Firsts & Lasts at the Mall

As ever, feel free to jump in here if you want. You won't need a ton of context to enjoy Dara and Briony's latest adventures together. But if you do want to watch their relationship develop chronologically, start with "Firsts and Lasts at the Strip Club." Like the previous installments, this one involves graphic f/f sexual activities, in this case over a video call rather than in person. There's also some heavy f/m flirting. All characters are enthusiastically consenting and over 18. Enjoy!

***

"I wish I were going with you," I complained, while I watched Dara put on her makeup for an afternoon shift at the Angel Room club.

I was lying on the couch of her apartment, wrapped in a knitted blanket, trying to preserve the warmth she had left behind in the cushions for a few minutes longer. The TV was dark, the obscure rom-com she'd shared with me this morning long finished.

"Can you imagine?" Dara giggled, pausing halfway through adhering a false eyelash. "We'd make all the customers so jealous, sneaking off to the Little Heavens together to give each other a million orgasms."

It was nice to hear her joke that way about bringing me back to the club -- sharing a fantasy, not making a sales pitch. When we'd first met, I would have taken it for a pitch anyway, no matter how clear she made herself, but I was learning to accept her affection for the genuine article. Dara was an excellent teacher, when it came to accepting what bits of niceness the world had to offer.

Not that I didn't wish the world were nicer still.

"Stupid bank account, telling me I have to bring money

in

instead of

out

today," I grumbled.

"Yeah, let me know if you ever figure out a fix for that," said Dara, finishing her second eyelash.

"I just wish I could spend all day with you," I said. "Or even that my job was a little more like yours."

"More like mine how?" Dara asked, looking up from the self-lighting vanity in her living room.

I shrugged. "Glamorous. Creative. Edgy. Exciting?"

The last word became a question, as I tried to guess what her job must feel like to do every day. I was sure there'd been some point in my life when working in a mall food court must have seemed mysterious and exotic, before I'd known anything about what work was like.

Dara didn't argue or laugh at me. She set down her lipstick and returned to the couch, perching on the arm in front of me.

"Sounds like you need a little bad girl assignment."

I glanced down at Dara's lacy purple thong and licked my lips. "I don't know if we have time, but I can try."

Dara put her palm to my forehead and turned my face upward.

"Not here," she said indulgently. "At work. While we're both at work today, I dare you..."

She examined my face for a long moment, summing up everything she knew of me, either from experience or from reading whatever telling creases she found there.

"I dare you to call one customer 'babe,'" she finished.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end at the thought, and my chest tightened.

"I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable," I hesitated.

"Of course not," said Dara. "That's why you're going to pick someone who won't be uncomfortable. Someone who'll get a kick out of it."

"How would I know that about them?" I asked.

"By being the gorgeous, empathetic soul that you are," Dara said with perfect confidence, brushing my cheek with her thumb. "And by getting out of your own head."

She pulled a dress over her lingerie for the drive.

"Oh, and I don't want any half-assed, mumbling 'babes,'" she said. "No slipping it in casually, like you call everyone 'babe' instead of 'dude.' When you see that person standing in line, the one who's day you're about to make by calling them 'babe,' you're going to lean across the counter like a luscious dance move," she leaned down with one hand on the armrest, "show them those knockout tits," she cupped one of my breasts and rubbed a finger over the nipple with effortless precision, "look them right in the eye," her eyes hooked their way irresistibly into mine, "and say

babe

like you mean it."

I laughed, because it was the only reasonable reaction to the image of myself doing that.

"Okay, suppose someone

does

happen to come in who's just dying to have me flirt with them, and I

do

get some kind of psychic vision telling me so, and I do it," I said. "What if they take me seriously? What if they want it to, you know, keep going? What then?"

"That's up to you," Dara winked.

The pressure in my chest spread down toward my stomach. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, if it feels fun, keep going. If not, stop," said Dara. "It's not like you're married to someone just because you called them 'babe' when you brought them their iced tea."

I doubted Dara intended for this to have any ominous double meanings, but my mind could instill enough possible meanings for the both of us.

"What about you?" I asked, kneeling up on the couch and gripping the backrest to face her, urgently preparing myself for a momentous conversation that probably shouldn't be happening in the last few minutes before work.

"Me?" asked Dara.

I collected the words as fast as I could. "Look, I know we haven't really put a label on this, but I'm taking it seriously. And I kind of thought you were too. I wouldn't want to do anything that... someone who's serious about someone shouldn't be doing. I don't want to do anything to mess up--"

Dara hurried across the room in her high heels and kissed me.

"I

am

serious," she said, holding my head in both hands. "I want you to be my one."

"I want you to be

my

one," I sniffled back at her through sudden, relieved tears.

"But I'm going to keep doing my job," said Dara.

"Of course!" I said. "I'm not asking you not to."

"And you know the kinds of things I'm going to be doing with other people at the club."

"That's for work," I said. "It's different."

"You're sweet," said Dara. "But the thing is, I

like

my job. And I'm not expecting you to avoid doing things that you might like too, just because of this."

She clasped my hand as she said,

this

.

I squeezed her hand back, as tight as I dared.

"But then, what makes us each other's 'one'?" I asked. "What makes this different from anything we might do with anyone else?"

"Doesn't it feel different to you?" asked Dara, squeezing even tighter.

A smile crept up on me. "Yeah. But how I feel...."

"...Hasn't mattered much in the past?" Dara guessed.

I shrugged, since nodding at this felt a little too pathetic.

Dara released my hand and rubbed my shoulders patiently.

"Don't get me wrong," she said. "I do have a

few

expectations for our relationship."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like, whatever we do, we keep it safe and clean," she said. "We don't lie or keep secrets from each other, unless we're planning a surprise. We make each other a priority, always. And when we see each other, we treat it like coming home. How does that sound to you?"

I traced these lines in my head, pleasantly surprised by how well they covered everything. "That... sounds like a plan."

Dara kissed my lips. "Great. Then it's a plan."

"Okay, so, run me through it one more time," I said. "While I'm at work today, I have to..."

"You don't

have

to do anything," said Dara, opening the door and peering back at me around the side of it. "But if adding a naughty little challenge to your day makes it more interesting, you have one."

#

I clocked in, pulled on my first set of clingy little plastic gloves, and asked the couple at the front of the line what they wanted, with my senses feeling strangely sharper than usual, my heart pumping faster in my chest.

Normally, my strategy for surviving work was to block out all thought of everything else. I didn't complain, or sneak glances at my phone, or think about what I was going to do when I got off. While I was behind that counter, I was a machine, an empty construct running on nothing but company policy programming.

It was joyless, but also as close to painless as any method I'd found. I rarely got in trouble, and I didn't waste energy pining for all the other ways I could spend my time if I didn't have to be here, because I did have to be here.

Even on my first shift after I'd met Dara and gone to class with her (and stayed after class with her), none of my coworkers had commented on any extra spring in my step, or sincerity in my smile. There was a new glow inside me, for sure, but I kept it carefully partitioned away from the working part of myself, so that it wouldn't outshine and destroy what interest I could muster for scooping meat onto tortillas.

Today, my partitions were broken, but somehow, I still felt capable of work.

It was almost like Dara was here with me, behind the counter of Pepperland, holding my hand, egging me on. Instead of a distracting wish about somewhere else I could be, the thought of her had become a gentle anchor, rooting my interest right here, to where I was and what I was doing.

What about that one?

I could almost hear her whispering to me as I greeted each new customer.

How would that one feel about it?

For the first couple hours, there were really no good opportunities. The morning shift was still there, overlapping with the afternoon, all of us jostling shoulder-to-shoulder to cover the lunch rush. At any given moment, fulfilling Dara's dare would have pissed off at least five people, even if no one took issue with the flirting itself, just because of the unnecessary extra seconds it would have taken me to lean across the counter and catch someone's eye.

But even the game of asking myself about each customer as they passed, imagining what it would feel like to try to connect with them that way, created an environment where my habitual boredom couldn't thrive.

One moment, I was savoring the thought of saying "babe" to a pretty woman with butterfly clips in her hair. The next, I was squirming with faint discomfort at the thought of saying it to a fatherly looking gentleman with a loosened tie.

This manner of working was not

painless

, exactly, but it sure did make the time zip by. In what felt like the blink of an eye, the rush was over, and the morning shift was departing.

With the line empty, Tyler, the shift supervisor on duty, sent Edith to take her break, and then stepped into the back to refill the cheese sauce dispenser himself. I was alone, minding both the burrito bar and the register.

Almost as if Dara had willed it into being, the next person to walk up to the empty counter was a young woman with asymmetrical bangs that highlighted one very cute cheekbone, and a T-shirt with a sly reference to one of my favorite TV shows.

"I'd like... hmm...."

She drummed her thumb ring thoughtfully against the counter. It was pearly white. A sapphic signal.

Or just something she thought looked cool.

"How's the steak?" she asked.

"Tough," I answered honestly.

"Chicken, then," she said, with an appreciative smile.

I went down the usual list of questions, watching the pleasant curve of her lips as she gave each answer.

"I like your hair," she said, as I rolled up and wrapped her order.

"Oh, thanks." I felt myself redden a little. It was seeming more likely that she knew what her ring meant. And maybe, maybe,

maybe

, she thought I was just a little bit cute.

Or maybe liking my rainbow hair was just her way of acknowledging a fellow sapphic woman on sight, whether or not I was her personal type.

Either way, I doubted she'd be scarred or offended by a quick, simple "babe." What was the worst that could happen? A moment's awkwardness as she brushed me off and went on her way?

Fuck, that was still pretty bad, though.

I was ringing her up. I was getting her drink. This was the moment. I could feel Dara rooting for me from afar.

I leaned my elbows down on the counter as I handed her the bag and receipt, arching my back the way I'd practiced with Dara, pressing my cleavage up and forward.

"You have a good one, b... bye," I stuttered out.

"You too, bye now!" the woman easily tossed back my odd choice of words with a wave and continued on her way. She was gone in time to avoid seeing me bury my now burning face between my forearms on the counter.

"Bri, you okay there?" Tyler asked behind me.

"Yeah." I stood up straight, a perfect work automaton again. "Just stretching."

"Well, stretch without sticking your nose where the food goes, okay?" he said.

"Of course. Sorry." I kept my face turned out toward the food court, waiting for it to cool off.

"You can take your break as soon as Edith gets back," said Tyler.

"Okay. Thanks."

"Sure."

He set down the cheese dispenser and turned to check the soda syrup, not sounding sure at all. He sounded unsure of

me

in particular, like seeing me make one mistake was a sign of the end times.

Tyler was only a couple years older than I was, but he had given himself over completely to Pepperland, and not just in the clock-in-clock-out automaton way that I had. He

cared

about serving Pepperland, and rising in its ranks. That passion had led him to perfect the voice of a superior, a voice that held your value in its inflections.

His possession of that voice had always made me a little afraid of him, but until today, he'd never directed its shame-inducing tone toward me.

I'd made my shift supervisor sound like that,

and

I hadn't even managed to finish the dare.

No, I decided. That couldn't be how this turned out. This wasn't the story I was going to tell when I got back to Dara. The shift wasn't over yet, and I was going to win this game yet.

I'd better get on with it, though, before the early dinner crowd started coming in.

The next straggler to approach the counter was, no joke, the single most conventionally gorgeous man I'd ever seen in person. Maybe my senses were a little overactive, but I could have sworn he'd walked right out of one of the posters in the windows of the trendy clothes shops down the hall. His hair was freshly cut, and he wore a clean tank top that showed off the razor-sharp definition of every muscle down to the waistband of his jeans. He took off a pair of sunglasses to look up at the menu, and smiled at me with an infinitely kissable mouth that brought a needed dose of softness to his otherwise chiseled face.

Everything in me said to keep my distance from this man, to fill his order and be as forgettable as possible.

This was someone who could have anyone he wanted. Who he wanted was almost certainly not me, and if it

was

me, that was arguably even worse, because we would never, ever exist on even footing. And when it came to men, uneven footing always meant danger. If I caught this man's attention, embarrassment was a best-case scenario for me. And whatever happened, I would have asked for it.

Or so everyone who took part in raising me would have said, anyway.

On the other hand, I doubted I had to worry about making him uncomfortable. He probably knew how to handle attention like nobody's business.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. It might not be Dara, but I pretended it was, and felt again as if she were holding my hand.

If it feels fun, keep going. If not, stop

.

It all sounded so simple, the way she put it.

"Hey," I said, leaning forward dramatically, chest first, to grab my next pair of gloves. Slowly, the way I imagined Dara would do it, I slid them on and fluttered my fingers, ready for the safe, oh-so-intimate contact of handling this customer's choice of meat. I met his gaze and held it, feeling three separate waves of anxious paralysis come and go through my body. "What can I get for you today, babe?"

His face split instantly into a grin, and he leaned forward against the counter too, so that our noses were only a couple inches apart.

"I'd

love

one of those steak burritos."

"The meat's pretty tough today," I warned him.

"That's okay," he said. "So am I."

"Bet you are," I said, eyeing his upper body a little more openly.

I put his meal together with lingering care, and even let out an ambiguous little moan when I drizzled the sour cream over the top, which he met with a gentle smirk.

"Practiced hands," he said, as I rolled up the tortilla.

"It's all about holding it at the perfect tightness," I said, wrapping my hand as far as I could around the thick, warm cylinder as I wrapped the foil around it.

I didn't think I'd ever made a customer smile quite this much.

He took his time signing the store copy of the receipt, glancing up at me from under his nicely long eyelashes, and my stomach flopped around like a beached fish, wondering if I was about to get another name and phone number slipped to me, and have to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

His fingers brushed deliberately against mine as he handed me the receipt, and I handed him the bag.

"Stay cool, sweetness," he said, and left, as if he said that sort of thing every day.

There was no name or number on the receipt. There

was

a nice five-dollar tip, and a smiley face.

The clearing of a throat reminded me that I was not alone.

"Well, that explains it," said Tyler.

I turned to find him watching me with crossed arms.

"Huh?"

"Why you're acting so weird," he said, nodding at the customer's back. "New boyfriend?"

"Nope," I answered, a bit smug in my honesty. "Never seen him before."

"Sure, okay," said Tyler. "Go on, break time. Get in your smooches or whatever."

He sounded as disapproving as he did proud of his own permissiveness. That tone should have haunted my nightmares for weeks to come, and made it utterly impossible for me to feel good about "smooches" or anything else that might have made me happy.

But the smug thrill of what I'd just done was so tough and dense inside me, that Tyler's voice just bounced off of it.

"Okay, thanks."

I had my phone out as soon as I left the Pepperland kiosk, a text to Dara in progress under my thumbs.

Briony: I did it!

Dara: Congrats, babe <3 How do you feel?

Briony: Amazing.

Dara: Did it go any farther than 'babe'?

Briony: No. I actually thought it might for a moment, though. The vibes got intense.

Dara: It's a high, right? Flirting?

Briony: Big time. My skin feels like it's vibrating.

Dara: Can you get somewhere private? It's dead slow here.

Briony: Semi-private, maybe?

Dara: Even better ;)

I rushed down one of the long employee access corridors that ran behind the restaurant kiosks and wedged myself into a little alcove, next to a drinking fountain. Someone else could come down that stark white corridor at any moment, but I'd be able to hear them long before they'd be able to see me.

Sitting on the tile floor with my knees pulled close in front of me, I started a video call.

Dara answered immediately, appearing on my screen in her Violet bra and panties, surrounded by the dim mood lighting of a Little Heaven room at the club.

"Are you being a bad girl like I asked?" she murmured.

"So bad," I answered.

"Good. Can you guess what your next bad girl assignment is?"

"Is it cybering with my girlfriend while I'm at work?" I asked. "Because I really want it to be."

Dara touched her fingers to her lips, veiling a giggle.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said. "I've just never heard anyone our age say 'cybering' before."

I shrugged away an oncoming blush. "It's what my parents used to call it when they told me why I couldn't have a bedroom door."

"Oh." Dara reached toward the screen, as if to touch my face in sympathy. She laughed lightly again, before I could feel too pathetic. "So, you have practice at this, don't you? Sneaking a little treat in plain sight?"