Mirrors, a General fanfic - FictionPress.com

Mirrors

For Patience

Cassia has no idea how Rose-like her sentiments are when, age twelve, she decides that there is nothing wrong with looking. Cassia looks at everyone—comparing, compartmentalising, allotting—and sees patterns in where her eye is drawn. She swallows over long lines; angles, breasts; a walk owning confidence that she cannot imitate. That is what Cia wants, and Patience—brilliant, reticent Patience, adored by Cia’s family and prone to casually downing gin in front of them, teasing the younger girl with conversation that whirls and brushes against new thoughts in her head without ever completely going over it—exemplifies this. Cia wants to be that smart, to walk that way in slacks, to be that, well, cool. She practises the voice in front of a mirror—warm, low, but glass-edged—and then she is too embarrassed and has to stop, has to let her mouth settle into its more familiar, softer curve, and look away.

Mother insists that Patience must come and see them, (“once a fortnight if you really can’t bear proper company,”) and she dotes on her and talks and teases responses from her even when Patience is at her most silent and abstracted. Daddy and Patience both laugh at her. (Patience’s laugh catching Cia by surprise every time, soft and unexpected and one of the happiest things she has ever heard. Cassia wants to make her laugh.) They laugh, but surely they can see, like Cia does, that their Sylvia uses her bright, insistent chattering to make small, dark spaces wider. She lets air in with the words.

Cia would love that gift with people, which Sylvie has already given to her other daughter, but she doesn’t like all her mother’s words. Especially the ones she murmurs after Patience has gone home again, to the cottage where Rose lived. “Honestly,” she says. “The poor love’s hardly older than twelve.”

Patience, to Cassia, is impossibly, insurmountably older than twelve. Lying in bed, watching lamps and books and bears twisting into shadows and playing out different lives on her wall, Cia thinks about the old stories. Kidnap and flowers and rescue. Patience was older, better, than twelve at three. She has come back from university, from the city where there are theatres and bigger bookshops and the chance of going a whole day without running into someone she knows, and who knows what Patience might have done there? Cia is starting to know what she would like to do, in a place away from constant family, and the shadows on her walls, to half-closed eyes, shift into bodies and hands, as her own fingers learn what her mother couldn’t quite tell her. Breasts aren’t just there—they can fit in your hand and harden against your palm, and slow, hesitant pinching can send whispers, and then whimpers, down her body to...elsewhere, pulling and pooling, wet and strange.

By the time Cassia is thirteen, she knows that she wants Patience to touch her cunt. (And she suspects that she might know just how to do it.)

Cassia doesn’t expect Lisa to kiss her in the shop. She had no idea her friend even wanted to, with her desperate passion for Laurence Delaney from drama, all poems and thrown away love letters she has written to herself in lieu of actual communication. Cassia looks at her—Cassia looks at everyone—and feels wistful as she lets her friend agonize over whether he would talk to next week after the exam, and she refuses to notice they way her arm is held a little longer and closer every day, the way Lisa never really looks sorry when their hips bump as they go through a door. She sees, but she refuses to notice, until she turns to tell her that no, “No one would think you’re mad, even though you clearly are,” and she is cut off, Lisa’s lips pressed tight and earnest against her own. It’s awkward, and startling, and just as Cia feels then both start to relax enough to tentatively open their mouths, one of their elbows shift and there is hot chocolate all over the table and their arms, splashing legs as one of the cups shatters on the floor. For once, Cia very much minds being stared at. She stands, dusts herself off, helps Lisa to her feet, yells apologies to the waitress and rummages in her bag for money, any money, even though it’s no where near allowance day, in a crazy blur, wanting out so there can be quiet and calm and time. She and Lisa laugh the whole time. High and nervous and mad—Lisa is half crying by the time they leave the coffee shop. Cia has an arm around her, a closer touch than she has ever dared, and then they’re outside and they’re both apologizing and blushing.

“I’d always wondered, and everyone says...”

Cia looks at her, chocolate drying stickily on her clothes, and wonders why she feels like crying. She swallows it back. “Everyone says...what, sweetie?” Cassia doesn’t recognize her own voice. She didn’t mean to act, yet it comes out harder and braver than she feels—all worldly inflections.

“...Everyone says you like girls.”

“Oh, that.” Oh, that. “Yes. Rather more than bloody Laurence Delaney.”

Lisa looks away, muttering something.

“Lisa?”

“I...I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t wa...no idea. I have no idea why...”

Cassia doesn’t want to hear any more of this. All she wants is home and a bath and a pit to fall into. “Well, don’t ask me, dar-ling,” she drawls—icy, acted—and takes her by the shoulders to kiss her, once and hard. If her first kiss is going to be one of the worst memories of her life, she thinks, she might as well get every aspect of it out of the way. Lisa squeaks, and Cassia laughs at her.

She pushes Lisa back with all the embarrassment, and intends to stride home in an appropriately uncaring and sophisticated manner, but Patience is in the window, vile coffee in hand, looking like she has seen everything, face a mix of outrage and, Cia thinks, amusement. After this, she runs, and avoids Patience for a month.

Fifteen is strange, for Cia. She has long recovered, since two years is practically forever when there are other girls to kiss. Mostly, she simply looks; it is safer, and she doesn’t want to act again. (Besides, it is embarrassing to admit that the best of these later kisses was a stage one she just happened to corrupt.)

She forgives Patience for witnessing her humiliation. Patience has, Cia knows, an awful lot of time for her. Not...never because of anything that slips into her dreams—Patience never looks back—but simply because they have long turned into friends. She is less a goddess now and more someone who answers back, which Cassia, when she can no longer avoid the thoughts, thinks is infinitely more attractive. Her house is a haven during those times when her mother talks just a little too much, when daddy is cross or sad in a way Cia doesn’t know how to fix. Patience seems to understand the horror of not being able to fix things, and allows Cia’s chaotic adolescent life to intrude on hers without rancour.

They drink chai in the other coffee shop. “It’s vastly superior, you know,” Patience had said, ending that month of silence. Now, Cia remembers the words as the woman at the counter leans forward to talk to a customer. Her smile looks genuine and she has to keep pushing her hair back with slim, long hands, tanned dark. She moves easily, with that confidence Cia is drawn to, though this is a walk and stance she thinks she can catch. Cassia focuses on how the girl’s light blue shirt rides up as she reaches to get a tin of something down from a shelf behind the counter. It shows skin paler than her arms.

“You’re terribly obvious, you know.”

Patience is smirking, tapping her lightly on the hand. Cassia, shrugging, looks away and into eyes the same blue as her own. The colour of their family sea. She can’t help the blush, but Patience expects that from her. She smiles, turning her hand around and gripping Patience’s fingers. Light, affectionate, impulsive.

“And?” “Patience, there’s nothing wrong with looking.” She slowly pulls her hand away.

Cassia is giddy. Patience visibly swallows, and it seems like that motion, the cessation of touch, that makes her clear her throat and look away, a brief shield of the eyes.

They talk about books the rest of the afternoon, but Cassia, for once, feels like Patience is looking back.

“Oh, so you’re nearly sixteen? Does that mean you think I should give you something? When you’re despicably spoiled?”

Patience stands, groaning as her knees and back release, while Cia secures soft, leafy strands of new growth to a trellis. Cassia laughs, refusing to look up, because she knows that the only thing she could do, looking up at Patience St. James as she kneels at her feet, is mirror a smirk back at her and say, “Not at all. What I want is to give you something.”

For her birthday, Cia gets herself a new haircut. Shorter, simpler. Patience declares it, “very nice,” in a tone that suggests ‘very nice’ as synonymous with, “less likely to tangle when I’m coming all over your face.” Cassia shivers, pushing her new hair back with one hand, tasting herself with the other.

Patience gives her money, in the end. Sylvia exclaims, Cia stutters her thanks and laughs off Patience’s comments about her, “not deserving it, but royalties have been kind,” and hides it away for something special.

‘Something special’ turns out to be clandestine lingerie. White, transparent, the lace on the bra and knickers twining a barely-there pattern that Cassia learns to relish against her breasts. (Cia does not trust herself to wear the knickers.) The nightdress defines ‘illusory’. They are all thinks that you either wear because someone shall see them, or no one will.

“Look, I honestly don’t know.” These words are on a loop the next year, when the questions of, “what do you want for your birthday?” trundle good-naturedly round again. “I’ve practically everything I could ever want.

“Practically?” Patience arches an eyebrow.

“Practically. Perhaps... I might stay at yours?”

“For you, there’s room.”

“Good, because I demand it.”

Patience, Cia thinks, is trying very hard not to stare. Cassia is curled on Patience’s sofa, and enjoying herself. Her birthday was lovely, and now, a day later, she toys with the idea of telling Patience that she knows, that she can see, for once, and isn’t it funny that she is wearing Patience’s gift to her from last year. Very pretty, doesn’t she think?

Cassia will never tell. She’s had a lot of practise. Besides, there is a more pressing conversation at hand. “Can’t I please try one? It’ll be the best favour you can give me—I’d like to not embarrass myself in front of older, less easily soused undergraduates. And what if I’m a drunk like dad?”

“That does not make me inclined to help you out, Cassia. Though it would be absolutely hilarious.” Patience is still dressed, and sprawled more than curled, sneering the way only she can.

Cassia sighs, then laughs. “Please?” she repeats.

“No.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Nothing in your power.”

“Oh, you’re no fun...don’t answer that, Patience. I know you’re going to say that you’re Fun’s Very Antithesis and all that, but honestly! You have a willing slave and don’t know what to do with that information.” Cassia’s words are running, tripping out of her, soaking the air like her cunt in those knickers, worn for the first time. Cia desperately wishes she were drunk.

“Oh, Patience. Please. Why can’t I just try one?”

Patience can speak again, resting on eleven years seniority in her own house. “I refuse to send you home with a hangover!”

“I won’t get drunk.” Lies, lies. She shifts. Lies.

Patience sighs. “Yes. Yes you will.” But she stands, and fetches the bottle of gin.

“And now, Cassia, it is time for bed.”

Sloe gin. It matches how she feels. Slow: body and mind curiously mismatched as the part of her that whispers the instructions babbles too fast for the rest of her physical, there-and-almost-touching-her, nervous self to follow. The half second delay is torturous, and she wishes, now, she'd had the courage to do this without the buffer, without the dizzying tendrils in her brain. She grins.

“Taking me to your bed finally, Patience? Now that I’m old enough?”

The shock on her face makes Cassia’s cunt throb, and she finally is brave enough to kiss her. Kiss Patience, who is a wicked revelation, a teasing tongue so much better than her own, and there is more want than curiosity in her kiss. Why should they be curious, when they mirror each other. Each difference is a surprise, and carefully kept, a catalogue they don’t know they’re making as Patience toys with Cia’s lower lip, as Cassia’s hand tangles in Patience’s longer, finer hair. They laugh, dazed and slightly bewildered, as they fall into Patience’s bed—Patience’s bed—and Cia watches, delighted, as she cups one of Patience’s breasts under her shirt, the look on her face saying, among many other things, that some responses are inevitable. She traces the nipples, swallowing, wanting everything at once and everything in its own time.

“Let me look at you?” Cassia always imagined that Patience would talk a lot in bed, but she is asking all the questions here. “I...I want to see what I’m doing.” I want the most from this.

Patience sighs, shakes her head, removes the shirt, and Cia is sure she must look insane. The lust must be making her look insane. The freckles down her sternum somehow look a little like a tree. Cassia traces them with a finger, watching it more than Patience’s face. “I...” she breathes. “I’ve never seen another woman’s breasts bef—” the confession is cut off, Patience is kissing her, and it is all Cia can do not to faint as she feels her hands and tongue. She is arching against her, shocked by the intensity of it, knowing as Patience’s tongue is urgent and less elegant in her mouth that she is not being humoured, that Patience wants this just as much.

“Take this off.” So she does talk. “Now.”

Cassia sits back, grinding into Patience’s thigh, enjoying the look on her flushed face. Expectant. Wanting. Demanding.

“Cassia, do as you’re told.” Oh, finally. When she’s down to bra and knickers, flushed to the tops of her breasts, Cia knows there are no more secrets between them. She knows, but it is harder than she thought, to say, touch me, please touch me, I want your tongue on my breasts, I want you to eat me. I want to come all over your face, when she is finally allowed.

Fingers press the lace agonisingly against her nipples. Cia toys with the idea of leaning down and sucking one of Patience’s into her mouth, but she’s too distracted, begging with her body if not her mouth.

They are switched, and Cassia is naked, naked and gasping and slightly scared, arching her hips to feel she doesn’t know what—oh, to feel that. Patience’s tongue is, not that Cia has words just now, practised, and she wishes she had been all and any of the people who had made it that way, shaking under her, crying out as her long, desperately long, fingers curl up deep inside. If something breaks, she does not feel it.

Cassia’s world narrows, and it is all her body, Patience’s bed, Patience’s name.

“I’ve never come that hard. I’m not sure I’ll ever come that hard again.” She is dazed, shivering, taking in how Patience’s nipples are still hard even though she hasn’t had the strength or presence of mind to touch them. Taking in how wet she looks. Patience’s expression is a strange mix of possessive, amused, and sad. She stands and washes her hand. “If you don’t, your partner isn’t doing it right.”

Can she do it right? Cassia straightens herself, running a hand through her hair. “Let me...?”

The pause is too long. Was she being humoured after all? “Patience,” Cassia’s voice is faint, scratchy. “Don’t you want me to touch you? Make you come?” Was I wrong?

Patience sits, and Cia has to touch her before she says another word. Her cunt almost burns Cia’s hand, and she is lost. Cassia loses herself, pushing Patience back and doing everything that has played itself shadow-like across over mind over the years. Well, almost everything. Patience’s cunt is tight, and Patience does not expect her to be slow. It is important to concentrate, after all, and Cassia wants to prolong this for as much as they can both bear. She laughs at Patience’s whispered pleas, shifts her hand to, “there,” and, “yes, Cassia, press up.” She is careful, reluctantly taking her free hand away from Patience’s breast to spread her lips, expose her clit, hard and aching, to the air and then her tongue, and a part of her that hasn’t just died knows that she will never feel this confident again.

Cassia’s world narrows, and it is all Patience’s body, Patience’s bed, her own name.

Of course, they don’t speak of this the next morning. Separate showers; mildly embarrassed smiles. It is Not To Be Spoken Of. Cassia is more than complicit, embarrassed by so much surrender, and yet, the next time they meet, Cia feels her familiar arm around her waist, she knows for sure that there will never be any shame. As they grow older, the secret is less of a thrill and more of a treasure. It is a brightness, a slight tension they accept and trust as they find others to love who mirror them less and, often, disturb them more.

Cia, years later, dances with Patience at a wedding. She is being watched, and she knows it, unsure of the depth of scrutiny she is undergoing under the eyes of Patience’s wife and her own, untouchable, dearest friend.

Her words want to run, and she bites her lip. “Are they undressing us with their eyes, do you think? Or just to our underwear.” No. That question, she needs to keep to herself.

But still, there is nothing wrong with looking.