Contest entry for Spanking the Monkey! For additional contest entries, please visit: .net/~spankthemonkey4u

Title: Needed Touch

Name: mamdi

Pairing: ?/Mike…sort of. You'll have to guess, but it's not who you think it is.

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or any of the characters. Even their gay alter-egos probably technically belong to Stephenie Meyer.

It's been three weeks since I broke up with Mike and nearly three days since I've seen or spoken with another soul, aside from Amun at the deli on Avenue B, who supplies me with beer, diet coke, and nasty California rolls. Mike and I had planned to take advantage of the holiday on Monday with a trip to the shore for four days. I should've worked on Friday, but I didn't want to have to answer questions when I'd already asked to have the time off.

It's too early Monday morning on the Fourth. The sliver of sky I can see when I wake is pale and suggests it's not yet 6 am. I'm in the same tank top and boxer briefs I've been wearing around the apartment for weeks and yet I'm sweating against the canvas of the futon. The sheet under me came loose in the night and is balled up in the corner.

The first thing I feel when I become conscious of my body is nauseous and…aroused. Not in a good way. It's as though the nausea in the pit of my stomach has sunk so low that it's brushing against my clit, making me hard and needy, and sick. I must be ovulating, but I'm not sure I've ever felt quite like this before. It's a physical sensation but it overwhelms me with sadness.

I haven't touched myself in a long time. I'm scared to. I'm scared to want something. And I've been dead inside so it hasn't been difficult to abstain. Mike and I hadn't had anything other than halfhearted sex for the past six months. I don't miss it.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about my sex life with Mike. I remember being attracted to him when we first met in high school. And we'd grown close friends by the time we finally hooked up after college. But something changed for me when we got physically involved. If I'm honest about it, the change was almost immediate. I'm ashamed by that. Mike is attractive. He was attracted to me. I cared about him. I even came, sometimes. But I didn't enjoy it.

I wish I understood why. Something about his pleasure felt alienating to me. Instead of connecting when he was in me, instead of getting closer to him, I felt further away. And I was alone in my own physical pleasure, too. I hated the sex. Not what it made me feel physically, but what it did to me emotionally. It made me lonely.

I hadn't admitted that to myself. I was so scared of what it meant that I hid from it. I told myself all manner of lies to keep from examining that fact. Years. I lied for years.

My stomach rolls and my clit throbs and before I know it my hand is between my legs and my middle finger is pressing hard on my clit through my underwear. Instead of easing the need, my finger encourages it and I shove my hand into the briefs to get some direct contact. I run my fingers and palm over my pubic hairs and across my clit and down further, until my middle finger is pressed inside of me. I reach up and curl my finger until it's pressing on my g-spot and I writhe against it for a second. The nausea and need is only getting worse.

I'm on my back with my knees bent and in the air. I tug my underwear over my hips and up my legs with my free hand, leaving them around my knees and then circle my clit with my middle and forefingers while the fingers of my other hand are making their way inside me. My clit is dry but I'm wet inside and I easily get three fingers in…four, fighting to quiet the painful arousal that's making me feel empty inside. I reach down to get my dry fingers wet before I return them to my clit to rub, but I'm already raw, as though I've come several times rather than slept chastely as I know I have.

I jerk at the contact with my clit but I have no choice. I keep rubbing at the hard, raw nub and shoving my other hand deep inside against my g-spot, desperate to move this toward some kind of release.

My mind is tumbling over itself in search for some thought other than how awful I feel. There are no fantasies attached to this desire. There is no Mike, no other, no beautiful face. There's no scenario. My thoughts are the sad berating of myself for what I feel and all the ways I've failed to feel.

I rub and gyrate around my hand for long minutes. My hands are tiring. Fifteen minutes? Twenty minutes? Longer? How much longer? Nothing stems the arousal and nothing moves it forward. I speed up, slow down. The nausea increases. The emptiness increases. I feel tears but I can't stop.

Finally I feel the nerves around my clit begin to warm and something only remotely resembling pleasure begin to build in my gut. It's small – weak compared to the intensity of my arousal, but I know I'm going to come. I concentrate on moving in big circles around my clit and massaging my g-spot inside. I concentrate on the sensations and stilling my mind.

I'm biting my bottom lip hard. I'm covered in sweat, my hair matted against my forehead and the back of my neck. I begin to lift my hips involuntarily and groan as the orgasm builds. "Fuck, fuck," I say quietly to the ceiling.

My finger slips and rubs over the center of my clit and it burns as though there's a cut there. I'm on the brink of the orgasm but the pain brings me back from it. The arousal is still there but the building pleasure eases. "Fuck!"

I slow my movements and breath deeply, desperately wanting to abandon this. Desperately wanting to get up and walk away from myself. I am alone not because I don't want to be around other people. I'm alone because I can't stand my own company. I want to leave me.

I can't leave though. And my arousal is insistent. It's connected to the nausea and the emptiness and my overwhelming instinct is to keep battering at it. I use my labia to cover my clit and rub through the skin, trying to ease the sting of my fingers against my clit. I turn my head to the side and press my chin into my shoulder blade. I can feel sweat on my eyelids, above my lip, running from my temples. The canvas under me is wet.

Finally, I feel a low volume pleasure start to build again. I try to take it slow but my fingers are slipping from how wet I am, and how tired I am. I have almost my entire hand inside myself, the only thing easing the emptiness. My hands and forearm are cramping but I'm too afraid to stop and rest. I rub and move and contract and release my internal muscles around my hand in quick pulses and each time I release I feel a building of pleasure. It rises and it's not enough. It rises and it's incomplete. I get closer and still feel the impossibility of it.

"Ahhhh, fuck!" I jerk against my hands and my hips rise and fall hard, my teeth buried in my lip. I come quickly. It's a shallow orgasm, like I've climbed and climbed to find I've crested an anthill. It's completely unsatisfactory but I feel some relief and roll over onto my stomach with my hands still shoved inside me and around me.

The arousal persists. I feel it even through the orgasm. My clit, hard and urgent and throbbing at the slightest friction. I gyrate against the futon and my hands, trying to erase it. But it's there. Unmistakable. I've come and the arousal hasn't eased at all.

Tears are mixed with the sweat and I pull my hands up, scrubbing my face with them as I cry lightly. I smell the warmth and musk of my sex and the sweat between my legs. I'm painfully aware of my clit against the canvas of the futon, screaming at me to be touched.

It's four in the afternoon and I'm a prisoner to this arousal that won't ease. I beat at it for hours. I got dressed and tried to walk away from it but the friction of my underwear against my clit chased me back to the futon and endless, fruitless masturbation. I tried a skirt with no underwear but the slightest brush of my thighs made me throb and opened up that pit of sadness in my belly. I left the apartment for twenty minutes, hoping to distract myself with the city but I am locked inside myself. Street noises were muffled. Some part of my mind registered enough to navigate the sidewalks but I was trained on the point between my legs where longing remained. I couldn't shake it and before I'd gotten far I had turned and jogged home. I had my hands down the front of my skirt before I'd made it to the futon.

For the past hour I've been crying. I'm on my back with my hands pinned underneath my lower back. My clit is begging, but I realize there's nothing I can do to ease this. Mercifully, I feel myself growing tired and I focus on shutting down.

I wake to my cell ringing. I hear it from the foyer and let it ring into voicemail. I look up at the cracks in the plaster above me and then down at my disheveled body. I haven't eaten. I don't know what time it is, but the sky is pale again so it must be getting close to eight o'clock. I feel a dull ache between my legs. The arousal is quieter. It's still there - less urgent, like a lightly slumbering beast. As soon as it registers I launch myself off the futon. I won't be trapped by it again.

I reluctantly make my way to the phone and check my voicemail.

"Hey, kiddo. It's Charlie. Wondering what you're doing tonight. Some of us from the Center are heading over to catch the fireworks in the East River and then maybe going out. Call me if you wanna join us."

I'm unfit for the world. Still, I need to get some air and I'll likely feel sorry for myself if I end up listening to the boom of fireworks from the interior of this apartment. I text Charlie that I'll be down in a few and strip on my way to a two-minute shower. The water feels good and helps to lift some of the tension from my body. Miraculously, sickeningly, I think my clit is still hard. I give a quick scrub to my body, careful not to linger there, and dry off and dress at a speed designed to make contemplation of my physical state impossible.

In fifteen minutes I'm headed to the East River Park where Charlie has already saved me a spot against the railing. I spot him with his hand on his boyfriend's shoulder, whispering in his ear as he points toward the barge in the river where the fireworks will begin. It's still in the 80's and humid, but like most men in New York, and certainly all gay men, he wouldn't be caught dead wearing shorts. He's in jeans and leather shoes. I'm sweating in my tiny skirt and tank top. I'd have to be hospitalized dressed like that. I see no signs of sweat on his back.

"Hey," I say quietly as I move up next to him, waiting for him to turn. I'm not very good at reaching out and touching people. I'm not sure why. Most people leave me physical space on instinct, but Charlie isn't most people. As soon as he hears my voice he spins and pulls me into a comfortable hug.

"Hey, kiddo! I'm so glad you made it." My sandals have a substantial heel so I can see over his shoulder. Harry is giving me a toothy smile and a small float wave.

"Thanks for inviting me," I say, as I finally pull back and return Harry's wave.

"I was afraid you might be moping around this weekend." For some reason I don't mind it when Charlie sounds paternal.

"You know me too well," I smile, hoping not to blush at the memory of the day I've had. In the heat, away from my apartment and in the presence of friends, it seems all traces of both nausea and arousal have left me. It's a relief, even if tinged with shame.

All of a sudden the air whistles and cracks, and the first trail of white fire blazes from the barge into the black sky. It pops and curls of sparks fall in arcs from its center like petals. Tiny wisps of smoke are left in its wake as the barge begins to shoot one after another of the rockets high above the river. The crowd transforms into a wall of dark silhouettes, chins in the air, framed by light and smoke. Spontaneous, joyful cheers go up when the bombs start. The deep, reverberating booms rattle the body and lift the mind from wherever it rests. I feel the joy despite myself. Despite the thought that Bella planted many years ago when she asked if I worried about frightened deer during one of Port Angeles's meager Fourth of July displays. Her kindness makes me smile even as I enjoy the warring sky.

Halfway through the display, Charlie slings an arm around me and holds me by his side. Harry leans around him and smiles at me, welcoming me into their cozy moment. I feel out of place, but not uncomfortably so. I didn't realize how badly I needed physical contact until I feel it loosening something in my shoulders. All of the needy tension of the past day escapes when I exhale and I'm human again. Sad, but closer to sane.

A/N Kind of a downer, I know. Sorry about that. In my mind it's part of a much longer story. However, right now, it's just, well...this. The reason for the mystery around the character is that she is not who you think she is, and assuming I ever write the longer fic, I want it to be a surprise. She is an OOC and completely AU version of one of our favorite Twilight characters, though, I promise.