@madamsusan:
the new dress, or what she is hoping to be a new dress, will need more alrerations than what susan had hoped. her eye isn’t as good as a seamstress’. with great care, minding the pins holding the fabric into place, she has pulled it down raine’s shoulders before retracting her hands to let her finish the job. the scars are revealed, nothing she hasn’t seen before but their sight never fails to drop something heavy in the pit of her stomach and there it rests, its presence now familiar in spite of the discomfort, the dread it spreads. they never speak about them -not since the first time raine has barred her back to susan’s makeshift stitches. they never speak about them but they are both aware, aware that they are now exposed, aware of the questions they might bring forth. an ugly sight indeed. the tip of her fingers trace a path in between them, graze the uneven and swollen blemishes shaping her friend’s backs, disfiguring it, marring it with a history as harrowing as their healing - or lack thereof. it is a map, a most cruel tale where monsters trod upon those they would see kneel, reduced to a pulp, and her fingers read on in a slow drag and follow the trail from one scar to the next as though it might reveal secrets deeply buried in a past still shrouding raine thornell. they momentarily float away from her body when she speaks. “will i?” with the same tenderness, the same deliberate diligence, they resume their exploration. when they find her spine, susan leans in to press a kiss on her shoulder blade. “is that all it will take?”
Yes. Yes, it will. Susan has a way about her--she’s like a dagger, cunning and little and pointed, and she can slice her way to the heart of something with ease; but it’s not all blades and cutting, it’s not all pain. As though with the cloth that covers Raine’s skin, she can brush all her defenses aside, leave her bare. Bare in a way she usually isn’t when unclothed. Susan has a way, yes... Of making a body feel.
She turns toward her, one hand holding the slack fabric of the unfinished dress to her body; the tips of her fingers alight soft on Susan’s cheek, the pad of her thumb tracing under her lower lip. “If you wished to give me more,” she says, starting to smile, “and be sure of my contentment... I would not deny you.” More touch, more tenderness, more Susan. This ratty old flesh drinks it in like parched ground takes in rain.
