Slotitude
Grating snores shook Bae from her sleep. It was Juice, still locked up in the cell across from hers. At least that's what she thought woke her, until the quiet ticking of nails against metal sounded from the corner of her cell. It was Allie. Quietly, under the strained breathes of their newest slotmate, Bae could hear Allie whisper her name between lightly scraping her nails across the small vent between their isolation rooms. She was not surprised that the younger woman hadn't just let it go and gone to sleep. Bae had made it obvious, she hoped, that Juice being there meant that they had to stop doing whatever it was they were doing…bonding?
"I know you're not sleep," Allie whispered a bit louder.
Bae's eyes immediately shot in the direction she felt Juice slept, strangled for oxygen from the sound of it. Sometimes that meant you were a light sleeper. Sometimes it meant you never woke up.
"You snore too, y'know."
"Liar," Bae said, aloud. It wasn't too loud, but its suddenness made them both go quiet until the sound of more struggled breathing rang out loudly. Bae sighed then, rolling her eyes before getting out of bed and going to kneel over by the vent. Last night she had been able to catch a glimpse of blonde hair on the floor beside it if she turned her head just right –
"How was psych?" She asked, interrupting her own thoughts. With Allie around, she found herself doing that a lot. Stopping her mind from wandering.
A quiet laugh. "Same as usual. Pep talk, lecture, piss test."
"They'll know you aren't using then."
"Doesn't change where they found the gear."
Bae nods even though she can't be seen. Her legs start to burn a bit so she settles down with her back against the wall, making sure to keep track of the snoring that let her know they were safe. "After what Ferguson did, getting you thrown in the slot in front of Kaz for drugs, you gonna take my advice now?"
That moment at breakfast, watching Allie strolling in with a grin on her face when their eyes met had made the new formed scab on her leg itch. Before she realized what she was doing entirely, she'd approached, asking questions about Ferguson, Kaz, why they were helping the former governor. You need to stay away from her. Allie's shrug-off had snapped her out of it, slowed her quickening heart.
"Just say it," Allie said. That tone again, confident and teasing. Like she understood.
She had already said it so many times, but she still said it again. "You need to stay away from Ferguson. All of you."
"You really think there's anything I can do to stop her from trying to get me out of the way now? This visit to the slot was her plan A, who knows what else she's got rolling around in that psychotic mind of hers."
It was true. If Ferguson went so far as to plant gear in Allie's cell, then there's was no way she would stop at a warning. This visit to the slot was only the beginning.
Thoughts of not seeing the blonde again, or finding her dead somewhere in the prison weighed heavily on her. No more of the shared glances as they passed one another, no more whispered conversations, or not so subtle grins; no more grabbing Allie by the arm, or pressing her against shower walls. Her mind started to slip back to that day, lukewarm water running down her back, but the fingers on her thigh pulled at the deep cut there and forced her back into the slot. She gasped at the pain, eyes sliding shut.
"Messing with that cut again?"
Bae jumps. The sound of scuffling let her know the other woman moved closer to the vent. She still didn't turn to look at it. Instead she focused on the sound of Juice snoring, the pain in her thigh, the ceiling.
"First I thought maybe you were one of those weird types that liked to get off with people around without them knowing it. Thought, I can get into that," Allie said, laughing. "But I get the tick….and I got a good look at the cut when you stood over at the bench one day in the showers."
Of course she had. Bae's heart was racing. They had been sharing before, talking about darker times, and better ones too. About Debbie. But Bae felt more exposed now than she had when she was laughing so hard that her gut hurt. It had been so long.
Allie wasn't going to let it drop. "Why were you so freaked when I was giving Boomes tips that day?"
She asks it like it's nothing. Like she hadn't been talking to Boomes about nipples and fingers, and like her and Allie hadn't talked about sex not being Bae's thing. It's not like Bae had said why, and however much the Red Right Hand thought they knew about her life, there were some things they couldn't know. Only Liz knew how much Harry had really taken from her over the years, and Liz didn't truly know all of it.
That night in her cell when Bae had touched herself, the sobs that followed her orgasm had erupted from somewhere deep within her. Somewhere close to where the pleasure that had overtaken her came from, and that had left her as scared as it had left her relieved. She felt like crying now too, as she finally turned her eyes towards the vent. Towards Allie.
Again their hours laughing, sharing, rapping even, came to mind. No matter how much fun she had managed to find, how much comfort and trust she found in a few other women in her block, there had been no one like Allie. From the moment Bae saw her she'd felt s a connection. If the blonde were there in the slot with her in that moment she'd see Bea's struggle, and she'd still ask why. With a playful kindness, she'd wait quietly like she was in that moment on the other side of the wall.
"You know how I told you I married young?" Bae started. Allie said she remembered, so Bae continued after listening to the snoring for a few moments. "My husband, Harry – ex-husband." She can't help but think of Ferguson and the fact that she killed Harry. It was something she couldn't exactly hate the woman for, though it had upset her. She doubted Allie would hold a grudge over his death either. "Wasn't much of the romantic type, go figure. At least, not after a while. We didn't really have sex. Just fucking, like you said. Sometimes after he'd beat me. Or during. Or before."
The pain was always part of it.
"I had a client once," Allie said, stopping Bae's mind from settling too far into the past, and snores still filling her silence. "He'd seemed like an okay guy at first, you know? Sweet talker, bought me nice clothes, food, and drugs. But something just wasn't right with him. He showed me just how true that was one night. Messed me up really bad. I couldn't stand being touched for weeks. Months maybe. Imagine the trouble, being a sex worker." She laughed. "Time's a bit spotty in my head now."
Bae pictures a younger Allie strung out and struggling to make ends meet. It was hard thinking of someone who could be so kind, and so beautiful out in a world that could be darker than Wentworth. Sometimes. But that was how the world worked. Good people get fucked just as hard as bad people do, if not harder.
"What changed?" she asked.
"I met someone. Not a love of my life type but she was good to me. Saw through all my crap. The anger, fear. I met her one night when some creep was harassing me. She kicked his ass, pulled me up by my arm and yelled at me for a solid block before dropping me on the sidewalk. I thought she'd leave me there, but she couldn't."
Bae didn't speak for a while, unsure of whether Allie would continue and go further into the details of her relationship with the woman who couldn't resist protecting her, like Kaz later wouldn't be able to resist, and Bae knows she herself wouldn't once they're out of the slot. How could she, after everything? Cautiously, Bae asked, Where is she now?
"Like I said, not a love of my life type of thing. We're too fucked up for anything to have really worked out, especially after I met Kaz. We're still friends though. She even made sure to get a hold of me after the Hand was busted. I told her about you."
"About me?" Bae huffs, rolling her eyes.
"Yeah," Allie laughs. "By the time the Hand was busted you were all over the news. Mother of daughter who was allegedly killed by Brayden Holt, of the legendary crime family, avenges daughter's death," she said, in a mock news caster voice. "Back then it was mostly Kaz that worshiped you, really rallied us together and hyped us up. I wasn't so sure. It wasn't 'til I saw you here, in Wentworth, that I really felt it."
Allie pauses again and Bae knows it's a way out. If she were to say the word, the conversation would end. But she couldn't say anything. The only thing she could do was angle herself further towards the vent, fingers gripping the fabric covering her thighs.
"I told her about your no drug policy, how you handled Tina. Or, didn't. Which led to that time in the shower…"
The roughness of the towel Bae'd thrown from her body was barely felt as she had tossed it aside, stepping into the stall Allie stood grinning in, and pressing her front tightly against the blonde's back. The water was streaming down her body, hair still dripping. Then Allie was facing her and dropping to the floor, arms spread, round breasts dotted with stiff nipples.
"Fuck." It was her own voice that she heard, her own breath caught up in the memory of that day. She tries to focus on the snores, eyes glancing over at the camera in the corner of the room. If this had happened months ago it would have been Ferguson watching. Looking for weaknesses. That's what she needed. The anxiety and frustrations, her need to protect the women.
"Do you want me to stop?" Allie asked.
Want? Could she have posed that question any differently?
Allie continued, "I should have kept my mouth shut."
"Well that's just not possible though, now is it?" Bae laughed nervously, unsure of how she even managed that. Part of her wants to tell the blonde, no. That she's glad there's yet another thing they were honest with each other about. Both of them were aware of their attraction to the other, and Bae couldn't deny that. Not after their time in the slot together, but apart.
"Then maybe you would have felt it, too."
The shower. She was still on the shower; still inside the lukewarm streams and cold tiles.
Allie cleared her throat. "How much I want you to touch me. To run your long fingers along my side while you rub your nose into the hair that you like so much."
Bae could smell it, that sweetness she got a whiff of while cutting Allie's hair.
"Your nails scratching up my thighs. All of me for you to have….if you want. You do, don't you?"
She reaches for the cut again.
"Bae?"
Squeezes her thigh just above it, feels a bit of the pain there. It's a reminder of what she'd done, who she'd become. Bae Smith: Top Dog. "Yes."
Her hand reaches for the vent and she swears she can feel the tips of a few of her fingers graze Allie's. She wished for more but knows it's the distance, the wall between them, that enables her. And they're back there. Before Ferguson's return, before she beat the crap out of Mr. Jackson. The showers humid, quiet except for the sounds of their breathing being dampened by the weak cascade of water.
She can feel the curve of the woman's back against her chest, can see Allie's mouth hanging open in that trademark way, taunting her, inviting her. The blood of the cut she'd inflicted on the blonde would slide down the wall, ignored, because here the pain didn't matter. It didn't win. The water would never go cold, she'd press her fingers into Allie and the fact that she'd had had no experience with women meant nothing.
The sound of Allie's voice began to float through her mind as if it were her own, until she wasn't sure who was saying what. Whispers of, yes and more, echoing through her mind. It doesn't surprise her when Allie turns to face her to nip and suck on the neck she'd admired, or dives into a kiss so hot that she'd beg for Allie to squeeze the hand that was kneading her breasts past her own, which had returned to just where Bae wanted it to be. She gasps, eyes squeezed shut, letting the forearm of her unoccupied hand rest against the cold tiles, feeling a slight slipping.
Harder.
They both moaned in appreciation, and Bea can feel the short breaths against her ear. Can feel the vibrations of Allie vocalized how good it all felt, and how she'd craved taking those hardened nipples between her lips for weeks. To graze her teeth along Bae's neck, grip her strong shoulders as she came, and Bae feels her everywhere all at once. Feels her in the pulling at her core, until she cries out. The tears are there again, but this time there's no shame or regret. No fear.
"Shhh. It's okay, it's okay," Allie soothes, still breathing heavily and somehow sounding even closer than before. "We'll get out of here, and things will be different."
Bae opened her eyes to the sunlight being blurred by the small window in the room. Allie was right, things were going to be different. It was a new day at Wentworth, and Juice had long stopped snoring.
- End -
It's been forever since I posted anything, and I've felt hesitant about this one for days, but the events in Orlando (along with the words of Ta-nehisi Coates, Virginia Woolf, and H.G. Wells) have once again led me to believe that we all must stand strong during rough times. My mother lives in Orlando, and I could have very well been at that club if I had gone to visit her last week, so I decided to contribute to the community in any way I can. We are all fighting to have our voices heard, to be respected, and understood, and because of the fact that generations have worked hard in order for us to live 'out and proud' we must always encourage more progress, and try to connect with each other in and outside of the community. Whether it's through political action, story telling, volunteering, whatever. Hope you enjoyed the fic, and though I'm sure I'm not doing any justice to the storyline Wentworth writers will give us over the next few weeks, I hope was satisfactory. Cheers.