"What is your favorite color, Tegan Rain?"
Dropping long, thin noodles into the pot of bubbling hot water, Tegan sighed. "Black."
"Regretfully, black is not a color. You have to choose again." Sara replied much to Tegan's
aggravation.
"I don't know," Tegan shrugged carelessly and threw out, "Green. I guess."
"I myself quite enjoy peridot." Sara informed her as if Tegan had cared to ask.
Turning away from the steaming pot, Tegan turned and raised a deadpanned brow at Sara's
indulgent face. She waited for the punchline of a joke, but Sara simply cocked her head curiously at
Tegan's stare. "That's a color?"
"It's a shade of green found in gems." Sara responded slowly and meticulously, as if speaking to a
small child. "You really must tell me about this barn you were raised in one day, Tegan Rain."
Turning back to the stove, Tegan rolled her eyes. "Don't you have, like, a tiara to go try on or
something?"
She was begging Sara as politely as possible to leave her the fuck alone. She didn't know why Sara
was suddenly so interested in her life, but she wasn't entirely excited to divulge any information to
her. She just wanted to be alone with her cooking, letting her mind drift and not think about her
urges for Sara. Which proved very hard when Sara was suddenly attached to her side like an excited,
questioning child.
"Honestly, me? A tiara?" Sara scoffed. "I once knew a woman who liked to wear tiaras, but she only
wore them in bed. She had quite a few men 'friends' and, according to the grapevine, was quite the
pillow queen. Pun fully and completely intended."
Tegan quirked a brow at the soft almost laugh in Sara's voice as she chopped the crisp, green
vegetables with a frown of concentration.
"You seem very far from a pillow queen." Sara added and Tegan almost chocked on her saliva. "Have
you… slept with a man before?"
Stunned, Tegan blinked rapidly as she asked in awe, "Sara, are you attempting to gossip with me?"
"Perhaps conversations work differently from wherever it is you come from. I was asking a question,
and in turn, you answer it." Sara lips stretched, curling over her upper line of teeth. "It's called
socializing. So, men?"
"That's an empty topic, Sara. There's literally nothing to talk about." Tegan admitted with an
annoyed sigh. "If you want to talk about sex lives involving men, just tell me about your own-" Tegan
paused and shook her head to herself. "-I guess."
Sara was silent for a long moment and Tegan turned to her with an indulgent shrug, "Well?"
"Oh, I was merely executing the fact that the topic of sex with men is also empty for me." Sara
smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles from her top.
Regretfully intrigued, Tegan turned away from the stove to face Sara fully. "You've never had sex?"
Sara gave a trilling laugh, soft and feminine in a way that roared fire in Tegan's gut. "Oh, I never said
that." she replied secretively, looking coyly through her lashes at Tegan.
A lump lodged into Tegan's windpipe, edging towards a gasp that she held back with all her might.
The implications were strong in Sara's words, the message of silent admission brimming behind thick
lashes and tugging at smirking lips. "Are you… Sara, are you saying that you've slept with women?"
"What I'm saying is a handful of women have slept with me." Sara glanced towards the bubbling pot
of water and softening noodles behind Tegan's shoulder before looking back into Tegan's wide eyes.
"With the status my family has and the people we associate with… well, generally the women who
come about are on a strict line of futures involving husbands and children. However, they find me
alluring and allow me to sneak them off during dinner parties to have very… tasteless intercourse in
a closet." Sara pursed her lips for a moment. "They allow me to touch them, yet shy away when it's
their turn to touch me. I've come to the conclusion that these women genuinely believe that
touching a woman will make them less heterosexual than having a woman touch them for whatever
backwards reason they've concocted."
"So, wait," Tegan rubbed her forehead at this news, utterly stupefied. She tried to wrap her head
around that information, while simultaneously avoiding the fantasy of Sara's hand up a tall blonde's
skirt in a dark closet, her hair messy from yanking fingers and lips red and wet from harsh kisses. Just
the mere flash of an image of Sara's hips undulating to aid her thrusts inside a woman, shushing her
whenever she became too loud, made heat stir in Tegan's blood. "Are you… are you saying you're
not straight?"
"I-" Sara faltered, brows knitting together. "I may not be very present in the, uh, gay life style, but I
assumed someone who is as clearly homosexual as you are would be able to pick up the hints of
another one living right across the hall."
"Well, if you're gay, why aren't you present in the gay life style?" Tegan cocked her head, genuinely
curious, but Sara simply blinked in response. Sighing, Tegan asked the other question loitering in her
mind, "And how do you know I'm 'clearly homosexual'?"
"Oh, isn't it obvious?" Sara asked rhetorically. "At first, I assumed it because of your hair and
clothes-" Tegan rolled her eyes at the stereotype. "-and later the simple aura you give out might as
well scream 'I'm not interested in men'. And honestly, Tegan Rain, do I really present myself in a way
that is anything remotely heterosexual?"
Tegan pursed her lips. "I assumed-"
"I know what you assumed. I've heard it from every woman I've ever had a quick rendezvous with-
that shock that I don't enjoy the company of men. My family background warps the perception of
everyone I come across no matter how obviously homosexual I believe I come across as." Sara
watched as Tegan turned to the cutting board of mushroom, crushing it with the blunt of one knife
and peeking over her shoulder as Sara huffed softly, "It's rather frustrating."
"You said many women have slept with you. But has anyone ever… you know, made you…" Tegan
trailed off and turned back to the mushroom, chopping it in quick and expert motions. Heat built up
in her cheeks as she tried to find the most professional way to phrase her question. "You know…
been, uh, intimate with you?"
"One woman." Sara nodded the affirmative. "Her name was Penelope and I was seventeen. I
suppose you could call our short time together a relationship. She was lovely and very beautiful. She
enjoyed touching me as much as I her, and was quite funny."
Tegan dropped chopped mushroom into another boiling pot of sauce. "What happened with her?"
"Oh." The tone of Sara's voice was even quieter than usual and Tegan turned around, half expecting
to see the emotional quiver of bad memories in her lip, but Sara looked as unmoved as always. "One
unfortunate day we became rather reckless and mother caught us in a rather heated lip lock. She
was absolutely horrified and immediately informed Penelope's mother of what she had seen. They
moved to Italy only three weeks later and I never heard from her again."
Real sympathy for the other woman wound around Tegan's heart in an empathetic squeeze. Though
her own mother hadn't been exactly thrilled at Tegan's own sexuality – she went on for years and
years after pulling the truth from Tegan's lips about the cruel society they lived in and her worry for
how others would treat her only child – she hadn't been anything but supportive. She could only
imagine the horror Sara had felt when her mother walked in. Assuming Sara felt anything.
"Oh, man." she grunted with as much sympathy as she allowed. "That's rough."
"It's been three years," One of Sara's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "It's water under the bridge."
Tegan rolled her eyes in annoyance. She didn't understand how Sara could let go of any resentment
or hurt feelings after her mother got her girlfriend sent away. Thirty years would pass and Tegan
would still stab it into every conversation with her mother if it were her.
They had found common ground in being gay, and even there they were vastly different. Where
Tegan was 'obviously gay' and wore her pride on her sleeve, Sara allowed people to assume she was
heterosexual until she wanted them to know otherwise. While Tegan laid girlfriends of various time
lengths on beds after days of planning and nervously sweaty palms, with the lights dimmed and soft
music playing, Sara was having dark and quick fucks in a coat closet with women she had only met
that night. Where Tegan was still bitter about a few horrible breakups and had spent those times in
tearful woe, Sara shrugged off the end with a dismissive wave of her hand.
She was unsurprised, however. They were never going to get along, not even in the topic of sexuality,
which Tegan had many experiences with and knew how closely it could bring people together. They
were too different of people.
"I quite like that you seem interested." The short heel of Sara's oxfords clapped against the floor as
her presence grew nearer. Tegan's arm hovered in the air where she was reaching for a spice, her
heart pausing. Sara's body heat lingered against her back as her breath grazed her neck. Her skin
tightened in heightened awareness, prickling with desire as pressure built between her legs while
Sara peeked into the pots behind her shoulder. "It's as if you care even the slightest." Her words
rolled over Tegan's neck in a heated puff of air and for one horrifying moment, Tegan contemplated
turning around and capturing those fucking cockily smirking lips in a hard kiss.
Throwing that damaging idea away, Tegan hastily gripped her spice and backed away from Sara's
body on clumsy feet, her shoes squeaking against the floor as she fell against the opposite cabinet.
"Well, I- uh…" She shook herself and tried to regain composure as Sara perked a brow. "I- you know,
don't."
Sara's lips hid in the depths of the mouth Tegan wanted to explore every inch of as she dropped her
eyes to the floor. "Ah." she muttered with a slow nod. "So, how many women have you slept with?"
Tegan's head felt too small for the quick shifts in conversation, her brain running to catch up with
the changes in topic that happened so abruptly with Sara. "That's private." she replied stiffly, as her
mind retrieved images of the beautiful faces she had been lucky enough to bed. There were only an
embarrassing few in her past as she had always been one to to take sex and relationships very
seriously, which Sara was fucking up without even knowing it.
Walking around Sara to reach the stove and tapping a light amount of spice into her sauce, Tegan
grumbled with renewed annoyance brought on by her thoughts, "You should go do something and
leave me alone. Surely you have more interesting things to do than talk to your cook at early noon.
I'm really busy and you're distracting me."
The room was silent after that and she waited to hear the retreating steps or snarky comment. But
the longer she stirred her sauce, the further the silence grew and she looked over her shoulder.
Sara was gone. The room was empty and the door was firmly shut despite Tegan not hearing it close.
Tegan turned back to the stove and stared in confusion down at the bubbles in her reddening sauce
before shaking her head and shrugging to herself. "Weird."