Vivian slapped the space bar, to start recording, and counted herself in. She certainly didn't need a fourth track for the bridge, but she'd recently become enamored with the way that multi-tracking filled out the sound. The little variations between one track and the next could be accentuated or muted, as she saw fit, and it made some of the bits sound really grand.
In the back of her head, she made a mental note that a variation on the bridge transposed into the harmonic minor would sound dope, and banked it for her backburner project.
She wasn't sure how she felt about her use of 'dope', even in her internal monologue, but figured that was the place to work those sorts of things out rather than testing out phrases in front of others. She had a reputation to maintain, after all.
She struck the last chord with more force than she'd intended, and immediately went to see how it sounded in the playback. That one take certainly stood out, so she messed around with the levels for a while until it was just right.
Until it was perfect.
She had a couple more sections to work on, re-recording the acoustic bass intro to the final track to get the feel more in line with the rest of it and a backing vocal line for the title track, but she was ahead of schedule. She could be done for the day, which was good, because she was pretty sure she'd heard the front door.
She put her guitar back on its stand, turned off this and that and plodded up the steps out of their basement to find Delia in the kitchen, smirking and unpacking a bag of groceries. Vivian moved right up behind her, and slid her arms around Delia's middle.
"I'm trying to put the food away!" her guiding star protested, even as she leaned back into Vivian's arms.
"I almost finished The Void today," she said, in between kisses along Delia's shoulder.
"Which one is that?"
Another kiss. "It's the one"—another kiss—"about the guy out in space. Trapped in orbit around a dying star." Another kiss, moving toward the back of the neck. "And then he gets away, but he feels it calling to him."
"I didn't realize it was a whole concept album," Delia purred, and as she leaned back she laid her hands over Vivian's and drew them tighter around her. "That's the one where you talk about him like he's a sailor at sea, right? The lyrics, I mean. Not you-you."
"Will you listen to it tomorrow?"
Kiss.
"When it's done?"
Delia turned around, and beamed up at her. Freckles by the thousands. Eyes that sparkled almost as much as her smile. Vivian made a mental note to use all of that for future lyrics.
"Baby," she said, hands sliding up toward Vivian's shoulders, "I will listen to anything you make
after
I put away the groceries." And then she booped Vivian's nose.
Vivian made a sound in her throat and reluctantly let go. Delia took the spinach and cheese, and went to the refrigerator while Vivian dug deeper into the bag and pulled out a big hunk of sourdough bread. "What's this for?" she asked.
Delia's eyes lit up. "I'm making soup tomorrow, and I thought maybe we could cut that in half and make bread bowls out of it!"
"Yes please," she replied, and then added an emphatic head nod when she realized that neither her expression nor her tone were conveying how excited she was to have a sourdough bread bowl. "That sounds amazing."
Delia stared at her for a moment, and chewed on her lip. It was an adorable trait that belied churning thoughts. As far as Vivian knew, Delia had no idea how easy she was to read sometimes. She wore it all right on the surface, which was so like Vivian and yet so dissimilar.
As the lip chewing continued, Vivian started to get a clearer picture of what Delia was thinking. Then, as if to punctuate those thoughts, Delia picked up the rest of the bag of groceries and threw the whole thing in the fridge.
"You look really good in those scrubs," Vivian said, as she followed her girlfriend up the stairs. Delia reached back and grabbed her ass as she climbed, which was exactly what Vivian had been focusing on. That made her think, very briefly, that she was probably just as transparent to Delia as Delia was to her. Which felt good.
They still called it their new house but they'd been moved in for two years, and the last box had been fully unpacked almost a full year prior. It still had
new house smell
. There were rooms they weren't sure what to do with, which had been turned into guest bedrooms for the meantime. Vivian had once suggested breaking each of them in, just to properly baptize them, but Delia had old fashioned notions about where sex should happen that Vivian was perfectly happy to go along with.
Her girlfriend turned around, as she often did at the top of the steps, and took Vivian's hands. This part was almost ritual. Delia had very soft hands, and Vivian loved that. Of course, Vivian's hands were rough and calloused by comparison. She wasn't religious about moisturizing. Delia led her into the bedroom, walking backwards, arms crossed at the wrist. Smile like a May morning.
Vivian went toward the bed first, stripping out of her shirt and jeans while Delia went into the bathroom. Her girlfriend always wanted to get freshened up right before sex, which Vivian had never quite understood but had long stopped trying to fight. Delia would come out when Delia was ready, and she would look like a million bucks when she did.
And she did.
Vivian was curled up on her side, one arm propping up her head, when her girlfriend emerged, and the sight filled her stomach with butterflies. It always did. Delia was a mass of freckles, with the exception of the sides of her hips and some parts of her legs. She was in amazing shape, which made complete sense for someone who was on their feet all day, taking fifteen thousand steps like it was nothing.
She prowled across the floor, with a very different gait from the way she normally moved. Delia normally strode everywhere, beaming all the while, but in the bedroom it was different. Languorous. Unhurried. When she moved barefoot, the definition in her legs was impossible to miss. When she crawled onto the bed, she moved past Vivian, just a little, and then spun around to lay the other way. With her head nestled gently against Vivian's thigh. And then, the more she curled in on herself, her own thighs pressed gently against the top of Vivian's head.
That first kiss was slow in coming. They would often just lay there against each other, gently caressing each other's faces. She liked to count freckles, and Delia had enough on her face alone to keep Vivian busy for hours. There was something about the intimacy they created, laying like that, banked in by the other and not really being able to see over the other's side, that made Vivian feel
held
. Safe.
The world became very small.
When they finally kissed, it was so different. Each of them held the other's head, upside down to each other, so that their tongues slid past and over. She couldn't see Delia's eyes, but she could feel the way Delia's fingers both cradled and squeezed along her scalp. She held Delia's head like a bird's egg, precious and fragile, as her tongue slid deeper and deeper.
Delia broke the kiss first. She always did. Always, always, always. She broke the kiss and craned her head back, tongue lashing out at Vivian's nipple. Vivian happily obliged her, gathering her breast in the webbing of her hand and squeezing to push out the nipple. Her breasts were not large, but regular, healthier eating, better exercise, and a 100% reduction in cocaine had helped her get back to a body weight more like what she'd had in high school.
She could almost fill out some of her older bras again, and had actually bought her first new bra that wasn't a sports bra in over ten years. They looked healthy.
She
looked healthy.
Delia, on the other hand, had no boobs. None. It didn't matter if she was flat on her back or on hands and knees, there was nothing to find: nothing, except for two of the most delicious nipples Vivian had ever seen. The areolae were small, but the bud would harden and swell. Big and round, like cherry tomatoes. Nearly three quarters of an inch long, when she was turned on.
They were perfect. Perfect to fondle, perfect to play with, and perfect to suckle, which Vivian did. Often. They were incredible to have in her mouth. They stiffened, and they twitched, and they were so reactive, and sensitive, and Delia made the most amazing little sound if she could get her teeth on them just right.
This, of course, incited retaliation. Delia would suck in hard, drawing most of Vivian's breast into her mouth, and then keep right on sucking. It felt just like a vacuum tube, pulling on her skin, except that there was a tongue in the middle of it feathering her constantly. Non-stop. It was enough to drive her crazy.
So she took the next step, which she always did. Always always always. She loved Delia's nipples dearly, and would return to them later, but there was a level of being turned on that she could reach when Delia was latched onto her nipple that would drive Vivian into a kind of cross-eyed haze, and all she could think about was reciprocating.
She would get her arm and head in between Delia's thighs, and make space for herself to work. Back of the knee in her armpit. She was taller. Had a longer neck. She could reach.
Delia had the most incredible pussy. It was amazing. She had very puffy outer labia, almost no inner labia, and a long hooded clit that ran the entire length of her cleft. Best of all, it was the kind of sensitive that begged for a tongue. Vivian had tried everything—fingers, toes, toys, and one time even her own clit—but nothing beat what she could do with her tongue.
Delia would buck and writhe, fighting her as much as pushing her away, before she would finally get her leg hooked along the back of Vivian's shoulders and squeeze.
Neither of them kept their heads past this point. They never did. Delia would slip between her thighs, doing the same, until Vivian's knee rested against Delia's waist. They mirrored each other in a writhing tangle of limbs and tongues. Curled around each other. Pushing and pulling. Looping feedback that started in her own clit, worked its way in through her quivering body, and found its way out as a long, warbling moan. Faster and faster, whipping around and around between them, until one or the other completely lost control.
This time, Vivian was very invested in not finishing first, so she reached for her secret weapon. She squirmed, getting an arm free with the right angle, and sank two fingers deep inside of her girlfriend, swirling and pawing gently at the sides. It was hard to focus on such small motions in her fingers when there was so much happening to her own clit, but she clung to her purpose. Once those fingers were sufficiently wetted, she withdrew them and slid them a little further back. Delia had amazing legs, and an ass that absolutely did not quit, and buried between those two incredible orbs of muscle was Delia's launch button.
