committed relationship. There’s a lot of her she doesn’t want other people to see. She’s unpredictable, and probably not emotionally mature enough to handle a real relationship, even if she is already twenty-eight.
But, at the same time… the universe is big and lonely, and it feels especially so tonight as Meg goes through her contacts a couple more times, trying to find someone she feels comfortable talking to. She considers texting Constance, but the conversation will eventually turn into a lecture on politics, and she’s not in the mood for that now. She considers texting Karen, too, but then remembers that she’s up in Big Bear this weekend. A little farther than she’s willing to go to hang out.
So she scrolls back to Isadora’s number. They usually go from on-again to off-again on good terms, but, all the same, Meg can’t help but feel as if she’s intruding on Isadora’s space and imposing on her, even if it’s just to say hello.
Well, here goes, she thinks as she pushes through her hesitation and composes a new message.
hey
Then, figuring she should probably say a little more after not texting for three months, she adds a follow-up message.
how’ve you been?
She doesn’t expect a reply for several hours, but she must have caught Isadora right as she had some spare time. A couple new texts come in.
good ?
i miss u ?
Meg smiles. The conversation picks up from there.
Meg:
I miss you too
what are you doing tonight?
Isadora:
watching a bad horror movie ? u kno me ?
Meg:
by yourself?
Isadora:
yea
buuuuuuuut i don’t mind company ?
Meg:
???
I’ll be there in 20
Technically, it takes 25 minutes to get from Whittier to Alhambra, but Meg never goes the speed limit when she’s on her bike. She applies some lip gloss—easier to guess and more forgiving if she misses the edges—and rubs some gold eyeshadow onto her eyelids, hoping that she applied it symmetrically. Blush is harder to mess up, though she’s been told on a couple occasions that she’d put more on one cheek than the other. She doesn’t bother owning mirrors anymore, and even front-facing cameras haven’t solved the vampires and reflections problem.
Meg tugs on her helmet and motorcycle leathers. The back of her black leather jacket is opulently embroidered with a bodhisattva bearing water and a willow branch. She’d opted not to get the bodhisattva’s name embroidered. For the most part, Meg is content to let people assume that she’s just Chinese. But that’s only part of her truth—Megumi Wei is Chinese and Japanese, and the bodhisattva is 觀音, Kannon, Guanyin, 観音; she can’t bring herself to pick just one name to embroider, and having them all there feels excessive. Here in New Angeles, at least, she usually doesn’t have to explain her jacket.
(She wonders if it would’ve felt different if Blanche had attacked her for being Japanese. Probably not, as far as slurs go. But maybe Blanche would have seen her as more submissive. More docile.
More destroyable.)
Meg kicks her motorcycle past 60 mph on city streets, hoping that the adrenaline of relying on sheer luck to avoid the cops will be enough to replace the roiling thoughts in her mind. At 9 pm, the traffic’s died down, and the streets are empty as businesses close. Still, as Meg swerves around a pedestrian dressed in dark clothes, she reminds herself that there are consequences other than the law to consider.
She goes at a modest 40 mph the rest of the way to Isadora’s. She parks her motorcycle in the visitors area of the lot and tugs off her helmet, runs her fingers through her hair, shakes out her roots, and prays that she doesn’t have any dandruff. Disappointing how many things vampirism doesn’t fix. She enters the courtyard, then takes the steps two at a time up to Isadora’s unit and knocks on the door labeled 2A.
“Coming,” Isadora says in her rich voice. Just hearing her makes warmth rise through Meg. A moment later, Isadora opens the door, her hair loose around her shoulders. A dozen of her locs blink up at Meg, some of them flicking their forked tongues at her. She resists the urge to touch her hair. First of all, she doesn’t want to get snaked. Secondly, it would be a rude-as-fuck way to greet her.
“Hey,” Meg says, stepping inside to the sound of screams from the TV. “What’re you watching?”
“Some slasher, except there’s also ghosts involved,” Isadora says, shrugging. She leans in and tilts Meg’s chin up for a kiss. Meg’s eyes flutter shut as she lets her helmet drop from her hand.
She misses this.
After they part, they make their way over to the couch. The air is bright with the scent of oranges; a plate of discarded peels sits on the coffee table. On the TV, a young woman walks down a dark hallway, trembling, her eyes wide as they dart from side to side. Terrified shouting rings out in the distance. Suddenly, the slasher appears before the woman, who screams. The knife plunges through her—and the slasher stumbles as the woman ripples, revealing that she’s a ghost.
“Huh,” Meg says as she takes in the low-budget CGI. “That’s… hmm.”
“I mean, it’s a great idea.” Isadora gives the TV a pitying look. “If it had better acting, special effects, makeup, sets, writing…”
She sits down beside Meg, who finds herself surprisingly fidgety now that she’s actually here with Isadora. She tells herself it’s just that she hasn’t been around anyone much these past few weeks.
Don’t kid yourself, some other part of her says. You don’t clench your jaw this hard over social anxiety.
Her throat feels closed up, too, all while agitated energy clamors through her. Didn’t she come here to have someone to talk to in the first place? The weight of words hangs in her throat, like what she wants to say is a bucket of water drawn up from a well, and she’s holding on to the lever, deciding whether to take the bucket or to let it drop back down into the earth.
It feels awkward to tell Isadora about sex with someone else, though. Maybe she can frame things to exclude that part, even if it means omitting much of the circumstances that made everything so terrible. She could still say something, but keep it simple. She’s not up for answering the questions that the full details would spark.
“I got harassed by a racist bitch a couple weeks ago,” she says in a casual tone. Isadora turns to look at her, concerned, several locs hissing in dismay.
“What happened?” she says.
“Met her at the club, danced with her a bit, thought she was hot,” Meg replies, shrugging. “Then she sees my fangs. Starts going off about how I’m a leech and calls me a chink on top of that.”
“Ugh,” Isadora says, wrinkling her nose. “White girl?”
“Of course,” Meg says. “Though, come to think of it, the last person who called me a chink was Mexican.”
“I’m sorry you went through that,” Isadora says. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Meg hesitates. She could leave it at that. It’s more than she’s told anyone else. She can shut up now and bury the incident in the past.
Judging by her behavior over the last couple of weeks, though, that’s not working. Reluctantly, she nods and opens up.
“It fucking sucked,” she says. “I felt like I wasn’t even a person to her. They say that shit about sticks and stones, but that hurt harder than the time I lowsided my bike without my leathers on.”
“Yeah,” Isadora says, nodding. “I know. The only reason why I haven’t been called a chink myself is because people never believe that I am Chinese.”
She rolls her eyes.
“I’ve been called names for being Black and being Two Spirit, though. Every time it happens, it’s like, everything you’ve built yourself up to be, everything you’ve ever accomplished in life, gone like that—” She snaps her fingers. “—because someone wasn’t happy just thinking you’re not good enough; they had to go and say it.”
They fall quiet as their attention turns back to the movie. But even this small of an exchange, saying what’s really on her mind and having someone validate her feelings… It helps, more than she’s willing to admit.
(Because if she admits that it helps, then she’d have to consider that Constance and Karen might actually be right about her benefiting from talk therapy. The idea of paying someone to chat every week, when her schedule’s already hectic and few doctors work into the night, seems like too much of a luxury, not to mention the shame she feels even considering it as an option.)
She ponders saying more to Isadora. About how, beyond recent events, she’s been feeling deeply lonely. Winter makes nights longer, giving her more time to be outside, but that only highlights how much time she spends solo. She can go for an entire day without speaking to anyone. She needs a release, but she’s never been one to let that happen in the form of words.
So she keeps her mouth shut. The energy inside her transmutes. Turns from an unbearable buzzing into something sparking, like kindling just about to catch. It’s not a conscious transformation, more like electric currents merging together into familiar lightning paths. She and Isadora have always had a deep physical chemistry. Just one kiss can have her shivering, breath coming out hot, entire body so alive she forgets that she’s a vampire who can live only a half-life. Even with something as chaste as sitting beside her, Meg can’t help but peek sidelong at Isadora, take in the sight of her absorbed in a terrible movie, eyes glittering in delight.
She’s beautiful, yes: the line of her jaw, her pouty lips, the sweep of her clavicle, the curves of her waist and hips… but that’s not what makes Meg stick around. Isadora is the only person Meg’s ever felt this way about. Something that seems to approximate what people mean when they say they’re romantically attracted to someone. They have great sex, yes, but the attraction isn’t merely that, nor is it platonic the way she feels about Constance and Karen, who she can’t imagine dating. She wants to just… be with her, bask in Isadora’s presence in any way, if only to look out at the world together, just so she can hear how Isadora describes it.
Meg uses the term “aromantic” for herself, but only in her mind. She’s reluctant to use it with anyone else. Most people don’t understand. For fuck’s sake, her phone keeps autocorrecting it to “aromatic,” and if there is anything Meg isn’t, it’s a goddamn bulb of garlic. In any case, people hear “aromantic” and take it to mean “incapable of love.” The testimony of her friends would prove otherwise—she would go uphill both ways to Hell and back for them—but people seem to think the only type of love that exists is romantic love, as if even the love between a parent and child doesn’t count.
She’s spent time combing through LGBTQ resources, too, where she found pages that would at least acknowledge that she existed, but would then subsume “aromantic” under “asexual,” as if they’re synonyms. If there’s one thing Meg knows about herself, it’s that she is not asexual. The degree of sexual attraction she feels toward even passersby is overwhelming more often than not. But tell people you’re into sex but not romance, and they think you’re a heartless bitch. Doesn’t help that when you’re a vampire on top of that, people assume you’re using your charisma to break hearts.
“Aromantic” isn’t even the most accurate term for her, but she dreads saying the word “sapioromantic” out loud even more. She doesn’t want to bear the questioning and the way she’d have to explain herself: that she needs to fall in love with a person’s mind, above all, and that that has nothing to do with intelligence or education. She has met many smart people she hates, after all.
With Isadora, her love comes from a combination of witnessing her passion and her kindness. She can watch a terrible movie that no one in the writers room put any thought into, and then break it down into evidence supporting a wild theory about the meaning of the work that nevertheless makes sense. Sometimes so much sense that it breaks Meg’s brain and changes the way she sees the world.
And then there’s how she shows everyone compassion. Meg’s grown a lot from seeing how Isadora acknowledges people that have become embarrassingly invisible to Meg, and talks to them as, well, people. She sees beyond the surface, imagining scenarios that Meg hadn’t thought of: that perhaps the woman muttering to herself as she walks down the street isn’t dangerous, but having an episode of mental illness; that a coworker whose performance has been erratic might not be lazy, but rather a victim of workplace harassment who could use her help talking to HR.
Meg puts a hand on Isadora’s, careful to not show too much neediness. She’s not sure whether she wants to jump back into a relationship. Maybe it would be better to keep this visit brief. Just a chat. Keep herself guarded, keep her vulnerability covered.
But when Isadora smiles and laces their fingers together, Meg finds her resolve ebbing away. She goes back over the last few weeks. After Blanche, she’s had… no affectionate touch, until this. No hugs, nothing lasting longer than a handshake.
She needs touch. She craves it as much as how other vampires crave blood. When she’s not with Isadora, that usually means going through another online dating phase and some hookups before realizing, once again, that touch without affection for who she is is not enough for her.
She closes her fingers more tightly around Isadora’s, who seems to sense her need as she turns to meet her gaze.
“I… I’ve missed you,” Meg says, as if explaining herself.
Isadora smiles. Meg holds eye contact with her, then feels herself going still as Isadora’s eyes go from their usual dark brown to a flinty obsidian. A subtle shift, but one that Meg recognizes.
Isadora blinks, then looks embarrassed as movement returns to Meg.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you that I slipped for a second.”
“It’s fine,” Meg says, then adds after a pause, “I missed you looking at me, too.”
“Yeah?” The smile is back on Isadora’s face, wider, with a sinful edge to it. “I would be more than happy to keep looking.”
Her eyes remain brown, though, as she waits for Meg’s response. Whatever hesitation Meg had before washes away as she recalls the thrill of being in Isadora’s gaze.
“I’d really like that,” Meg confesses.
“All right,” Isadora says, her eyes flashing obsidian for the briefest heart-stopping moment. Then, she closes them and leans in for a kiss. The locs that brush against Meg’s cheeks flick their tongues against her, little, tickling kisses to punctuate Isadora’s deeper one. The remote falls out of her lap as she shifts to press against Meg.
It feels so fucking good to kiss Isadora. Not just because she leaves her breathless with one swipe of the tongue, but because of how familiar it is, how she doesn’t have to hesitate before leaning into it. She lifts the hem of Isadora’s shirt, lets her hands roam until they cup her breasts. Isadora pulls off Meg’s jacket and tosses it onto the back of the couch, expertly unzips her leather pants without even looking, tugs them off smoothly as she tongue-kisses her, leaving Meg in just her thin band tee and soft leggings.
“Let’s take this somewhere else,” Isadora says. She stands and helps Meg up, then tugs her by the hand back to her bedroom.
Isadora is not shy about mirrors. Her gaze doesn’t petrify herself, so she can decorate with abandon. Her bed has a metal frame, wrought with arabesque filagree, painted a delicate off-white; the mattress is neatly made, everything in muted colors. But all the coziness her bed invokes still can’t chase away the discomfort she feels upon seeing the massive, gold-edged mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed, over Isadora’s vanity. Isadora wakes every morning by looking herself in the mirror—something that sounds like Hell to Meg.
So she sits on the bed with her back to the mirror and pulls off her leggings, revealing the lacy black panties and the sheer thigh-highs she has on underneath. Isadora’s breath catches in her throat. Meg smirks. Mirror or not, she knows she’s hot, and she knows what gets Isadora going—a pretty little pillow princess, dressed high femme.
Isadora surprises her by not even bothering to take off her panties. Instead, she gets on her knees before her, pushes her legs apart, hooks a couple fingers under the lace and tugs her panties aside, revealing Meg’s cunt, already wet. She plants a kiss on Meg’s clit, then traces her tongue along her slit, dips the blade into her hole. Meg groans, looking down to see the flash of Isadora’s tongue jewelry. For all the stereotypes of it being great for sex, Meg can’t actually feel the metal when they’re fucking, even though she wishes she could.
“You look so good,” Isadora murmurs, her voice vibrating through the folds of Meg’s pussy. Meg arches her back and groans.
“Yeah?” she says, looking down and meeting Isadora’s eyes. “Tell me how I look.”
Isadora’s eyes go dark, even more intense than before. The thrill of being seen rushes through Meg, parallel to the petrification that keeps her in place. Isadora’s gaze isn’t strong enough to turn her into stone, but it’s enough for impromptu bondage.
“I love seeing you all wet for me,” Isadora murmurs as she nudges Meg’s inner labia one way, then another, before lapping at her clit—the briefest touch. But even that much of a taste leaves Meg gasping. She can’t squirm away. Petrification magnifies everything she feels, leaves her exposed and addictively vulnerable. The only control she has left is over her eyes, breath, and voice.
And she keeps her eyes firmly fixed on Isadora.
“Your pussy gets all fat and pink,” Isadora says, pulling back to admire Meg. She’s firm this time with her touch, massaging the swells of her outer labia, tugging her inner labia as she dips in for a wet kiss on Meg’s clit. Meg can’t even throw her head back in pleasure, leaving her no way to vent the intensity of the feeling. Her pussy clenches and unclenches. She wills the movement into a steadier pulse, one that builds toward orgasm, and gasps as she realizes that Isadora did leave her control over her pussy, too. Though the thought of what it would feel like to have her pussy left soft and perfectly fuckable…
“Oh, fuck,” Meg says, biting back a moan, unable to squirm or shudder as a small orgasm rolls through her.
“You’re so gorgeous when you start to sweat like this,” Isadora says, tracing a finger along her humid skin. “It looks like you’re covered in glitter. Coachella bitches could never.”
Meg laughs, but the sound turns into another moan, louder, as Isadora starts eating her out with more enthusiasm. God, she can’t even squeeze her thighs together as pleasure spikes through her, sets her nerves alight. The only thing she can possibly do to reduce the intensity of the feeling is to close her eyes, but even then, that doesn’t do much to tamp down the sensation. If anything, closing her eyes only seems to open her ears more, and Isadora isn’t shy about making noise. She slurps as if to show her appreciation, and Meg has to admit that part of why it’s hot is because it’s so obscene.
Isadora’s lips and chin gleam with Meg’s slick when she comes up and kisses Meg, deeply, releasing her of the petrification.
“Mmm.” Isadora grins as she pulls away from Meg. “The best lip gloss. Meg brand, in the color ‘Snail Trail.’”
“Oh my God,” Meg says, swatting Isadora’s shoulder. “You’re the worst.”
They spend several breaths kissing on the sheets. Isadora strips Meg of her T-shirt, her breath hitching at the sight of the lacy black bralette underneath. She squeezes Meg’s tits, then tugs the lace down to free her breasts, which hang pushed together by the bunched-up lace and band. Meg’s nipple jewelry glints in the dim lamplight.
“So cute,” Isadora says, tugging at one of Meg’s nipples.
“Look who’s talking,” Meg says. She pulls Isadora’s tank top off, careful not to get the straps tangled in her hair, then trails kisses down her stomach to the band of her lounge shorts. Meg hooks a finger under each side and shimmies them off of Isadora’s hips, tugs them up and over her ankles, throws them aside.
Isadora’s not wearing anything underneath. Meg drapes herself over Isadora’s thighs and takes the head of her cock into her mouth. Isadora hums with pleasure as Meg swirls her tongue around the ridge, kisses away the precum on her slit, drags her tingling lips over the subtle crest of a vein. Meg circles her fingers around the base of Isadora’s cock, luxuriating in the silky feeling of her skin as Isadora stiffens in her mouth.
“God,” Isadora says, laughing with delight as Meg bobs her head. She’s just as enthusiastic about letting sounds happen. “Feels amazing.”
“Good,” Meg says around a mouthful of girldick, which comes out sounding like she’s grunting “goo,” making both of them laugh.
Meg sucks Isadora’s cock a little longer, enjoying the moans she’s drawing out of her. Then, she comes up for another kiss. She tastes herself. Her tongue bumps against Isadora’s jewelry, then traces the line of Isadora’s top row of teeth. Fangless, a sensation she no longer remembers.
Isadora comes up onto her elbows, then onto her knees. They kneel together on the bed, the plush blanket fluffing up around the indentation of their shins, Isadora’s arms now resting on Meg’s shoulders, her wrists crossed just behind the nape of Meg’s neck. The kiss they fall into this time isn’t deep, but it has a rhythm to it, an ebb and flow. Isadora’s locs undulate, knotting and unknotting, slithering and swirling as if riding an invisible updraft generated by the heat slowly building between them.
Meg breaks the kiss first. She lets her eyes open slowly, her gaze resting first on Isadora’s collarbones, then the graceful sweep of her neck, before she finally comes up to meet her eyes. They’re not that magical obsidian, dark with the energy of petrification, but rather their usual brown. She lets her gaze linger. As Isadora looks back, her eyes unwavering, Meg realizes with a start that the specks of light gleaming on the surface aren’t just abstracted reflections of the light in the room.
There is a silhouette there that breaks up the light.
Meg.
She stares in wonder at her reflection. It’s too murky to see many details, but the very fact that it’s there, that she exists, in the reflection of someone’s eyes—perhaps only in Isadora’s eyes? She doesn’t know if her reflection is there because Isadora is a medusa with her own supernatural sight, or if she exists like this to all, reflected in every eye of the world.
The thought nearly overwhelms her. She makes eye contact because she’s trained herself to, knowing that it’s the polite thing to do around people even if it makes herself uncomfortable. But perhaps because she’s never been comfortable with it, she’s never looked closely enough to see anything but a splash of color in anyone’s eyes.
Isadora tilts her head.
“Doing okay?” she says.
Meg snaps out of her thoughts, embarrassed to have been caught staring.
“Yeah. Your eyes…” she begins, then hesitates, changing the course of her sentence. “You have beautiful eyes.”
“Thank you,” Isadora says, smiling. “So do you.”
She puts her hands on Meg’s waist. Then, as Meg yelps in surprise, Isadora turns her around so she’s facing the mirror, keeping one arm around her waist to hold her up. Meg sees just Isadora there, beautiful and splendid, her locs wilder now, tongues flicking like a murmuration. The only indication that Meg is there are the indentations on the blanket and the slightly compressed way that Isadora’s breasts look as she presses them against Meg’s back, her nipples dark. It’s always eerie, seeing her own absence. But some of the uncanniness retreats as she remembers that somewhere in that reflection, in Isadora’s eyes, is an image of herself.
“Your dān yǎnpí eyes are dark brown, always bright and curious,” Isadora says, resting her chin on Meg’s shoulder. In the mirror, Isadora’s center of gravity is off; by the laws of physics, she should fall. Except—the indents in the blanket shift—there is something supporting her. Meg tries to lower her chin to look down at herself, but realizes that her body is petrifying again.
“Oh yes,” Isadora says, smiling as Meg blushes. “My gaze can still reflect onto you, Xiǎomèi.”
She kisses Meg’s neck, then her shoulders. Positions her so that she’s got her hands around around the rail at the foot of the bed, her knees spread apart, her pussy exposed. And this time, as Meg tries to squirm, she finds that she can’t squeeze her pussy muscles voluntarily. Her cunt throbs, twitches with desire every now and then, but she can’t clench down like she did earlier. She’s left soft, relaxed.
“Do you need me to unfreeze any part of you?” Isadora says, one hand coming down to rest on Meg’s ass, her pinky tantalizingly close to Meg’s pussy.
“No,” Meg says, head spinning with want. “I’ll let you know if I do.”
“Good,” Isadora says. She kisses Meg’s shoulder again, then runs a hand through her hair, parts it into three strands. “You’ve got such beautiful hair. Shiny and soft.”
She continues to speak as she braids the strands together.
“When I pull the hair under like this, it makes the braid look so fat and strong.”
Once she gets to the end, Isadora wraps the braid around her wrist and tugs gently. Meg’s scalp tingles with the sensation, which amplifies into a wave of goosebumps that washes over her. Isadora smiles, meets Meg’s eyes in the mirror, even if there isn’t anything there.
“I love your body hair, too,” she says. “The cute fuzz under your arms. All the little hairs on your legs. The patch above your pussy.”
Isadora slides her hands between Meg’s legs. She hopes she hasn’t missed any pubic hair—shaving by touch is harder than she’d like to admit—but, then again, Isadora probably wouldn’t care. And as she slides one finger into her pussy, then another, all of Meg’s anxieties melt away.
“Look at that,” Isadora says proudly as she slides a third finger in and Meg moans. “You can take so much more than you let on.”
She withdraws her fingers with a wet plop. Meg would laugh at the sound if she weren’t feeling as aroused as she is, her cunt open, so relaxed it gapes.
Just as she’s about to whine at the empty feeling, Isadora enters her. Meg takes in a sharp breath, then releases it in a soft hiss of pleasure as her pussy accommodates Isadora’s cock, relaxes even more than she thought it could. Isadora keeps up a rhythm of praises, punctuating Meg’s moans with other descriptions of her: “God, my cock looks so good going in and out of your pussy.” “Wish you could see how rosy your ass is getting, smacking against me like that.” “You know you’ve got the cutest O-face, right?”
The sex is brief, but just what Meg needs. With her pussy held in its relaxed position, Isadora can plunge deep into her, grind the head of her cock against her cervix, get her moaning with the intensity of it, the slow build, like Isadora’s fucking her open, revealing to her parts of her she didn’t know she had. All she can do to ride through the feeling is clench her jaw, but even then, she can’t do it for long. As she gets closer and closer to orgasm and all sensation turns to bliss, Meg’s fangs extend to their full length. She’d reach up a hand to cover them if she could. It’s embarrassing, something she tries to hide. But while she can control whether her fangs extend or retract from hunger, she still can’t control her fangs extending from arousal as she pants, open-mouthed.
“Ooh, there’s Dàgē’s little slut,” Isadora says, grinning as she leans over Meg’s shoulder, plants a kiss on her cheek as she continues to thrust deep into Meg. God, she’s so wet that she sounds like rainboots stepping through a flood. With Isadora’s weight falling even more heavily on her, Meg sinks deeper into the mattress, hands still gripped firmly around the rail at the foot of the bed. Meg looks up long enough to see Isadora in the mirror, her hips undulating sensually with every stroke, as if she’s dancing. Then, her eyes roll back as she closes them again, the feel of Isadora’s cock in her maddening, keeping her right on the edge of orgasm, turning her pleasure into sobbing pleas for release.
“Keep your eyes open, Xiǎomèi,” Isadora says.
Meg’s eyelids flutter open again. It takes a moment for her pleasure-laced vision to focus. She meets Isadora’s gaze in the mirror, marveling at how fucking gorgeous she looks when she’s about to come herself. Her locs are everywhere, some of them flicking tongues at her nipples. Her lips are parted, devastatingly kissable. But the hottest sight is the way her gaze softens, her eyebrows drawing together as she bites her lip, looks right at the reflection of Meg that doesn’t exist.
With a shuddering moan, Isadora comes.
The cum hangs in the air for a moment. Meg stares, fascinated. It’s not too visible—years of hormones have changed Isadora’s cum to more of a cloudy, transparent color—but it’s there, floating right where Meg’s cunt is. And—pulsing, she realizes, as her own orgasm comes on, her pussy contracting and releasing, pulling the cum deeper into her before it disappears from view.
“Wh…” Meg begins, squinting at the mirror. “Where did it go?”
Isadora grins.
“Guess it stops having a reflection once it becomes part of you,” she says. “New note in my How Vampires Work log.”
“Do you actually have a How Vampires Work notebook?” Meg asks. The petrification lifts. She lets go of the rail in relief, glad to be freed of the hard metal pressing against her palms.
“Nah,” Isadora says, pulling out. Meg watches, intrigued, as the cum dripping out of her pussy and down her leg becomes visible again in the mirror. “Just a ‘How Meg Works’ notebook.”
“Hah,” Meg says. “I bet I know what it says: ‘Barely functions, needs lots of troubleshooting.’”
“Nah, I closed that bug as ‘as designed,’” Isadora says, making Meg laugh. “It says stuff like, ‘Goes into anaphylactic shock when exposed to the sun. Doesn’t need blood, but will kill for Jamba Juice. Tries to be tough, but is a big softie inside who has a lot of feelings that need to be validated.’”
“I… feel called out…” Meg says, a complicated ball of feelings in her chest. She wants to say that she’s not a softie, she can manage her emotions just fine by herself, thank you very much, except—well.
That’s obviously not true.
“I call you out because I love you,” Isadora says.
Meg turns, her back once more to the mirror. Isadora has said she loves her before, and she’s told Isadora as much, too. But something feels different about this moment. She looks into Isadora’s eyes. Sees herself reflected in there, more clearly now that the light is illuminating her face. She looks unsure. Doubtful. Then, stubborn and headstrong, as if she’s about to say something smart to Isadora, before her expression finally settles into one that she recognizes all too well: fear.
“I really do,” Isadora says, as if sensing her hesitation. “I like having you around. I know we’re both busy, but I’m sure we can do something about our schedules. We can make this work.”
“I don’t know.” Meg reflects on her self-destructive behavior, on her defiance, as much an asset as it is a curse. She thinks about what Constance and Isadora say about mental health, and how there’s still stigma and barriers for Asian Americans. How she falls into that category of people facing a barrier, even if it’s a purely internal one. She knows there’s something unstable about her emotions, that she’s got to find a way to deal with them in a healthier manner.
“I haven’t been able to make this work,” Meg says with a shaky breath. “I… I need to get my shit together first.”
“You don’t need to ‘get your shit together,’ Meg,” Isadora says. “You need help. And I’m willing to go down that path with you.”
Meg meets Isadora’s gaze again. This time, she doesn’t look for herself in her eyes. Instead, Meg takes in Isadora whole. Sees her the way she sees others. Looks for the microexpressions, the hesitations, the movements outside of conscious control that reveal what’s written on her heart. And though she’s not a medusa, Meg can still read what she sees in Isadora’s eyes: a genuine desire to be with her, but also a well of disappointment, too, that she draws from again and again.
It’s not fair to do this to her. To bounce in and out of her life, all the while refusing to tell her why she feels so unworthy, so unnecessary, so—nonexistant. Isadora is the one person she does exist around. And she deserves better. She’s a brilliant woman who deserves stability and predictability, who deserves to be shown as much love as she shows to others. It’s not fair for Meg to project her own bullshit and assume that Isadora will just put up with it patiently.
“I—” she begins, then pauses to collect her thoughts. There’s a million things she could say, some that justify her bad behavior, some that are sympathy-chasing, some laden with anger, or resentment.
Instead, she swallows and says, “I… I do need help. And I don’t know where to start.”
Isadora smiles, so wide and brilliant that Meg feels like she’s being bathed in sunshine, how she remembers it before she turned: warm and radiant, like she’s in the presence of something with so much love to give that it can sustain an entire planet. She knows the well of disappointment hasn’t been filled with just those few words, but, all the same, she’s humbled by Isadora wanting to try again.
“With the first step,” she says, gently. “I’ve still got my windows with double blackout curtains on. If you can swing waking up in the early afternoon, we could look up some therapists and call them together. See if there’s someone who can do appointments at night. Or video calls.”
“Thank you,” Meg says, surprising herself as her eyes well up with tears. “I appreciate it, Isadora. I really do. And—I love you, too. So much, for everything you are. Especially your mind.”
Isadora gives her a light, bashful punch, but Meg doubles down.
“I mean it.” She pauses, then decides to go for it. “Have you heard of the term ‘sapioromantic’?”
“No,” Isadora says, looking at her with curiosity. “What does it mean?”
“Add this to your ‘How Meg Works’ manual,” Meg says, grinning as she begins to tell her.
© 2020 by December Seas
“The texture is like diabolical tofu” lord, but it IS
All of this was so good. I love how you blend in emotion and identity and vulnerability and then weave it all together with eroticism. So glad I found you on Twitter!