157: Twisted

on February 14, 2008 in 06: A Period of Conflict

In Which Events Take Place

“What’d he want, anyway?” Steff asked when I joined her outside Professor Hart’s classroom.

“Oh, um, he just wanted to know how to address you,” I said. “And, um, he wanted me to tell you that you should pay more attention in class.”

Steff rolled her eyes.

“It’s not a bad idea,” I said. “Anyway, I’d appreciate it, too.”

“Sorry you didn’t like my picture,” she said. She sounded sullen, almost petulant.

“I… um… I actually liked it,” I said, turning the side of my glowing-red face to her. “Kind of. I wish you would have kept it.”

“Ah, it was just a stupid doodle. Anyway… enough talking,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders and pulling me towards her.

I blushed and drew back, expecting–wanting–Steff to grab my hips and pull me back towards her.

She didn’t disappoint me.

Once again, I was short of breath and even redder in the face.

“Steff…” I breathed. I didn’t have anything else to say. I just needed to say her name.

Did she have rope?

Would she tie me like that?

Once I had permission to date her and she had permission to go all the way, I meant.

If you hadn’t insisted on waiting, she could have fucked you already, I told myself. Stupid. Would our date really be that more special for having waited?

Steff wanted me so badly, she wanted me so hard, and it killed me not to be able to give myself to her, even while I worried for her.

Amaranth loved me, Ian at least liked me, but Steff wanted me so badly. The others would use me, but every time Steff looked at me, it was a promise to use me up… and… I wanted so badly for her to make good on that promise.

I shivered.

That realization scared me more than she ever could.

Steff held onto my arms and began moving us down the hall, walking backwards and pulling me along. We passed the door to Ariadne’s classroom, and she stopped, then backed up a bit.

The light was off in the room, but that didn’t reassure me.

“Why are we hanging out in front of the elven history room?” I asked, feeling my previous unease returning.

I felt guilty, for some reason. I hadn’t done anything bad in elven history, not really… but I expected to be blamed for the walk-out and I felt guilty anyway.

“We’re not hanging out,” Steff said, looking up and down the hall. “We’re waiting in front of the elven history room.”

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

“Opportunity,” she said, opening the door and pulling me backwards through it into the dark classroom beyond.

“Steff!” I shrieked. “We can’t…”

She slipped around behind me and clapped a hand over my mouth. Her dick was hard up against me.

“Shh,” she said. “I want to fuck you on Ariadne’s desk.”

Panic rose up inside me. I made a noise of protest behind her hand. In my mind, her dick seemed to grow about three times as big.

“I’m not going to,” she whispered. “But I still want to… want to fuck your little butt so hard. I want to rip you open… plow right through you… cut you in fucking two.”

I screamed through her fingers, overwhelmed by a sense of desperation. I broke away and tripped, stumbling to the floor. I banged my knee on the tile.

Steff laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. It wasn’t a sexy laugh. She stood where she was, watching me turn myself around and get back to my feet. I was a little wobbly.

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable playing with you when you’re drunk,” I said. It was an understatement, but I wanted to be nice.

She snorted.

“I’m not drunk,” she said. “I had some wine, like more than an hour ago. I’m not drunk.”

“Didn’t Viktor tell you no alcohol?” I asked. I hadn’t heard all of their conversation. I assumed he must have given her the same rules he told me, though, even if he hadn’t mentioned the dating and the special condition he’d set for it to her.

“I’ll be sober before I see him again,” Steff said.

“You said you already were,” I pointed out.

“I said I’m not drunk any more,” Steff countered. “That doesn’t mean I’m sober yet. Take off your clothes.”

“I’m not getting naked in a classroom,” I said. “We can go back to my room if you want…”

“We’re already here,” Steff said. She took a step towards me. “We don’t need to go to your room.”

“Viktor told you no,” I repeated, backing away. “No alcohol, private property… you know this is going to make him mad.”

“I don’t care,” Steff said.

“Yesterday you were crying because you were afraid you were going to lose him,” I reminded her.

“What? I’m not afraid of Viktor,” she said. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“I didn’t say afraid of him,” I said.

“You let me worry about Viktor,” Steff said.

“Steff, if I get… more involved with you, I’m going to have to be concerned about his reactions,” I said. Fuck. It was going to be hard to have this conversation without spoiling the surprise.

“‘Private property’ just meant no fucking,” Steff said. “We’re not going to fuck, just… fuck around.”

Usually, everything about Steff excited me. I was excited, to be honest… but I was also disturbed. She was using no finesse. There was no charm in her smile. There was no magic in her voice.

Even when I’d been held utterly helpless by Dee’s divine magic, Steff had put some effort into pushing my buttons. “It’s all in the foreplay” was practically her motto. Now, it seemed like she just wanted to get to the main event, whatever that was going to be. She wasn’t trying to get me going.

It was all so sickeningly familiar.

“Steff, you sound like Puddy,” I said.

“C’mon, you know you want this,” she said, advancing on me. The statement did nothing to change my impression.

“I want you,” I said. “But sober and… and safe.”

“You are frightened,” she said, her smile threatening to split her head.

“I am,” I said. “For you.”

“Take off your clothes,” she said. “Now.”

I stood, frozen. Steff had respected my safeword in class, for nothing more than distracting me with notes. She would respect it now, if I used it. I didn’t want to, though. I didn’t want to because.. because I wanted her to fuck me… no, no. I did. Just not like this. I didn’t want to use my word because I wanted her to see what she was doing for herself.

“I don’t want this,” I said, pulling off my shirt. “I really don’t.”

“You’re doing it, though,” she said.

“I want you to stop it,” I said.

“Keep going,” she said.

I unbuttoned my jeans, then looked at her.

“Steff, I’m scared,” I said, peeling them off. “Of you. For you.”

“Keep going… I want to see everything you’ve got,” Steff said as I stepped out of them. “Especially your nice, big lips. I noticed them, that day in the boutique.”

My hand went to my face, subconsciously feeling my mouth. Big? I didn’t think so. They were actually pretty thin.

Steff chuckled.

“So clueless,” she said. “It’s adorable.”

Normally, that would have embarrassed me and turned me on at the same time. Now, it infuriated me.

“Damn it, Steff… don’t you see what you’re doing?”

“You love it,” she said, taking another step towards me.

“I love you,” I said. “But… I hate how you’re acting right now.”

That stopped her. She looked hurt.

“It’s how I always act,” she said.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re just too… impaired… to know the difference.”

I didn’t say “drunk.” No sense arguing semantics with a drunk, right?

Steff shook her head, not so much in disagreement with me… more like she was shaking away irksome ideas.

“If you wanted to stop me, you’d stop me,” she said, stalking forward. Puddy logic. Of course, Steff was talking about the safeword, not physical force. “We’re just playing.”

“Steff, I want you to stop this,” I said. I turned my face from her, but didn’t move. My legs seemed to have forgotten what they were for. “Because you know I don’t want it.”

“What do I know?” Steff said. “What do I know about anything?”

“You know you don’t want to do this to me,” I said.

She leaned in close. I closed my eyes and shrank away, as much as I could without forcibly uprooting my feet from where they seemed to have grown into the floor.

I waited.

I waited some more.

Steff gave a high, exasperated grunt and hit me. She actually slapped my shoulder, pretty much moving only her forearm. It reminded me of Viktor “pounding” the keys of his keyboard in frustration over his song, with more effort expended in restraint than he could have in actual brute force. She did it again, flailing at me with both arms, with no strength behind it. Tears were streaming down her face

“Steff!” I cried, turning back to her… and catching a hand in my nose. Ow. Okay, so not quite no strength behind it.

Actually, it seemed like she was getting wilder and wilder, and hitting harder, and then she was outright punching me, not with any kind of precision or forethought, but blindly and at random. All the while she was crying with abandon… like a child, like Two.

No self-consciousness, no restraint.

Somebody was sure to hear her. Or were they? I didn’t know if there were any evening classes in this part of the building.

“Steff!” I said, a bit louder. I was very conscious of the fact that I was half-undressed in an empty classroom with her. It probably wouldn’t end well for either of us if anybody walked in, but under the circumstances, somebody might well get the wrong idea about Steff.

I tried to catch one of her arms, but missed… she grabbed my arm and twisted it around behind my back. I cried out in pain. The slaps had been annoying, the punches had hurt, but this was agony.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Fight me,” she said, sobbing. “Fight back.”

“Steff, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Why not? I’ll hurt you,” she said. She twisted my arm violently. “See?”

“Steff, I love you,” I said.

“No,” she said. “No! You can’t! Say you hate me.”

“I… I love you!” I said, then screamed as she wrenched my arm harder. I flailed around with my other arm, but she grabbed that one, too.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why?”

“Steff,” I said, bending my knees and trying to, I don’t know, flip her off of me somehow. It wasn’t working. “You need help.”

“I need you to hit me!” she said. “I need you to hurt me!”

“Steff,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Please let go of me.”

She let out a strangled scream and shoved me away. I wasn’t expecting that, and ended up doing a face-fault on the floor. I banged my lips, but managed not to bust them on my teeth for once. They still hurt, though.

I pushed myself up off the floor, and limped over to Steff, who was slumping down on the floor. My knee was taking a real beating.

I sat down beside her. I said nothing. I did nothing. I wasn’t sure it was a huggy moment. She sobbed quietly for a while.

“Why won’t you hate me?” she asked finally, in a tiny, defeated voice.

“Why do you want me to?”

“I don’t want to live,” she said. “I don’t want to spend hundreds of years like this.”

“Like… what?” I asked. I thought she meant her body, but I wasn’t sure. She’d insisted that she didn’t care, that she liked how she was.

Hurting.”

“And… you wanted me to kill you?” I asked. I couldn’t keep the horror out of my voice. I don’t think she noticed.

She shook her head.

“I wanted you to hate me,” she said. “I’m going to lose Viktor… I know I am.”

“You’re not,” I said. “Not if you clean up.”

“I… I c-can’t,” she said. “But if I don’t have him, and I don’t have you… I could… and you wouldn’t miss me… and…”

Her words broke down into a wail that cut right through me, leaving me cold inside. Elven voice magic. It wasn’t only sex games. There was a reason that elven ghosts–bansidhes–could kill with their keening.

“Steff, where’d you get the wine you were drinking?” I asked.

“Mariel,” she said, between sobs. “She was throwing it out.”

Puddy’s wine. Was it just wine? Steff’s pain and grief were real… very real… but her bluster, her… her macho-ness… had been something else entirely. Something had changed in her before she found me in the hall, and then changed again right before she broke down.

“Steff, you need help,” I said again.

She nodded.

“Will you come with me to the healing center and set up an appointment?” I asked.

“Will you come?” she asked.

“Um, that’s what I said.”

“I mean… later,” she said. “When I go. Walk me there. Make sure I… I get there okay.”

Make sure I actually go, in other words.

I nodded.

She sniffed.

“Thank you,” she said.

Then it was a huggy moment. It was awkward crawling towards her, especially with my knee in pain and my body covered with not-bruises from where she’d hit me, but it was worth it.

Hugging, I realized, was the one place where Steff always showed that there was more to her than a heaping helping of want and hurt. Yes, she would grab me and grind up against me when she was in the mood, but she’d also just plain hug, and she did it wonderfully. Didn’t Two lean forward in anticipation of a Steff-hug every time she saw her?

There was a real person… girl… person under all her layers of armor, and that person loved being hugged.

She would choose romance, I thought, remembering Viktor’s question: which would Steff choose if she could have either the real date I wanted to take her on, her first ever… or an hour to do whatever she wanted with my body, implicitly including torture as well as sex.

She’d pick the date. I wouldn’t necessarily want to put the question to her right that moment, but I was fairly sure that in the long run, she would.


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5 Responses to “157: Twisted”

  1. pedestrian says:

    When faced with a similar situation, I always felt helpless and guilty that somehow i may have deliberately or worse, carelessly, aided or at least abetted? enabled? the situation that resulted in someone I cared about being harmed.

    Current score: 1
  2. Arkeus says:

    Oh god, this is the “Steff get more and more unable to see what she wants” arc, isn’t it?

    Current score: 0
  3. Gigiant says:

    I know exactly how steff is feeling. I use to embrace the fact I have a penis, it didn’t bother me too much. I was fine being me. But now I hate myself, I hate everything about me, and I just want it gone. I know exactly what is happening to her, and understand what she is feeling.

    Current score: 1
  4. Leila says:

    Back when I used to be really suicidal, that was one of the only things that kept me from going through with it, the thought of how the people who loved me would feel. Spending as much time as I have online, I’ve had friends and even loved ones just up and disappear without a trace. The not knowing is the worst, never knowing if something had happened to them, or if you just weren’t important to them anymore, I could never put someone else through that…

    Current score: 6
  5. nobody says:

    It is unfortunate people can’t realise that if they can identify what prevents them from committing suicide, then they should focus on the reason it stops them.
    Instead they often convince themselves that they should get rid of (who/what)ever it is that could help them, if they would try to seek help.

    Current score: 0