Mercy As A Default Position
She can taste on Sally's lips all the men she's gone through -- Dana's men -- and still feel that absence of emotions and physical turmoil she's been through with every one of them. And she whispers shh, Sally, it'll all be okay, and Sally cries into her chest because she's never known what to do with her awkward body, smeared with sex and tinted with a tinge of glamour, and the intensity of the moment. Like a painting, Dana thinks, and draws her for another kiss to show she isn't mad.
Always forgiving the undeserved; is why she got engaged to Gordon in the first place and teenage-crushed on Casey for the better part of her thirty-three years. And Sally throws her long limbs around Dana's shoulders and around Dana's waist; and she can't think that the feeling won't still be there the next day.
(Sally's touch leaves her mind unable of coherent thought and her body semi-liquefied. She moans the name over and over again and when it's over there's just the heat that spills out of her body leaving a comfortable chill, and the heavy scent of sex between Sally's satin sheets.)
Sallysallysally.
Dana sleeps on her side; her tiny body spooned against the long one. She traces circles and stars on Sally's back until one of them is unconscious, though she can't tell which one. The next thing she remembers is that morning comes before it's due and they're back to the cat and mouse routine Sally seems to get off on.
And more days like this, and more nights, and she starts forgetting what her own apartment looks like and smells like; it occurs to her that maybe it doesn't matter, but she can't decide. She leaves shirts at Sally's, and underwear, sometimes on purpose but usually because it's one of those things that happen, and soon she has her own toothbrush there and she feels like a couple.
(She refuses to accept it when one of her bras is simply not to be found, because she's fallen in love with being one half of two, and because damn it, this one has to work out; she needs it to. She'll forgive and forget if that's what it takes to make the relationship last.)
She'll forgive and forget. She'll admire Sally's curves. She'll moan when it's needed. She'll bend her wishes to fit her lover's, because it's the kind of person she is, is what she tells Sally in a non- convincing voice. As she yells as her later, trying her hardest not to throw punches but only a nice little fit, she got sick of being that person she doesn't really want to be when her toothbrush started tasting differently.
Because that's just disgusting.