We Belong Together

Elise sees the strangers before they see her. She's just stepped out onto the balcony after the shower, reveling in the way the wind caresses her scalp where her long dark hair has been cropped down to the stubble on one side and the far naughtier way it blows up under the towel that's wrapped around her pale body, and she happens to notice two people working their way door to door down the narrow Rue Aubriot. They hold something up every time someone answers, a flyer or a photo or something Elise can't make out from this distance, and the people who respond all point in Elise's general direction. Uncomfortable, she darts quickly back inside.

She decides to get dressed--it's a shame, really, she has the whole day to herself and she was looking forward to spending the morning in bed with nothing but her favorite vibrator and the edging file Maitresse made for her last week. But she has an odd, inexplicable conviction that the strangers won't go away just because she's hiding in her room; they'll wait outside the front door until they get a response no matter how long it takes. She wishes Maitresse was here. Her lover... her owner, if Elise is being perfectly honest with herself... is so much better at dealing with the unexpected little challenges that always leave Elise so timid and overwhelmed.

She manages to wriggle into a pair of leggings and a loose bulky sweater, the kind that won't show her nipples too prominently through her clothing. Elise has a few bras remaining, and a couple pairs of panties shoved away in a drawer somewhere, but her shapely breasts don't really need support and anyway, it's rare these days that she can muster up the focus to cope with the complicated straps and fasteners and, um... holes. Elise blushes, admitting to herself that her inability to put on underwear has very little to do with the item itself and everything to do with the delicious, sensual way that Maitresse makes being ditzy and dizzy so very attractive.

They're already knocking by the time she reaches the staircase, and Elise freezes in a momentary anxiety she hasn't felt in months at the sound of their insistent presence outside. She knows she didn't recognize them, but something about the way they looked up at her in the instant before she ducked back into the safety of the apartment gave Elise a sense of familiar dread, as though some long-prophesied doom had finally arrived for her. That feeling hasn't gone away. It still clings to her. Some part of her is utterly certain that answering that knock will destroy the wonderful life she and Maitresse have made together.

But she can't not answer it. Elise steps hesitantly down the stairs into the foyer, and opens the front door.

* * * * *

"I can't." Nikki really hoped Marie could hear the sincere regret in her voice; her friend's English wasn't always the best, but usually Nikki could get tone across even if she did have to stick to short, simple sentences without any idioms. "I want to, I really do, but... there's just no way. I have classes, I have work, I have bills, I'm having dinner with my parents on Wednesday, I--it's just not possible. C'est, um, impossible." Nikki's crude French made Marie's English sound fluent, she knew, but sometimes it got the point across in ways that her native language couldn't.

But this time Marie only chuckled. "Eet, uh, eet ees somezink you say beecauz you want too beeleeve eet, ma cherie," she drawled, her voice coming through Nikki's gaming headset like she was a French maid in a 60s sex farce. It was almost inconveniently hot when Nikki was trying to keep her mind on taking out enemy gunnery platforms, especially since she was stuck in bed for the next fifteen minutes with an uncomfortably large medical-grade phallus dilating her vagina. Not that she'd ever really done anything more than a few sessions of phone sex with the beautiful young Parisienne with the long blonde hair and wide blue eyes, but Marie had made it clear that she would welcome anything Nikki had to offer.

That was what this whole conversation was about, in fact. "You have, uh, how ees zey say? Spreeng Break. In, qu'est-ce que c'est, a week? Zat ees half ze time right zere. And ze professeurs, zey accept remote learning at your school. You can log een from my, uh, my... c'est dit appartement?" Nikki gave another private prayer of gratitude to whatever Norman conquerors mashed Old English and medieval French together. Half the time they could make a random stab at a word and have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right in both languages.

"Yes, apartment," she confirmed, shifting position slightly as she respawned after an ugly death at the hands of an enemy sniper. "But it's not just class, I have two jobs to go to. They won't, I mean I can't... I can't just pack up and leave on a trip to Paris with just a week's notice, even if I could afford to go. They'd, I'd, it would...." She heard herself trailing off into stammering silence, anxiety and stress bubbling up and catastrophizing everything into a single sticky mass of panic in the back of her mind, and wished it wasn't such a familiar sensation.

But Marie continued to politely but firmly steamroller over all Nikki's objections. "Eet ees ze Great Renonciation, ees eet not?" she said pointedly, a chuckle in her voice that Nikki could hear even from across the Atlantic Ocean. Everee one needs employees. Even eef zey dared to fire you, you could find anuzzer job like zat." Nikki heard Marie snap her fingers, just as her character momentarily wheeled awkwardly to the right into the side of a wall. She couldn't hold back a tiny giggle at the sight.

"And your parents, well...." Marie's voice turned serious for a moment. "I cannot lie, ma cherie. Zey are part of what you need to geet away from." Nikki winced, feeling momentarily seen despite their voice-only connection--she'd been hanging out with Marie for the better part of a year now, gaming with her at odd hours of the morning when stress left her an insomniac wreck, and they'd gotten a little too close for Nikki to pretend she didn't know what her friend was talking about. Half the reason she hadn't dropped out of grad school six months ago was the sickening dread she felt every time she pictured breaking the news to her family. Two weeks without any calls, any texts, any awkward questions from Marge and Mason Sheppard at family dinner about when her bachelor's degree was going to get her a real job instead of just some make-work position at Chase Manhattan and a side hustle at Starbucks on the weekends... it sounded kind of like heaven.

But heaven could wait. It had to. "Even so, Marie, I can't just... that's over a thousand dollars just for the tickets, I couldn't possibly expect you to drop that kind of money on me. I'd, it's, I'm...." Nikki trailed off again, knowing what Marie would say if she told her she wasn't worth it. And that was her ultimate argument, the one all the others were merely smokescreens for. She didn't feel like she deserved a two-week all-expenses-paid trip to France, even if her apparently very wealthy friend could drop that kind of cash without batting an eye. And Marie felt differently.

"Oh, fine," she sighed, putting all her misgivings behind her in a sudden rush of giddy impulsiveness. "Go ahead and buy the tickets, I'll request the time off tomorrow. Now can we please get our minds back on the game before the human race winds up overrun?" Marie chuckled, and Nikki lost herself in the musical laughter for a long moment before she began shooting again. Nothing could go wrong when her best friend was laughing like that. Nothing in the world.

* * * * *

Elise's focus, first and foremost, is on the picture. The people holding it are kind of a blur, a pair of unremarkable Americans around her age who look at her with hopeful, worried smiles on their bland and unmemorable faces, but the picture... the picture is astonishing. It's a marvel out of one of those operatically absurd thrillers Maitresse likes to watch while she gets Elise stoned and plays with her pussy until she's a moaning, whimpering mess. Who was the one she always loved, the one who kept conjuring up ever more melodramatic plots around twins and doubles? De Palma, that was it. She's somehow stepped into a Brian De Palma movie.

The woman in the photo is posed with the strangers in front of some American tourist trap, somewhere bright and sunny like... Elise's knowledge of America, never particularly sound, fails her entirely here. California or Florida or wherever they have the Disney parks. She's sitting on top of a big fiberglass alligator, so maybe that would make it Florida, but... Elise's clit throbs, fuzzing the knowledge away in a blur of arousal that makes her wish she could slam the door and go off to masturbate, but the strangers keep looking at her expectantly and she wants to let them down easy.

"izzityuunick? izzitrilliuu?" Elise doesn't understand their babble, any more than she understands the tourists who sometimes accost her while she's out running errands and repeat the same gibberish louder and slower in the hopes that this time it will produce a different result. She gives them a wide, helpless smile and shakes her head, but the whole time her eyes keep coming back to the woman in the photo, the one on top of the alligator. Because Elise has to admit, that woman looks a lot like her.

Almost identical, in fact. Elise sees the same watery blue eyes, the same long dark hair cut in an identical side shave--even the same curves, give or take a few years of hormone therapy. Likewise, the face is a little more angular, a little less filled out, but if Elise had any photos of herself five years ago she feels certain they would look exactly like this. These people... they must think Elise is this woman. Or was this woman. Or something--god, can't they go away so she can settle the distracting arousal in her clit and think clearly for a change?

"Miss. Miss, duyuspeegennglesh?" She understands the first couple of words, but after that it all descends into gibberish again. Maybe if they weren't so frantic, she could at least pick out the very few bits of English vocabulary she did recognize, but they're clearly very excited about her resemblance to the American woman. It feels like it's all they can do to keep from grabbing at her, and their unpredictable energy awakens a quiet terror inside her. She wonders if she's about to be kidnapped. She wonders if the strangers are so desperate to find their friend that they're going to simply take Elise and force her to believe she's the woman they want her to be.

"No, no [English]," she murmurs haltingly, the unfamiliar word sitting awkwardly on her tongue. She reverts to French, hoping they understand at least a little of what she's trying to say and speaking slowly in an unintentional impersonation of the tourists who frustrate her so much. "Please, please go away, I don't know her and I don't know you--" Elise breaks off. It's no good. She can tell they didn't understand a bit of it. The language barrier is insurmountable without a translator. She wishes Maitresse were here--she'd make them understand. More importantly, she'd make them leave.

And the whole time, that woman in the photo keeps smiling back at her, staring at her with those wide blue eyes as if she didn't have a care in the world. It's a lie, Elise can tell; she's looked into a face just like that enough to spot the tiny little creases of worry and stress that her twin thinks she's hiding. Whoever she was, wherever she was, she felt guilty for enjoying herself so much doing something so silly. She hid it well, but the photo betrays it all. Elise feels sorry for her, even before the entirely reasonable assumption that she went missing somewhere and her friends are trying to find her without any luck.

"saaryeye--" one of them says, another woman with a tight, anxious face that feels like it could erupt into anger at any moment. "ahduntandustaannd, ah--" She breaks off. Confusion begins to creep into those tense features. They have to be wondering whether they're right. They have to be questioning themselves. Elise wants to encourage their doubt, but she doesn't have the words. She's annoyed and terrified in equal measures.

They thrust the photo at her again, repeating something forcefully. Elise shrugs, the gesture almost a flinch in the face of their intensity. She wants them to go away, but they won't leave. And the throb in her pussy only keeps getting stronger.

* * * * *

It was all going so well at first.

The flight had been absolutely luxurious--Nikki had flown first class once or twice, cashing in her dad's frequent flyer miles for a little extra leg room and the chance to board early, but that was on a domestic flight. Flying first class across the Atlantic was an entirely different level of comfort and style that left her almost floating on a warm cloud of peace and relaxation despite the yammering little voice of anxiety in the back of her head. Even if she came back to find that her bosses had changed their minds and fired her after all, even if she dropped a whole point off her GPA from starting classes a week late, she still had this moment of happiness. It was refreshing.

And then she got off the plane and Marie met her at the airport, and the way the taller woman looked down shyly at her and leaned intimately into Nikki's presence awakened all of the American's dominant instincts. She wound up gripping the blonde hair at the base of Marie's neck and steering her into a long, soulful kiss that lasted almost a full ten count before tugging her away and saying, "I've wanted to do that for a long time now." She didn't let go of Marie's hair. Marie didn't ask her to.

They took a taxi back to Marie's small but sumptuously appointed apartment, and tumbled almost directly into bed with one another. Marie turned out to have a very nice selection of sex toys, and any concerns Nikki might have had about topping someone a good six inches taller than she was melted away when she realized that Marie looked a good deal smaller lying down. She cuffed the French woman to the bed, then teased her wet opening with a vibrator that was almost aspirationally thick before giving Marie a nice light spanking. Nothing that would make sitting down too uncomfortable, but definitely the promise of two very delicious weeks in each other's company.

The next few hours were a blur of unleashed sexual tension, filled with flavored lube and buzzing silicone cocks and kissing and licking and oh god Nikki hadn't had this many orgasms since she first got her new clitoris. It ended with them curled up amiably against one another, dozing on the sweat-soaked mattress with their limbs entangled and intertwined in playful intimacy. Nikki hadn't realized she was going to go that hard at someone she was still thinking of as a friend just a few days ago, but the chemistry just felt so right the moment they were in physical space together, and sex finally seemed to banish that voice of anxiety that had been nagging at her for so long.

It wasn't just the sex, though. It was stepping into that role that did it, shedding the Nikki that she usually was and becoming someone else in the space of their scene together. Confident, growling Dominant Nikki didn't worry about jobs or grades or being deadnamed by her parents; she was outside herself just a tiny bit, almost as though another person was taking charge of her body, and it made her troubles seem like they were someone else's too. Nikki tucked away that little realization as it came to her in her half-sleep, planning to unfold it later.

But 'later' turned into a night on the town, hitting the clubs of Paris in the company of a wealthy heiress who spent money like it was water and knew all the right people in all the right places. Nikki tried absinthe for the first time, wincing at the burning sensation on her tastebuds and scraping her tongue against her teeth to get rid of the licorice aftertaste. She took a tiny amount of ecstasy, looking nervously over her shoulder as if expecting the cops--or worse, her parents--to spot her at any moment. She got silly drunk and loopy stoned, and all her revelations about enjoying life more when she wasn't quite herself disappeared into a very different kind of altered mental state as she melted into a giggly, bubbly, uninhibited party girl who danced until her feet ached and laughed until her throat was hoarse. And finally, at something that approached four o'clock in the morning, Marie (whose tolerance was so much higher for this kind of lifestyle) poured her into another taxi, brought her back home, and put her to bed with an almost maternal tenderness.

And the next morning her passport was missing.

Not just her passport, although that would have been disastrous enough--when Nikki went through her purse, she realized that her ID, her wallet, virtually every form of identification she had and every form of identification she was absolutely required to have with her at all times in order to stay in Paris without the threat of deportation had simply vanished. She searched, she searched again, she dumped out her bag onto Marie's bed and she dumped out her suitcase onto the living room floor and she was just about ready to sprint out the door and go back to every single bar they visited that night when Elise put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Pleese, ma cherie, do not so much worry," the French woman said, her thick and lilting accent somehow absurd even at the height of Nikki's nightmares-come-true. "Zee travel viza, eet lasts a month, no? And les professeurs, zey will let you work remotely for a while. Ze passport weel turn up, someone weel find it and turn eet een at ze embassie, and everyzing weel be well. I weel geet you a flight home when ze time comes, I promise."

Nikki's mouth flapped for a moment in overwhelmed panic. "But I, I should report it stolen, I should tell the--the State Department to expect it or, or get things going on a replacement, I... I can't just ignore it, Marie! It's important!"

But the blonde only chuckled. "Only eef you let it be," she said, her unruffled temperament rubbing off on Nikki. "Eef you do not tell ze Americans, zey will not know until the passport shows up on zeir doorstep and ze problem ees solved. And eef worst comez to worst, ma pere can make zings right. He has friends een high places, he can pool some streengs." Nikki's eyes widened in surprise. She knew Marie's family had money, but she didn't realize that she was that well-connected. Could she really just snap her fingers and make a passport materialize out of thin air? She'd certainly seemed unworried about buying drugs last night at the club, and France had some of the strictest possession laws in Europe.

"Eet will be fine, ma cherie," Marie cooed, giving Nikki a kiss on the lips. "Trust me." Nikki thought about the embarrassment of being put on a flight home on the second day of her vacation, the stinging humiliation of having to call her parents from a ride home from the airport, and shrugged helplessly. She really didn't see what other options she had.

* * * * *

The man has his foot in the door. He's pressing forward urgently, leaning in with one foot on the threshold, not quite ready to commit the unforgivable act of trespass that would give Elise the excuse to call the police and have the strangers arrested but definitely positioning himself in a way that prevents Elise from shutting them out and pretending the whole strange exchange never happened. "yugotalasantuss, knick!" he snaps, his face contorted in impotent frustration. She can see the tightness in his shoulders, the compulsive clutching of his hands into fists. He wants to grab her, she can tell, but he's terrified of making a mistake and assaulting some innocent French woman.