geonncannon
in
mmom
DAY 9: "The World Without Her," (relevant snippets)
Title: The World Without Her
Author: geonncannon
Fandom: Original work
Self-Lover: Original female character
Words: 2,444 (for the MMOM-related snippet)
Date: May 10
The post to suggest future pairings/stories!
Notes: For those of you who follow Squire's Isle, this story takes place in the summer of 2013.
Summary: After her wife leaves her for another woman, Rebecca Waite tries to move on in a new state with a new home... a home that purportedly comes with its own ghost.
The whole story is up on AO3 (17,192 words)
That night after her shower, she wandered out onto the balcony to attempt air-drying her skin. It was dark enough that she didn't worry about anyone seeing her. She rested her hands on the railing and looked out over the water. Most of the boats had gone in for the night, but she could still see one or two bobbing like paper lanterns between Squire's Isle and its neighbor. She had OneRepublic playing on the iPod in the bedroom, just loud enough for the music to drift out to where she was standing but she couldn't make out the lyrics.
She once again counted the perks to being alone. She didn't have to worry about if Courtney was staying up late to read papers, or if she'd left enough hot water after her shower. She sighed and lowered her head. She wouldn't have anyone to stroke her arm if she woke up from a nightmare. No one there to press against under the blankets. She wasn't sure the pros outweighed the cons, so she stopped listing them and went inside.
There was also a con, a large con, a con she'd been trying to ignore. If Courtney was there she would have crawled into bed, taken off her glasses, and put Courtney's papers aside as she gave her a "This Leads Somewhere" kiss. She crawled under the blankets and pressed her thighs together, toes curled, and tried to ignore the fact that she was feeling seriously deprived. She hadn't had an orgasm in the three months since Courtney left her. Part of her viewed the need as a sign her libido may be healing, but there was very little she could do about it on her own.
Well, there was one thing. But she wasn't in the mood for self-gratification. She didn't need to come; she needed someone to be with her. She wanted to feel wanted. Wasn't that the whole point of sex?
She stopped thinking about it and curled on her side, knowing that the urge would go away if she went to sleep. She would wake up, the ache would have subsided, and she could go on with her afterlife. She folded the pillow in half, slipped her hand between the two sides, and closed her eyes.
Except for the area directly around them, the world was a fog. She could hear echoes of their voices, memories mingling in the haze. It was like a reel from a movie folded so that all the scenes overlapped and bled through each other. But Courtney, directly in front of her, was definitely real. The only solid thing in the entire dream. She used her teeth to take off her glove, her other hand flattened on Rebecca's back.
"What do you want?"
"I want you, but seeing as we're in public..."
"Oh, that's a stumbling block?"
"You shouldn't tease."
Rebecca heard the silence that meant she was holding her breath as Courtney slid her hand down the front of her pants. Rebecca bent her knee, her right foot off the ground as she leaned against her girlfriend, eyes locked with hers, lips parted as her underwear was pushed aside. To an outside observer, someone giving them a casual once-over, they were just a couple embracing on a winter's day.
"I can't believe you're doing this," Rebecca hissed, her smile and the shine in her eyes betraying how much she was enjoying it.
"How long I do it is up to you..."
Rebecca bit her bottom lip and rocked her hips.
Rebecca rocked her hips against the palm of her hand, and she whimpered as the dream haze faded and she realized she was in her bedroom. She had kicked the blankets away at some point, and the cool air off the water had filled her bedroom. Her skin was goosebumped, her nipples hard, and she had both hands between her legs. She was wet, and she saw no possible way she could take her hands away and go back to sleep now.
She stroked herself with two fingers and then three. She used her other hand to manipulate her clit, gasping at the contact after the long months of neglect. She writhed on the bed and twisted to lie on her back, pushing the blankets to the foot of the bed as she bent her knees to spread her legs apart even further.
It was only then she saw the woman standing at the foot of the bed.
She screamed, lifting both hands to cover her breasts and then pulling the pillow out from beneath her and hugging it. By the time she was covered, the woman was gone. She felt like her heart was going to burst from her chest, as if it had become a separate entity desperate to escape its cage. She scanned the room, certain that someone wandering along the shore had seen her open balcony door and then... what? Scaled the side of the house and silently crawled inside?
Rebecca got out of bed and walked to the balcony door. She shut it, locked it, and scanned the floor for signs of footprints. Nothing. She pushed her hair out of her face and hugged herself as she crossed to the bathroom. She closed the door behind her and turned on the light, staring in the mirror at her bed-head, the bags under her eyes, the sallow complexion. She hadn't been getting much sleep at all, and it showed on her face. She held her hands under the water and splashed her face with it.
Birdie and Chely are going to think I'm killing myself. I have to get it together before they show up or they'll never leave me alone.
She wet her hands again and moved one between her legs. She braced her hand on the sink and closed her eyes as she stroked her clit with one dripping finger, biting her bottom lip as she finished what she'd started. She wasn't going to let her dry spell end with frustration just because she had been half-asleep. That was all, she knew. She had still been partially in the dream, and the dream version of Courtney had popped up in the real world. Just a hallucination caused by excitement and being aroused for the first time in months. The moonlight and her own fantasies had played tricks on her.
She arched her back as she came, smiling despite herself and giving a laugh of victory. She patted her labia, gasping at the sharp impact on sensitive skin, and then cupped her hand over her mound until the trembling subsided. She looked at the woman in the mirror again. It was her first orgasm without Courtney's assistance. The barrier had been breached, and now she didn't have to worry about the next time. She washed her hands, splashed her face again, and turned off the light to let her eyes adjust before she went back into the bedroom. It was still empty.
"Hello?"
No answer. Not that she expected one. She put on a pair of underwear and a T-shirt before she crawled into bed, knowing that the attempt to sleep in the nude had been part of the problem. She pulled the blankets back up and then had a thought. She scanned the room again and whispered, "Tamara...?"
No answer. Not that she expected one. Not really.
A voyeur ghost... that would have been really ridiculous.
#
Rebecca sat in her bedroom with her laptop, staring at the screen while alternatively looking out the window. She couldn't think of characters, was miles away from a plot, and the thought of trying to string it all together was too daunting to contemplate. She closed the laptop and went into the master bathroom, undressing as she ran a bath. They hadn't had a tub in their apartment, so she was looking forward to the luxury.
She added the bubble bath she'd gotten during her grocery run and eased herself in. She relaxed against one corner of the tub, her feet resting on the opposite corner, and closed her eyes. She moved her hands under the water so it would be moving against her, so she could imagine she was sitting just off shore and letting the waves break against her skin. It took her a while to get used to the tub, to just sit and soak, but soon she saw the appeal. To be submerged and completely relaxed...
Rebecca ran her hands over her breasts, pausing to circle her nipples until they stood at attention. She looked down to watch the bubbles spill across her curves. She'd always been busty, a way to balance the curves of her hips and ass, and she appreciated the way the water seemed to polish her skin to a shine. She rested her hands on her stomach and then pushed them lower, closing her eyes as she stroked her pubic hair. She needed to take care of a little personal maintenance; she hadn't bothered since leaving Ithaca and it was starting to become necessary. But she had more pressing needs at the moment.
She pressed two fingers against her labia, stroking gently before moving one to her clit. She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and arched her back. Masturbating underwater was certainly... interesting. She cupped her free hand and moved it between her thighs, moving it like a tailfin to push the water forward. She squirmed at the sensation and opened her eyes to see if there was some sort of massage attachment on the showerhead.
Instead she saw Tamara Pearce sitting on the edge of the tub watching her.
Her lungs and throat seized, and she tensed, clapping her hand over her mound as her eyes widened. This wasn't a vision, a flicker from the corner of her eye, and the woman wasn't fading despite Rebecca staring at her. She looked exactly like her picture, down to the hairstyle, a touch that made Rebecca wonder if she was really awake. She wore a floor-length floral print dress Rebecca usually associated with someone much older, a grandma's dress that was unbuttoned to her navel to expose her slip.
"This isn't real."
Tamara stared at her and moved a hand into her dress, lifting one leg onto the side of the tub to make room between her thighs. She shrugged and one side of the dress fell from her shoulder. She moved her other hand to her breast and cupped it, parting her lips as if to moan but there was no sound. Rebecca stared, watching this beautiful and tragic young woman's eyes close in pleasure.
Her body began to respond to the sight - hallucinated or not, and she relaxed her hold on her sex. She began to stroke again, and Tamara opened her eyes. She smiled seductively and lowered her slip to expose one breast, and Rebecca swallowed the lump in her throat. Could they touch? If she reached out to cup the breast, would the specter just fade away? She didn't want to risk it. She moved her foot off the edge of the tub so they wouldn't touch by accident, bending her knees so they made islands in the bubbles.
Tamara moved her eyes from Rebecca's breasts to her face, and Rebecca nodded as she pressed a finger inside. Tamara hunched her shoulders, and Rebecca began moving her other hand against her clit. The water moved against her, taking her breath away, and she let out an eager whimper as she came. She arched up out of the water, sitting up and pulling her knees toward her chest as she tightened her thighs around her hand. "Oh, yes," she whispered, eyes tightly shut, sliding her butt over the slick surface of the tub in an attempt to keep the sensation from fading.
When she sagged backward, sinking so deep that the water lapped up against and into her ears, she looked and saw that Tamara had vanished. If she was ever really there. She pushed her hair out of her face, the ends wet from hanging into the water, and closed her eyes. She was trembling, and not just from the force of her orgasm. She remembered the phone conversation before she moved from Ithaca, her mother's worried voice traveling down the line from Florida.
"Honey, this is not the proper way to react to--"
"What do I have keeping me here? This is Courtney's town, Mama. If I stay here, I'll just see her every time I turn around."
"But you're acting irresponsible. Fleeing to the other side of the country?"
"I need a fresh start. I can write anywhere, I have the money saved up, why not spend it on a new life? Everything is going to change anyway."
Her mother was silent for a long time. "I just worry. I worry about your Aunt Linda."
"Aunt Linda had a brain tumor, Mama. Those aren't genetic." She actually didn't know for sure, but she knew her mother would have no idea. "She was sick."
"What would you call this?"
"Survival, Mama."
And now she was seeing a ghost. She knew the island had a hospital or a med center somewhere near downtown. What could it hurt to go and get checked out? She could at least look online to see if brain tumors were genetic. She spent the next few minutes on actually bathing, then drained the tub and wrapped a towel around herself. She looked in the mirror and realized how much a tumor would explain. If it had changed her personality in some subtle way, it was no wonder Courtney had left her. If she wasn't seeing the world as it actually was, maybe there were other clues she'd missed.
Rebecca put two fingers to her temple as if she could feel some clue, a bump or a throbbing that would tell her she was ill.
She went into the bedroom and put on her pajamas. In the morning the girls would take her shopping. They would find yard sales or, best case scenario, a furniture store that could help make the house into a home. Depending on the prices she might also splurge for a bed just so her friends wouldn't have to couch-surf when they visited. When she crawled under the blankets she looked around the room and then scooted to one side. She smoothed out the sheets next to her.
"I'm not saying you have to. But if you want to... I wouldn't mind."
As she fell asleep, she could have sworn she felt an arm slip around her waist.
Author: geonncannon
Fandom: Original work
Self-Lover: Original female character
Words: 2,444 (for the MMOM-related snippet)
Date: May 10
The post to suggest future pairings/stories!
Notes: For those of you who follow Squire's Isle, this story takes place in the summer of 2013.
Summary: After her wife leaves her for another woman, Rebecca Waite tries to move on in a new state with a new home... a home that purportedly comes with its own ghost.
The whole story is up on AO3 (17,192 words)
That night after her shower, she wandered out onto the balcony to attempt air-drying her skin. It was dark enough that she didn't worry about anyone seeing her. She rested her hands on the railing and looked out over the water. Most of the boats had gone in for the night, but she could still see one or two bobbing like paper lanterns between Squire's Isle and its neighbor. She had OneRepublic playing on the iPod in the bedroom, just loud enough for the music to drift out to where she was standing but she couldn't make out the lyrics.
She once again counted the perks to being alone. She didn't have to worry about if Courtney was staying up late to read papers, or if she'd left enough hot water after her shower. She sighed and lowered her head. She wouldn't have anyone to stroke her arm if she woke up from a nightmare. No one there to press against under the blankets. She wasn't sure the pros outweighed the cons, so she stopped listing them and went inside.
There was also a con, a large con, a con she'd been trying to ignore. If Courtney was there she would have crawled into bed, taken off her glasses, and put Courtney's papers aside as she gave her a "This Leads Somewhere" kiss. She crawled under the blankets and pressed her thighs together, toes curled, and tried to ignore the fact that she was feeling seriously deprived. She hadn't had an orgasm in the three months since Courtney left her. Part of her viewed the need as a sign her libido may be healing, but there was very little she could do about it on her own.
Well, there was one thing. But she wasn't in the mood for self-gratification. She didn't need to come; she needed someone to be with her. She wanted to feel wanted. Wasn't that the whole point of sex?
She stopped thinking about it and curled on her side, knowing that the urge would go away if she went to sleep. She would wake up, the ache would have subsided, and she could go on with her afterlife. She folded the pillow in half, slipped her hand between the two sides, and closed her eyes.
Except for the area directly around them, the world was a fog. She could hear echoes of their voices, memories mingling in the haze. It was like a reel from a movie folded so that all the scenes overlapped and bled through each other. But Courtney, directly in front of her, was definitely real. The only solid thing in the entire dream. She used her teeth to take off her glove, her other hand flattened on Rebecca's back.
"What do you want?"
"I want you, but seeing as we're in public..."
"Oh, that's a stumbling block?"
"You shouldn't tease."
Rebecca heard the silence that meant she was holding her breath as Courtney slid her hand down the front of her pants. Rebecca bent her knee, her right foot off the ground as she leaned against her girlfriend, eyes locked with hers, lips parted as her underwear was pushed aside. To an outside observer, someone giving them a casual once-over, they were just a couple embracing on a winter's day.
"I can't believe you're doing this," Rebecca hissed, her smile and the shine in her eyes betraying how much she was enjoying it.
"How long I do it is up to you..."
Rebecca bit her bottom lip and rocked her hips.
Rebecca rocked her hips against the palm of her hand, and she whimpered as the dream haze faded and she realized she was in her bedroom. She had kicked the blankets away at some point, and the cool air off the water had filled her bedroom. Her skin was goosebumped, her nipples hard, and she had both hands between her legs. She was wet, and she saw no possible way she could take her hands away and go back to sleep now.
She stroked herself with two fingers and then three. She used her other hand to manipulate her clit, gasping at the contact after the long months of neglect. She writhed on the bed and twisted to lie on her back, pushing the blankets to the foot of the bed as she bent her knees to spread her legs apart even further.
It was only then she saw the woman standing at the foot of the bed.
She screamed, lifting both hands to cover her breasts and then pulling the pillow out from beneath her and hugging it. By the time she was covered, the woman was gone. She felt like her heart was going to burst from her chest, as if it had become a separate entity desperate to escape its cage. She scanned the room, certain that someone wandering along the shore had seen her open balcony door and then... what? Scaled the side of the house and silently crawled inside?
Rebecca got out of bed and walked to the balcony door. She shut it, locked it, and scanned the floor for signs of footprints. Nothing. She pushed her hair out of her face and hugged herself as she crossed to the bathroom. She closed the door behind her and turned on the light, staring in the mirror at her bed-head, the bags under her eyes, the sallow complexion. She hadn't been getting much sleep at all, and it showed on her face. She held her hands under the water and splashed her face with it.
Birdie and Chely are going to think I'm killing myself. I have to get it together before they show up or they'll never leave me alone.
She wet her hands again and moved one between her legs. She braced her hand on the sink and closed her eyes as she stroked her clit with one dripping finger, biting her bottom lip as she finished what she'd started. She wasn't going to let her dry spell end with frustration just because she had been half-asleep. That was all, she knew. She had still been partially in the dream, and the dream version of Courtney had popped up in the real world. Just a hallucination caused by excitement and being aroused for the first time in months. The moonlight and her own fantasies had played tricks on her.
She arched her back as she came, smiling despite herself and giving a laugh of victory. She patted her labia, gasping at the sharp impact on sensitive skin, and then cupped her hand over her mound until the trembling subsided. She looked at the woman in the mirror again. It was her first orgasm without Courtney's assistance. The barrier had been breached, and now she didn't have to worry about the next time. She washed her hands, splashed her face again, and turned off the light to let her eyes adjust before she went back into the bedroom. It was still empty.
"Hello?"
No answer. Not that she expected one. She put on a pair of underwear and a T-shirt before she crawled into bed, knowing that the attempt to sleep in the nude had been part of the problem. She pulled the blankets back up and then had a thought. She scanned the room again and whispered, "Tamara...?"
No answer. Not that she expected one. Not really.
A voyeur ghost... that would have been really ridiculous.
#
Rebecca sat in her bedroom with her laptop, staring at the screen while alternatively looking out the window. She couldn't think of characters, was miles away from a plot, and the thought of trying to string it all together was too daunting to contemplate. She closed the laptop and went into the master bathroom, undressing as she ran a bath. They hadn't had a tub in their apartment, so she was looking forward to the luxury.
She added the bubble bath she'd gotten during her grocery run and eased herself in. She relaxed against one corner of the tub, her feet resting on the opposite corner, and closed her eyes. She moved her hands under the water so it would be moving against her, so she could imagine she was sitting just off shore and letting the waves break against her skin. It took her a while to get used to the tub, to just sit and soak, but soon she saw the appeal. To be submerged and completely relaxed...
Rebecca ran her hands over her breasts, pausing to circle her nipples until they stood at attention. She looked down to watch the bubbles spill across her curves. She'd always been busty, a way to balance the curves of her hips and ass, and she appreciated the way the water seemed to polish her skin to a shine. She rested her hands on her stomach and then pushed them lower, closing her eyes as she stroked her pubic hair. She needed to take care of a little personal maintenance; she hadn't bothered since leaving Ithaca and it was starting to become necessary. But she had more pressing needs at the moment.
She pressed two fingers against her labia, stroking gently before moving one to her clit. She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and arched her back. Masturbating underwater was certainly... interesting. She cupped her free hand and moved it between her thighs, moving it like a tailfin to push the water forward. She squirmed at the sensation and opened her eyes to see if there was some sort of massage attachment on the showerhead.
Instead she saw Tamara Pearce sitting on the edge of the tub watching her.
Her lungs and throat seized, and she tensed, clapping her hand over her mound as her eyes widened. This wasn't a vision, a flicker from the corner of her eye, and the woman wasn't fading despite Rebecca staring at her. She looked exactly like her picture, down to the hairstyle, a touch that made Rebecca wonder if she was really awake. She wore a floor-length floral print dress Rebecca usually associated with someone much older, a grandma's dress that was unbuttoned to her navel to expose her slip.
"This isn't real."
Tamara stared at her and moved a hand into her dress, lifting one leg onto the side of the tub to make room between her thighs. She shrugged and one side of the dress fell from her shoulder. She moved her other hand to her breast and cupped it, parting her lips as if to moan but there was no sound. Rebecca stared, watching this beautiful and tragic young woman's eyes close in pleasure.
Her body began to respond to the sight - hallucinated or not, and she relaxed her hold on her sex. She began to stroke again, and Tamara opened her eyes. She smiled seductively and lowered her slip to expose one breast, and Rebecca swallowed the lump in her throat. Could they touch? If she reached out to cup the breast, would the specter just fade away? She didn't want to risk it. She moved her foot off the edge of the tub so they wouldn't touch by accident, bending her knees so they made islands in the bubbles.
Tamara moved her eyes from Rebecca's breasts to her face, and Rebecca nodded as she pressed a finger inside. Tamara hunched her shoulders, and Rebecca began moving her other hand against her clit. The water moved against her, taking her breath away, and she let out an eager whimper as she came. She arched up out of the water, sitting up and pulling her knees toward her chest as she tightened her thighs around her hand. "Oh, yes," she whispered, eyes tightly shut, sliding her butt over the slick surface of the tub in an attempt to keep the sensation from fading.
When she sagged backward, sinking so deep that the water lapped up against and into her ears, she looked and saw that Tamara had vanished. If she was ever really there. She pushed her hair out of her face, the ends wet from hanging into the water, and closed her eyes. She was trembling, and not just from the force of her orgasm. She remembered the phone conversation before she moved from Ithaca, her mother's worried voice traveling down the line from Florida.
"Honey, this is not the proper way to react to--"
"What do I have keeping me here? This is Courtney's town, Mama. If I stay here, I'll just see her every time I turn around."
"But you're acting irresponsible. Fleeing to the other side of the country?"
"I need a fresh start. I can write anywhere, I have the money saved up, why not spend it on a new life? Everything is going to change anyway."
Her mother was silent for a long time. "I just worry. I worry about your Aunt Linda."
"Aunt Linda had a brain tumor, Mama. Those aren't genetic." She actually didn't know for sure, but she knew her mother would have no idea. "She was sick."
"What would you call this?"
"Survival, Mama."
And now she was seeing a ghost. She knew the island had a hospital or a med center somewhere near downtown. What could it hurt to go and get checked out? She could at least look online to see if brain tumors were genetic. She spent the next few minutes on actually bathing, then drained the tub and wrapped a towel around herself. She looked in the mirror and realized how much a tumor would explain. If it had changed her personality in some subtle way, it was no wonder Courtney had left her. If she wasn't seeing the world as it actually was, maybe there were other clues she'd missed.
Rebecca put two fingers to her temple as if she could feel some clue, a bump or a throbbing that would tell her she was ill.
She went into the bedroom and put on her pajamas. In the morning the girls would take her shopping. They would find yard sales or, best case scenario, a furniture store that could help make the house into a home. Depending on the prices she might also splurge for a bed just so her friends wouldn't have to couch-surf when they visited. When she crawled under the blankets she looked around the room and then scooted to one side. She smoothed out the sheets next to her.
"I'm not saying you have to. But if you want to... I wouldn't mind."
As she fell asleep, she could have sworn she felt an arm slip around her waist.