BOP fic: Look Closer (Babs/Dinah)
Aug. 20th, 2008 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Look Closer
Fandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,625
Characters/Pairings: Babs/Dinah, Big Barda, Zinda Blake, Helena Bertinelli, mention of Scott/Barda
Summary: At first glance, Barbara and Dinah are just good friends. If you don’t look closer…
Barbara had set aside the conference room of the Drake Hotel for their briefing, conducting it by teleconference. There were about five hundred empty folding chairs, less the ones the Birds took up. Helena took the opportunity to sprawl across three, looking like she would rather still be in bed. Barda, who had had bad experiences with folding chairs, stayed near the buffet table. Free strawberries.
“So, Dinah, you infiltrate the party…” Barbara began, that portion of the briefing helpfully visualized by a CGI render of Dinah in a Vitalxs original.
“Big surprise there,” Helena said.
Dinah leaned back to look at Helena, sitting behind her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just that every time there’s a mission that needs someone to dress up fancy and eat cocktail weenies, Dinah’s first in line.”
“Because she’s good at it,” Barbara said firmly. “Barda, you’ll be accompanying her.”
Helena’s cough sounded suspiciously similar to some words of four letters.
***
All through the party, Dinah wondered if Barda had ever worn a dress before. She kept swooshing the skirt when she thought no one was looking. Dinah brought her a martini she thought Barda would like.
“Guess we finally sorted out which of the Frees wears the pants in your relationship.”
“Keep your pants. This is prettier.” Barda took a sip. “Bah. Weak.”
Dinah tugged on her dress. It was exquisitely suited to her measurements, but it was backless and not really practical to having to possibly run and gun. She wondered if Barbara was just that sure of Helena sneaking in while everyone was distracted by the item she’d brought to the auction: Al Capone’s favorite gun.
“What do you think Helena was on about this morning?”
“It was more what she was on half the night.” Barda rapped the Mega-Rod she has strapped to her garter belt in a visual metaphor Dinah really didn’t want to put much thought into. “Ignore her.”
“You don’t think Oracle’s playing favorites? Because I have been with her the longest and I wouldn’t want…”
“Ms. Gordon is a ruthless warrior. She would do whatever is necessary to fulfill her mission,” Barda said admiringly. “Besides, you do look good in a dress.”
That didn’t put Dinah’s mind at ease.
***
“Go out, have fun,” Barbara said when Dinah got back.
Three boring hours in a dress, then they’d had to hide in a cramped little hole where the only fun they could have was getting beaten at arm-wrestling by Barda, then Zinda had arrived in one of the more sci-fi vehicles in Oracle’s garage. They’d been strapped in throughout the supersonic flight.
Dinah’s dress was still sprawled alongside the clothes boxes Dinah had torn into, containing gym shorts and a crop-top. Dinah had thrown them on while Barbara watched her monitor rigidly, green eyes unblinking in the reflection of her glasses. Now she let her long legs out to play, tumbling through a set of gymnastics that put the Bat-boys’ casual calisthenics to shame.
“Too tired to go out,” Dinah said from a handstand.
“I can see that.”
“C’mon, Babs, don’t you ever just want to stay in?”
“Not really a choice with me.”
A quick flip took Dinah behind Barbara. The hacker gasped when Dinah touched her face with sweaty-palmed hands, doing up her disarrayed hair into a quick, sexy ponytail. “Come on. You go out there, with this face, with that body—“
”…half of it…“
“And no man would say no to you.” Dinah lowered herself to eye-level and turned Barbara’s head to face her. “Trust me. You’re beautiful.”
***
“See, told you it wasn’t favoritism,” Dinah said as she held out a scarlet lingerie set whose dark red she thought would flatten Helena’s olive complexion.
Helena kept on her mask while she tried it on, just to be contrary. “Yeah. I get to distract the courier with my sexy bod while you steal back the microchips. That’s not favoritism at all.” Helena pulled on the bra, got angrier when an underwire poked her. “Barbara’s being protective. And notice that when it’s not you getting all dolled up, she lets me do the shopping.”
“There’s just no winning with you, is there?”
“Sorry. I’m happy for you and the boss, I really am…”
“Thanks, we do work well together.”
Helena guffawed. “Yeah. You certainly do.”
***
“You don’t think Barbara is protective of me, do you?” Dinah said from the backseat of Zinda’s whispercraft.
Zinda gave the chopper a little slant to keep track of the courier’s motorcycle. He would get into an “accident” with Helena in just a few minutes. “Nah. The boss-lady just knows you can take care of business all on your own.”
“Good. Because I don’t like being protected.”
“Do you feel protected with Barbara?”
“Well… a little…” Dinah rested her hands on her knees, a little nervously. “I mean, I know she would never let anything happen to me.”
“Snazzy.”
“I suppose it’s nice to know someone has my back. Not that I need it, just… nice. Like, knowing you can come pick me up if things get hot.”
“Wouldn’t say it’s exactly the same thing. Oh darn me, look at what happened to that poor boy’s motorcycle because Helena tried to catch a light. I hope she makes it up to him… why, yes, she is.”
***
The operations room was darker than Dinah had ever seen it. Videos of his escape and his crimes filled every screen, providing a sickly glow to light the darkness. Dinah knew if she looked, she would eventually find the pictures of Barbara on the floor, bleeding, crippled. She knew Barbara looked at them, from time to time. Like picking a scab. She hoped they were somewhere to Barbara’s back. She hoped Barbara didn’t remind herself of it too often.
“I don’t want you here for this.”
The words were cold, as simple a dismissal as any Dinah had heard, but because it was Barbara she could hear the worry in her tone…
“Besides, you’re needed in Hong Kong. I want that drug pipeline shut down.”
…the simultaneous regret that Dinah wouldn’t be there with her and the justification of having her be anywhere but in his line of fire…
“Hong Kong can wait!” Dinah snapped angrily.
“The Joker is just too dangerous.”
…the words sounded like they’d been worked over inside Barbara’s head for so long that they’d lost all flavor…
“So Helena and Zinda and Barda can deal with him, but I can’t?”
“Dinah, I give the orders here—”
Dinah grabbed Barbara’s hand. It was an angry gesture, a fitful gesture, but nonetheless once she was holding Barbara, even just her hand, she wiggled her grip to get her fingers interspersed with Barbara’s in a comforting hold. A hold she wouldn’t have to let go of.
“I know what he did to you,” Dinah said, wiping away Barbara’s tears. “I know you want to protect me. But I want… I need to protect you. I won’t let him hurt you again.”
Barbara put her head down. Dinah moved forward, just enough to kiss the crown of her head. She caught a whiff of shampoo, strawberry, cheap, but on Barbara it was so good she wanted to just wrap it around her like perfume.
When Barbara spoke, her words weren’t cold anymore. They simmered, emotion surging up into her throat and choking her. Dinah backed up to pay heed, backed up a little further when the actual content of the rushed words registered. “I opened the door, it was my fault, what happened to my dad, to me, my fault…”
“No, Babs—”
“It… would be worse…” She looked up. “If it were you.”
There was far too much in her look for Dinah to return, or even acknowledge. Her voice cracked when she spoke: “It won’t be.”
She went off to join the others. As she left, she found the monitor displaying the pictures Joker had taken. She smashed it without breaking step.
***
Barbara steepled her hands and watched Barda lift her extra-grav weights. Usually it gave her a bit of a pick-me-up to see her team exercising, the camaraderie and the physical discipline that combined to make them unstoppable, but Dinah was out to a play and without her the gym seemed too quiet. Dinah always made little jokes when she sparred and everyone else rose to the occasion, Helena cattily, Zinda with one-upping double entrendes, Barda with deep belly-laughs that started with a rumbling in her shoulders and grew until she couldn’t hold them in anymore. Without Dinah, Barbara couldn’t think of anything funny to say.
“Barda… how did you know that you and Scott were in love?”
The ring on Barda’s finger gleamed almost as much as the sweat running down her forearms. “It was the little things. Gestures we made. He never escaped when I was guarding him. He much preferred to talk to me, even though it took me a long time to talk back. When he escaped, if I was the one to recapture him, I would put the manacles on a little looser than regulation so he wouldn’t get sores. And sometimes, when Darkseid was executing those who had failed him… Scott would let himself be caught rather than let me fail. Every time, he would rather put himself in harm’s way than let me get hurt.”
“And how did you know you loved him back?”
“Once I kissed him.” Barda set down her dumbbells, the anti-grav stand humming as it took their weight. “It came as quite a shock.”
“I can imagine.”
Barda’s smile was altogether too warm for her face, but it fit perfectly. “No. You can’t.”
***
Barbara looked for answers in familiar and familiarly unsatisfying exercise. It felt like she was running away, even though Dinah could be on her way back right then and Barbara was still in the Clocktower. She barely felt the water she knifed through.
Barbara held onto the north edge of the pool, gasping in air as she prepared to force her exhausted muscles to give her one more lap. It felt like she had just slid in, that’s how little relief her swim had brought. She heard the click of Dinah’s high heels on the tile as she approached and went for another lap, submerging her head in the water as she propelled herself like a torpedo to the south edge.
The water was sliding down the soggy curls of her hair and dripping off the ends to rejoin their brethren. Barbara’s green eyes scanned through a quickly diminishing curtain of raindrops to see Dinah sitting at the other end of the pool, by the ramp that let Babs’ wheelchair “wade” in. Her heels were next to her and her fishnet toesocks were dipping into the choppy water.
“Enjoy your play?” Barbara asked before she knifed through the water towards her. Dinah was wearing a robe against the chill of the poolside air, under it a mostly concealed white T-shirt and khaki shorts because God forbid Dinah not let her long legs out to play.
“I would’ve enjoyed it more with company.” Dinah watched with a keen interest as Barbara came to a stop, hanging off the edge once more. She kept one eye on the droplet of water winding its way down Barbara’s graceful neck and dipping between her breasts. Made her thirsty. Dinah reached down with one hand and rested it atop Barbara’s. It felt so much more natural now than it did way back in the heated moment of the Joker’s escape, altogether different from their old friendly cuddles but somehow better.
“Oh no, you know how much those Broadway road shows charge for admission? I could train a satellite on the show for less.” Barbara gave Dinah’s hand a quick squeeze that birthed butterflies in the blonde’s stomach and pushed off, headed back towards the far end of the pool.
“You can afford it,” Dinah called after her.
“I really can’t,” Barbara said as she reached the edge. She started back. Her muscles complied without a murmur and she wondered if this was some sort of runner’s high. She was headed back towards Dinah when she noticed that Dinah was stepping into the pool. Her robe flared up in the water, pooling around her like a cape in zero-G before Dinah shrugged it off, leaving it floating like a lily-pad on the surface. Her white T-shirt became sodden and Barbara could trace the outlines of her bra through the damp material.
“Dinah… you’re getting all wet…” she whispered under her breath, now just treading water.
“I’ve been thinking about us,” Dinah said.
“Me too,” Barbara confessed, louder than before. Her voice echoed through the room that was empty except for the two of them.
Dinah reached her in a few quick strides, moving through the water with such ease Barbara was surprised the stuff didn’t just pull a Red Sea and part for her. And when she reached Barbara, Dinah didn’t even say anything. Her hands just found themselves cupping Barbara’s jaw and cheeks like a vise, pulling her up out of the water and then Barbara felt someone’s lips pressing against hers and for the first time she wasn't being compared to Batgirl, she wasn't not failing to live up to anyone’s memories, she was just… everything.
She held on to Dinah like a life preserver. “I was going to do that,” she said, and Dinah laughed.
And Dinah reached down, reaching the buckle of the strap that held Barbara’s legs together and fingernails clicking against the tongue, the sound (plink plink) of water deserting their bodies like bombs in Barbara’s ears. Dinah’d stopped laughing, but she was still smiling, and it was a really pretty smile.
And the strap came off and Dinah pulled the thing up Barbara’s dead legs like a garter belt before hurtling it aside and Barbara was reminded of the way a snake shed its skin. Then Dinah was spreading her legs, so slowly, so goddamn slowly, moving her hands up Barbara’s cloistered legs from ankle to inner thigh, parting them as she went, until her hands reached the point where Barbara could feel and she just about came then and there.
Her memory of the event, of Dinah, was like that - a series of near-orgasms like slaps to the face of a sleeping person and the next one was Dinah violently pulling Barbara’s lower body against her and the motion was so hard and so fast that Barbara actually cried out, a sort of halfway sound that she couldn’t identify but that made Dinah’s smile shoot upwards diabolically at the tips.
“Were you going to do this too?” Dinah asked sardonically and Barbara’s mind was on fire and she was wondering why exactly someone would continue a conversation when words were so unnecessary.
So Barbara just thrust herself against Dinah to show her just what she would’ve done if Dinah hadn’t kissed her first, and at the same time Dinah was showing her what she would’ve done if they were making love for the first time, and between the two of them they managed to get each others’ clothes off, get out of the pool, did things against the cement of the poolside that left Barbara’s shoulders raw and aching (and oh god, what a lovely feeling, she could feel) and when it was over Dinah got a towel and wiped Barbara off so she wouldn’t catch cold, then carried her to bed, ignoring all protests for her wheelchair. Barbara had the feeling Dinah didn’t want to leave her an escape route.
Silly blonde. Couldn’t figure out this was her escape.
Fandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,625
Characters/Pairings: Babs/Dinah, Big Barda, Zinda Blake, Helena Bertinelli, mention of Scott/Barda
Summary: At first glance, Barbara and Dinah are just good friends. If you don’t look closer…
Barbara had set aside the conference room of the Drake Hotel for their briefing, conducting it by teleconference. There were about five hundred empty folding chairs, less the ones the Birds took up. Helena took the opportunity to sprawl across three, looking like she would rather still be in bed. Barda, who had had bad experiences with folding chairs, stayed near the buffet table. Free strawberries.
“So, Dinah, you infiltrate the party…” Barbara began, that portion of the briefing helpfully visualized by a CGI render of Dinah in a Vitalxs original.
“Big surprise there,” Helena said.
Dinah leaned back to look at Helena, sitting behind her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just that every time there’s a mission that needs someone to dress up fancy and eat cocktail weenies, Dinah’s first in line.”
“Because she’s good at it,” Barbara said firmly. “Barda, you’ll be accompanying her.”
Helena’s cough sounded suspiciously similar to some words of four letters.
***
All through the party, Dinah wondered if Barda had ever worn a dress before. She kept swooshing the skirt when she thought no one was looking. Dinah brought her a martini she thought Barda would like.
“Guess we finally sorted out which of the Frees wears the pants in your relationship.”
“Keep your pants. This is prettier.” Barda took a sip. “Bah. Weak.”
Dinah tugged on her dress. It was exquisitely suited to her measurements, but it was backless and not really practical to having to possibly run and gun. She wondered if Barbara was just that sure of Helena sneaking in while everyone was distracted by the item she’d brought to the auction: Al Capone’s favorite gun.
“What do you think Helena was on about this morning?”
“It was more what she was on half the night.” Barda rapped the Mega-Rod she has strapped to her garter belt in a visual metaphor Dinah really didn’t want to put much thought into. “Ignore her.”
“You don’t think Oracle’s playing favorites? Because I have been with her the longest and I wouldn’t want…”
“Ms. Gordon is a ruthless warrior. She would do whatever is necessary to fulfill her mission,” Barda said admiringly. “Besides, you do look good in a dress.”
That didn’t put Dinah’s mind at ease.
***
“Go out, have fun,” Barbara said when Dinah got back.
Three boring hours in a dress, then they’d had to hide in a cramped little hole where the only fun they could have was getting beaten at arm-wrestling by Barda, then Zinda had arrived in one of the more sci-fi vehicles in Oracle’s garage. They’d been strapped in throughout the supersonic flight.
Dinah’s dress was still sprawled alongside the clothes boxes Dinah had torn into, containing gym shorts and a crop-top. Dinah had thrown them on while Barbara watched her monitor rigidly, green eyes unblinking in the reflection of her glasses. Now she let her long legs out to play, tumbling through a set of gymnastics that put the Bat-boys’ casual calisthenics to shame.
“Too tired to go out,” Dinah said from a handstand.
“I can see that.”
“C’mon, Babs, don’t you ever just want to stay in?”
“Not really a choice with me.”
A quick flip took Dinah behind Barbara. The hacker gasped when Dinah touched her face with sweaty-palmed hands, doing up her disarrayed hair into a quick, sexy ponytail. “Come on. You go out there, with this face, with that body—“
”…half of it…“
“And no man would say no to you.” Dinah lowered herself to eye-level and turned Barbara’s head to face her. “Trust me. You’re beautiful.”
***
“See, told you it wasn’t favoritism,” Dinah said as she held out a scarlet lingerie set whose dark red she thought would flatten Helena’s olive complexion.
Helena kept on her mask while she tried it on, just to be contrary. “Yeah. I get to distract the courier with my sexy bod while you steal back the microchips. That’s not favoritism at all.” Helena pulled on the bra, got angrier when an underwire poked her. “Barbara’s being protective. And notice that when it’s not you getting all dolled up, she lets me do the shopping.”
“There’s just no winning with you, is there?”
“Sorry. I’m happy for you and the boss, I really am…”
“Thanks, we do work well together.”
Helena guffawed. “Yeah. You certainly do.”
***
“You don’t think Barbara is protective of me, do you?” Dinah said from the backseat of Zinda’s whispercraft.
Zinda gave the chopper a little slant to keep track of the courier’s motorcycle. He would get into an “accident” with Helena in just a few minutes. “Nah. The boss-lady just knows you can take care of business all on your own.”
“Good. Because I don’t like being protected.”
“Do you feel protected with Barbara?”
“Well… a little…” Dinah rested her hands on her knees, a little nervously. “I mean, I know she would never let anything happen to me.”
“Snazzy.”
“I suppose it’s nice to know someone has my back. Not that I need it, just… nice. Like, knowing you can come pick me up if things get hot.”
“Wouldn’t say it’s exactly the same thing. Oh darn me, look at what happened to that poor boy’s motorcycle because Helena tried to catch a light. I hope she makes it up to him… why, yes, she is.”
***
The operations room was darker than Dinah had ever seen it. Videos of his escape and his crimes filled every screen, providing a sickly glow to light the darkness. Dinah knew if she looked, she would eventually find the pictures of Barbara on the floor, bleeding, crippled. She knew Barbara looked at them, from time to time. Like picking a scab. She hoped they were somewhere to Barbara’s back. She hoped Barbara didn’t remind herself of it too often.
“I don’t want you here for this.”
The words were cold, as simple a dismissal as any Dinah had heard, but because it was Barbara she could hear the worry in her tone…
“Besides, you’re needed in Hong Kong. I want that drug pipeline shut down.”
…the simultaneous regret that Dinah wouldn’t be there with her and the justification of having her be anywhere but in his line of fire…
“Hong Kong can wait!” Dinah snapped angrily.
“The Joker is just too dangerous.”
…the words sounded like they’d been worked over inside Barbara’s head for so long that they’d lost all flavor…
“So Helena and Zinda and Barda can deal with him, but I can’t?”
“Dinah, I give the orders here—”
Dinah grabbed Barbara’s hand. It was an angry gesture, a fitful gesture, but nonetheless once she was holding Barbara, even just her hand, she wiggled her grip to get her fingers interspersed with Barbara’s in a comforting hold. A hold she wouldn’t have to let go of.
“I know what he did to you,” Dinah said, wiping away Barbara’s tears. “I know you want to protect me. But I want… I need to protect you. I won’t let him hurt you again.”
Barbara put her head down. Dinah moved forward, just enough to kiss the crown of her head. She caught a whiff of shampoo, strawberry, cheap, but on Barbara it was so good she wanted to just wrap it around her like perfume.
When Barbara spoke, her words weren’t cold anymore. They simmered, emotion surging up into her throat and choking her. Dinah backed up to pay heed, backed up a little further when the actual content of the rushed words registered. “I opened the door, it was my fault, what happened to my dad, to me, my fault…”
“No, Babs—”
“It… would be worse…” She looked up. “If it were you.”
There was far too much in her look for Dinah to return, or even acknowledge. Her voice cracked when she spoke: “It won’t be.”
She went off to join the others. As she left, she found the monitor displaying the pictures Joker had taken. She smashed it without breaking step.
***
Barbara steepled her hands and watched Barda lift her extra-grav weights. Usually it gave her a bit of a pick-me-up to see her team exercising, the camaraderie and the physical discipline that combined to make them unstoppable, but Dinah was out to a play and without her the gym seemed too quiet. Dinah always made little jokes when she sparred and everyone else rose to the occasion, Helena cattily, Zinda with one-upping double entrendes, Barda with deep belly-laughs that started with a rumbling in her shoulders and grew until she couldn’t hold them in anymore. Without Dinah, Barbara couldn’t think of anything funny to say.
“Barda… how did you know that you and Scott were in love?”
The ring on Barda’s finger gleamed almost as much as the sweat running down her forearms. “It was the little things. Gestures we made. He never escaped when I was guarding him. He much preferred to talk to me, even though it took me a long time to talk back. When he escaped, if I was the one to recapture him, I would put the manacles on a little looser than regulation so he wouldn’t get sores. And sometimes, when Darkseid was executing those who had failed him… Scott would let himself be caught rather than let me fail. Every time, he would rather put himself in harm’s way than let me get hurt.”
“And how did you know you loved him back?”
“Once I kissed him.” Barda set down her dumbbells, the anti-grav stand humming as it took their weight. “It came as quite a shock.”
“I can imagine.”
Barda’s smile was altogether too warm for her face, but it fit perfectly. “No. You can’t.”
***
Barbara looked for answers in familiar and familiarly unsatisfying exercise. It felt like she was running away, even though Dinah could be on her way back right then and Barbara was still in the Clocktower. She barely felt the water she knifed through.
Barbara held onto the north edge of the pool, gasping in air as she prepared to force her exhausted muscles to give her one more lap. It felt like she had just slid in, that’s how little relief her swim had brought. She heard the click of Dinah’s high heels on the tile as she approached and went for another lap, submerging her head in the water as she propelled herself like a torpedo to the south edge.
The water was sliding down the soggy curls of her hair and dripping off the ends to rejoin their brethren. Barbara’s green eyes scanned through a quickly diminishing curtain of raindrops to see Dinah sitting at the other end of the pool, by the ramp that let Babs’ wheelchair “wade” in. Her heels were next to her and her fishnet toesocks were dipping into the choppy water.
“Enjoy your play?” Barbara asked before she knifed through the water towards her. Dinah was wearing a robe against the chill of the poolside air, under it a mostly concealed white T-shirt and khaki shorts because God forbid Dinah not let her long legs out to play.
“I would’ve enjoyed it more with company.” Dinah watched with a keen interest as Barbara came to a stop, hanging off the edge once more. She kept one eye on the droplet of water winding its way down Barbara’s graceful neck and dipping between her breasts. Made her thirsty. Dinah reached down with one hand and rested it atop Barbara’s. It felt so much more natural now than it did way back in the heated moment of the Joker’s escape, altogether different from their old friendly cuddles but somehow better.
“Oh no, you know how much those Broadway road shows charge for admission? I could train a satellite on the show for less.” Barbara gave Dinah’s hand a quick squeeze that birthed butterflies in the blonde’s stomach and pushed off, headed back towards the far end of the pool.
“You can afford it,” Dinah called after her.
“I really can’t,” Barbara said as she reached the edge. She started back. Her muscles complied without a murmur and she wondered if this was some sort of runner’s high. She was headed back towards Dinah when she noticed that Dinah was stepping into the pool. Her robe flared up in the water, pooling around her like a cape in zero-G before Dinah shrugged it off, leaving it floating like a lily-pad on the surface. Her white T-shirt became sodden and Barbara could trace the outlines of her bra through the damp material.
“Dinah… you’re getting all wet…” she whispered under her breath, now just treading water.
“I’ve been thinking about us,” Dinah said.
“Me too,” Barbara confessed, louder than before. Her voice echoed through the room that was empty except for the two of them.
Dinah reached her in a few quick strides, moving through the water with such ease Barbara was surprised the stuff didn’t just pull a Red Sea and part for her. And when she reached Barbara, Dinah didn’t even say anything. Her hands just found themselves cupping Barbara’s jaw and cheeks like a vise, pulling her up out of the water and then Barbara felt someone’s lips pressing against hers and for the first time she wasn't being compared to Batgirl, she wasn't not failing to live up to anyone’s memories, she was just… everything.
She held on to Dinah like a life preserver. “I was going to do that,” she said, and Dinah laughed.
And Dinah reached down, reaching the buckle of the strap that held Barbara’s legs together and fingernails clicking against the tongue, the sound (plink plink) of water deserting their bodies like bombs in Barbara’s ears. Dinah’d stopped laughing, but she was still smiling, and it was a really pretty smile.
And the strap came off and Dinah pulled the thing up Barbara’s dead legs like a garter belt before hurtling it aside and Barbara was reminded of the way a snake shed its skin. Then Dinah was spreading her legs, so slowly, so goddamn slowly, moving her hands up Barbara’s cloistered legs from ankle to inner thigh, parting them as she went, until her hands reached the point where Barbara could feel and she just about came then and there.
Her memory of the event, of Dinah, was like that - a series of near-orgasms like slaps to the face of a sleeping person and the next one was Dinah violently pulling Barbara’s lower body against her and the motion was so hard and so fast that Barbara actually cried out, a sort of halfway sound that she couldn’t identify but that made Dinah’s smile shoot upwards diabolically at the tips.
“Were you going to do this too?” Dinah asked sardonically and Barbara’s mind was on fire and she was wondering why exactly someone would continue a conversation when words were so unnecessary.
So Barbara just thrust herself against Dinah to show her just what she would’ve done if Dinah hadn’t kissed her first, and at the same time Dinah was showing her what she would’ve done if they were making love for the first time, and between the two of them they managed to get each others’ clothes off, get out of the pool, did things against the cement of the poolside that left Barbara’s shoulders raw and aching (and oh god, what a lovely feeling, she could feel) and when it was over Dinah got a towel and wiped Barbara off so she wouldn’t catch cold, then carried her to bed, ignoring all protests for her wheelchair. Barbara had the feeling Dinah didn’t want to leave her an escape route.
Silly blonde. Couldn’t figure out this was her escape.
