Friendship to Fervour

They'd been watching the movie for thirty minutes now.

Ling's eyes were on the screen, but her awareness was sweeping the room, back and forth. She'd draped herself along the sofa, covered in her duvet. Elisa was nestled into a cushion on the floor below her, head resting against the arm, just below her own, enveloped in her own duvet.

They'd had a busy week, and Ling hadn't run into Elisa alone in the apartment, but movie night was a scheduled Friday item; sacrosant. This month they were watching

Bound

, so they hadn't invited anyone out of the core three. Guilty pleasures are allowed to remain private, which also explained the unpalatable sweet rosé they were sharing.

Alex was sprawled in the basket chair to the side, as was his want. Male pride, strong metabolism, or (more probably) taxi logistics preventing him bringing his own duvet.

Ling knew the movie fairly well, from that age of college where alternative lifestyle art was a fascination. What she was

really

watching, more surreptitiously, was Elisa, trying to gauge how she was reacting to her closeness. So far, there was no reaction that she could sense.

She thought perhaps she should have felt relieved, that their closeness hadn't seen any obvious awkwardness after recent events, but she also couldn't lose the sense of disappointment.

Attempting to feign whimsical realignment, she let her arm fall off the sofa, beside Elisa. And let it lay there a while.

Alright.

She knew there was

something

here, with Elisa. She would normally talk to her friends, or failing that strangers on the internet; advice, analysis.

Well, normally, she'd just talk directly with Elisa about her feelings.

This was different, though. Ling couldn't articulate why, but she had a strong feeling that vocalizing any of this would somehow destroy it, like trying to cage a thought or grasp a cloud. They would all agree it was a silly emotion, or a product of too much time together, and laugh it off, and then seal it somewhere without oxygen to die.

So vocalization was off the table. And that was why she'd been reached out, silently, slowly, over the minutes, letting her arm drift closer and closer.

Until it touched Elisa's arm.

When Ling first made contact she felt the skin grow taut under her touch and knew that tensions it had spread throughout Elisa's body, like ice cracking on a lake. She felt a moment of almost sickening vertigo.

Then Elisa relaxed into her.

The surge of warmth she felt at such a simple action surprised her, the simple acceptance of one's touch against another.

Slowly, she began to run her fingers up and down Elisa's arm and across her back, enjoying how the hairs stood to attention, tiny salutes to visiting dignitary. She listened to her friend's breathing, trying to read her friend through force of will alone.

Ling didn't know how long they continued, lost in her fingers, but the reverie was broken by the unmistakable sound of kissing on the television. Widescreen lips slowly moving to reach each other, hanging in mid-air, on screen for their appraisal.

As the bodies on the screen pressed into each other, Ling didn't even decide, but moved on instinct.

She gently but deliberately let her hand run under Elisa's loose top.

She paused for a second, feeling, rather than looking around at the room. Elisa stiffened again, but relaxed, faster than before. Slowly, Ling worked her hand under Elisa's breasts, cupping it. And then her thumb grazed against something hard. Her nipple, elongated, hypersensitive.

Elisa gasped, started. The glass in her hand reacted in kind, wine spilling over her top.

The splash of liquid, the gasp, brought Ling back into the moment. She reflexively flattened her hand into Elisa's side.

"You should clean that up", Alex's words came out, pitched gently, and Ling grasped the lifeline. Lithely, without large movements, she rolled over the armrest to fetch a washcloth, grateful to her flexibility for making the motions assume a naturalness she did not feel as she returned, placing herself across from Elisa, sitting on her knees.

The cloth was damp, but pressing into the shirt only had the effect of increasing and spreading the spill further still. As it did so, Elisa's top clung, increasingly stubbornly, to her skin. In addition to the nipple protruding the outline of the whole breast was now held firm and prominent against the fabric.

Ling stopped.

"You know," she whispered, eyes not daring to look up, "It'd be better if you just took this off."

In her head, that had been an empty-minded musing to get changed, but the sexual subtext hit her just as the words left her lips, her own arousal adding a husky edge.

For a moment, Ling feared that Elisa would just go to get changed. And maybe not come back, or self-conscious come cocooned in thick cardigans.

Then Alex's voice cut across the room; "I'll turn my back if you don't mind". Her eyes flicked up to Elisa. They were pools of intensity, unfocused and yearning.

"No peeking", she admonished Alex playfully, turning her head at him, though unable or unwilling to look at his face, waiting for him to (exaggeratedly, she thought) turn his back. Then she ran her hands down to quickly, but gently, pull Elisa's shirt over her head, proceeding to slide down beside her, pulling the duvet around them as she did so.

Backs against the sofa, she pressed her side into Elisa, wrapping an arm around her waist and resting her head on the shoulder, shielding her from Alex's direction.

The movie continued, and they stayed like this, for a time.

Ling willed up her courage. The film had about thirty minutes to go.

In some ways, she felt like the original contact could somehow later be ... passed off, ignored, a mind choosing to confine it to the past. If she reached out again though - it would be something concrete, tangible.

It was scary. It meant things would never be the same again.

But it won't be anyway. At least, not for me.

She began to let her hand fall, down the side of Elisa towards the top of her pajama shorts. They were soft and loose, and her hand slid easily under them and across the hip.

Elisa tensed; less this time. But with heavier breathing. Ling let her hand continue, around and under her posterior, smooth and soft.

Ling paused for a second. She knew where her hand wanted to go next. Her reluctance hung in the air for one, two, three seconds.

And then she felt Elisa's breath, faint but unmistakable, across her neck.

Ling's heart vaulted in her chest, then slammed back into ribs. Her body felt gripped, consumed with need, and her fingernails involuntarily dug into Elisa's rear, before uncoiling, surging forward, parting the wet folds of her waiting pussy.

The effect on Elisa was instantaneous, and even stronger.

Ling felt as much as saw Elisa hold her breath, every muscle of her body tensed in a contorted arc, toes curling, calves instinctively pulling legs up towards her stomach, jaw clenched down, finger crushed in an intensely tight grip.

Ling paused, for the seconds needed for the spasm to pass and Elisa's breathing to resume, her finger to be released. No sound or movement from Alex. Good. She then began to gently, so gently and slowly, curl her inserted finger back and forward, up where she liked to be touched herself.

She felt Elisa's tension rise, stop, release, and then rise again as she did so. She loved the way Elisa responded to her touch, delighted in holding contact for a second when she was clenching down on her finger, pausing before releasing.

It felt short, too short, before the lack of sound filled the room; an intrusion of absence. Silence. The film must have finished.

Ling stopped, daring not to move. They all sat there, Elisa taut but still.

Alex yawned. "Mind if I crash in your room again, Elisa?"

Ling feared Elisa's ability to give response, but Alex was already moving, making the question rhetorical. Then he was through the door, closing it behind him, just a few meters away from where they sat.

Slowly, without further words, Ling being to curl her finger again. Elisa moaned, softly, and now Ling turned to look at her - unfocused, panting, skin flushed.

Ling let herself fall into that gaze, felt the desire emanating. She wasn't sure she'd ever held such attention before, as Elisa descended further and further into wanton need. Gently, Ling lent forward, brushing her lips across Ling's cheek and past them to her ear, to run her tongue around it, and then on a whim let her tongue venture inside as she bit down gently on the lobe.

The vehemence and suddenness of Elisa's orgasm was explosive. She bucked into her hand and cried out as her pussy clenched down onto her hand.

Ling was astonished. She'd never thought Elisa could be so sensitive. The orgasm exploded out as her muscles strained against her flesh, eyes scrunched shut, mouth clamped down to muffle a scream.

Ling drank it in as it rose, peaked, and then slowly began to subside. Automatically, Ling moved her other arm around Elisa, and pulled her hair down into her shoulder. As the weight moved she found herself slipping backward until she was lying on the floor, Elisa's body nuzzled against her, duvet pulled cozily over the both of them.