"What if I don't know how?" Grace tilted her head ever so slightly, as though testing the weight of the words. "Maybe… you could teach me?"
Her voice had grown lower, almost too heavy for her own throat to carry. The armor she had worn for years—polished and flawless—was beginning to split. Thin cracks spread like veins across its surface, branching in every direction.
Oakley trembled, unable to stop herself, and tried to steady the rhythm of her breath. It took a long while before she leaned close to Grace's ear and whispered with a soft laugh, "So innocent? You've never seen anything before?"
Grace did not answer at once. She had never been drawn to such things, not in the ways others might. Which was why, when Oakley came into her life, she found herself frightened by this unknown side of herself.
But was it really innocence? She knew the truth—it was not. She and the word had never belonged in the same sentence.
Perhaps it was the slow corrosion of culture and society, shaping her without permission. People could speak openly, even proudly, about violence and cruelty. But sex? That remained forbidden, something unspeakable. Even love, when spoken of aloud, was framed only in terms of souls, not flesh.
A man could lash out in cruelty and still be forgiven. But a kiss stolen in the middle of a street—that was the true offense. Rebellious. Improper. Against God. Something to be nailed to the pillory of shame, condemned by the weight of every sermon.
Everyone followed this order. Everyone stamped it down.And even when Grace told herself otherwise, she couldn't escape the reflex—the deep conviction that sex was shameful, something to be buried. She smothered it. Ignored it.
Especially her. In so many ways, she had been tamed. She was the one who unconsciously treated rules as holy law, never to be broken.
To others, that made her dazzling. She was the one parents praised to their children, the unattainable "model child." The kind you compared yourself to and sighed. Perfect. Faultless. A machine wound with exquisite precision, never straying, always on schedule.
Most of the time, she had no desires of her own. No needs. She lived only to execute the commands pressed upon her by the world outside.
But that too was a cage—an inhuman one. And the longer she wore it, the more unbearable the inner tearing became.
She was drawn to Oakley with a ferocity that terrified her. It felt foreign, incompatible with every directive she'd ever obeyed. Warnings blared inside her like red text across a broken screen: Error in the program. Return to the correct path.
So she tried—again and again—to stop herself from falling, to sever anything that might lead to a "mistake." To cut her losses.
But she was only human. And the more she resisted, the more desperate her longing grew.
Her hunger for Oakley devoured her. Day and night, it lived in her. She craved the slide of Oakley's hair around her fingers, the warmth of her skin, the softness of her lips. She wanted to drown inside Oakley's world, to touch, to fuse, to exchange something that had no name.
She was parched. Utterly parched. No water could quench the fever in her veins. And she was learning—what is buried too deep does not vanish. It rebounds. It erupts, drags you lower still.
So when her words finally came, they were thin, evasive, a poor disguise: "I never had much time to look."
The night stretched endless and dark. Oakley's laughter bubbled in it, light and reckless, more melodious than wind chimes trembling in the afternoon breeze.
"Then," Oakley whispered close, her breath warm against Grace's ear, playful and dangerous, "let me teach you."
Grace's lips pressed tight.
It was as though Oakley had pried open some forbidden chest. Inside were wonders Grace had never seen—frightening, yet irresistible.
Dream and reality slid together. She could feel herself sinking deeper and deeper into the tender earth that was Oakley, until her own thoughts no longer belonged to her.
And at last she broke. Grace kissed her.
In that moment, she felt like a traveler scorched half to death by a merciless sun, stumbling into a green oasis.
She inhaled Oakley's scent—indefinable, but achingly right.
The room was shadowed and heavy, yet the heat between them was wild, merciless. Their minds blurred.
After a long time, Oakley's voice rose, faint and trembling, from the dark. She called her name: "Grace."
Grace stirred as if roused from a dream. "Mm? What is it?"
Oakley's hair clung damp to her temples, her strength nearly gone. She struggled for words.
At last, she murmured, "I like you. So much."
Truly. So much.
Grace did not answer, only gathered her into her arms. She held her as if to bind her there, to fill her emptiness with this one body. Only then did she feel whole.
Silence held them.
It was a long while before Oakley stirred again, pulling Grace's hand to her lips, brushing a kiss across her long fingers. A gentle trace that made Grace's bones curl in a faint shiver.
Oakley tilted her chin, her voice tentative. "And you? Don't you want to?"
She wasn't sure she knew how. But she believed she could.
Grace only tightened her hold and shook her head.
She thought she had no desires. Believed herself frigid.
Oakley smiled faintly. "Then you…"
"Mm?" Grace opened her eyes.
Oakley toyed with the hand around her waist, turning so they lay face to face. Her voice was soft but certain: "You have a strong need for control, don't you?"
It was what she had just felt.
Grace lay still a while before arching her brow. "Do I?"
"Yes." Oakley nodded. "You always need to hold the reins, to keep a fragment of clarity. You won't let yourself completely lose control."
Grace frowned, uneasy. "That sounds… rather like a villain."
But Oakley shook her head, smiling. "Not a villain. Just a big cat."
"A cat?" Grace blinked, bemused.
"Mhm." Oakley's voice was tender. "A great cat that had to evolve sharper claws to survive. Even when asleep, one eye stays open. Even in the sun, belly up, ears remain pricked—alert to the slightest sound, ready to strike. Terrifying, yes. But also… a little endearing."
Oakley's words made Grace seem almost sweet.
"And it has its blessings too," Oakley continued, gently scratching beneath her chin. "It means you'll never be toppled so easily. It's your survival skill. So… if you don't want something, you don't. I won't force you, won't shatter your order."
She had a gift for metaphors—making every truth strange and beautiful.
Grace thought quietly for a long time before asking, "How do you turn all my flaws into virtues?"
She realized Oakley had an astonishing talent for seeing brightness in others. Grace did it too, sometimes—but sparingly. She saw both sides, both light and shadow. Oakley was different. She fixated on the light.
Or perhaps, she simply chose to look past the dark, pretending it wasn't there.
In the dark, Oakley sighed and shook her head. "I didn't turn your flaws into virtues. You're the one who never forgives yourself. You only see the shadow. Never the sun."
It sounded like comfort. Yet Grace knew it held truth. Oakley glimpsed the blind spots she herself could not see, and did so effortlessly.
Like some kind of oracle. Seemingly naïve, yet knowing everything. Childlike and luminous, yet vast enough to hold the world.