Disclaimer: I do not own Gunslinger Girls.
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MONEY SHOTS
(A Tale of Sex, Conditioning and Mills & Boon)
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It was late when Triela finally got back to her room. Late is, of course, a subjective term - differentiated by the person upon whom the lateness is based, but, in this case at least, it was probably safe to assume that it was late. The Agency compound was flushed in that sort of lethargic darkness that's less to do with being creepy and more to do with it just being plain knackered.
And knackered was probably the word she would have used - although she wouldn't have admitted it to Hirscher. She was run-ragged, worn-out, drained and, on top of that, there was a rather colourful stain on her overcoat where a Republican mook had decided to charge her instead of putting his hands up, and had instead wound up decorating her clothes.
Normally that would have bothered her, but today...
It was dim in the girl's dorm room.
The window was open, letting in the opalescent shimmering of the full-moon. Those cosmological beams drew themselves along the floor, caressing the table and the cabinet, running across teddy-bears lined atop and the books underneath, and burned fiercely against the white linen of the bunk-bed's covers.
Triela closed the door as quietly as she could and slipped her bag off her shoulders, dumping it silently by the wall. On the top bunk, she could see the outline of the lump that was Claes lying supine and silent beneath the gossamer threads of her quilt.
"Are you awake, Claes?" she hissed.
From the top bunk there was a sudden "oh!" of surprise, a brief few seconds of the quilt flapping about, and Claes' bespectacled face appeared, peeking down surreptitiously from over the top of foot-board.
"No."
That wasn't something to pique her interest, so Triela took off her coat and left it over the back of one of the chairs. Then she undid her neck-tie, her fingers toying with it for a moment as she attempted to undo the half-Windsor.
Behind her, Claes watched... and waited.
There was something about Triela that Claes couldn't entirely put her finger on. Something subtle - a feeling, or maybe it was an emotion, that was both sickening and strangely intriguing. It was almost like jealousy. No matter how she looked at it, the same thing came up to a lesser or greater degree with each of the girls. She was sure it wasn't deliberate, or even that they'd understand what she was driving at. She wasn't even sure whether she herself understood it. But so it remained.
Claes was, as far as she could ascertain (and was particularly accurate in that), that she was a girl. But she wasn't sure if she felt like a girl. So far as she had concluded from the slim cross-section of books available to her, girls did more things than what she was currently acting out. There was more than this.
One of those things happened to be... well...
Love.
And one of the things that appeared to be happening to everyone whose name was not Claes and did not happen to be her was... well...
Love.
And although saying Claes was upset at this would be incorrect, it wasn't overly erroneous either.
Now, to be sure as it is, love is - much like 'late' - a rather subjective term, based on the opinions of the person upon whom the 'loving' is taking place, and, as such, means that one man's fish is another woman's poisson when it comes down to deciding what really equates to that thing which makes the world go round.
Claes was on the ready for the carrying out of a developed plan.
Triela, rather, was on the cusp of womanhood, yet retaining that beauty and God- given femininity of Persephone. Her flaxen tresses tugged playfully by the light June breeze which drifted through the window, and she stood next to the table, her back turned to Claes as she folded the tie neatly into halves and then quarters and then eighths and lay it over the coat.
She checked her shirt carefully for any signs of blood, bullet-holes, knife-slashes, shrapnel entrances or rough stitching, and then disappeared out of Claes' sight into bottom-most part of the bunk-bed. The struts squeaked appreciatively under her weight.
"Goodnight, Claes."
"Goodnight, Triela."
The time was right to act. Carefully, Claes rolled over onto her side and listened to the soft sound of Triela's rhythmic breathing. Within minutes it had fallen into rather unbecoming shallow, off-snore sighs.
She rolled over again, the bedclothes undulating over her slowly like some white ocean wave, twisting about her as it did so, and she lay prostrate, reaching under the pillow for the thing that would assist her in that better understanding of herself.
She pulled it out and held it up above her, the ribbed exterior hard and effervescent in the iridescent moonlight, and she ran her hand across it - relishing the feeling beneath her fingertips. For weeks - months - even she had been building up to this scene, this ending, this finish, this conclusion, this climax, this...
Her synonyms failed her for a reason she wasn't quite able to fathom.
She had watched, casually, objectively and from afar, the ways that the girls' loves manifested - and now, tonight, she would understand what it was to feel that herself. She turned onto her side, her face lit by the wan moon, and then she lowered the object, stroking it gently, and began.
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Claes could feel her cheeks burning with unholy passion as she abused herself in such a way. Her young body, supple and sinuous, tightened slightly as she felt her body churn with heat. It was disgusting and it was wrong, but it felt so good! Throughout all her time living here she had never thought there could be such feelings stirred inside a human body.
Her breath was beginning to come quicker as she sped up, her senses tingling... every nerve in her body screaming at her as her thumb flicked faster, moving her forwards along the irrefutable path. She touched her neck and then jerked her hand back as she found how sensitive she had become at this strange, sensual, contact.
She wondered if Triela felt this way with Hirscher? Or Henrietta with Giuseppe? (She licked her lips) It wasn't even sensible to ask whether Rico did with Jean. But... (oooh)... there was a lot merit in it if any of them did. They didn't do the things she was doing now (and with suitable relish and aplomb at that) so they must have to get their enjoyment from their handlers.
With a heavy sigh, she stopped for a moment to catch her breath - delighting in the way she quivered. Her fingers seemed to jump with energy and she stared at them for a moment as her heart (which had never really raced before) slowed down to a more benign pace.
Her hair was damp. She felt all hot and sweaty. And she still wasn't anywhere near finishing. Oh, and Triela had stopped breathing.
There was an long, uncomfortable silence as Claes lay there caught between slowly dissipating feelings - and sudden and rather discomforting realisation. Cautiously she turned her head.
"Ah," said Triela who was staring directly at her over the edge of the bunk. Claes gasped and flinched back, banging her head on the wall. "So you are reading. The noise you were making, I thought you were dying! What is it?"
With a sinking feeling Claes tried to grasp at the novel that was sitting open on her pillow. Except Triela got there first. With the whisper of fabric and the faint odour of perfume she dropped back down to the floor, novel in hand. Claes leant over the edge of the bed, her hand outstretched and pleading. "Nothing." She tried to make it sound perfectly calm. "It's just a book."
"'A Welcome Gentleman'?" Triela sauntered over to the table, squarely turned away from the other girl - whose eyes narrowed into tiny triangles of terror.
"Ferro was reading it, and I asked her about it. She gave it to me."
"Romance novels?" Triela sat down on one of the chairs and laid the book out on the table, as if it were some sort of relic of the Ming Dynasty.
Claes dropped her arm limply to hang over the bed. "You know about them?"
The look that spread across the blonde girl's face was a curious mix of shock and amusement. "Haven't you read one before?"
"Well," said Claes slowly. "Most of the books I read are rather more... scholarly."
"You've never read a romance novel before?"
Claes paused. "Well; I did read 'The Iliad' once."
Triela cocked an eyebrow, then seeming to cast that comment away, sat back in the chair and put her hands behind her head - thrusting what indefinite chest there was to be found out underneath her shirt. "So, where are you up to? Have they had sex yet?"
"Sex?"
It was a very quiet and suspiciously pronounced word, as if saying it might somehow cause it to explode.
There was a moment as Triela put her hands back down. "Yeah... sex."
Silence reigned.
"Well," said Triela slowly. "You know when babies are made?"
"Procreation," said Claes. "Yes."
"So you know about sex?"
"Splitting from a bud?"
"Er... no." The blonde girl wracked her brain for a moment. "It's like this..."
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And so Triela explained, in the manner of young girls who are first beginning their forays into mutual adolescent learning. And Claes listened, because this was something that didn't seem to have been touched upon in all the books in the library that she had the key for. At least, not the books on the lower shelves.
"That's..." said Claes when Triela finished. She sought for words. "That's... filthy."
"Yeah." Triela flicked through the pages. "Wow, you hadn't even got anywhere! They're just staring into each others eyes!" She held the book up and began to read;
"His ice-blue eyes sent shivers down her spine, as he stared out across the gardens. That strength he carried, the keen gentlemanly air he held about himself, all sought to make her feel less like the maid she was, and more like"
"What are you two talking about?" asked the voice from the door. The girls' heads snapped around. Hirscher, backlit against the corridor's night-lights, was standing in the doorway, looking at them with his classic stance in detached impassivity.
"Sex," said Triela.
A waver of emotion passed across his face. "Right. Don't stay up too late." He closed the door behind him.
Triela laughed and then rose, joining her hands and bringing them above her head in a curving stretch. "He's so easy." She closed the book with a snap, sauntered over to the bed and lay down, draping herself out across the mattress and its cover. "And if you really want to annoy him, you just ask him what a condom is."
Triela watched the bunk-bed's slats bow slightly as Claes rolled over.
"Do you know what one is?" drifted the voice of the girl with the specs.
"Well, Hirscher just walked away when I asked him... so I asked Giuseppe."
"So... what is it?"
Triela heaved a long, forthright sigh. "It's a small rubber balloon that you place on the end of your gun-barrel so that water doesn't get in." She pulled a face in the darkness. "Sometimes I wonder what his problem is."
Out across the compound there was the sudden barking of a dog, and beyond that - from the town - the chiming of a church bell.
It was a long time before either of them spoke again, and it was Claes who broke the silence. "I never would have thought that kissing made babies." She pondered on that. "Triela?"
"Yes?"
"Have you ever thought about kissing Hirscher?"
"Good-night, Claes."
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FIN
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