Contort me against your body and mind - Chapter 20 (Early Access) (Patreon)

Ellie

The hunt for Ellie’s favourite blue fruit ended quickly when she found Effie hunched over her mobile communicator, her expression crumpled in confusion. It enhanced her innocent appearance and brought on an urge to squeeze her cheeks between her hands.

“What are you doing?” she asked over the young woman’s shoulder.

“Trying to translate this strange message Dr Bonnie sent me. I think she sent it by accide-” Effie jumped into a one-eighty turn. “What are you doing out here?” she asked through a gasp.

“Sightseeing,” Ellie answered without thought.

“You are going to get me into trouble!” Effie accused. Her pout only served to remind Ellie of the kiss they shared on the ward. Plump purple lips that had begged her to bite them. But Effie was not finished scolding her. “And where is your chair with wheels?”

“I needed to see you.” At what point Effie's presence had become a necessity, Ellie didn't know.

“I need to pretend I didn’t see you or I will be told off by the nurses again!” She attempted to turn her back on Ellie, as though it was line of sight that would incriminate her. “They believe I am the one breaking you out each time you escape from their watch.”

“I’m sorry," Ellie said sincerely. She grabbed Effie's upper arm and pulled her back with what little strength she had. It squished under her fingers despite her rough medic’s shirt. "I’ll plead your case later,” she promised. “But I need to talk to you about something and I can’t do it there.”

Effie gazed up at her, full attention beaming onto Ellie's face like a spotlight. It made her nervous for some reason. She felt like a kid auditioning for their school play.

“What’s wrong?” Effie asked, barely above a breathless whisper.

Ellie peeled her crutch hand off the wall she was leaning on and took Effie's other upper arm in it. "Effie, I like you. A lot," she said.

“I like you, too,” Effie replied with her signature smile of pure innocence. Innocent like a friendship. Which was absolutely not what Ellie was asking for.

“I don’t like you in the way a co-worker does, though," she added.

Effie's features drooped slightly. “You don’t like me?”

“I do like you," Ellie repeated hurriedly. She was making an absolute cock-up of her first attempt to ask out a woman in an embarrassingly long time. She tried not to cringe at her own awkwardness. Effie would only confuse the action for something else, probably.

Effie stared at her. Her pretty mouth popped open and closed a few times. “I am confused,” she said finally.

“I'm trying to say," Ellie began, then got stuck. She released Effie's arms and regretted it instantly as she no longer had anywhere to put her hands. She clenched them and dropped them to her sides. "That... I like you in a romantic way. A sexual way, too.”

Effie nodded slowly. Processing. “I like you in the same likeness of liking ways," she said.

Ellie stared at adorable face. Baffled by her words. Her round eyes appeared hopeful, and she was smiling, so Ellie took her gibberish to be confirmation that they were on the same page. Maybe just not the same line.

“But we must go back to the ward," Effie added with an unusually stern tone.

Ellie frowned. “Why?” She probably sounded more frustrated than she had intended to let slip. She was so tired of people coddling her. Bossing her about. Telling her what she was or wasn’t capable of.

“It is not safe out here,” Effie whispered. There was genuine fear in her features. “We mustn’t stand around in a corridor like this too long. We need to be around others.” She raised her curved brows in insinuation and a pair of puzzle pieces clunked together in Ellie’s mind. She had never told Effie about Forest. She thought there was a boogeyman roaming the shadows of the ship. She was scared.

“Effie, we’re not in danger here-”

“I know you are strong," Effie interrupted, speaking gently but with an overlapping tension that seemed to hold her frame stiffly. "I do feel safe when I am with you, but you are also injured.” Even with the caveat, her words sparked a small prideful burn in Ellie’s chest. She wanted Effie to feel safe with her. Always. “I am not meaning to be rude to you,” Effie added. She glanced up and down the empty hallway with wide eyes. “We don’t know who-”

“I do know who," Ellie reassured her quietly. Effie stilled, somehow appearing even more afraid. “Let’s go to my quarters where we can talk privately," she suggested with most soothing tone she could manage with the level of pain she was attempting to ignore.

Effie's eyes lit up, then she shook her head 'no', then she folded her arms over her chest.

"Well, either you come with me, or I go alone," Ellie said with a shrug. She turned away and began to hobble down the corridor in the wrong direction to reach her private quarters. It was the principle that mattered.

Effie caved instantly and followed her at a nervous, silent trot.

Ellie glanced to her side and gave her a grin. Effie blushed indigo and looked away, taking in the contemporary cement-coloured decor. Ellie had only been on a few missions away from Earth, but the grim grey colour scheme had been a staple of every government-issued ship she'd ridden on. Apparently, private companies sprung for the interior design package. The Sentinel's entire budget, from the reports Ellie had been privy to, seemed to have been spent on medical supplies and weapons.

Every step hurt, but she refused to admit as much to anyone. Least of all Effie. No one would rat her out to the doctors faster. That, and she'd probably go into cardiac arrest from the stress of worrying about Ellie. The faffing and fussing were almost too much for Ellie to take some days. If she didn't have such a mind-numbingly intense crush on the woman, maybe she would have cracked under the overzealous care-taking already.

Once they reached the right end of the ship, Ellie led them to her door and pressed her keycard to the scanner. They were supposed to be able to scan your fingerprint if you didn't have your card on you, but half the time it didn't work anyway. The same way all the communal doors on-board were supposed to be motion sensor activated, but every crew member slapped the pads anyway. No one had time to wait for clunky tech when they had somewhere to be.

Her room was not as immaculate as it would have been a few weeks prior, she had only managed to sneak back this far away from the medical unit a couple of times and her first thought hadn't been to dust her shelves or fluff the pillows. She gestured to the bed for Effie to sit.

Effie dropped onto it like a robot. Her hands were crossed neatly in her lap and the only part of her body that looked to be moving was her eyes. She was snooping while sat still, glancing at everything in range. Ellie didn't mind; she'd do exactly the same in Effie's position.

Ellie closed the door and flopped onto her back next to her. She had found it was easier than lowering herself into a seated position. Her back was one of the few areas where she wasn't injured, and once she was laid down it was more comfortable to slowly curl her torn-up stomach from there.

Once she was upright, and balancing half of her weight against the pillows, she broke the heavy silence.

"I’m sorry for not telling you this sooner; I didn’t realise how afraid you were."

"I am very afraid all the time," Effie admitted. She didn't look Ellie in the face as she said it. Ellie was grateful. She couldn't imagine how much more it would sting.

"The person who murdered Legacy is no longer on this ship. It was Forest."

Ellie allowed the statement to sit in the room for a few seconds while Effie processed her words. A stuttering inhale was the only noise she made in response, and it pierced Ellie's chest.

"How?" Effie asked finally.

"How?" Ellie repeated. Effie had performed the autopsy herself; she knew how the man had died.

"How do you know it was Officer Forest?"

"Oh. During the ambush he attacked me," Ellie explained. She spoke slowly. Effie already seemed pretty overwhelmed. "He was the one who stabbed me."

A wobbling lip and trembling irises were the only forewarning Ellie got before Effie burst into tears.

“Effie!” Ellie yelped. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” She reached for her face and caught her cheeks between her palms. Effie didn’t respond. Ellie wasn’t sure if she could in between her sobs and sniffles. She leant into the cupped hands hands, allowing Ellie to take some weight off her neck. With careful swipes, Ellie wiped the tears with the pads of her thumbs as fast as they fell. “Everyone is safe now, he's gone,” she reminded her hurriedly.

Effie pulled in a deep, rattling breath and began to babble. “I don’t know- in English I don’t know. But I am sad. I am sad that Forest did this and he was not- he should be- is being- not friend-” She wailed again.

“You’re upset that he betrayed me?” Ellie offered, hoping to have made some sense of the alphabet soup that Effie was spewing.

“Yes!” Effie sobbed. “He is… not friend. But he is your team!”

Ellie nodded her understanding. “We were supposed to be allies,” she summarised.

“I want human and Ailu’t to be friends as well.” Effie sniffed, loudly, and dove into Ellie’s chest, knocking her back onto the pillows. She managed to refrain from grunting on impact. Her arms remained up for a few seconds where she had been holding Effie’s face. She dropped them to her back and clutched her closer. Effie sobbed into her top. “Why would he do this?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Ellie answered. “I’m sorry, Effie. If I knew that, I’d tell you. I swear.”

She stroked her hands flat over Effie’s short, shiny hair. It slid under her fingers so smoothly it was a struggle not to become entranced in the motion. It was satisfying to feel the curled ends wrap around her fingertips each time. Effie sniffled against her, catching her breath slowly but surely.

"I'm sorry, Effie,” she repeated. She felt suddenly weary, moreso than usual. “I should have told you sooner.” She hadn’t intended to leave Effie in a state of constant fear for her life; she’d just needed to tell Slate first.

"It's okay,” Effie mumbled into her chest. “You are busy."

Ellie huffed a quiet laugh. "I'm really not.” She had never spent so much time sat down in her life. “And all I do on that damn ward is think about you. Or talk to you. Or watch you."

Effie’s face snapped up, the tip of her nose not an inch from Ellie’s.

“Really?” Her face was still damp and her breaths a little rickety.

“Yeah.”

Ellie tilted her head down just enough to press their lips together. A single soft kiss. Then she dragged the tip of her nose along Effie’s. The younger woman shivered, blinking her wide eyes in the exaggerated way of a doll. Effie leant a little closer, offering her pouted lips up. Ellie took them in her own with a slow, wet pull.

It began gentle, Ellie coaxing the smaller woman with cheeky flicks of her tongue and pulling on her plump bottom lip to hear the cute noises Effie made. Then Effie began pushing back, curling her tongue around Ellie’s and tentatively widening her mouth more and more until Ellie had full entry. Their tongues collided over and over. Their bodies melted into each other, as though their clothes had disappeared.

Ellie flipped them with a painful twist of her hips and Effie gasped under her. She didn’t allow their lips to unlock, diving deeper into Effie’s mouth now that she had her pinned and ready for the taking. She pressed her harder into the mattress, until it dipped into an Effie-sized pocket beneath them.

Effie's legs crooked around her waist and squeezed. Ellie choked on her own breath at the stab of pain that came with the action. Effie froze.

"I hurt you," she whispered. Her limbs fell limp, dropping them to the bed around her like a starfish. Making absolutely certain not to touch Ellie.

Ellie groaned. "I'm fine. I got a shock, but it's fine." She attempted to latch their lips again, but Effie shook her head.

"We will go back to the ward,” she said. “Now. Please." She pursed her lips and Ellie mimicked her with an added eye roll. "Now," she added. And then another, "Please."

Ellie huffed.

“Please, Ellie.”

Ellie obliged.

Because she wanted to. Not because Effie was especially cute when she was trying to order her about. She even let her tuck her into her cot on the ward. That part was definitely for Effie’s enjoyment and nothing else. Unfortunately, the nurses enjoyed the spectacle, too.

As Effie left the ward afterwards, Ellie couldn’t think of anything but how she had managed to fuck up her love confession so badly. She’d had one thing on her mind when she left Doctor Bonnie’s office, and now she didn’t know if they had actually made any progress at all.

Technically, nothing had changed. Ellie would get to work on that as soon as she successfully escaped again.