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Michaela is just getting out of the bath when she hears the chime of her doorbell. Tightening the belt on her robe, she hurries over to the front door, takes a moment to verify through the peephole, and then opens it up for Laurel to walk in. She’s barely inside before Michaela is shutting it, after a quick peek to confirm that none of her neighbours are about.
When she turns around, back pressed to her door, it’s to see Laurel shrugging out of her coat and scarf in the middle of her tiny living room. Her cheeks are red with a little flush, her dark hair a wild tumble about her shoulders, and she’s not particularly tall, but she manages to look larger than life. This isn’t a sight that Michaela’s exactly used to, Laurel in her apartment, but it’s the fourth time this week that she’s being treated to it. Familiarity is breeding a low swoop in her belly, a tingle in her extremities.
Laurel looks… Awkward, might be one word for it.
“Hey,” she says. She drops her satchel onto Michaela’s couch. She’s got that look on her face, like kid gloves for her expression.
“Hi,” Michaela replies. She doesn’t move from her position by the door. Her hands are laced behind her back.
“Cold out,” Laurel remarks, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.
“I guess so.”
Laurel bites her bottom lip briefly, and Michaela tries not to be so obvious about the fact that she’s watching. Everything about her body language says that she wants to step forward, but instead, she keeps giving Michaela that look.
“How are…” Laurel trails off, then starts again, running her fingers through her hair. “Are you doing okay?”
A beat passes in silence. Michaela raises her brows, impatience pulling at her seams.
“No. No Laurel, I’m not doing okay. Neither are you. None of us are.” Her voice is flinty, and she can feel her fingers twisting together behind her back. All this inaction, all this talk, is making her itchy. “Our lives are shitty, and we got out of that latest mess but everything could still fall apart at the drop of a hat, so could we stop bullshitting and just do this?”
It’s hard to pinpoint, the exact moment where her expression changes, but one minute Laurel’s expression is cloaked in that unsure, tender, almost pitying mask that makes Michaela feel as if her skin is crawling with ants, a look that Michaela doesn’t need or deserve. In the next, she’s all hard lines and angles, and she’s got her game face on, the one she wears when she and Michaela are bickering across the room in Annalise’s study, and neither of them is prepared to back down. Her lips thin into a purse.
“Fine,” she says.
“Good,” Michaela says, and pushes herself off the door.
In the next second, she’s slammed back against it, and Laurel’s mouth is pinning her there.
Michaela groans, and it should be embarrassing how quickly her knees turn to putty, but she’s too busy winding her arms around Laurel’s neck, bringing her closer. The heat of her seems to sear straight through Michaela’s robe at every point of contact: their chests pushed together, a slim thigh between Michaela’s, Laurel’s fingertips burning like brands on Michaela’s hips. This kiss is a rough one and Michaela wouldn’t have it any other way; she feels the scrape of teeth on her bottom lip and shivers before pressing harder, adding some bite of her own.
This is the fourth time. The first, they hadn’t talked about it, not before or after. Michaela didn’t want to talk about it, much less even think about it. Didn’t want to think about how it was the oldest coping mechanism in the book, about what the guys or Annalise would have to say. She especially didn’t want to think about the fact that Laurel’s a girl, and Michaela is supposed to be as straight as a wall. Thinking about that too closely means opening up that box that she’d locked away as a teenager, and she means to keep those thoughts and memories hidden away for as long as healthily (and, screw it, unhealthily) possible.
So they hadn’t talked about it, and it suits Michaela just fine. The first time had rolled into the second, had barrelled into the third, had slid right along into the fourth, which finds them here, making out against Michaela’s front door like the feel of each other is the only thing keeping them alive.
Laurel’s mouth, warm and slow, travels down Michaela’s neck, leaving kisses that feel like bruises. Michaela arches automatically, wanting each press of Laurel’s lips to sink beneath her skin. When Laurel reaches the juncture of her neck and shoulder, she spends what feels like an eternity there, nipping at the skin, drawing little circles with her tongue. All this while her hands work their way down Michaela’s thighs, slip beneath the skirt of her robe, and then start sliding back up.
At that, Michaela feels like her legs really might give out, which is a little ridiculous. It’s not like this is the first time that someone has touched her thigh, trailed little patterns up to her hips, thumbed her hipbones. But the fire licking at her belly at the delicate scrape of fingernails, the frantic hitch of her breath when a stray finger grazes the lips of her cunt, as if by accident, the way her hips move like they’re magnetised to those hands… that’s all new. God, it’s new. Laurel has fucked her three times and each time it’s like a tiny revelation.
The mouth on her neck moves further south. Michaela would have never judged her clavicle to be an erogenous zone, but she’s learning quite a few things about herself these days. She cups Laurel by the cheeks and drags their lips together again before she embarrasses herself by calling out the other girl’s name before they can even get started properly.
Laurel sucks on her bottom lip like a sweet, then pulls back to stare at her. They’re both breathing harshly, and Michaela is so distracted by the pretty flush in Laurel’s cheeks that she doesn’t notice right away how intently Laurel is looking at her.
“What?” she asks. It comes out in a more waspish tone than she’d intended, but there’s no taking it back now. Laurel lifts a brow coolly.
“Nothing,” she says, and jerks Michaela back towards her, back into a kiss.
They move with their kiss, legs tangling together, Laurel directing them backwards through the apartment, all the way to Michaela’s bedroom. Halfway there, Laurel unties her robe, and uses the opportunity to run her hands along the sides of Michaela’s body, chasing every dip and every curve. By the time they’re at the bedroom door, the robe is sliding to the floor, and one of Laurel’s thighs slips between Michaela’s, pressing up with the sweetest pressure. Her skin comes over with little goosebumps, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the cold.
“God,” Michaela half-moans, half-whines. She licks a trail of her own kisses across the slopes of Laurel’s jaw. Her skin is heating up pleasantly under her mouth, and Michaela wants nothing more than to give her a hickey. Or seven. Laurel shivers, her fingers threading through Michaela’s hair. She doesn’t think she’s ever mentioned how much she loves having her hair played with, but during tryst number two, Laurel had tugged on it to bare more of Michaela’s neck to her, and she hadn’t been able to hide her reaction to that.
“Your hair is gorgeous,” Laurel says in a whisper, one of her fingers wrapped around the curls at the base of Michaela’s neck. Michaela almost snorts, pulling away. She’s got split ends to rival the messiest divorce cases of the century and her roots are dying for a touch up. It’s a sweet thing to say though, and Laurel obviously means it; it shows in her little quirk of a smile. ‘Thank you’ is on the tip of Michaela’s tongue.
“Shut up,” she says instead, and goes to work on Laurel’s jaw again. She hears the other girl huff, in indignation or exasperation, she doesn’t really know which. She doesn’t get time to figure it out. In the next second, she feels it; a quick swat against her ass. Michaela tenses up with a little gasp.
“Learn to take a compliment, for Christ’s sake,” Laurel says, eyes flashing.
Michaela reaches behind Laurel to open up her bedroom door, and then nips at Laurel’s bottom lip.
“I can take a compliment just fine,” she says, hoping Laurel gets the gist. “Learn to give better ones.”
Laurel smiles, and slaps her behind once more, harder this time. Michaela gasps again, not trying to control the tiny explosion of sound. Laurel’s palm lingers, moving with a gossamer light caress over the spot, before she spins them around and gives Michaela a gentle shove across the threshold.
Michaela backs up until the backs of her knees are brushing against the bed, but she doesn’t sit down. Not yet. It occurs to her that Laurel is still fully clothed while she’s naked. She doesn’t know why she’s only just noticed this. She doesn’t know why it makes her cunt clench and squeeze, almost as much as the spanking had.
She doesn’t really think about this either. It’s hard not to feel guilty about it, like she’s single-handedly setting feminism back five hundred years or something. Which is ridiculous. If she ever bothered to talk to someone about all the… everything in her life, she’d probably be told that it’s only natural to want to give up control during sex when she’s such a freak about it the rest of the time. Which is probably why she’ll never talk to anyone about it.
With guys, it’s simpler; most of them just assume that she wants them to be dominant because, men. With Laurel, it’s different. Different good.
“What do you wanna do?” Laurel asks from a few feet away, unbuttoning the cuffs of her shirt. She likes to do that, Michaela had realised sometime during the second time. Ask questions. Michaela makes little fists in her sheets.
“Have sex, obviously. Pay attention.”
Laurel rolls her eyes, but that smile that kicks up the left side of her mouth and pushes the tiniest dimple into her cheek is still there. She takes a few steps closer to the bed.
“Yeah but. What do you wanna do?”
It’s the most clichéd, teeny-bopper movie probably involving vampires thing ever, but Michaela’s breath actually speeds up by a ridiculous degree when Laurel reaches out, and touches her hipbone with a single finger. She can feel her heart slamming away against her ribcage, and Laurel definitely can too, when she walks her fingers up Michaela’s belly, skimming past her navel, through the valley of her breasts. She bites her lip and shudders out a sigh before she can stop herself.
Laurel’s smile gets just a little bit wider.
“Oh, shut up,” Michaela says for the second time that night, and jerks Laurel closer to kiss her.
Immediately, she has to wonder why they don’t spend most of their time occupying the same room in this way. Kissing. Because Laurel’s pretty good at it, and Michaela’s definitely not so bad at it herself, and together… God. She clutches at the small of Laurel’s back to bring her closer. Every sensation goes straight to her head. The way her nipples, hard as little pebbles, graze against the material of Laurel’s shirt; the hand slipping down to cup her ass; the other hand sitting securely at the side of her neck.
Laurel gives her a few more biting kisses, and then slowly navigates a path down, skipping over most of Michaela’s neck to jump to the hollow of her throat. Her tongue draws the line across to her shoulder, to kiss the little scar there and blow on it. It’s a surprisingly good feeling, to be touched in a place others might look over as a flaw. Laurel tongues at the spot, and Michaela groans.
She’s so wet that her thighs feel damp, and they haven’t even done much more than make out so far. This comes to Laurel’s attention soon enough; she slips two fingers between Michaela’s legs, not even inside her, and they come away glistening. Laurel holds them up for Michaela to see.
Michaela’s first thought is, I wonder if she expects me to lick it off.
Her second thought goes something like, Ah, screw it.
Her third thought… well, it’s very generous to classify it as a thought, because her lips are wrapped around Laurel’s fingers and her hands are on Laurel’s hips and it’s salty and sweet and so hot she can hardly stand. It’s amazing how something this simple can feel so dirty, and she loves it. She feels a shiver course through Laurel’s body as she pops off, and that alone makes her feel more powerful than the sun.
“Jesus,” Laurel says, eyelashes fluttering as she strokes the side of her face with those same two fingers.
“Michaela’s fine,” Michaela says, and then they’re kissing again.
Their tongues slide together, warm and slick. Laurel’s hands cup both of Michaela’s breasts, pinch at them in the way she likes. Michaela can’t help but thrust her chest forward, her nipples aching to be touched. Her entire body feels like livewire, and Laurel is a living fuse. Her thumbs press against Michaela’s nipples, then flick back and forth across them. It’s tight and full of friction and the sensation is just short of too intense. Michaela sighs, and squirms on her feet, her clit feeling heavy and hot between her legs.
Laurel’s hands start travelling down again, but when they reach her hips Michaela stops her, pulling away.
“Wait,” she says.
Laurel’s breathing is even, but audible. She doesn’t quite pull her hands away. “What?”
Michaela swallows, drags her eyes up and down the other girl.
“I don’t wanna come yet. You first. Take off your pants.”
Laurel spends one second in silence, before she’s off smiling again and that dimple reappears. Her hands fly to the button of her jeans.
“So it’s not ‘shut up’ any more, huh?” she asks with a smirk, wiggling out of her jeans and panties at the same time.
“Shut up,” says Michaela. She waits until Laurel is standing upright again, her jeans flung across the room, before she starts on the buttons of Laurel’s shirt. It’s stark white, starch stiff, and made of cotton. Michaela’s fingers can’t move fast enough. Laurel helps, fingers moving down while Michaela’s move up, and when they meet in the middle Laurel grabs her hands and pulls her forward for a quick kiss. Then Michaela is trailing her hands down the coastline of Laurel’s torso, from sensible bra to little waistline to the flare of her hips. Michaela traces her index over her tan, and the print in her skin left by the line of her panties.
“Wait,” she says again, when Laurel makes as if to shrug out of the shirt. Laurel pauses, and waits for the explanation. It comes haltingly.
“I… I want you to keep this on,” Michaela says in one mouthful, tugging on the collar of the sturdy white shirt. Laurel looks down at herself, then back up at Michaela.
“Yeah,” she says. “I can do that.”
Her voice sounds a little hoarse, but neither of them mentions it. Laurel gets the clasp of her bra in the back, and Michaela detaches the straps of it in the front, and in five seconds flat they’ve got it off.
Michaela sighs, as she always does, because Laurel’s boobs are unfairly perfect; high and round and unblemished. She brushes the shirt aside and cups them in her hands under the light of Laurel’s heated smile. Carefully, she grips the nipples between her index and middle fingers, and watches as the dusty brown peaks get harder.
“That’s nice,” Laurel sighs, one hand at the back of Michaela’s neck. The throbbing in Michaela’s cunt gets more insistent, and she tugs Laurel towards the bed.
It doesn’t take long to get her where she wants her; sitting at the very edge of the bed, hips tilted forward, legs spread. Laurel doesn’t take her hand off her neck, and Michaela doesn’t want her to. It remains there as Michaela leans forward, hands braced on Laurel’s thigh, and gives her the hickey she’s been wanting to all night. The bruise blooms into being near her collarbone, a mix of purple and red on her tanned skin.
It remains there as Michaela dips to her breasts, taking one peak at a time into her mouth, sucking gently. Her nails, not very long but not exactly short, make little half-moons on Michaela’s nape that she’s going to feel for days. Laurel takes shallow, even breaths that hitch up every once in a while when Michaela lets the scrape of her teeth come into play. The hand gets tighter at that too, in a warm, secure way that makes Michaela hotter, makes her mouth move all the more urgently.
The hand is still there when she kisses her way down Laurel’s belly, tongue dipping briefly into her navel, before she gets onto her knees properly between Laurel’s thighs. Michaela flicks her eyes up to Laurel’s; they’re watching her intensely. Unblinking. They don’t break contact as Michaela smooths her hands down Laurel’s sides, and curves down to her hips and ass. She tugs, and Laurel obligingly scoots her hips forward a little more, at the same time that the hand on her neck travels just a bit further upward, into the roots of her hair. Michaela shudders, closes her eyes, and leans forward.
She kisses Laurel’s thigh first. The skin there is paler than the rest of her, delicate, and unbelievably soft. Michaela is a little bit in love with Laurel’s thigh, and she does her best to show it; she sucks another little hickey into the skin, laving with her teeth and tongue until Laurel’s breath is shuddering and she’s murmuring, “come on, come on,” in a coarse little whisper. Michaela smiles, blows on the spot, and it’s completely worth it for the way Laurel’s hand tightens in her hair.
“Oh, god.” It’s more like a sound that escapes than a phrase that Laurel actually says, and headiness fills up Michaela’s head like smoke. Licking her lips, she shuffles closer, and presses a slow kiss to Laurel’s cunt.
She’s not an expert at this, not by a longshot. Laurel’s the first girl she’s ever gone down on, and this is only the second time. She doesn’t even have that much experience to draw on, when it comes to herself. But eating a girl out isn’t the chore that a lot of guys make it seem to be; it’s easy and it’s intuitive. She does everything that she’d like herself, and lets Laurel’s hands and hips and the sounds she makes guide her in everything else.
Bracing herself with a hand splayed near Laurel’s hipbone, Michaela kisses her again, tongue tracing up to follow the curve of her vulva. All the breath seems to go out of Laurel at once. Michaela could spend forever here, touching her where she’s most sensitive, where even the tiniest waft of her breath or flick of her finger will get some kind of reaction. Her thumb runs down the neat patch of curls and beats deftly on her clit while she licks her open. A deep-throated moan is her reward, and she feels Laurel’s thighs tensing up on either side of her.
Laurel doesn’t shy away from vocalising every moment of pleasure. That had mortified Michaela to no end at first; she’d gone a little out of her mind thinking about her neighbours, and the thin walls, and what a woman is supposed to sound like during sex. It’s a hang-up that she’s all too glad to have shed; now when Laurel groans and asks her to stiffen her tongue, she just feels herself getting wetter before she complies.
“Oh my god,” Laurel gasps out when Michaela slides her tongue into her as far as it will go. It’s not very far, but it’s enough to make Laurel’s hand tighten in her hair almost, but not quite, to the point of pain. Gooseflesh crops up over her shoulders and boobs with embarrassing quickness, and she cries out, panting against Laurel’s lips.
“Sorry,” Laurel says, gathering up Michaela’s hair and smoothing it back from her face. She tilts Michaela’s chin up with a finger, and the view upwards – tensed stomach, gently heaving breasts, flushed face – has Michaela distracted for a second. “Was that too hard?”
Michaela shakes her head, licks her lips. “No, you’re good.”
Laurel smiles, a quick little thing that appears and disappears within the space of a breath. Michaela sees the shadow pass over Laurel’s eyes, sees a moment of lightning quick contemplation on her face, before she says,
“You… you look really beautiful.”
It’s said softly and with a painful amount of sincerity. Michaela’s heart pounds a bit. She doesn’t know what to do with that look, or that tone, or those words, so she does the only thing she can think to do, and sucks Laurel’s clit between her lips.
She doesn’t understand the expletive that Laurel shouts out then, but it’s enough to tell her that she’s doing something right. Palms sliding down to bracket Laurel’s hips, she licks and sucks at her with feverish strokes, breathing in the smell of her, feeling her wetness on her chin. Both Laurel’s hands are in her hair now, gripping on for dear life as she gasps and trembles her way to orgasm. Michaela can tell the exact moment she comes; her thighs go completely still for a moment, and then her hips shudder and roll, riding out the wave of pleasure on Michaela’s tongue.
She doesn’t let it end there. Before Laurel can stop shaking, Michaela slides two fingers into her, all at once, and curves them up. Laurel’s entire body goes kind of limp, and she collapses back on her elbows and groans as Michaela finger-fucks her to a second, gentler climax, tongue still flicking out to caress her.
This is the fourth time, but it’s also a night of firsts; the first time Laurel’s come before her, the first time Michaela’s given someone multiple orgasms. It feels… nice.
She climbs up onto the bed, crawling on all fours until she and Laurel are face to face. Her hair falls forward, and Laurel is reaching up to brush it back before it hits the sheets. Using the shirtsleeve, she wipes at Michaela’s mouth daintily.
“Well,” she says. She still sort of sounds like she’s paying taxes on every breath she takes. “I enjoyed that.”
“Yeah, I could tell,” Michaela retorts, one eyebrow raised. Laurel is smiling by now, so she does too; an automatic reflex that she doesn’t know how to curb. She swears that that’s a first too; they never smiled at each other this much, the first few rounds.
“I am going to wreck you,” Laurel says, chuckling, and just like that, Michaela is flat on her back.
There’s no waiting for the other to make the first move; they’re kissing before the moment has a chance to settle. Laurel presses her down into the mattress, rolling their hips together, letting their chests brush. Michaela splays her hands across Laurel’s back, loving the rough feel of the shirt as much as she loves the sight of it. Tingles are spreading from her belly to every extremity in her body; Laurel had said those last words playfully, but Michaela knows how true they are. The anticipation is near killing her.
But Laurel isn’t done with her mouth yet; they kiss and kiss and kiss some more until the lower half of her face feels like one pleasant bruise. Michaela wonders if Laurel can taste herself on her lips, wonders if the thought is as sexy to her as it is to Michaela. Something tells her it is. Pinning Michaela’s hands above her head, Laurel remains completely engrossed in the breadth and shape of their kiss.
When she pulls away, she doesn’t go far; her next target is Michaela’s neck. Michaela sighs, toes curling, as she feels the hint of teeth along her pulse point.
“What do you want to do?” Laurel asks quietly, mouth to ear.
Not this again. Michaela’s cheeks are flooding with heat. The insistent throb of her clit hasn’t let up at all, and she becomes all too aware of it once again. Instinct drives her to push her legs together, get some pressure on it. A knee between her thighs stops her. Michaela glares.
“You want me to eat you out?” Laurel dips back to her ear to say it. Soft tendrils of her hair tickle at Michaela’s face and ear. Her own breathing sounds so loud, and she knows that Laurel can’t see her right now, but Michaela glares harder anyway.
“Just…”
“Because I could do that. If you wanted, I mean.” She kisses Michaela’s earlobe briefly, then licks the spot behind it. Michaela gives one of those full body shudders that she can’t really control, and hides her face against her arm.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she mutters.
“So much.”
Laurel kisses her cheek, and leaves the ghost of her laughter there when she slips down to crouch between Michaela’s legs. There’s no preamble, no teasing; she hoists one of Michaela’s legs over her shoulder, leans in and licks a broad stripe up her cunt, and it’s such a hot shock of pleasure that Michaela covers her face with her hands, crying out.
Laurel, it is certain, did not attend the Michaela Pratt School of being in constant denial about your attraction to other women. Laurel, unlike Michaela, would need more than one hand to count the number of times she’s gone down on a girl. Laurel probably doesn’t even need the soft noises or breathy directions that she coaxes out of Michaela. Laurel is good at this, so good that Michaela’s eyes are already damp and she feels electric, like she’s not entirely in control of herself.
One of Laurel’s hands grips Michaela’s thigh, holding it firmly on her shoulder. The thumb of the other flicks up and over her clit in a steady tattoo. And her mouth wreaks pure havoc; deep, warm kisses to her lips, long strokes with the flat of her tongue, every now and again the barest scrape of teeth. Sometimes on the slope of her vulva, sometimes very gently to the side of her clit, sometimes on her inner thigh. Michaela thinks she’s babbling; she must be babbling. Every time, when she remembers this, she thinks that Laurel can’t possibly be that good at this, it must all be amplified in her memory, but here they are again, and oh god, she is that good.
Everything feels so warm and amazing and she’s so sensitive she doesn’t know if she’s trying to move towards or away from Laurel’s mouth, and her legs turn liquid with every lash of that quick tongue. It circles up and around her clit, down to her entrance to lap sweetly, and back up again. Tremors race up and around her belly, only intensified by the way Laurel groans around her. Her index and ring fingers reach down to spread Michaela’s lips, keep her open, and her face gets so hot at that she feels atomic. Gasps are the only language she feels capable of speaking in.
By the time Laurel pulls away to breathe and dot her thighs with kisses, Michaela’s eyes are definitely wet and she’s throbbing steadily between the legs. Automatically, she reaches down to cup herself, but she’s stopped by the press of fingers to her wrist. A pair of darkened blue eyes is looking up at her.
“Are you ready to come?”
Michaela’s breath hitches and she nods. “Yeah.”
It’s the work of a few seconds for Laurel to disentangle them, crawl up the bed and put her back to the headboard, spread her legs and pat her thigh.
“Get on. I want to look at you,” she says.
Michaela’s mind has gone all fuzzy, so it takes her a few seconds to parse what Laurel wants her to do. Understanding comes with a shiver, a prickling feeling all over her chest and thighs. Her nipples perk up, and she crawls the short path to Laurel. A knee goes on either side of Laurel’s outstretched thigh. Slowly, hands braced on the other girl’s cloth-covered shoulders, knees as far apart as she can get them and feet tucked behind her, she sits.
“Oh, god.” Laurel must run or work out or lift or something; her thigh is really supple and strong, and the first contact of her clit against the smooth skin makes Michaela buck up, and tighten her grip on Laurel’s shoulders. Laurel never breaks eye contact, keeps staring straight at her as she cups one of Michaela’s breasts and curves the other hand onto her ass. That hand, she uses to coax Michaela’s hips into a gentle rocking motion, and that wrenches another gasp from Michaela’s throat. She’s so wet, and it’s so slippery, and her cunt clenches every time she presses down on her clit and wrings out another burst of pleasure.
“Come on,” Laurel murmurs, eyes dark and deep. Her thumb presses into her nipple, flicks it up and down. Michaela stops trying to find any kind of rhythm, just rolls her hips in time with the frantic thudding of her heart, chasing that sweet dizzying ache. Laurel’s hand tightens on her ass, then gives it a little tap, more encouragement than anything, but it sends what feels like a spark of lightning straight to Michaela’s core.
“Please,” she half-sobs, and she doesn’t know what she’s begging for, but she gets it. She rolls her hips down and comes with a sharp cry, peaking and plateauing, the pleasure coming in steady, breathless waves. Michaela covers her eyes and gasps out her orgasm while Laurel pulls back, stroking her thighs and whispering soft words. When she arches her back and moves away, Laurel’s thigh is right there chasing after her, and she rubs out the most intense orgasm she’s had since she discovered that she could have them.
Everything goes a little bright and fuzzy.
She’s weak when she comes back to herself, absolutely boneless. She lets Laurel help her off, and then rolls onto her back, breathing deeply. Her legs and thighs and pelvis are still tingling; they feel like they’ll be that way for hours yet. Michaela can’t bear to touch herself or have anything else touch her, so she pushes as many sheets away as she can, and lies there staring at the ceiling, fighting a losing race to catch her breath.
Shuffling sounds reach her ears. She looks across to see that Laurel is now flat on her back too, completely naked after having shrugged out of the shirt. Her skin is still prettily flushed.
Michaela turns away. Now comes the awkward part. Laurel will lie there for a while, then get up, gather up her clothes and slip them on, then let herself out after a two word goodbye. They won’t see or talk to each other outside of Annalise’s house until the next time they text one another to hook up. They’re using each other. This is mutually beneficial. They both know that.
She reaches across to her nightstand for a hair tie, and pulls her hair up into a topknot. The clothes gathering part might take longer than usual; Laurel will have to reassemble her bra, and her jeans are nowhere in sight. But it shouldn’t take too long to find. Michaela keeps her room pristine, free from schoolwork and legal work and all the drama, so that she actually has a better chance of getting a good night’s sleep whenever she crashes. Her books and laptop are all out in the living room. She’ll have to go out there later tonight, to catch up on Torts, finish that essay for Professor Levinthal, and study for Annalise’s next quiz.
It’s the last thing she wants to do, she realises. She’s going to, because it’s the only way she’ll keep her grades up and maintain any sense of normalcy in her life, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to be alone in this apartment surrounded by books and theories and crushing stillness.
Across from her, Laurel sighs. Michaela wonders idly how come she hasn’t gotten up yet. The last thing she’s expecting her to do is speak, and so of course, that’s exactly what she does.
“When are we going to do it, Michaela?” The words are soft. Michaela raises a brow, confused.
“Do what?”
“You know.” Laurel runs a hand through her hair. “Actually sit down and talk for once.”
Of course. Just the conversation she didn’t want to have. Michaela blows her bangs out of her face.
“Talk? Talk about what, Laurel?” Her eyes are still levelled ceiling-ward. “The fact that we’re all bad people? The fact that we’re always one slip-up away from twenty-five to life? The fact that my last three sexual encounters before you have been with a spy, a serial killer, and the human equivalent of the grinning poop emoji?” She’s aware that her voice has taken a turn towards the peevish. But she doesn’t try to take any of it back. “You want to talk about that stuff?”
Laurel sighs again, and even though she’s still a few inches away yet, Michaela can feel her shrug. Already, it’s less of a response than she’d expected.
“Sure. That stuff, other stuff. This.” She waves a hand between them. “Anything.”
“Why should we?”
“Why shouldn’t we?”
And that… On another night, maybe, Michaela might not notice the strain in Laurel’s voice, the picked-apart quality like a rope hanging on to a cliff’s edge by a few loose threads. But tonight, she does.
Her eyes slide across, catching Laurel in her periphery. She’s staring at the ceiling with an arm behind her head; she looks like she’d be smoking, if that were a vice that she indulged. Michaela watches her, and thinks about Frank’s sudden disappearing act, about Wes’ weirder than usual behaviour, about those few days where she’d been too wrapped up in... everything to really notice that Laurel was AWOL. Whether she was in the room or not.
At some point, she’d stopped looking at Laurel from the corner of her eye, and turned to face her properly. Now she’s lying on her side, looking at a girl that she would have sworn, a year ago, to have nothing in common with.
She looks kind of sad.
“Are you.” Michaela stops herself when she realises she’s about to repeat Laurel’s platitude of earlier that evening, but then she decides, fuck it. “Are you okay?”
Laurel laughs. Post-sex satisfaction is still curling around the edges of her voice, but she sounds wistful, and tired.
“Yeah. I mean, no, obviously, but like. Yeah, I guess.”
A contradictory statement to say the least, but the thing is, Michaela knows exactly what she means.
“Same,” she says after a moment. Laurel hums, and they go silent.
It’s probably time, Michaela thinks resignedly, to admit that things have changed. Without her consent and without her quite noticing it, but they’ve changed all the same. They’re not the same people they were a year ago, a few months ago. They’re not even the same people they were last week. It’s bizarre to think about it. When did Laurel become the kind of person to stop and say ‘you're beautiful’ while they were fucking? When did Michaela become the type to let that render her speechless? When did any of that happen?
They’re in this now. All five of them, of course, but Laurel and Michaela especially. They made sure of that the first time they kissed on Michaela’s couch, and neither of them thought it was a good idea to stop. They’ve been through so much together, more than Michaela would have ever thought herself capable of surviving. And they probably love each other, in the way only accomplices can, even though most days Michaela’s not actually sure that they like each other.
Truth be told, they’ve probably been hurtling towards something like this ever since that cold night on the stair. Laurel had been in trouble, and Michaela had acted without thinking. And if they've come this far… maybe she can give way. Just a little.
“Fine,” Michaela says, arms folded under her boobs. Just that one word makes her feel a tiny bit lighter.
The bedsheets rustle as Laurel turns.“Hm?”
“Let’s do it. Maybe we can… go for coffee or something tomorrow.” Michaela glances over to see Laurel’s reaction; her face is a careful mask with no real expression. “Or whenever you want. A lot of shit’s gone down recently. Maybe it would be kinda nice to get it out there or whatever.”
She trails off before she can start to babble. Laurel is silent for so long that Michaela thinks for a minute that she doesn’t plan to reply.
“Wow,” she says finally.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” Laurel is smiling, a faint little thing that just touches her eyes. “I guess I really wasn’t expecting you to agree. And so nicely, too. Quick, say something mean to save face.”
Michaela rolls her eyes with more fondness than she’d like to admit. “Shut up.”
“Shut up!” Laurel mocks gently, and Michaela knows that damn tone, so she’s prepared when Laurel reaches across with long fingers to tickle her. Prepared, but she gets caught anyway, and spends a few seconds fighting her off and trying not to giggle.
Eventually, Laurel pulls away, her laughter subsiding into a little grin. Her arm is still outstretched, and a couple of Michaela’s fingers are resting in her palm, as if by accident.
“And hey… thanks,” Laurel says. “For agreeing.”
Michaela shrugs. “Yeah, well. It isn’t entirely selfless of me.”
That's the closest she'll come to admitting that maybe talking isn’t the worst idea, and Laurel seems to know it. She takes Michaela’s hand in her own properly, runs her thumb across her knuckles, darker than the rest of her hand. Michaela watches her, then glances up to let their eyes meet.
“Don’t say anything sappy again,” she warns.
“I won’t,” Laurel promises with a chuckle, and tugs Michaela towards her.
Little spoon is Michaela’s default, and her favourite anyway, so she gets comfortable with her butt tucked up against Laurel’s pelvis. Laurel’s arm is draped over her waist; casual, and not cloying at all. Her breath is warm by Michaela’s neck, but not unpleasantly so. She isn’t making any moves to leave, and Michaela is willing to admit (to herself at least) that she doesn’t want her to. Not yet, anyway. It’s when she’s alone that it all comes rushing back, everything that she doesn’t think about; Sam, Sinclair, goddamned Caleb…
She closes her eyes against the thought.
For now, this is good. Laurel places a chaste kiss on her neck, and it’s the first time Michaela can remember Laurel kissing her while they aren’t in the middle of sex, or intending to have sex. It’s nice. They lie together; close, warm, at ease. Quiet.
There’ll be time for words later.
*
Day after next, Michaela meets Laurel at a sleepy uptown café.
It’s a lonely place, no businesses or banks nearby. Laurel gets them a table outside at Michaela’s request, where sound won’t echo and there’ll be no cameras. Not that they have plans to do or say anything incriminating, but this is the kind of stuff that she thinks about now. Comes with the life.
Besides, it’s a beautiful day out.
She arrives a few minutes after Laurel, and slips her phone into her purse. Laurel’s wearing a red coat that’s almost the exact shade of her lipstick. She looks pretty.
“Hey,” she says as Michaela slides in opposite her.
“Hi,” Michaela replies. There’s a mug of steaming cocoa waiting on the table, and she pulls it towards her gratefully. The chill in her fingers is chased away almost immediately. This feels… good. Natural.
Laurel sips from her own mug.
“Are… are you doing okay?” she asks.
Michaela doesn’t fight the smile that twitches her lips.
“Oh, you know. Could be better, could be worse. But all things considered…” Under the table, she nudges Laurel’s foot with hers, and Laurel has a little grin of her own ready to meet her. “I’m doing pretty okay.”