Work Text:
Sitting on two beds beside each other, Eleanor and Theodora reached out between and held hands tight; the room was brutally cold and thickly dark. From the room next door, the room which until that morning had been her’s, came the rhythmic low sound of a woman grunting, too ragged for exact words to be heard, too steady for disbelief. Holding hands so hard that each of them could feel each other's bones, Theodora and Eleanor listened, and the low and steady sound went on and on, the grunting sometimes pitched sharply up in exultation, falling sometimes to a stuttering breath, going on and on. Then without warning, there was a low moan, the low desperate moan that broke through the rhythm, and rose as it went, on up and up the scale, and then broke off suddenly in a ragged gasp, and yet the breathy grunting went on.
Eleanor’s grasp loosened, and then tightened, and Theodora, lulled for a moment by the sounds, started and looked across to where Eleanor ought to be in the darkness, and then thought, hazily, Why is it dark? Why is it dark? Eleanor rolled and clutched Theodora’s hips with both of her hands, and Theodora tried to speak and could not, and held her back, blindly, and firm, trying to stand her mind on its feet, trying to reason again. We left the light on, she told herself, so why is it dark? Eleanor, she tried to whisper, and her mouth could not move; Eleanor, she tried to ask, why is it dark? and the grunting went on, rhythmic, low, and steady, a rolling liquid gloating sound. She thought she might be able to feel the breath across her skin if she lay perfectly still, if she lay perfectly still, and waited, and waited, feeling the vibration of the grunts going on and on, never ceasing, and she clutched desperately to Elenaor’s sides, and felt the weight of Eleanor press into her and the answering press of her own fingers.
Then the low heady moan came again, and the rising pitch of it drowned out the grunts, and then suddenly absolute silence. Theodore took a quivering breath wondering if she could speak now, and then she heard a little soft cry which melted in her chest, a little infinitely sharp gasp, a little sweet moan of wild pleasure. It was her, she thought with disbelief, she is moaning somewhere, and then, upon that thought, came a soft stroking down her side she had never felt before and yet knew she had felt always in her haziest of dreams. Hesitantly it touched her. Slowly a hand moved down her borrowed nightdress, and after coming to the edge of the fabric, moved up her bare thigh.
I can’t stand it, Theodore thought desperately. This is devilish, this is torture, she is touching me so softly and I cannot even touch her, and the ragged breathing went on, steady, on and on, meanwhile the touch rising to the apex of her thighs and falling a little, pulling her thin underwear with it. Two cold fingers slid against her center. The strokes quickening and stuttering a little, the brushing of smooth fingertips against her going on and on.
Now, Theodora thought, perceiving she was lying on her back pressed tightly under Eleanor’s chest, holding so tight she could feel the ridges of Eleanor’s ribs, now, I will not survive this. She thinks to consume me. Well, she has. I am consumed, but more that that, I am a molten thing, I am liquid, I am a treacherous wretched creature and I will endure a lot from this hungering lunatic house but I will not resist a achingly beautiful touch, no, I will not; I will by God get my mouth to open right now and I will beg I will I will beg “PLEASE,” she groaned, and the lights were on the way they had left them and Eleanor was sitting up beside her in bed, startled and disheveled.
“What?” Eleanor was saying, “What, Theo? What?”
“God God,” Theodore said, panting and rolling to the edge of the mattress far from Eleanor, who had moved suddenly out of bed and into the corner of the room, “God God— whose hand was that?”