Disclaimer: I don't own the Fosters.
I saw a comic once where a kid walks into a room wearing a strap-on like a rhino/unicorn and the mom and all her friends see and are horrified. It was pretty funny and provided the initial inspiration for this story... and then it kinda grew from there.
I love hearing people's reactions, so feel free to review/favorite or say hi on tumblr!
Stef browsed the shelves with curiosity. For weeks she had slowly hedged around the idea of coming here and only when Lena offered to come with her had she finally worked up the courage to step through the rainbow-draped doors. She'd been in sex shops before – well, she'd been in seedy stores that had a shelf or two of lube, condoms, porn and vibrators tucked away in the back. But she had never been in a place like this, that explicitly catered to LGBTQ people. Most of the toys were familiar – things she'd seen marketed to straight couples, if not toys she had used herself – but there were some things that were obviously designed for two partners with vaginas. Those were the objects that drew her attention.
Lena hovered nearby as Stef wandered through the store, far enough away to give her privacy to explore, but close enough to see if anything caught her eye.
Stef picked up a feeldoe on display and turned it over in her hand. "Have you used one of these before?" she asked her girlfriend.
Lena nodded. "They're not quite my thing," she replied. "I'm generally not big on penetration. And a harness works better." Stef cocked her head and put the feeldoe back on the shelf. "That doesn't mean we can't try it, though, if you want," Lena added.
Stef shook her head and moved down the shelf. "This is the one you have, right?" Her fingers just barely brushed against a sleek silver harness. She had seen it several times in Lena's bedroom, but they had never used it. "So..." Her eyes drifted from the harness to the rows of dildos. "You have one of these too?"
"Not anymore," Lena said, shaking her head. "I wore one with Gretchen. But you have to boil silicone to really sterilize it, so anything that couldn't be submerged got thrown out when we broke up."
Stef hadn't considered that. "I suppose sex toys are a good exception to recycling." She paused, "Did you like wearing one? Would you want to get another? Since you already have the harness..."
Lena hesitated.
She did like her strap-on. She liked the feel of the harness on her hips, the weight pressed against her skin, and the thrum of the vibrator tucked into a pouch next to her clit. She loved the way it moved with her hips and the pleasure she could give her partner while wearing it.
But none of her previous partners had a history of dating people with penises. A knot formed in Lena's stomach. What if they got one and Stef realized that the brightly colored silicone was nothing but a poor-woman's stand-in for what she had already had with Mike?
Lena felt Stef watching her, still waiting for an answer. "Sure, let's get one," she agreed.
"Which?" There were dozens of options laid before them and Stef turned to Lena for a decision.
Lena scanned the choices. "What do you like?" she asked.
Stef shrugged. "One of the vibrating ones would be fun." She didn't make any move to pick one out, instead shoving her hands in her pockets while she continued to scan the shelves with wide-eyed curiosity.
Lena stood beside her. A vibrating dildo narrowed their choices, but not by much. She opened her mouth to ask Stef what size she wanted. The question hovered on the tip of her tongue... and died there, silenced by the fear that if she asked, the answer would be a rough description of Mike's or another former partner's penis. So instead, Lena reached for a box and looked to Stef for her input. "How about this?"
"That is going to take a lot of foreplay to make that work, love," Stef snorted in amusement. "Here I thought 'bigger is better' was just a guy thing."
Lena snatched her hand back. Her cheeks burned. "Why don't you pick one you like," she suggested.
Stef turned, her attention shifting from the shelves of sex toys to focus solely on her girlfriend. Lena's expression remained neutral, but her stiff posture face revealed her discomfort. "What's wrong, Lena?"
"Nothing," Lena deflected. "But really, I'm just going to be the one wearing it, so you should find the one that will feel best for you."
"Alright, but you are upset?" Stef's voice rose on the last word.
"I'm fine," Lena insisted. "You pick something out, I'm going to go look at the vibrators."
"Okay." Stef didn't sound certain. She stepped back from the shelf and turned to go explore another corner of the store.
When they were ready to leave - after Stef had examined literally everything in the store - they headed to the check-out counter together and started to divide up who was paying for what. One object was conspicuously absent from their pile.
Lena took a deep breath. "You didn't want to get a dildo?" she asked.
Stef shook her head, her eyes firmly fixed on the countertop. The sales clerk continued scanning their purchases.
"Stef," Lena said, "I'm sorry. I was just… I want us to have one if that's something you want."
"No," Stef said firmly, raising her eyes and turning toward Lena. "You obviously don't want one and you shouldn't do something just because I want to."
"Your total is on the screen," the sales clerk said. They didn't seem at all disconcerted by the conversation. Lena imagined they saw quite a few interesting interactions between people shopping for sex toys together.
Stef swiped her card. "Thanks," she said, as the clerk passed her her bag. "I'll be out by the car." She left Lena alone at the counter to pay for her purchases.
When Lena walked out to the parking lot a few minutes later, she spotted Stef leaning against the side of her volvo. "Stef?"
Stef straightened as Lena approached. "Ready to go?" she asked, a false cheerfulness in her tone. With anybody else she might have gotten away with it, but Lena saw that she was close to tears, if she hadn't been crying already.
Guilt sunk like a rock to the pit of Lena's stomach. "Stef-"
"I've got to go by Mike's to pick up Brandon in less than an hour," Stef cut her off. "Let's just go."
The car ride back to Lena's apartment passed in silence. Only as Lena was turning into her complex did Stef finally speak, her voice low and soft. "I'm allowed to be a lesbian and still like penetrative sex." She meant it to be a statement, but a layer of uncertainty ran through her voice.
"Of course you are," Lena agreed. She pulled into an open parking space and threw the car into park so she could face her girlfriend. "I'm sorry, Stef, this was-"
"You liked to wear a strap-on with Gretchen, but not with me?" Stef's jaw clenched as she stared straight forward out the window. "Because what - I'm not a gold-star lesbian so maybe I'm still 'just passing through'?"
"No," Lena burst. One of her friends had brought a new girlfriend out with them for drinks a few weeks before and she made a series of offhand remarks about gold-star lesbians. Lena still seethed over it, mostly because she could see how Stef grew quiet and withdrawn over the course of the conversation. Obviously the comments had stuck with Stef as well.
Lena twisted her body in the driver's seat and took Stef's hand in both of hers. Stef didn't pull away, but she didn't meet Lena's eyes either. "No, Stef, this was not about you somehow not being lesbian enough. This was me." She stumbled over over the words and pressed on. "When we were standing there looking at the strap-ons, I felt... maybe a bit insecure? Not that I thought you wanted to go back to men, but that I wouldn't be as good at it as... that you wouldn't enjoy it as much. You have more experience with penetrative sex than I do - and that doesn't make you any less of a lesbian, it just means that…" she trailed off, unsure of where to go.
Stef tilted her head as she finally looked at Lena. "You were, what? Afraid you wouldn't measure up?
Lena blushed as she remembered the dildo she'd picked up in the store. "So to speak."
Stef's lips twitched up into a tentative smile. "You don't have to worry about that," she said. "You don't have to measure up to Mike or anyone else. I might like penetration sometimes, but I don't want sex with a man, Lena, I want sex with you."