Lilac's brow furrowed and her hand slowed to a gentle rubbing, just to keep up the rhythm more than anything. Nothing was really doing it for her tonight - no new content in the usual places (or at least no new content that was
good
), and the old stuff she just knew too well. Ashley was still off at a week-long convention with some friends and wouldn't be back for
days
, so she had to take care of this mood on her own somehow. She scrolled bitterly through all the tabs she'd opened trying to find something that would work for her, but all it did was remind her that she'd been at this for nearly two hours.
She gave up on the half-hearted stimulation and pulled her hand away, staring at the moisture collected on it. This kind of material made her wetter than anything else, and was usually a surefire ticket to relief, but not today, it seemed. She wiped her fingers off on a tissue and tossed it in the trash, then closed the laptop lid and glanced around the apartment's living room guiltily. She'd promised Ashley that she wouldn't let it get
too
messy, a promise that had lasted only a few hours after she left before Lilac had decided she'd just clean it all up in a panic right before her girlfriend got home.
She looked down at herself, acknowledging for the first time that it was well past noon and she was still in her underwear. Ugh, and she hadn't showered either, she thought, fingering her long brown hair. More evidence that living in the same apartment as another human being was the only thing keeping her from descending into pure filth. She threw her head back and groaned; at least Ashley wasn't here to see her abandoning civilization. She wouldn't have to face the music for this mess until--
The front door's lock clicked and it was shoved open roughly by a tall, slim woman with short reddish-brown hair dragging a suitcase behind her. "Hey Lilac! Sorry, I know I said I'd be back by three, but the buses were packed with people leaving and--" She paused, looking at the state of the apartment and her confused girlfriend hanging out in her underwear. "Um, what?"
Lilac stared back at her, baffled. "Wait, you're...I thought...don't you still have three more days?"
Ashley shrugged, rolling her suitcase in. "The convention got canceled, there was a bomb scare and they had to close it down." She delicately pushed a pizza box out of the way with her foot. "Didn't you get my texts?"
Lilac tried to picture where she'd left her phone. "Ummm...I must have missed them." Her brain finally kicked back into gear and she got up. "Sorry, let me clean some of this--"
A soda can found its way under her foot and she went up in the air, banging her shoulder into the table on the way down. Ashley was next to her in a flash, helping her up. "Whoah! You okay there, Ly?"
"Ugh, yeah, I...ouch!" She winced, putting a hand to her shoulder where it had hit the table, surprised when it came back bloody. "Shit, sorry. I should go take care of this. I'll...help you clean up once I get some disinfectant on this and bandage it." She looked down at herself. "And, uh, get dressed."
Ashley looked the cut over. "Yeah, doesn't look too bad. You just hit a sharp edge." She patted her on the head. "You go clean yourself up, I'll start on the apartment. Gone a day and a half and you turn into a filth goblin!" She walked off towards the kitchen to grab a trash bag and Lilac made her way to the bathroom.
She grabbed the first aid kit off its wall perch and turned to get a good angle in the mirror. Ashley was right, it wasn't that bad of a cut. It didn't take her long to disinfect and bandage it, and then she wandered into the bedroom to grab an I-gave-up-today outfit while trying to craft some kind of reasonable excuse for letting the apartment get this bad in under 36 hours.
"I'm sorry about the mess, Ash, I know I promised I'd--" she began as she walked back into the living room. She saw Ashley jump at her voice and slam the laptop shut. Lilac's heart skipped a beat. She'd never told Ashley about her interest in hypnosis; she knew it was creepy and would probably seem like she was turned on by rape. She had planned to tell her
eventually
, but that stopped being a believable lie by the time they'd moved in together. Her mind was racing. She'd had
dozens
of tabs of porn open on that laptop from her desperate hunt. Had she closed the window? Did she move another one on top? Maybe Ashley hadn't actually looked at any of them? Her girlfriend's face was a mask. She couldn't tell.
"I-I, the, uh..." Lilac began. "Y-You see, there...I didn't know you'd...the mess, it was just, I was going to clean it up, but...I...I-I slept in today, that's why I called in sick..." She could tell she was starting to hyperventilate, but she couldn't stop. Ashley was staring at her with
concern
now, and Lilac felt her vision start to tunnel. Ashley had
definitely
seen the tabs. There was no way she hadn't. What was the last one that had been open? Was it something awful?
Lilac couldn't stop talking. "I can explain! It's, um, that was just research! I-I lost a bet, and, and I have to write some gross, creepy..." She was standing next to the couch now but had no memory of having walked there. "...shitty, filthy, rapey..." Now she was sitting down and Ashley was hugging her tightly, which didn't make sense. "...gross, ugly, creepy..." Now she was just repeating herself! Why was she still
talking?
She willed herself as hard as she could to shut up and buried her face in Ashley's shoulder, hugging her tightly. She could do nothing but let the panic attack run its course, enduring visions of her girlfriend leaving her with a look of impossible disgust. She wasn't sure if she was still talking or not, but it was beyond her control at this point. She pressed herself as close to Ashley's body as she could, convinced this was the last time she'd ever be able to.
After what felt like an eternity she felt herself stabilizing. She slowly pulled herself away from Ashley, dismayed to notice a prominent damp spot on her shirt. She reached up to her face to confirm it was her fault. That was when she noticed how sore her arms were - she must've been squeezing Ashley as hard as she could. "Sorry, I..." she began, starting to turn away, unable to look Ashley in the face, trying to escape her hug.
"What was that all about, Ly?" Ashley asked, and the genuine concern in her voice made Lilac stop. She felt a pang of guilt through the fear. Ashley knew more about her than anyone else in the world; why should she assume this was going to end things between them?
Lilac took a deep breath and wiped her eyes, then turned back to face Ashley. "You, um...you saw the tabs, didn't you?" She tried to meet Ashley's eyes but couldn't quite manage it, and settled for staring at the wet spot she'd made on her shirt.
"Yeah. I'm sorry for prying, I really didn't mean to! My phone logged me out of my PayPal, and I couldn't remember the password, and I just wanted to check if my ticket had been refunded and there were all those..." She paused and leaned down, forcing Lilac to meet her gaze and see that she was smiling. "So. Hypnosis, eh?"
Lilac held her breath, save for a soft "mhm."
"Wanna tell me about it, once you're feeling better?"
Lilac exhaled slowly, then shakily nodded and pulled her girlfriend in for another hug. "Uh huh." They stayed like that for a while, Ashley rubbing her back, the messy room forgotten for the time being.
Ashley smiled down at the zoned out girl in her lap. She was getting better at putting Lilac into a light trance now, but it wasn't deep enough for a lot of the stuff on her list. They'd been working at it for a couple of weeks now and things were going well; despite Lilac's initial concerns, she had turned out to be pretty susceptible to trance. They'd tried several places and positions, but head-in-lap seemed to work best for Lilac, which Ashley decided was proof that she had pillowy thighs. Hopefully not
too
pillowy, though; Lilac had actually fallen asleep when they'd tried having her lie down on their bed.
After their initial talk and Lilac's anxious explanation about her fetish, Ashley had asked for some examples, and Lilac had sent her a folder called "Favorites". She'd looked at the images and skimmed through the stories, doing her best to write down what seemed to be common items between them. Then she did some research and tried to figure out what was doable and what wasn't, and sat down with Lilac to go over it and make sure she was okay with all of them. By the third or fourth item she'd started blushing furiously and covering her face, which Ashley knew from experience meant she was on the right track.
"Drift even deeper into trance as you listen to my words," Ashley continued, watching Lilac breathe softly, her eyes just barely shut. She wasn't entirely sure where Lilac's dramatic fears about how her fetish would be viewed had come from, but Ashley was used to her girlfriend working things up in her head until they became monsters. Lilac needed gentle reassurances about herself and her fetish right now. Whatever reason she had for her dramatic reaction to having it discovered was probably complicated and personal; whether that should be addressed was something she had to decide for herself, and pressing her on it would likely only make her more anxious.
Ashley paused, looking at the next section in her notes. She wasn't too sure this hypnosis stuff even worked, but it seemed real enough to Lilac, and she'd been responding pretty positively to it. Ashley still wasn't entirely sure Lilac believed her when she said she didn't think she was a creep because of her fetish, but there had been a certain new spring in her step that seemed to indicate a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. And the sex, well...the thought of what the future had in store seemed to be giving Lilac a boost there, too.
When she'd talked with Lilac about limits and boundaries, she hadn't even been entirely sure how many of them would come up. They'd done bondage before, and even tried some harder stuff, but you could actually get hurt with those. This was basically just...guided meditation, right? It was hard to imagine consent coming into play, especially since Lilac had explained several times that hypnosis wasn't the perfect mind control usually seen in media. Not that Ashley could even remember the last time she'd seen it in something, but Lilac definitely seemed to feel it was everpresent.
She watched Lilac's chest rise and fall, her hands interlaced across her stomach. She seemed so at ease right now that Ashley was almost a little jealous. It was a far cry from the sobbing mess she'd been earlier this week. "Why are you always so hard on yourself, Ly?" she whispered softly.
To her surprise, Lilac responded, albeit sluggishly and quietly. "Not...always..." Ashley remembered what Lilac had warned her about - that hypnosis was a state of suggestibility, and that she would probably be less inhibited while under it. Ashley hadn't realized that might extend to how honest she was willing to be.
She paused. Maybe this wasn't something she should pry about, but she wanted to know when Lilac felt she was easier on herself. In Ashley's experience, those moments were rare and fleeting. "When are you not?" she asked.
The answer this time took so long that Ashley began to wonder if she'd just imagined the first one. "When I'm...with you..." Lilac finally said, her face serene. Ashley felt something tighten in her chest.
Lilac made her way across the room to where Ashley was sitting on the couch. Ashley had a funny smile on her face, which usually meant she was up to something, but Lilac didn't really care this time - she'd had a long day and needed a nap, and Ashley's lap looked like the perfect place to rest. She worked herself up onto the couch from the floor and then crawled into Ashley's lap. It was more difficult than she felt it should have been, and after trying to curl up in it for a bit she just settled for resting her head on it and splaying the rest of herself across the couch. Ashley was snickering about
something
