Ellie was at home alone, watching TV, bored.  It hadn’t been that good a day at work.  She was tired, and sick of her manager, and pretty much sick of all her coworkers too.  They seemed to be able to take work way too seriously, and at the same time be bad at doing what Ellie needed them to do.

She had the TV on, but she wasn’t really watching it.  She had come in, and flopped onto the couch, and not moved for fifteen minutes.  She’d been staring at the screen the whole time, but she still wasn’t completely sure what she was looking at.

She was bored, and lonely, and wishing she had someone to come home to.  She was tense, still all edgy and irritated from the day.

After a while she slid her hand down the front of her suit trousers.

She needed to relax.  She wasn’t really planning to actually get off right there on the couch.  She was just touching because it was comforting.  It was nice like fluffy socks were nice, or electric blankets, or cocoa.

She sat there for a while, pressing her hand against herself, not moving much, not even really stroking.

Just sitting, and pressing, and starting to feel better.  Starting to forget she’d had an awful day.  Started to feel turned on, too.  Almost turned on enough that maybe she should go and finish in her bedroom, or in the shower, even though she was comfortable where she was, and wasn’t really trying.

She heard a key in the front door, and tugged her hand out of her clothes.

She heard voices, and called hello.  Her housemate Mark came in, with his friend Mia.

“Hey,” Mark said, and started untying his shoes, to take them off and leave them beside the door.

Mia kicked hers off, and came over and stood beside the couch.  Beside Ellie.  She looked at TV.  “What’s on?”

“Don’t know.  Surfing.”

Mark took his shoes off.  “There’s letters,” Ellie said, and pointed to the bookcase beside the door.  “A letter.  From a charity or something.”

“Thanks,” Mark said, and picked it up.

Mia was still standing next to Ellie.

Looking carefully at Ellie, as if she was thinking.  Perhaps thinking just a little too hard.

Mia had always flirted with Ellie.  Very gently.  Just enough that Ellie that knew Mia was, not so much that Ellie needed to think about whether she actually cared. The good kind of flirting, that made you feel better about yourself, and didn’t necessarily need to be anything much more than that.  But still flirting.

And now Mia was looking at Ellie, and Ellie had been doing what she was just doing, and now Mia was grinning.

Grinning a little bit too much

Ellie had been playing with herself for a while.  Even though she hadn’t meant to get herself off on the couch, she’d got a fair bit of the way there.

Maybe far enough it showed.

Her skin might be flushed.  Her breathing might be slightly fast.

She really hoped not, but Mia was still staring.  Looking at Ellie and grinning.

“What?” Ellie said, quietly.

Mia shook her head.  “Nothing.”

Ellie glanced at Mark.  Mia did too.  He didn’t seem to be paying attention to them.  He had opened the letter, was reading it.  It was probably some kind of newsletter.

“Want a drink?” he said to Mia after a moment.

“Yep.”

“You too?” he said to Ellie.

“Yeah.  Please.”

“Beer?”

“Sure,” Mia said, and Ellie just nodded.

Mark went through into the kitchen, still reading.

“I know what you were doing,” Mia said to Ellie, as soon as Mark had gone.

Ellie looked at her.  “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yeah you do.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.  I was watching TV.”

“Yeah you were.  I can smell you.”

Ellie was startled.  Startled, and a bit embarrassed too by how direct that was.  “Dude,” she said.  “What the fuck?”

Mia grinned some more.

“Yuk,” Ellie said, overdoing it.  “You can smell me?”

“I can.”

Mia was so sure of herself, so smug about it, that Ellie actually believed her.

She believed her, so she decided to act innocent.  She lifted up her arm, made a show of sniffing her armpit, then said, “I’m fine.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Mia said.  “And you know that isn’t what I meant.”

Ellie looked at her, and didn’t know what to say.

Then Mark came back into the room, and handed each of them a beer.  He didn’t seem to be listening, or paying attention to them, he just wandered in, and wandered away again, down the hall, still looking at his newsletter.  He was probably going to his room to change.  He always got changed when he came home from work.  He was fussy about his suits.

And Mia kept grinning at Ellie.

“That’s kind of creepy,” Ellie said, when Mark had gone.

“Not nearly as creepy as what you were doing,” Mia said.

“I wasn’t…” Ellie said, then stopped, and decided not to care.  It was her house, and she didn’t have to explain, and if Mia was so certain, there wasn’t any point arguing.  Ellie didn’t especially care what Mia thought, not if she wasn’t going to tease Ellie in front of Mark.

Everyone did it, Ellie thought.  She almost said that to Mia.  She wanted to, but didn’t.  She wasn’t quite that sure of herself.

Instead she looked at Mia and said, “So?”

Mia didn’t answer.

“Is there a so?” Ellie said.

“Yeah,” Mia said.  “I guess.”

Ellie waited.  “Well?”

“So I can get you off, if you’d like.”

Ellie was surprised.  She didn’t know what to say.  She sipped her beer, and looked at Mia.

“Just if you wanted to,” Mia said.

“What,” Ellie said.  “Right now?”

Mia grinned, and shrugged, and said, “Yeah.  Sure.”

Ellie was surprised.  She didn’t know what to say.  She was horny.  She’d made herself horny, and then not got to finish.  She didn’t especially fancy Mia, but she didn’t especially dislike her either.  Mia seemed like a nice enough person, and she was fairly sure Mia wasn’t suggesting true love or a lifetime together or anything like that.

Ellie sat there, sipping her beer, wondering.

Mark came out of his room, and went into the kitchen.  Usually he and Ellie took turns cooking, night and night about, but there was kind of a house rule that whoever had guests had to do it.

Mark started looking in the fridge, opening cupboards.

“Not my feta,” Ellie called.  She was surprised her voice still worked.

“Yeah, okay.”

“And leave enough milk for breakfast,” she said.  “We’re almost out.”

“Yeah.”

Mia kept watching Ellie.  She didn’t seem impatient.  She didn’t even seem to especially care whether Ellie said yes.  She was just waiting.

Ellie still didn’t know what to say.  She looked at Mia, and decided she quite liked her, and that she’d quite like to get off too, but she still didn’t know if she should.

So because of that, because she didn’t know, she said, “All right.”

Mia grinned.  “Yeah?”

Ellie nodded.

“Your room,” Mia said.

Ellie stood up, like this was a perfectly normal thing to be doing.  She walked to the door, and started down the hall.

Mia looked into the kitchen and said to Mark, “We’re going to do girl shit.  We’ll be ten minutes.”

“Yeah,” Mark said, not really listening, probably still working out dinner.

Ellie went down the hall.

She went down the hall, and opened her bedroom door.  She went inside, and stopped.

She stood there, just inside the door, suddenly wondering if this was smart.  If trying new things with someone this close to home, someone she’d have to see again, was the best thing to be doing.

Even though it was probably too late to starting thinking like that.

She turned around.

Mia had followed Ellie into the room.  She pushed the door closed.  She stepped forward, and Ellie stepped back, and that meant that somehow Ellie ended up trapped against the wall, behind the door.

Not trapped, not really.  Mia wasn’t touching, or pushing, or even standing especially close.  Ellie could have told her to move, or just walked away.

But she didn’t.

She stood with her back to the wall, behind the door, with Mia in front of her, not quite sure how she’d got there.  Trapped by being promised something she wanted.  Not with anything as simple as Mia’s hands, or her mouth, or kisses.

“Okay,” Ellie said in the end, “So go on.”

And Mia did.

She stepped forward, staring at Ellie, and pushed her hand down Ellie’s trousers. Pushed it inside Ellie’s clothes, and touched Ellie carefully, all wet and hot and silky.

Touched so that Ellie sighed and closed her eyes and was suddenly lost in how Mia’s hand felt.

Ellie closed her eyes, but Mia kept watching.   Ellie knew she kept watching, because every so often Ellie opened her eyes, and Mia was still staring.  Staring while she fingered Ellie.  While she slid her fingertips into Ellie, and while Ellie grabbed the wall beside herself, and then Mia’s arm, trying to keep her balance.  While Ellie bit her lip, and closed her eyes, and tried not to make any sound.

She watched while she made Ellie come, and did it as quickly and completely as Ellie could have done it herself.

Ellie was a bit surprised it was that easy.

Right at the end Mia whispered, “Hey, look at me,” and that was the only thing either of them said.

And Ellie did.  She opened her eyes, and looked, and did her best to hold Mia’s gaze, while Mia made her come.

That was strangely, curiously intense.  It was almost a connection, almost something intimate.  Staring at each other like that, staring into Mia’s eyes, while she gasped and clenched into Mia’s arm, and while Mia got her off.

Ellie came, slow and hard and startlingly good, but as soon as had, she suddenly thought she’d made a mistake.  She thought that now she owed Mia something, that she probably ought to do Mia too, and that she didn’t know if she wanted that.

She didn’t even know how she would, if she was going to.

She ought to, though.  If she was a decent person, she ought to do Mia because Mia had done her.

Ellie didn’t know what to think.  She almost panicked.  And while she did, while she had a tiny crisis of lust and identity and desire, Mia just stood there, smiling.  Grinning, like she was proud of herself.  Like she knew some big secret.  Like staring into Ellie’s eyes, watching Ellie come, had given her a glimpse of Ellie’s soul.

And as if nothing about this was strange, either.  As if this was some public service she liked to perform, because she was curious, and no big deal at all.

She took her hand away, slipped it out of Ellie’s trousers, and Ellie opened her mouth, but had no idea what to say.

She had to say something, to say thank you, at least.  But she couldn’t.  Thank you seemed inadequate.  So she stood there, silent, feeling stupid.

Feeling awful.

Until Mia smiled.

She smiled for a moment, then stepped backwards, and opened the door beside Ellie, and went out into the hall.  And closed the door behind her.

And that was that.

Finally Ellie breathed.  It wasn’t until then that she realized she’d been holding her breath, waiting for Mia to kiss her.  Waiting for Mia to do something.

Ellie did up her trousers, and sat down on her bed, and made herself get calm.  Made her breathing slow down.  She leaned over, and looked at herself in her mirror and made sure she looked normal.

She mostly did.

After a while went back out to the lounge.  She watched TV, while Mia and Mark drunk beer in the kitchen, and cooked, and talked.

Then, a little later, Ellie ate dinner with them.  They all ate dinner together, and Mia and Mark talked, and Mia sometimes said polite things to Ellie, trying to include her.  Including Ellie, like anyone would a friend’s housemate who happened to be there.

It was strange.  It was good, too, and Ellie was relieved, but it was also strange.

It was the most boring way for the evening to end that Ellie could imagine.  Unspeakably boring, for what ought to be a momentous event in her life, and it almost seemed rude of Mia.

Ellie didn’t mind.  She thought Mia was trying to give her space, and was glad of it.  Very glad.

She needed to think about what happened next, and she thought Mia knew that.