Tammy had absolutely no idea how long she’d slept for or what time it was when she woke up. Frankly, she didn’t really want to know. This would be the second time in as many days that she’d been fucked unconscious and she was not impressed by that fact at all. She wasn’t sure which time was worse. On the one hand, at least this particular instance was at least sort of consensual, but on the other it was with someone who was effectively a complete fucking stranger. Several someones who were complete fucking strangers, really. But, well, now that she was sober, she didn’t want to put too much thought into that particular angle.

Really, she kind of just wanted to go back to sleep – all that alcohol was taking its toll on her, it seemed. The last hangover had been bad, but this one was leagues worse. Her mouth tasted like something had crawled into it and died overnight, and her head felt like someone had taken a fucking jackhammer to it. Even without any light or noise she felt absolutely miserable, to the point where she was almost wondering if it was just a hangover or if she was outright sick.

God, that’d just be the shit icing on the garbage cake, wouldn’t it? There wasn’t exactly a good time to get sick, but this would be a strong contender for the worst. Having to attend her parents’ funeral while sick was just about the last thing she needed. But, well, she couldn’t deny that the symptoms were there. In addition to the standard signs of a hangover, breathing was difficult, which to her indicated that her nose was stuffed up. She was also unusually hot and there was a weird sort of pressure on her forehead and sinuses. And her nose felt... Wet? Wet.

This was around the point that Tammy realized she wasn’t actually sick. “Mnf.” She felt like she should be upset at the fact that someone had elected to sit on her face while she was asleep, but the hangover was at least real so all she could muster was mild annoyance and exactly enough energy to reach up and give the intruder an impatient smack on her ass. “Geddoff.”

Whoever it was did not, in fact, get off. At least not at first – she made some groaning noises of her own, which prompted Tammy to smack the ass a few more times, more insistently this time. Given the dimensions, she had a pretty good idea of who it was, but she decided to pretend that she didn’t. Even if she’d been reluctantly willing to admit to a bit of bicuriosity when lubricated, she point-blank refused to be able to identify a girl purely by the size and shape of her ass while sober.

No matter how distinctive this particular ass managed to be.

Distinctive, and also kinda fucking heavy. She gave it a few more good smacks, which only prompted more sleepy grunts. Resigned to the fact that whoever it was wasn’t going to get up on her own, even with insistent prompting, Tammy decided it was time for drastic measures. It took a moment to finagle her arms into position, hooking them under the butt and then lifting as much as she could. Which wasn’t much, but she didn’t actually need to get the other person off of her. Just get enough leverage to slip herself out from under Lydia’s colossal butt.

“You need to go on a fucking diet,” Tammy muttered to herself, giving the still half-asleep mouse a dirty look.

“Wha?” Lydia muttered blearily, reaching up and rubbing her eyes. She was leaning against the headboard of her bed, legs splayed out, though Tammy tried not to look too hard at that part of her body given she didn’t have any panties on. She did, at least, have a loose-fitting white tee shirt, so she wasn’t nude. As though they’d not literally had sex the previous night – fuck, she’d woke up underneath her huge ass, implying she’d fallen asleep eating her out. Or that Lydia had taken advantage of her while she was asleep, but somehow that seemed out of character. Though, on the other hand, she’d also have assumed rape to be out of character for Penny too and boy howdy look how that had turned out.

“I’m saying that your ass is fucking gigantic,” Tammy replied tersely.

“You didn’t seem to mind that last night.”

“Yeah, well, that’s before you fucking fell asleep sitting on my face. I feel like shit.”

“Mm, you’re not the only one, my back’s fucking killing me.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Mff.” Lydia didn’t respond, instead rolling over to lie flat on her stomach. “That’s better.”

“Yeah, you would be a stomach sleeper, wouldn’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

“It’s another dig at your fat fucking ass.”

“Hmph. Like I said, you seemed pretty happy about my fat fucking ass last night.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like it makes a good pillow at least. If only I’d gotten to use it as such.” Tammy punctuated her remark by turning around and doing just that, nestling her neck into the cleft. “Oh. Oh wow, you’re so soft. What are they feeding you?”

“Hey, don’t get too comfy. I’ve got work today.”

Tammy took a moment to actually take a look at her surroundings instead of getting distracted by Lydia being half-naked. They clearly weren’t still in Diane’s house, but rather what appeared to be a one-room apartment. Over to one side there was a desk with a computer on it, and over to the other was a small kitchen. “Do you really have work today?”

“Yes. I’m the only doctor in town, I’ve gotta be on call as much as possible.”

“How often do you actually end up needing to be on call in Cluaran Creek, though?”

“... Okay, fair enough, I can probably afford to sleep in today. But, you’ve gotta make it worth my while.”

“How so?”

“With sex.”

“Oh.” Tammy frowned. “Just so we’re clear, last night was a special situation. I was drunk and my inhibitions were lowered.”

“Yeah. Sure, and a minute ago you were talking about how much you wanted to use my ass as a pillow and how soft it is.”

“Hey-”

“I’m just saying that for someone who is so insistent about being straight you sure do say and do stuff that makes you seem pretty gay a lot.”

“Bicurious at most!”

“Yeah, well.” Lydia rolled over, leaving Tammy’s head resting in her lap. “What do you say we test that out?”

“Um.”

“It’s okay if you say no, by the way.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not gonna force you.”

“Um. In that case, uh.” Tammy sat up and turned around to face Lydia. “Okay. I’m willing to see if I’m down for girls while sober.”

“You’re definitely down for girls while sober, by the way,” Lydia said with just a hint of a smug smirk. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you staring at my ass when we met yesterday.”

“Look in my defence your pants had to be at least half a size too small, you clearly want people lookin’.”

“Yeah, that’s the first thought the average straight person would have, and not that I’m a small-town doctor with nothing to do who outgrew pants I bought a while back.”

“Immediately after meeting Sherry?”

“... Okay yes fair. Sorry about her.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

Lydia elected not to respond, instead leaning forward and giving Tammy a kiss.

Most of Tammy’s experiences with kissing girls in Cluaran Creek had, thus far, been nice. BJ had tasted good (though Tammy still wasn’t entirely sure how real that whole thing had been), and... well, honestly, she was pretty sure she’d not actually kissed anyone aside from that? Her memory of both encounters was honestly pretty fuzzy, but she was pretty sure that Diane had jumped right into titty sucking and things had only escalated from there. She’d definitely not kissed Sherry, and she was also pretty sure that she’d not kissed Lydia until right now. So her sample size of just plain old kissing was, ironically, kind of tiny. BJ tasted like chocolate.

Lydia, meanwhile, tasted like refried ass.

Apparently Tammy wasn’t the only one who was dissatisfied with their kissing experience. Lydia pulled away and made a Face, scrunching up her nose and squinting her eyes. “You know what? On second thought, no making out until after we take care of our morning oral hygiene. You taste like halitosis.”

“So do you.”

“I’m not gonna pretend I don’t, just... Lemme brush my teeth and then I’ll see if I can’t dig up, like, a mint or something for you.”

“Yeah. That’s probably a good plan.” Tammy pulled away from Lydia, giving the mouse room to get up and head over to what was presumably the bathroom. “I figure it’s not a fair test of my heterosexuality if you taste like a hangover.”

“You don’t exactly taste like strawberries and cream yourself, you know,” Lydia retorted. “I can definitely tell that you’re a smoker, by the way.”

“I haven’t even smoked since I left New York!” Tammy retorted indignantly. It wasn’t entirely true, of course – now that she thought of it, she’d had a smoke in the courtyard with Sherry.

“And yet kissing you still tasted like a rancid ashtray.”

“Hmph.” Tammy crossed her arms sullenly, which is when she noticed that she wasn’t wearing any clothing. It was a little bit too late to be embarrassed about that, of course, but she still found herself making a semi-conscious effort to conceal herself. Intellectually, she knew that it really didn’t matter. Not only had Lydia already seen her naked more than once, and not only had they literally just had an entire fucking conversation while both mostly unclothed, but they’d already fucked and were in the process of preparing to do so again. “Hey, uh, speaking of hygiene, do you mind if I use your shower after this? I’ll replace the shampoo I use.”

“You don’t need to replace my shampoo, it’s fine.”

“Lydia, I’m a squirrel. Unless you’ve got a whole-ass industrial-sized tub of shampoo in there, you’re gonna need a new bottle or two.”

“... Okay, fair enough. I’ll accept your charity this time.”

“It’s not charity, it’s a necessity.”

“A necessity?” Lydia’s voice was suddenly slightly garbled – clearly she’d started to actually brush her teeth.

“I figure if we’re going to be, you know, having playdates like this on a regular basis, it’s probably best to futureproof.”

Lydia leaned over, poking her head through the doorway with her toothbrush still in her mouth. “Are you suggesting we go steady?”

“N-no! Just, uh-”

“Just that I stock up on extra shampoo in case you decide to spend the night at my place again.” She pulled her toothbrush out of her mouth and pointed at Tammy with it. “That right there sounds an awful lot like you’re planning on at least a lot of casual sex to me.”

Tammy averted her eyes, blushing furiously. “I haven’t even decided if I like having sex with girls yet, let alone if I wanna have a long-term relationship with one.”

“I dunno, it kinda sounds like you’ve already made the decision and just don’t want to admit it to yourself yet.”

“Even if I had decided to date you, which I haven’t by the way, but if I had it’d be a long-distance relationship by necessity. I do gotta go back to New York eventually, you know.”

“Sure, sure,” Lydia replied, gesturing with her toothbrush before going back into the bathroom. “But until then...”

She trailed off, but Tammy had an idea of what was being implied. “I’ll consider it,” she said tersely, firmly resolving not to consider it out of raw spite.

“Again, it sounds to me like you’ve already considered it.”

“Yeah well I haven’t.”

“I’ve got peppermint, wintergreen, and cinnamon.”

“Ech, cinnamon mints suck. Do you got honey-ginger?”

“They don’t make ginger Altoids anymore.”

“Oh, well.” She was, she supposed, still too used to being able to run down to some hipster-ass convenience store that made their own mints. Yet another thing about being back in Cluaran Creek she’d have to deal with – Altoids. “Wintergreen then, it’s too early for peppermint.”

“It’s November.”

“Exactly. No Christmas until December first at the earliest. We haven’t even done Thanksgiving yet.”

“Technically speaking, pretty much everywhere that celebrates Thanksgiving besides the US has already done it by now.”

“Yeah, and they’re wrong.”

Lydia re-entered the bedroom and tossed a tin of mints onto the bed. “Take as many as you want.”

Tammy grabbed the tin, popped it open, and took one single Altoid out. “All I’m saying is that it’s our holiday so we get to decide the date it’s celebrated on.”

“It’s based on British Harvest Festivals that generally happen around September, so really we’re all wrong.”

“Whatever, I don’t even really celebrate Thanksgiving anymore.”

“You don’t?”

Tammy shrugged. “I haven’t been on speaking terms with my parents since college.”

“Oh.”

“I usually go out for Chinese food with my agent.”

“You have an agent? I thought that was, like, an actor thing.”

“Literary agent. Her job is to talk to publishers and shit, handle all the marketing garbage so I don’t have to.”

Lydia walked over and sat on the bed, across from Tammy. “Huh, you learn something new every day I guess.”

“Creative types are notoriously not business minded. So it helps a lot to have someone who is business minded on your payroll.”

“Makes sense.”

“Ugh, speaking of which I should probably check in with her, let her know what’s up. This whole trip has been kind of impromptu and I didn’t exactly have the time to let her know my parents fucking died.”

“Yeesh.”

“Yeah, I’m kinda not in the mood to think about work right now. But I kinda can’t, like, not think about work, yanno?”

“Haven’t you written three books?”

“In six years, yeah.”

“That’s still a book every other year.”

“Stephen King’s published like two or three a year since the mid-seventies.”

“Yeah, but even I know that Stephen King’s a freak of nature when it comes to his output. Just try and keep your health in mind, that’s all I ask.”

“Fair enough,” Tammy replied. It made sense that the doctor was worried about her overworking herself. But, again; Tammy kind of didn’t want to think about work right now. “Uh, anyway. We were going to make out?”

Lydia smirked. “I thought you were still considering it?”

“I am, but I’m also eager to change the subject.”

“Finish your mints.”

“Fair enough.”

“In the meantime, there’s other things we can do that don’t involve me having to taste your cigarette breath.”

“My breath can’t possibly be that bad,” Tammy muttered in sullen response. Even if it had been a few days since she’d brushed her teeth.

“Do you want this or not?”

“I’ve got a mint, just gimme a minute to finish it.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” Before Tammy had a chance to respond, Lydia’s smirk turned into a grin as she leaned in and pressed her hand against Tammy’s pussy.

“A-ah!”

“Told you there’s other things we can do,” Lydia said as she began to gently rub. “I could also eat you out, but I say we start slow for now.”

“Mnf.”

“And for the record, don’t worry about any power dynamic shit. This  is just regular sex.”

“Okay cool I have no idea what that would entail.”

“You’ve had sex before, right?”

“Mmmmmostly with dudes, yes.” That was being a bit generous with the truth, of course. Tammy had been with guys, but she’d never gone beyond foreplay – or at least, not before the past few days.

“Mostly but not exclusively.”

“I’ve experimented. Everyone’s experimented.”

“Okay-”

“But ahhhhhh that doesn’t mean I know what I’m doingggggg.”

“Just do to me what I’m doing to you.”

“That’s eaaaaaasier said than done.”

“Do you want me to stop while you figure this out?”

“No! No it’s fine!” Tammy made an attempt to reciprocate and failed miserably. Between the hangover and the increasingly vigorous attention from Lydia, her arms felt like jello. There was no way she’d be able to lift her hands without falling the fuck over. Which was, she realized, probably the intended effect. Every time she made an attempt to move, Lydia picked up the intensity of her rubbing. She couldn’t say for certain that wasn’t a coincidence, but it sure didn’t fucking feel like it. Her fingers moved deftly, pressing and rubbing against all the most sensitive parts of Tammy without actually crossing the line to full-on fingerfucking, which left Tammy frustratingly on the edge of climax, just barely not teetering over. “F-fuuuuuck~”

“Want me to put ‘em in?”

“Yeh.”

“Okay, hold on.”

That warning, it turned out, was probably a waste of time – no amount of bracing could have saved Tammy from falling backwards. Thank fuckin’ god she was already on a bed or she might have hurt herself. And even then, if she’d been just slightly farther up she’d have hit her head on the headboard and gotten a concussion. Thankfully, however, she couldn’t really focus on that particular morbid train of thought because she was too busy thinking about how good Lydia’s fingers felt inside of her. They were wildly different from BJ’s tongue. Took up less space, for one, not as warm, but the way they could move independently from each other mostly made up for that. Mostly.

Of course, there was the lingering fact that this particular sexual encounter wasn’t magically enhanced. She was pretty sure, when BJ had eaten her out, that her own libido and sensitivity had been artificially ramped up. She tried not to think about that, just like she tried not to think about the fact that she’d not yet experienced what it was like to have a dick put in her, magical or otherwise. She had experimented a few times in college, but had never really gone further than mutual masturbation. And she’d never once actually put a dick inside her.

Or at least not yet. But, again, she tried not to think about it. Which was thankfully easier done than said given that Lydia had very much pushed her over the edge and was continuing to tease more and more and more out of her. Less a climax and more the first real escalation in would probably have been a very, very productive session had Tammy’s cell phone not picked that exact moment to start blaring the opening riff of Don’t Fear The Reaper.

“Shit!” Tammy loudly swore as she pulled away from the bed and fumbled through her clothing, the ringtone enough to pull her out of her reverie. “I fucking forgot we’re doing the legal paperwork today. God dammit, what time is it?”

“It’s eight thirty,” Lydia said, looking over at the clock. “I guess I could have gotten ready for work after all.”

“Yeah, yeah, I owe you one fingerbang. Sorry.”

“It’s fine, this is more important than casual sex,” Lydia replied, although her tone of voice made Tammy think that maybe she wasn’t being entirely honest about her opinion on the situation. Whatever, she’d make it up to her later. Probably after all the paperwork and funeral and such were taken care of and she actually had some free time.

“Hey, Tam. You dead?”

“No, no, I’m fine. I’m alive. And no, I’m not in jail again either.”

“Where are you.”

“At a friend’s.”

“... You went back to New York?”

Tammy rolled her eyes, a gesture that her brother couldn’t see but which she hoped came across anyway. “I have made friends in Cluaran Creek since coming back, believe it or not.”

“Bullshit.”

“Say hi to Kyle, Lydia.”

“Hi, Kyle. You still having trouble with-”

Kyle’s shout of “No!” was loud enough that Lydia could probably make the gist of it out without speakerphone.

“Anyway, look, I’m awake, I’m gonna shower, I’ll be over in like an hour and a half tops.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, we’re not heading out until like eleven. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t sleep through it again.”

“Look, that happened once when I was like fifteen and I was sick so I think that’s enough extenuating fucking circumstances.”

“Yeah, sure. Just make sure you show up, Tam.”

“The longer you bitch at me, the more likely I am not to show up.”

“I love you too, sis,” Kyle said before summarily hanging up.

“Ugh. Sorry about this.”

“It’s fine,” Lydia said, once again in a manner that made Tammy think that it really wasn’t. “We’re gonna have plenty of time to fuck, trust me.”

“Are we? I don’t really intend to stay in Cluaran Creek for anything more than a few more days after the funeral. Tops.”

“Trust me,” Lydia repeated. “A few days is plenty of time for plenty of fucking.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

For a doctor, Lydia’s apartment was fairly small and barebones. There were really only two distinct rooms, per se, with everything else being one single multi-purpose space. The bed was in a nook in one corner, a desk with a computer on it by the window, a couch across from the bed positioned to face a TV on the other side of the counter that marked off her kitchen space. There was also a bathroom, obviously, on the opposite side from the kitchen, right by the entrance. Space was economical – presumably being the only GP in a rural Kansas town was not as lucrative as it sounded. Yet another reason to buy her more shampoo after inevitably using all of it on her tail.

The shower was tepid. That was fine, Tammy could deal with it, but it wasn’t her preferred shower temperature. She wasn’t going to complain – frankly she was just fucking happy to get a shower at all. It had been far, far, far too long since she’d had a chance to bathe and it was her own god damn fault. She had plenty of opportunities to do personal hygiene and had just not taken them. And now that she had the chance it was lukewarm. Oh, well. She could always have another shower tonight or tomorrow. A nicer one, that wasn’t in a cheap apartment whose landlord didn’t bother to keep up maintenance on the fucking water heater.

“You’re out of shampoo,” she shouted into the other room.

“I refuse to believe your tail needed that much.”

“Like I said, I’ll buy you an industrial-sized tub. Do you have a hair drier?”

“Does anyone not own a hair drier?”

“Reptiles and amphibians?”

“Fair enough.”

“Fish, too.”

“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. It’s under the sink. Do you wanna borrow some clean clothes?”

“Do you own any clothes that look like they might even come close to fitting me?”

“I’ve got some sweatpants.”

“I’ll pass, it’d look like I’m wearing a circus tent. I can live with changing when I get home.”

“You sure are fixated on the size of my ass.”

“It’s huge.”

“It’s not that big.”

“Oh yes it is, babe.”

“Is not!”

“Gigantic. Massive. Enormous. Large.”

“Ugh, just dry off and then get going.”

“It’s gonna take me like an hour to get dry enough.”

“I’ll turn on the TV, you can listen to what I choose to watch from in there.”

“Okay.”

“I hope you like daytime TV because that’s basically all we get here.”

“Netflix?”

“Netflix sucks.”

“Fair enough.” To each their own, she supposed. Honestly, Tammy was barely paying attention to whatever was on TV anyway – it was just background noise. One of those daytime talk shows where they intentionally try to stir up as much chaos and controversy as possible. Trashy garbage, obviously, but that specific kind of trashy garbage where you can’t help but secretly get a bit of a kick out of it. And, though she would never say so out loud, she couldn’t help but feel a little kinship to daytime talk shows. Just like Jerry Springer, she was in the business of using human tragedy to create entertainment. It’s just that her genre of choice was a bit more respectable, but also less honest.

“Sorry, it’s either this shit or cartoons for preschoolers.”

“Ew. I’ll take the talk shows, thanks.”

“I’m not a pediatrician so I can’t say for sure but I can’t help but wonder if that shit is particularly good for kids in the long run. Like, educational shows are one thing. But the stuff we make for babies is just... offputting.”

“Do babies even like that shit? I remember thinking stuff like Teletubbies was kinda creepy when I got older.”

“I don’t think babies have the capacity to realize things can be bad yet, but also I can’t imagine it’s not kind of traumatic. I feel like there’s gotta be a better way to keep kids entertained, you know?”

“There’s some kids shows that aren’t horrible and offputting.”

“Most of those are aimed at an older audience. Stuff for elementary schoolers is usually fine, it’s baby cartoons that I hate.”

“Yeah, I ain’t gonna defend baby cartoons.”

“I don’t think anyone is going to defend baby cartoons, they’re – oh my god get over here you’ve got to see what this guy is wearing.”

“You’re gonna have to describe it for me.”

The conversation continued like that while Tammy slowly but surely worked on drying herself off. Thankfully, it didn’t dry up at any point, or at least not for very long. The daytime talk shows made for good conversation fodder, and drying herself off in silence for an hour in someone else’s home while they watched TV in the other room felt like it’d be fucking awkward. A fate worse than death, and one that Tammy managed to successfully avoid for long enough to finish.

“I’m also willing to pay your electricity bill.”

“I promise you that you drying your hair is not going to be enough more than my baseline power usage to make that much of a difference.”

“The offer remains on the table. I’m off.”

“See you later?”

“Unless something else comes up, prolly.”

“Don’t feel obligated. Like I said, we’ve got plenty of time for that fingerbang you owe me.”

“Goodbye.” Tammy closed the door behind her and then stood around for just long enough to feel awkward. “... She can lock her own door,” she muttered before heading off. It took her longer than she’d have preferred to figure out how to get out of the apartment building, especially considering that it wasn’t really much of an apartment building. Two floors with six units each, plus a ground level with a reception area and an office.

And yet, somehow, she still managed to pick the opposite direction from the stairs. It was at most a fifteen second delay, but it still made her feel like an idiot. Once she did find the stairs, getting out was dead simple, but honestly that just made her initial failure to find the stairs even worse. Then, once she was out, she was faced with a further issue.

“Okay. Where the fuck in Cluaran Creek am I?”

Cluaran Creek might have been Tammy’s hometown, but at the end of the day she didn’t really know it all that well. She knew where her home was, she knew where Penny’s home was, she knew where the Nighthawk was, and she knew where the town square was. Those were the places in town she’d had a reason to go to as a kid – pretty much every other time she went out somewhere it had been out of town, with her parents driving. If Cluaran Creek weren’t so fucking small, and if she didn’t have the Lodge acting as a decent landmark, she’d probably have needed to bust out google maps or bum a ride off her brother (again).

Thankfully, nowhere in Cluaran Creek was particularly far from anywhere else in Cluaran Creek. All in all, from getting the call to getting home, exactly one hour and twenty minutes ended up passing. “Early.”

“You coulda’ been earlier if you hadn’t gotten wasted again.”

“It’s a rare occurrence, I assure you.”

“Two nights in a row?”

“Special circumstances. Now do you wanna get the legal shit done with or what?”

“We’re gonna hafta head downtown.” That made sense, Tammy supposed. It wasn’t like there were any lawyers based out of fucking Cluaran Creek.

“Man, aside from the airport I think the last time I went to Missouri City was, like, high school?”

“Well, yeah, it might be bigger than Cluaran Creek, but no one who doesn’t live there has any reason to go to Missouri City.”

“There’s gotta be tourism, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Kyle replied with a shrug as he grabbed the keys.

“Do I need to bring anything?”

“Just yourself, I think. Prolly, like, an ID or something, but you’ve prolly got one on you already.”

“In my wallet which is in my purse, so yeah.”

“Okay then we’re probably good to go.”

Cluaran Creek wasn’t really that close to Missouri City. Close enough to count as a satellite, but far enough away that it was inherently a day trip. The drive itself was only about an hour, assuming good traffic once they got into the city proper (there was always good traffic on the road between Cluaran Creek and Missouri City.) It was also extremely straightforward until you got into the suburbs – the road between the two was one big straight line with no turns. Once they did get into the city, the trip slowed down a bit as Kyle pulled out a map. “Couldn’t you use google for this?”

“I don’t own a smartphone.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. I’ll buy you a smartphone.”

“Don’t buy me a smartphone, just act as navigator for like five minutes.”

“It’ll be an early Christmas gift.”

“It’s not gonna help us get there in time now-”

“Yeah but consider this futureproofing.”

“When other than this exact situation am I ever gonna need a smartphone.”

“There’s plenty of reasons to have a smartphone besides a GPS. Turn left here.”

“Shit, could you not have said that like fifteen seconds earlier?”

“It’s fine, take the next left.”

“The next road’s a one-way.”

“Okay the one after that, and then another left, skip a road, right, right, and we’re back on track.”

“Ugh, this is why I hate city living. I don’t know how you manage it.”

“No one who lives in a city owns a car.”

“Bullshit.”

“You pretty much always just use public transit or walk places.”

“Man, people on the internet are always complaining that America is designed so you need a car.”

“I think that’s mostly a problem in the suburbs. Or, like, if you want to go from one town to another.”

“I have never in my life had to go from one town to another.”

“What about High School, dude.”

“Okay fine, I’ve rarely had to go from one town to-”

“We’re going from one town to another literally right now.”

“Okay fine maybe we could use a few more trains. I dunno.”

Tammy shrugged. “I’ve always managed to get by without a car.”

“Anyway, try to keep up with the directions.”

“You already missed that right I told you to take.”

“Oh my god.”

“Do you want me to turn on my GPS for you?”

“No, you literally just have to tell me when to turn.”

“We’ve invented technology that makes me not have to do that and you refuse to use it.”

“It is the easiest thing in the world you literally just have to speak it’s not hard-”

“I’m turning on my GPS.”

“Turn right now.”

“Ugh.”

The rest of the trip went much quicker thanks to the GPS, although Kyle made his annoyance clear every time it interjected. Tammy could not for the life of her wrap her head around why he had a problem with GPS, especially considering that it probably cut the length of their trip by a good seventy five percent. Of course, once they got there they realized that there wasn’t any parking. “Annnnd this is another reason why no one in New York owns a fucking car if they don’t have to.”

“Ugh, this is why I hate going to the city.”

“Hold on, I’m looking up nearby parking lots.”

It took another fifteen minutes to actually find parking. “See, this is why I didn’t want to use GPS.”

“This wasn’t GPS’s fault, it would’a happened even if I’d done manual navigation.”

“Hmph.”

Walking to the lawyer’s office took a further five minutes. They went as fast as they could manage, but there was only so fast they could go given crosswalks and traffic and other people and such. “You’re late,” the lawyer, a crotchety looking owl, said tersely.

“Blame big city traffic,” Tammy replied, equally terse. “We’re here now, let’s get this over with.”

The problem with the legal side of things, the key sticking point that made it such a fucking nightmare scenario, was that both of their parents had written their wills with the other parent still being alive in mind. Most of their important assets were left to each other. Generally, that meant that it would all default to their next of kin, which was Tammy.

The problem there being that Tammy didn’t really want any of it. She didn’t have any emotional investment in her childhood home – she’d left ages ago and built a new life elsewhere. And she really, really didn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of having a second home. Kyle, meanwhile, did have an emotional investment in the house. Tammy had always had a rebellious streak a mile wide, even when she was younger. Kyle did not. He was, frankly, a bit Chronically Normal. He wasn’t the favourite, but he was more well behaved and thus generally clashed with their parents less. So the obvious solution, then, was to give everything to Kyle, except Kyle for some reason didn’t like that solution.

“I’m fine with not getting anything, Kyle. I have plenty of stuff.”

“You’ve gotta get something, otherwise it’s not fair.”

“There are some things in the wills specifically left to Miss Castellano,” the lawyer interjected.

“Yeah but she’d definitely be getting more than just a big old trunk if Mom’d had the chance to update her will. And it isn’t fair that-”

“Look, really, I actively want to not profit off of mom and dad dying, okay?”

“Emotional value things then.”

“We’ve been over this. I moved out, I don’t really have any emotional stake in any of this shit.”

“There’s gotta be something. Like... I dunno, how about mom’s wedding dress?”

“If it’ll make you happy then okay,” Tammy said, knowing full well she never intended to get married.

“How about her jewellery, too, it’s not like I’m ever gonna get any use out of it.”

“You could sell it.”

“I’m not selling it.”

“Okay fine.”

“Mom’s dress and jewellery, plus dad’s records and... Let’s say his collection of scotch, too.”

“You know I normally don’t drink, right?”

“You’ve gotten blackout drunk two nights in a row, sis.”

“Special circumstances.”

“Anyway, I think that’s a reasonable take. Plus the stuff mom and dad specifically left to you.”

“Yeah, that’d be some cash and that trunk, right? You good with the amount you’re getting?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? I’ve got plenty of money and you’re kind of on the hook for maintaining the house and car now.”

“It’s fine, I’ve got a job.”

“I figured you did,” Tammy replied with a roll of her eyes. “I just wanna make sure that it’s gonna be enough.”

“I do tech support for a couple of big companies.”

“... From Cluaran Creek?”

“Telecommunication is a hell of a thing.”

“I refuse to believe that Cluaran Creek’s internet is good enough that you can telecommute reliably.”

“Mayor Lacroix installed fibre optic internet five years ago.”

“Huh, no shit.” The swearing earned her a dirty look from the lawyer. “Anyway, is that everything?”

“You still need to fill out the paperwork,” the lawyer replied. “Unfortunately it isn’t as simple as just saying that Mr. Castellano gets all the things that should be going to the next of kin. The law doesn’t work that way.”

Ugh. “Right. Let’s just... get that over with as quickly as possible.”

“It will take about a month for all the papers to be ready.”

“... You’re kidding.”

“The holiday season is coming up,” the lawyer replied, as though that was enough of an explanation. “That slows things down significantly. If you manage to make it on time, I can guarantee that everything should be squared away before Christmas.”

“Okay well that’s still a while.”

“You’re probably going to want to stay in driving distance in the meantime.”

“In that case, can I get a more concrete estimate on when the paperwork will be ready?”

“No. Sorry.”

Tammy inhaled sharply through clenched teeth. “It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s not like I’ve bought return tickets yet.”

“Is that everything for today, then?”

“Yes. You may leave now. I’ll call Mister Castellano when I have a more concrete idea of what paperwork needs to be filled out. We can set up an appointment then.”

“Okay.”

“Try to show up on time.”

“Hmph.”

The trip back to Cluaran Creek took slightly less time than it took to get to the lawyer’s office, mostly because they didn’t have to find their way to a specific location – just out of town. Tammy considered turning the GPS on again but decided that she didn’t want to incite violence while she was stuck in a confined space with her brother for an hour. Instead, she decided to make an important phone call.

“Hey, Bestseller! Where the fuck are you?”

“Cluaran Creek.”

“Okay cool where the fuck is Cluaran Creek.”

“It’s my hometown. Which, by the way, I’ve definitely told you before.”

“I have literally never heard of the place in my entire life. I thought you were from Missouri City.”

“It’s near Missouri City, I guess,” Tammy replied with a shrug.

“Look, all I’m sayin’ is that if you’re gonna go out of town on a random whim you should at least let your fuckin’ literary agent know in advance.”

“You’ve had ample time to call me.”

“I assumed you’d forgot your cell again.”

“That happened once.”

“If by ‘once’ you mean ‘eight times’ then yes. Why are you in your hometown? You’d better have a good fuckin’ reason, I was worried sick.”

“My parents died.”

There was a good solid half minute of silence. “Like both of ‘em?”

“Yeah. Dad died, mom called me to let me know, I flew over, she was dead before I got here.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ. Well, okay, never mind, that’s definitely a good fuckin’ reason. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

“Yeah. It sounds like legal shit’s gonna keep me stuck here at least until Christmas, too.”

“Yeesh.”

“So, uh, I’m going to try and get some work done in the meantime but-”

“No you’re fuckin’ not!”

“Bella, I-”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, babe.”

“I want to write something about, you know, the whole experience.”

“Okay so first off, you’re not even fuckin’ thirty yet, babe, you’re way too young to be writing a memoir.”

“It’s not a memoir, it’s-”

“And second. Babe. Hon. Sweet summer idiot child. Listen to me. You’ve been on non-stop for the past six years. You’ve got three fucking bestsellers under your belt and those are the three books you’ve written. Take a fucking month off to mourn your parents Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

“Okay, okay, geeze.” Tammy rolled her eyes – Bella couldn’t see it, but the sentiment was there. “I never figured you the type to think of someone’s wellbeing over money.”

“First off, fuck you you’re my best friend, you know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re my best friend too.”

“And second off, this is me thinking about money. Have you ever had to deal with a writer who burned themselves out and got really bad writer’s block? I have. It fuckin’ sucks.”

“Okay, okay, duly noted.”

“I’m serious. They used up everything they had and then instead of waiting for the word juice to replenish they just kept pushing and pushing until the wording machine broke.”

“Okay, I’ll take a break, mom.”

“Damn straight you will.”

Of course, both of them knew that Tammy had every intention to work on her writing anyway. But, for now at least, she was willing to pretend to take a break, at least. “I’ll call you back when I’ve got a better idea of the timeline on all this shit.”

“Gotcha. Enjoy your vacation, babe.”

“I’ll enjoy my vacation that I’m going to be spending at my parents’ funeral.”

“You’re not gonna be spending the whole fuckin’ thing at your parents’ funeral, babe, you enjoy those bits.”

“Yeah, yeah. Talk to you later.”

“Who was that?”

“Who do you think.”

“I don’t know, that’s why I asked.”

Tammy rolled her eyes, this time with the intended audience able to see it. “My agent.”

“You have an agent? I thought that was a celebrity thing.”

“Literary agent. It’s a thing.”

“Huh. What do they do?”

“You can google it. I already had to explain this once today and I’m fucking tired.”

“Fine, whatever. Just trying to make conversation.”

“I can’t believe you’re up for conversation after that three hour hell-meeting.”

“It wasn’t three hours.”

“Still took way too fucking long.”

“Kinda. I’m gonna turn on some music.”

“‘kay.” The rest of the drive passed in silence. On the one hand, Tammy was still in a bit of a shitty mood so not getting talked at was nice, but on the other, conversation would have definitely made the trip go faster.

Though, on the other other hand, when she saw a cop car parked outside their house, she found herself wishing that maybe the ride had taken even longer. “What the fuck did you do.”

“What do you mean, what did I do?”

“You’ve already been arrested once since coming back home.”

“I wasn’t arrested! Just, uh, dumped in the drunk tank.”

“Yeah sure. I haven’t done anything wrong so it’s gotta be you.”

“Look, just be cool. Neither of us have done anything illegal that we know of, right? So just don’t do any of the things that make cops decide to shoot at you.”

“I’m pretty sure none of Cluaran Creek’s cops are gonna just randomly shoot us.”

“Unless you do something that makes them want to shoot us, yes. So don’t do those things.”

“I think I’m gonna drive somewhere else for now and wait this out.”

“That is absolutely a thing you could do that would make them want to shoot us.”

“Stop talking about us getting shot!”

“Just pull into the driveway and act like you haven’t committed a crime. If they ask you any questions, answer honestly, and if they do try to arrest you, let ‘em do it. If you fight back, that’s what gets you shot.”

“Stop talking about us getting shot!”

“And don’t panic.”

“Ugh. I don’t know how you’re managing to not panic.”

“Just park the damn car.”

“Okay fine but if we get shot that’s on you.”

They did not, in fact, get shot when Kyle parked the damn car. Or when they got out of the damn car. Tammy briefly considered the possibility that it was just a huge coincidence, that the police car was there for some other reason than her. Or maybe they were off duty, Tammy mused as the driver’s side door opened and Sherry emerged like it was a fucking clown car. Sure enough, she wasn’t wearing her uniform. Plainclothes for Sherry consisted of a slightly dirty off-white tank top and a worn pair of old jeans. The same basic outfit she’d worn at Diane’s house yesterday, Tammy noted. Possibly she’d even outright not changed? Whatever, she wasn’t going to judge, she was wearing the same clothes she’d come to Cluaran Creek in. “How do you even fit?”

“I had to get some custom work done to move the driver’s seat back a few feet. Still significantly cheaper than buying a bigger police car.”

“Okay but if you’re off duty why are you in a cop car?” Kyle interjected before cringing away when Sherry turned her attention to him.

“Most cops do, actually. Makes it seem like there’s a bigger police presence. Plus there ain’t no law sayin’ I can’t just drive her off-duty, so why spend the money on a personal car? Especially since I’d need to buy a big personal car. Or, y’know, fork over the cash for another fuckin’ custom job.”

“Yeah, speaking of which, what about the back seat? What if you need to arrest three people?”

“There has literally never been an occasion in the entire history of Cluaran Creek where we’ve needed to arrest more than one person at a time.” She shrugged, making her muscles shift visibly in a way that Tammy elected to not pay attention to. “Besides, I’m the fuckin’ Sheriff, I generally don’t arrest people unless they do some really heinous shit or unless I’m the only cop in the area.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Tammy walked over to Sherry’s car while Kyle slunk off indoors. “So what brings you to the Castellano manor?”

“I’m takin’ you up on that offer ‘a low-stakes conversation.”

“The one you made to me.”

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna guess that saying I’m busy isn’t an option, then?”

“I mean, technically it is, but you’re not. I can tell by lookin’ at ‘ya.”

“I-” Tammy had intended to check out that trunk her mother had left her, but honestly? Fuck it, it could wait. After the funeral tomorrow, she would be stuck in Cluaran Creek with nothing to do but wait for the paperwork to be ready with her thumbs up her ass. At least checking out the trunk was something to do with her time. “Yeah, okay.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t make you do anything you don’t wanna do. Unlike certain people I’m not a fuckin’ rapist, Penny.”

“Can we, uh, can we not talk about that?”

“Yeah okay.” Sherry shrugged again, before circling around and opening the passenger side door. “C’mon, babe, your chariot awaits.”

This wasn’t the first time Tammy had ridden in a police car. She’d had a lot of interactions with law enforcement, good and bad, as a result of her work. She’d never outright gotten arrested before, but cops tended to not particularly like journalists poking their noses into closed cases. This wasn’t work, though, and last she checked she wasn’t on bad terms with Sherry. Still, sitting in a cop car was always a weird experience, regardless of the context. It wasn’t really all that far off from Kyle’s shitty old station wagon, but there was something about the vibe it gave off that just felt weird. “We’re headin’ to my place.”

Sherry slowly and carefully entered the driver’s seat, which it turned out really was several feet father back than the passenger’s seat. “One of the realities of being seven fuckin’ feet tall. They don’t build shit with you in mind.”

“Yeah, uh, you kinda stand out.”

“Hell yeah I do,” Sherry replied with a grin. “Lemme tell you, the, like, five times I’ve ever actually had to do cop shit and arrest a guy? They’re a hell of a lot less likely to put up a fuss when you look like I do.”

“Yeah, uh, I can imagine.”

“It’d be super useful if I was the sheriff of literally anything bigger than Cluaran Creek, though. Ha.” Sherry leaned forward, turning the key several times before the car started. “Like, when I was younger I was all passionate about law enforcement and shit but like what laws am I going to enforce, this is fucking Cluaran Creek. I can’t even be a hardass stickler because, like, what, am I going to arrest nice old Miss Maple for jaywalking? No fuckin’ way, when I was a kid she would bake cookies every week and give ‘em to us when we got home from school. I can barely bring myself to fuckin’ fine her.”

“Anyway, do you have any plans or are we just flying blind?”

“Flying blind. I figure we can take some time to figure out if we actually have anything in common beyond both of us being smokers.”

“I can’t imagine we do. You’re a cop, I’m an author.”

“Huh, no shit. What do you write?”

“Trashy true crime novels.”

“Oh. Oh! You’re that Tamara Castellano.”

“You’ve read my books?”

“I’m a cop, of course I’m into crime journalism.”

“I, uh, wouldn’t really call it journalism.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. You do some good shit. Better’n most true crime trash these days.”

“You really think so?”

“Too many people get all up their asses about performative morality bullshit, complaining that people put too much focus on the criminals and not enough on the victims which like... fuck you? If someone in my family got offed by a serial killer and a bunch of loser podcasters started pestering me for my side of the story I’d be pissed. Leave the victims alone, it’s disrespectful.” She shrugged, pausing her monologue to take a left turn towards the outskirts of Cluaran Creek. “And then they act all high and mighty about it bein’ more disrespectful to the victims to give the killers attention but like come on the entire appeal of true crime is understanding the psychology of people who do heinous shit. Which is what I like about your books, by the way, y’really dig into things.”

“Uh, thanks.” Tammy had always been really bad at dealing with fans. She never knew what to say so she just sort of sat there and let them talk at her. Which, she supposed, wasn’t as bad as some authors. She’d never outright gotten into a fistfight with one of her fans, at least. And Bella managed her twitter so there were no blow-out internet arguments in her past, either. No author, that she knew of, had lost a fan by being mildly socially awkward. But, well, on the other hand, no author had gained a fan by being mildly socially awkward either.

“I don’t think anyone else ever bothered actually directly interviewing Don Reece. Or at least not as thoroughly as you did.”

“Really? How can you write about someone who’s still alive and not talk to them. You’d think there’d at least be, like, a Netflix documentary or something.”

“Nope! You were the first.” Sherry shrugged. “I guess everyone figured there was no point considering you’d already done it.”

“It wasn’t even that hard to set up a meeting.”

“You’d think it would be kinda hard to set up a meeting with a guy on death row.”

“I mean, it wasn’t easy either. It took a few days to set things up and all that.”

“What was he like?”

“Creepily normal. If I didn’t know he was a serial killer I wouldn’t have twigged it at all.”

“Guy was a used car salesman, right?”

“Yeah, and you absolutely twig him as a used car salesman. Motherfucker was super sleazy.”

“What was that thing he said to you?”

“‘Arson is almost never the best solution to any given problem, but it’s always the most satisfying.’”

“God, yeah. Like weird sitcom dad advice but from a guy who killed people by burning them alive.”

“He said it like it was just a normal thing to say, too, is the thing.”

“Creepy.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway! Here we are, the McClane manor.” It was, pointedly, not a manor. A bungalow, maybe. Definitely smaller than Diane’s house, and probably smaller than Penny’s. “Yeah there’s like four rooms, not counting the basement and the bathroom. I don’t really need anything bigger’n that.”

“I’m not gonna judge, my apartment back in New York is like three rooms. Maybe like half the size of this for twice the rent.”

“Ew.”

“Never move to New York.”

“Why did you move to New York?”

“The same reason actors move to LA. Don’t move to LA either, by the way.”

“I’ll try to avoid having cause to move to New York or LA, then. C’mon, let’s watch some TV or something while I work on dinner.”

“Oh, you’re treating me to dinner?”

“No, I’m only cooking for myself, you can starve,” Sherry replied, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t have invited you over if I didn’t plan on feeding you.”

“Hey, I’m down for being fed, I’m starving. I... actually think I haven’t eaten anything since the day before yesterday.”

“Seriously?”

“I had, like, a mint today and, uh. Might’a sucked on Diane’s tits a bit. But neither of those count.”

“Diane’s tits sorta count, but you should still try and eat three meals a day.”

“Diane’s tits don’t count.”

“No, seriously, I’m pretty sure that you could probably get all your nutritional needs sorted just by suckin’ on that bitch’s fat milkers, it’s wild.”

“I’m still hungry.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re having chili con carne.”

“Are we talking real chili con carne or ground beef and beans in tomato sauce.”

“The former. Believe it or not, I’d been planning on having chili tonight since before we even met.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be?” That statement earned her a Look from Tammy. “What?”

“I’m just saying that we’re absolutely going to have sex at some point this evening, right?”

“Where are you getting that impression?”

“It’s called basic pattern recognition.”

“Anyway, don’t worry, any interesting digestive quirks won’t kick in until after whatever hypothetical happenings are done.”

“Are you sure about that? Because I’ve had a lot of sex since coming back here and every time it’s lasted a while. Like universally. I got fucked unconscious twice.”

“Well, hey, if you got fucked unconscious then you can’t say for sure that it lasted a long time.” That earned her another Look. “Anyway, are you in the mood for anything specific? I’ve also got the new Smash Bros if you’d rather play video games.”

“Isn’t that like four years old?”

“The newest Smash Bros, then, little miss pedantic.”

“I’m honestly surprised we’re not jumping right into Netflix and Chill.”

“Ha. Look, I know everyone you’ve met so far has immediately jumped to sex but not everyone is as absurdly repressed as Diane or as thirsty as Lydia or... whatever the fuck Penny’s deal is.”

“Can we maybe not talk about Penny?”

Sherry frowned. “Y’know, you’re gonna hafta pull that bandage off eventually.”

“Yeah, I know. But not now.”

“Okay.” Sherry shrugged. “I ain’t gonna force you.”

“Thanks.” It felt like a weight off her shoulders that she hadn’t even noticed was there until it was removed. Sherry frankly had a good fucking point – Tammy was going to have to confront this eventually. She didn’t really have a choice, considering she was going to be stuck in town until the holidays and Cluaran Creek just plain wasn’t big enough that she could conceivably avoid Penny for the entire time. “I’ll discuss it with my doctor at some point.”

“Oh, so you trust Lydia more than me?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! At least you’re honest about it.” Sherry grinned, and gestured towards what was presumably the kitchen. “C’mon, let’s go make some chili and I can work on earning your trust.”

That was probably easier said than done. Tammy had never been much of a cook, and she trusted Sherry about as far as she could throw her. Which was very slightly more than she trusted Penny, but still not very much. The same with Diane and Lydia. None of them had raped her – yet – but they’d certainly gotten close last night. The whole thing was weird and uncomfortable and she still wasn’t sure how she felt about it. But, like, fuck it, at least they seemed to be nice enough people when they weren’t on the weird magic sex drug?

At least the chili turned out to be simpler than she’d expected. “It’s kind of a multi-day affair, but the benefit of that is that now we just need to leave it to simmer for a few hours and it’s ready to eat.”

“Cool.”

“I swear I didn’t put anything weird in it.”

“I believe you.” She did not actually particularly believe her, but it wasn’t like she could do anything about it beyond order out or something.

“You sure don’t sound like you believe me.”

“I do!”

“Look, I promise I’m not going to rape you unless you ask me to.” That resulted in a choked snort of a laugh from Tammy. “I mean it!”

“I know, just... listen to what you said.”

Sherry paused, mulling it over. “Okay, fair enough, I worded it badly.”

“I get what you mean, though. Don’t worry, for now I trust you enough to assume you won’t do anything beyond rape-play.”

“We can go the whole-ass night without any sex period if you don’t wanna fuck! I told you, I’ve got Smash Bros.”

Tammy took a moment to actually seriously consider whether or not she even wanted to have sex with Sherry. “Tell you what. Promise to keep the weird magic drugs out of it for now and we’ll see where things go.”

“Pfft, is that all? Fine. We can just finger each other while making out or something.”

“Yeah sure.” Tammy paused. “You got any breath mints?”

“... Why would I need breath mints?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got all evening.”

“It’s an embarrassing story,” Tammy clarified, which was a mistake.

“Oh, so it’s juicy. Now you gotta tell me.”

“The point,” Tammy said, pointedly not telling her any more details, “is that we’re both regular smokers.”

“Ah, lemme guess. Lydia called you out for having bad breath? Yeah, she does that. Trust me, she will not shut the fuck up about you smoking unless you quit.”

“I told her that once I finish my current pack I’m going to go cold turkey for a month. You know how smokers always say they could quit if they wanted to? I’m gonna put my money where my mouth is and if I can manage it then I’m allowed to smoke as much as I want without her bitchin’ about it.”

“Yeah that’s prolly not gonna be good enough for her. I guarantee that she’ll still bitch about it.”

“Anyway,” Tammy said, pointedly changing the subject. “I think it’s reasonable to wanna be sure neither of us has cigarette breath if we’re gonna make out.”

“Who says my mouth is getting anywhere near yours?”

“I mean, I’m assuming-”

“Trust me, it’s gonna be busy elsewhere.”

“oh.”

Sherry grinned, held up her fingers to her mouth in a v shape and stuck her tongue through it – and man, she had a lot of tongue to stick out. She’d made the same gesture when they’d first met but Tammy hadn’t been quite as gay back then so it hadn’t had quite as much impact. God, it had to be like a fucking foot long. “That’s, uh, a lot.”

“Dogs have long tongues.”

“Apparently so.”

“I can give you a practical demonstration if you want?”

“Mnf.”

“Actually we should probably do it now, before dinner. Don’t want to get chili down there, you know, even if it’s not too spicy.”

“Mnf.”

“I’m gonna take that as a ‘yes, please ravage the fuck out of me, Sherry.’ Unless you say otherwise.”

Tammy did not say otherwise. She was having a hard time thinking, to be honest. Part of her wanted to object, but a larger part of her reminded her that she had been intending to test out her heterosexuality with Lydia this morning. And, while that had fallen through, Sherry was just as good a barometer of gayness as Lydia. Yeah, she didn’t have Lydia’s colossal ass, but she didn’t really need to because she was just plain ol’ huge all over.

Apparently taking her silence as consent – which, to be fair, it wasn’t exactly not consent – Sherry picked the squirrel up and slung her over her shoulder, carrying her to the living room where she unceremoniously dumped her onto the couch. “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. If you want me to stop, just say so.”

“Mnf.”

Once again, Sherry clearly took that as a sign to continue. She unbuttoned Tammy’s jeans and pulled them down. “Holy shit, you’re soaked.”

“Shut up,” Tammy snapped in response, blushing furiously.

“You sure you’re straight?”

“Just eat me out already, okay?”

“Patience, patience, geeze. I hafta get your panties off first.”

“Oh.” Right yes fair enough. “Look, I haven’t... done this before, okay.”

“I mean, I would assume you could guess that you need access to the pussy to eat it.”

“Mnf stop bullying me and get on with it.”

“Fine, fine, no more dragging our feet.” Sherry grabbed the sides of Tammy’s hips, hooking her fingers around the plain white panties and pulling them down.

“What do you mean, our, the only one dragging their feet here is yaaaaaahnnnn~”

This was the first time Tammy had ever been eaten out, obviously. Out of all the firsts she’d experienced over the past few days, this was hardly the most outlandish. There was no way it was going to compare to the various things she’d let herself get dragged into last night. But, in the moment at least, she couldn’t quite say that it was underwhelming.

Just the opposite, in fact. She’d done plenty of penetrating since coming back to Cluaran Creek, but the only time anything had penetrated her it was fingers, so Sherry’s tongue was almost overwhelming. It was surprisingly dexterous, for a tongue. It pressed and rubbed against her lips and clit and slid its way inside her. God, it was huge. She already knew it was huge, Sherry had shown it off several times, but there was a difference between seeing that Sherry had a foot-long tongue and actually experiencing that foot-long tongue first hand. It went in deep, wiggling and writhing inside of her in a way that she was pretty sure a dick couldn’t. “F-ffuuuuuck!”

Tammy came hard. She felt a little bit embarrassed that she’d finished quite so quickly, but she also wasn’t particularly surprised. She didn’t have much experience with sex, and especially not with non-magically augmented sex. Plus, she’d already gotten metaphorically blue-balled once today as it was. So, yeah, okay, it was no wonder she was a bit quick on the trigger right now. Didn’t make it any less embarrassing. Sherry’s tongue slithered its way back out of her like a snake and she pulled away, grinning smugly. “Someone’s a quick-shot~”

“Can it, it’s been a long day.”

“Suuuuure it has~”

“Quit it or I won’t return the favour.”

“That was on the table?”

“It won’t be if you don’t stop being smug.” Tammy blushed furiously, pointedly not looking at Sherry’s smug face.

“I’m not being smug. ‘s just that you’re so cute.”

“I said quit it!”

“I am allowed to compliment you, babe.”

“Hmph.”

“I mean it, by the way. You are cute.”

“Hmph.”

“C’mon, no more sulking. I’ll let you touch my tits?”

“You’d let me touch your tits anyway.”

“Not necessarily!”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay fine, absolutely.” Sherry rolled her eyes. “I was absolutely gonna make you touch my tits.”

“Make me?”

“Yes. Well, sort of. The kind of ‘make you’ where I’m not actually making you but, you know.”

It was Sherry’s turn to blush. Tammy very briefly considered taking this opportunity to rub it in her face but ultimately decided to be the better woman. “Glad we’re on the same page, then.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Sherry stood up and grabbed the bottom of her tank top. “This is all foreplay anyway, by the way, so it’s fine if you cum early. So long as you cum often too.”

“Uh. Okay.” It seemed like it was her turn to take initiative, which meant that suddenly she found all her apprehension flooding back.

“Hey, don’t worry too hard,” Sherry said, clearly intuiting Tammy’s discomfort. “You don’t need to do anything. Remember, this is gentle femdom and you’re the sub.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. Which means that your job is to just relax and let me do all the hard work, okay?”

“Okay.” Honestly, Tammy wasn’t actually all that okay. She didn’t really get what Sherry meant by gentle femdom.

“It means that I take the lead, basically. Tell you what to do and take initiative and so on.”

“Okay, that makes a bit more sense.”

“You live in NYC how the fuck are you so sheltered.”

“I’m a virgin, remember?”

“Yeah but you live in NYC.”

“I’m not sheltered, it’s just that all of this stuff is out of my wheelhouse, okay?”

“Yeah, well, let’s just do what we can to get you acclimated to it.” Sherry pulled her tank top off in one fluid movement. “Like, to be clear, I’m not good at this gentle shit, but anything I can manage is gonna be better’n throwing you into the fuckin’ deep end. As we have been doing thus fuckin’ far.”

Sherry probably had a point. Tammy didn’t really know for sure, she’d kind of checked out at this point. Her attention was monopolized by Sherry’s tits. They weren’t as big as Diane’s or Penny’s, but they were still pretty fuckin’ large. Big and round, firm but not too firm, covered in chocolate-brown fur and capped with dark nipples.

“I think I might be gay.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“What happened to being gentle?”

“I am being gentle,” Sherry replied with a smirk. “I’m gently making fun of you.”

“Look, I’m just new to even the possibility that I might not be straight, okay? Gimme some time to get used to it.”

“How old even are you? Like thirty?”

“Twenty eight!”

“So twenty eight years and you didn’t even consider you might be gay?”

“Bi.”

“You just said gay, babe.”

Tammy frowned. “Can we please just skip the sexuality talk and get to the bit where I touch your tits?”

“Yeah, but this is probably another bandage you’re gonna wanna rip off at some point. Just, uh, not with me?”

“Mnf.”

“I’m not exactly the best person to talk about serious shit with, is all I’m saying.”

“Look, dinner’s gonna be ready any minute now and we’ve spent enough time fucking waffling.”

“Then touch my tits, babe, nothin’s stopping you.”

“You’re supposed to be taking the lead!”

“Oh my fucking god,” Sherry said, rolling her eyes before firmly grabbing Tammy’s arms and placing them on her breasts. “There. Jesus.”

They were, in fact, very firm. Not quite so firm that they felt fake, but nowhere near as impossibly pillowy as Diane’s. They felt pleasantly warm, too. And her rock-hard nipples provided a weird but oddly pleasant contrast.

“You like ‘em?”

“Yeah.”

“Gay?”

“Maybe. Gimme a bit more time with ‘em. I need to compare ‘em to some other boobs, too.”

“Want me to call up Diane or something?”

Tammy thought back to Sherry and Diane’s interactions the previous night. “... Maybe not.”

“Well, what, are we just gonna wait for another pair of boobs to come to us?”

The doorbell picked that exact moment to ring, further convincing Tammy that the universe was actively conspiring to make her life as complicated as possible. “Oh for- who the fuck could that even be?” Sherry grumbled, angrily retrieving her tank top from the floor and putting it on. Tammy had never considered the possibility that someone could convey so much sheer raw annoyance by putting a fucking shirt on, but this whole trip had consistently defied all her expectations.

“Who would you least like to see right now?”

“Pretty much anyone, considering we were just getting to the good bit.”

“I guarantee you it’s gonna be whoever’s in the number one spot.”

“Here,” Sherry said, grabbing a blanket off of the couch and tossing it to Tammy. “Put this on for now. I don’t have any pants that’d fit you and yours are still, uh, wet.”

“Who’s fault is that?”

“Yours.”

“Thanks.” Tammy unfolded the blanket and covered her lower body, trying really hard not to think about whoever was on the other side of the door. She had some ideas. Best case, it was somehow work related, but somehow Tammy knew it wasn’t.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Um. Hi, Sherry! I brought cookies.”

Yeah, that was about what Tammy thought. The worst possible person who could have any reason to show up out of the blue.

“Do you seriously think cookies are going to make any difference, Penny?”

“I didn’t! I just... made too many. So, um. I thought I’d give you some as a peace offering.”

There was a banging noise – probably Sherry punching a wall or something in an attempt to be threatening. Tammy couldn’t actually see the doorway, so she had to make do with guesswork. “You’re going to have to do way better than that to make peace.”

“Eep! I-I’m sorry!”

“Sorry isn’t good enough. You are extremely lucky that I can’t actually arrest you for this.”

“F-for baking cookies?”

“No, for raping someone, you idiot.”

“Oh.” There was an awkward pause. “Is, um, is now a bad time?”

“Yes.”

“I can come back later?”

“Oh my god.” Tammy could just barely hear Sherry burying her face in her palms. “She’s here, by the way. Just so you know.”

“Wh-who’s here?!”

“Who do you fucking think.”

“... oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I, um. I can leave, then...”

Tammy decided now was probably a good time to interject. “It’s fine. Just come in.”

There was another audible pause. “You sure you’re okay with that?”

“It’s like you said earlier, I need to rip the bandage off at some point. Might as well be now.”

“Well, okay, if you’re sure.”

There were a few more moments of silence before Penny came into view, Sherry looming ominously behind her. She was making a visible attempt to shrink into herself, which didn’t really work given that she was almost as tall as Sherry. “Um. Hi, Tammy. Sorry.”

Tammy frowned. “Sherry’s right that sorry isn’t really going to cut it.”

“Oh. Um. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.”

“Put the cookies down.”

“O-oh. Okay.” Penny took a brief, frantic moment to look around before carefully placing the large plastic container of cookies down on a nearby side table. “Okay, they’re down.”

“Good.” Tammy stood up, carefully making sure to keep herself covered by the blanket. It wasn’t like Penny hadn’t seen her naked before, of course, but that was part of the problem. She walked over to the larger woman, pulled her hand back, aimed upward, and smacked her across the face as hard as she could. Which, granted, wasn’t actually very hard. She was a weedy author, not the picture of upper body strength. But that was fine. She didn’t really want to hurt Penny. Just make a point.

“There. You hurt me, I hurt you. We’re not even, but at least now we can talk about it like fucking adults. Okay?”

“Mnf.” Penny rubbed the point of contact. “I deserved that.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Sherry grumbled. “You deserve way worse than that, frankly.”

“This is fine for now. The rest is up to Penny.”

“Okay. What do I have to do?”

“No more sex without asking, for starters.”

“Okay. Okay, I can do that.”

“I should fuckin’ hope so.”

“Sherry. I can handle it.”

Sherry frowned. “I just don’t think it’s okay for her to get off lightly.”

“It’s like you said, we can’t exactly arrest her. That magic shit probably ain’t standing up in a court of law.”

“Yes, but-”

“We got basically the best possible outcome. I’m not traumatized or anything, I don’t think. I basically passed out five minutes into sucking her dick.”

“I didn’t do anything after that,” Penny interjected nervously. “After you passed out I, um. Realized that I’d messed up. So I called up Sherry. She’s the one who came up with the drunk tank cover story.”

“Right.” That was probably part of why Sherry was so specifically angry about the whole thing. Putting aside the obvious reasons to be mad at someone for being a rapist, especially when you’re a cop, that would make her an accessory. She’d basically put her job on the line because Penny couldn’t keep it in her pants. “Anyway,” Tammy said, deciding to nip any further digressions in that particular direction in the bud. “The point is that most of the time rapists don’t exactly get the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, you know?”

“She’s not gonna learn if she doesn’t face any consequences.”

“Yeah, but she’s also not gonna learn if we just yell at her nonstop without giving her the chance to improve.”

“... Yeah. Okay, fine. That’s fair.” Sherry visibly relaxed, just a little. “I’ll be the bad cop, you can be the good cop.”

“I think it’d be better if we had two morally neutral cops.”

“I like being the bad cop though.”

“You’ve gotten to be the bad cop more than enough today.”

“Boooo. Fine. I’m gonna go check on the chili.”

“Okay.”

“I’m also throwin’ your pants in the washer.”

“I can probably just-”

“No y’can’t, they’re soaked.”

“Oh, um. Was I interrupting anything?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Tammy waved dismissively, mostly because now was a really bad time to let Penny know she’d just been having gay sex. “It’s nothing we can’t do later. I’m gonna be stuck here for a while so we’ve got plenty of time.”

“Stuck?”

“Legal shit’s gonna take longer than it really should,” Tammy clarified. “That’s part of why I kinda wanna be on speaking terms with you again? Considering that that’s like a fifth of the town’s population right there.”

Penny stifled a giggle. “Hey, now, we’ve got at least ten people.”

“Come on, let’s go sit down.”

“Right.” Penny made a point to sit on the far side of the couch from Tammy. “I, um. I really am sorry, by the way.”

“Yeah.”

“I just... acted on impulse. I didn’t even think about how you felt.”

“Yes, well. You’re not gonna make the same mistake twice, right?”

“Of course not!”

“Then it’s fine. So long as you don’t go into this expecting anything more than friendship, then we’re fine.”

“Okay.”

“And maybe, maybe, if you behave yourself, maybe we can try taking things farther. Maybe.”

“That’s okay. I can be patient.”

“Patience is good. But you can’t just say it. You’ve gotta demonstrate it.”

“Mmm. It’s one thing to say that I’m patient, but those are just words. My actions have been...” Penny trailed off, but she didn’t really need to say it. Frankly, Tammy was kind of done with saying it out loud for now, anyway. “A-anyway. I can wait, I promise. It’s not like I’m hard up for sex or anything.”

“Yeah, I guess you do have BJ, right?” Tammy paused, frowning slightly. “Hey, you’ve never-”

“No.”

“Okay. Just wanna make sure.”

“If anything, BJ was the one who took initiative. Helped me figure out that I’m, um-”

“A turbodom?” Sherry injected, leaning in from the kitchen. “Chili’s ready, by the way.”

“I was gonna say that she helped me figure out I was bi,” Penny replied with a surly grumble.

“Yeah sure, whatever helps you sleep at night.” She tossed Tammy a tee shirt. “Here. I don’t have any pants that would fit you so this’ll hafta do.”

“I have pants.”

“Nope, not gonna let you put those back on without washin’ em.”

“They’re fine.”

“No they’re not, babe. Maybe if you were a little less eager earlier? But they’re soaked, I ain’t letting you sit around in ‘em until that’s been dealt with.”

“They’ve got a good few days left in them.”

“Well okay now I’m tempted to throw them in the incinerator.”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s that or the washing machine, kiddo.”

“I cannot possibly be that much younger than you,” Tammy grumbled. “Fine, if you’re gonna wash my pants you might as well wash my shirt, too.”

“You can keep your shirt on.”

“I haven’t had a chance to change it in a while anyway. Which, by the way, is partly your fault.”

“Excuse me, don’t blame your lack of hygiene on others.”

“I would have changed by now had I had a chance to go home for more than five minutes at a time. Which, again, is partly your fault.”

“It’s everyone’s fault.”

“Speaking of which, I definitely need to go home tonight. So no sleepovers.” Tammy removed her jacket, and then paused long enough for Penny to avert her eyes before pulling her shirt off. “The funeral’s tomorrow so I actually need to get ready for that.”

“Fair enough. I’ve had my fun for now, apparently you’re stuck here for a while so I’ve got plenty of time to fuck you senseless.”

“What about-”

“You don’t get any,” Sherry snapped. “Not until you’ve demonstrated that you can behave yourself.”

“I wasn’t going to say that!” Penny very obviously lied. “I was gonna say what about her clothes?”

“If we throw ‘em in the laundry now they’ll be done in a few hours. That gives us plenty of time to eat dinner and socialize a bit without you havin’ to stay over. And you can go home in freshly laundered clothes.”

“Mf.” Honestly, Tammy generally didn’t really care about how clean her clothing was. Unless she needed to look nice then all she cared was that they weren’t too dirty to be comfortable. Still, she couldn’t deny that freshly laundered clothing felt nice – especially in the winter. “Fine, fine, let’s just do this.” She unhooked her bra and then tossed both it and her shirt to Sherry. “You can grab my pants yourself.”

“That’s fine, I’m just not comfortable sending you home with cum-soaked pants.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a neat freak.”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness or some shit like that.”

Tammy stood up and put the shirt Sherry had given her on. Unsurprisingly, she ended up practically swimming in the thing. It practically reached down to her knees, and the neck was big enough for one of her shoulders to keep slipping out. It was also, obviously, very breezy. No underwear and all that. Thankfully, she wasn’t going to have to go outside in only an oversized tee shirt. 

The chili was good, Tammy supposed. She didn’t really have much experience with Mexican food – you could probably find decent Mexican in New York, but why bother when you could get good Puerto Rican food for cheaper at basically every street corner? “I got the recipe from the Cruzes. According to them it’s the best chili con carne you’re ever gonna get north of Oklahoma.”

“Kansas is pretty far south.”

“Not far enough to get good Mexican food, according to the Cruzes.”

“They would know.”

“You have to have eaten Mrs. Cruz’s cooking at some point, Tammy. I ate her cooking when I was a kid and we’re around the same age.”

“I wasn’t really super social as a kid.” And even disregarding that, the Cruz family weren’t exactly in Tammy’s social circle. They seemed nice, but they only had one kid at the time who was like five years younger than her.

“Y’ain’t exactly super social now.”

“I’m plenty social. Would I even be here otherwise?”

“You’re pretty prickly, babe.”

“She’s not that bad,” Penny said, though her voice was uncertain. “We, um, haven’t spent much time together since she got back, though.”

“She’s like a cactus with a fluffy tail.”

“I’m not that prickly.”

“Are you a squirrel or a hedgehog?”

“Are you a dog or a donkey.”

“Hey. Um. Let’s calm down a bit. No arguing, okay?”

“Eh, this ain’t arguing. ‘s good natured banter.”

“And we should probably cut it off while it’s still good natured banter,” Penny reiterated firmly.

“Gah, fine. I can’t deal with you when you’re in full-on angry elementary school teacher mode.”

“I’m not angry! I just want to try and make sure we all get along.”

“Yes, Miss Lane. Are we gonna be learning arithmetic next?”

“I’m not in elementary school teacher mode!” Penny flushed with embarrassment, cringing down into her chair.

“You need to get better at turning the fuck off. You’re always either in teacher mode or turbodom mode.”

“N-not always!”

“True. Sometimes you’re just terrified of your own shadow.”

“I’m not that bad!”

“You’re pretty timid,” Tammy interjected. “You’ve been shy for as long as I’ve known you at least.”

“Mmm!”

“Anyway, I think I like teacher Penny best of the three Pennies.”

“There aren’t three Pennies, there’s just me.”

Tammy thoughtfully took a bite of her chili. “Everyone wears masks all the time.”

“I’m not pretending to be someone else, I just-”

“Well, it’s not really like you’re pretending to be someone else. All the masks are you, they’re just like... different parts of you that you bring out depending on the situation.” Tammy ate another spoonful. “Everyone does it.”

“I guess...”

“Don’t worry too much about it,” Sherry said, waving her spoon for emphasis. “Just do whatever you would do otherwise, aside from the obvious things that you should try not to do anymore. If you think too hard about it you’ll overcompensate and try too hard. And no one wants that.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so! Look at me, I’m just as much of a turbodom as you but I come across as perfectly normal to most people.”

“You did sexually proposition me within like five minutes of our first meeting.”

“That’s called flirting and it’s normal.”

The conversation continued on for several hours, well after dinner, with only a brief pause in the middle to transfer Tammy’s clothes into the drier. The whole thing felt oddly normal. Like she wasn’t having a casual dinner with a childhood friend who had raped her. And frankly Sherry wasn’t that much better. She’d asked, at least, and getting eaten out had been nicer than she’d expected. But Tammy couldn’t help thinking back to the previous evening’s events. Sherry hadn’t been particularly nice, and she got the impression that maybe Diane wasn’t quite so into it as Sherry claimed. And then there were the magic drugs, whatever they were. Beyond the more fantastical effects, every sexual experience she’d had while the drugs were involved had been noticeably more forceful. She had a hard time putting it to words exactly, but it was like Sherry and Lydia and Penny were all entirely different people when the drugs came out.

Which really wasn’t all that novel an observation. Drugs were, in fact, known to make people behave differently. That was kind of a big part of the point of recreational drugs.

Eventually, the laundry finished, and Tammy took that as her cue to go home. She did want to check that trunk her mother had left her, after all. But mostly she just didn’t want to stick around long enough for more sex. At least not yet. She was comfortable enough to socialize with Penny, but not quite enough to do so without someone she trusted in earshot, and nowhere near enough to actually have sex with her. So instead she just put her clothes back on, took a few cookies, and left. “You want a ride?”

“I need the exercise.” And she kind of wanted to be alone for a bit. Some time to think, although she ultimately ended up not actually thinking about much on her way home aside from things she’d already thought about.

She gave her brother a terse greeting before immediately heading to her bedroom. She didn’t really want to get into another conversation. Frankly, today had already gone on for long enough – especially after yesterday, which had felt like it lasted forever. The plan was to check the trunk and then go to bed early so that she could get up early for the funeral – and, hopefully, in the process get back into a more normal hygiene routine. Daily showers, three square-ish meals, not wearing the same outfit multiple days in a row while reeking of cum.

She decided that she was going to stop thinking about that and instead focus on the trunk. It was already in her room – apparently her mom had moved it here shortly before she’d passed. Maybe she had seen it coming? But, more likely, she and her father had decided to use it for storage. They hadn’t exactly kept it in exactly the condition that she’d left it in, though that was because Tammy took most of her stuff with her when she left for college. They honestly probably didn’t expect to ever see her again, which was a depressing thought. The only things in the room, aside from her luggage, were a plain bed, the same one she’d slept in for her entire childhood, a desk, and the trunk.

It was a very plain, bog-standard steamer trunk – deep green with brass-coloured rivets all along the edges including where the lid met the main box. It had two latches on either side of the lid, also made of some sort of slightly tarnished brass, and a big lock in the middle. Thankfully, it wasn’t locked, because she didn’t have any idea where the key was, didn’t know how to pick locks, and really didn’t want to have to break out an angle grinder on her inheritance.

She flipped the latches and opened the trunk, staring at what it contained and trying really hard not to think about the implications. Stacks upon stacks of familiar-looking incense along with multiple burners, piles upon piles of pill bottles, and an upsettingly large number of small, clear glass vials filled with multi-coloured fluid.

“... You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”