Stardust

Dresses don’t go with swords.

—Revolutionary Girl Utena

     Entering a house was a weird experience for July. The last time she’d been inside a proper home, it was a cramped and dingy New York City apartment, and it was in middle school. This was an entirely different experience.

     The neighborhood itself was disconcerting. The houses were much sparser than July was used to, spread out in their own little grassy bubbles, surrounded by lawns that definitely used to be well-kept, but were now brown tangles of dead and hibernating foliage. Once every few streets, she would catch sight of one that was still manicured, with a car or two in the driveway and even a light on in one of the windows. In the pre-sunrise blue-raspberry morning half-light, soundtracked only by the electric buzz of streetlights, the streets just looked… empty.

     The house they eventually settled on would have been the perfect powder-blue picture of the suburban dream—if it wasn’t for the piles of dead leaves and litter that filled the massive front yard. It was otherwise cute; a little two-story family home with vinyl siding and an attached side porch, and most importantly for their purposes, an open garage with no cars inside.

     Without speaking, July and Cass left the boys to attempt to figure out the manual garage door mechanism, and headed around the side of the house to jimmy the side porch door open. July pulled a couple of bobby pins out of her jacket pocket—normally used to keep her ponytail regulation, but it wasn’t like she’d had time to do her hair this morning—and handed them to Cass, who knelt in front of the doorknob and began doing all kinds of fiddly bullshit to it.

     July shifted from foot to foot awkwardly, watching her breath fog in the chilly air. “So, uh.”

     “Please spare me the dramatics,” Cass said dryly. Something in the mechanism clicked audibly a few times and the door swung open.

     That was when July decided normal people’s houses were unfathomably weird.

     The first thing that struck her was how overwhelmingly white everything was; the walls, ceiling, and moldings were all painted the same blindingly bland white that practically glowed in the early-morning half-light. As Cass came inside behind her, the lights flickered on, adding to the violent white miasma. At the same time she was assaulted by this onslaught of visual bullshit, a thick, musty odor hit her nose, filling her head with stale air. She winced.

     Walking in the door sent puffs of dust flying up where her boots hit the hardwood. The living room was sparse, a couple of couches piled with throw pillows and blankets in dull shades of gray and blue, spaced around a fireplace covered in cobwebs. Off to the side, a hardwood staircase disappeared up into the second floor. There were some photos on the fireplace mantle; July’s eyes skimmed hastily over those, her stomach doing flips.

     “Sorry about the…” Words failed her. She gestured lamely in the general direction of the garage. “Car stuff.”

     “I am well-versed in dealing with your psychosis, dear.” Cass brushed past her and threw her backpack onto the couch as she passed; she prowled around the room, gaze swiveling from object to object.

     July kept doggedly at her heels. “I meant the game stuff.”

     “I know what you meant.”

     Further conversation was avoided with the arrival of the boys through the garage door. Jasper staggered in with Lake leaning awkwardly against his shoulder; the duo made a beeline for the couch, where Lake collapsed heavily with a grunt. His weight sent a visible cloud of dust puffing up from the cushions.

     Lake stretched out lengthwise on the couch, hands pressed to his eyes.

     “He has a headache,” Jasper said.

     “That’s quite a headache,” Cass noted. In response, Lake curled in every finger but his two middle fingers, all without removing his palms from his eyes, but Cass wasn’t looking at him.

     July followed Cass into the kitchen, which was similarly dusty. And rank. She made a wide berth around the no-longer-shiny stainless-steel trash can radiating the smell of rot and sulfur in a multi-foot radius.

     “Don’t open that,” Jasper said from the doorway. Cass, standing by the fridge (also stainless-steel, much to July’s bafflement—she decided the former owners must have been very wealthy), paused, her hand hovering over the door handle.

     He leaned against the doorway, arms folded over his chest. “It’s gonna be full of rotting food.”

     “Right.” Cass moved on and began opening and closing dove-gray cabinets, glancing over their contents with puzzlingly methodical intensity.

     “What are you doing,” July finally said, unable to stand the tense silence.

     “Taking inventory,” Cass replied, “which you would be doing as well if you had any sense. Why don’t you go find the bathroom and see if there’s anything helpful there?”

     Without responding, July gritted her teeth and stomped past Jasper back into the living room.

     The side door, obviously, opened out into the side yard; the front door was easily recognizable from the long rectangular windows set into its panels, and the remaining door was where the boys had emerged from the garage, which only left the upstairs. She dragged her feet up the staircase, not bothering to acknowledge Lake, who hadn’t moved except to put a dingy pillow over his face.

     This was stupid. Cass was obviously pissed at her, or she wouldn’t have sent her away to do pointless bullshit on her own. It wasn’t like July could do anything about this, but that only made her more upset.

     She averted her eyes from the photos hanging by the stairway.

     The bathroom was at the top of the stairs. It struck July as extremely luxurious to have a bathroom with only one toilet. She’d obviously had one in her family’s apartment, but that was so long ago…

     The room was smaller than she’d expected, a rectangular alcove of tile that had obviously been gleaming-white only a few years ago, and now the effect was only spoiled by a layer of dust. July drew one finger along the countertop; the pad of her fingerprint came away gray, leaving a streak of stark white on the counter.

     Curiously, she tried one of the faucets. It sputtered and coughed for a moment, making a violent clattering noise that made July wonder if she’d just massively fucked up, but the sounds stopped just as quickly as they started and water began pouring from the tap. She let it run for a second, then tentatively stuck her finger in it. Warm, and getting warmer the longer she let it run.

     She glanced over at the bathtub.

     “Is this what you’re supposed to be doing?” June asked, batting those girlishly innocent green eyes.

     “Fuck you,” July said, and started stripping.

###

     Baths were exactly as good as July remembered, maybe even better. The scalding hot water turned her skin bright pink and made her feel newer and cleaner than she had in years; stripping the dirty bandages off her burned leg hurt like a bitch, but letting her leg float in the water felt glorious. Plus, soaking gave her time to think.

     After letting the water drain, she shook herself dry as best she could and wrung her dripping hair into the bathtub. Then she steeled herself, stood as straight and tall as she could, and looked in the mirror.

     It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. An angry red scratch stood out on her temple, framed by her wet hair plastered to her head, but it was entirely clotted and didn’t seem to be in danger of reopening anytime soon. It was just a surface wound.

     Otherwise, she looked fine. Her eyes were puffy and red, but scrubbing off the layer of grime was good for her. Experimentally, July tilted her head and gave her reflection a come-hither smile, surprised to find that she actually looked rather cute. She’d always liked her freckles, and they looked much better when not mixed with dirt ground into her pores.

     In the back of her head, Cass’s voice gently scolded her for her moment of vanity. She pulled herself away from the mirror and squatted down to root through the cabinet under the sink.

     It was divided into two halves; one held a pile of rags and haphazardly stacked bottles of cleaning chemicals, and in the other half, there were small shelves stacked with bottles of pills, fat white drugstore bottles and orange prescription bottles. July grabbed a bunch at random and dropped them on the floor by her discarded clothes.

     It felt nasty to put her grime-smeared clothes back on her clean body. This gave her a half-formed idea. Cass usually advised her against acting on those, but July was feeling mildly spiteful and she was pretty sure nothing she did here would have major consequences.

     She wrapped herself in the towel that hung over the back of the bathroom door, wincing slightly at the mildewy smell, and exited the bathroom.

     There were two other doors on the second floor. July went into the one nearest to the bathroom and immediately walked back out, a lump in her throat. Smack in the middle of that room was a crib, one set of bars completely removed, showing off a dinosaur-print comforter. Not that one, then.

     June giggled somewhere in the distance. July swallowed and hoisted the towel up further on her breasts. She counted to ten, taking a slow, deep breath and letting it out through her nose, before moving on.

     When she cracked open the door to the second bedroom, someone inside said “What’s up?”

     She jumped back, scrambling to pull her towel up more, as if that would make the situation any better. The door swung slowly open, revealing a sunlit room, walls the same blinding shade of white as the rest of the house, where Lake’s gawky frame lay sprawled on top of a decadently large bed. July could feel her ears burning.

     “Sorry,” she squeaked. Squeaked. Disgusting.

     He flapped one hand in the air above him, seemingly unbothered. “No worries. Did you need something?”

     “I was, uh,” she couldn’t seem to stop fiddling with her towel, “looking for clothes.”

     “Don’t let me stop you.” He let his head fall back onto the indulgently fluffy pillows, apparently content to let the conversation end there.

     The room was more extravagantly decorated than the rest of the house; the bed itself was covered with a thick, colorful patchwork quilt, and set into a recessed space under the window, there was a desk littered will all kinds of dusty knickknacks. All the furniture in this room was dark, heavy-looking wood, and a full-length mirror hung on the wall across from the bed, featuring ornate gold metalwork on the frame. It was kind of kitschy.

     July crept into the room, carefully keeping her eyes averted from Lake’s limp form. It felt like the polite thing to do. She beelined to the far end, where a massive wardrobe sat, taking up nearly the entire wall by the desk alcove.

     The clothing inside was neatly arranged into two sides. (July was starting to feel actively put off by how organized everything in this house was—but at least this room didn’t smell nearly as musty as it did downstairs.) To the left were presumably men’s clothes; button-downs that would have dwarfed July’s short frame and heavy woolen coats. To the right, some dresses and skirts, mostly in beiges and whites. She wrinkled her nose.

     “Do you want anything?” Lake made a questioning mm? noise, so she clarified: “Clothes. Yours are dirty.”

     There were a few seconds of silence. He must have been seriously considering the offer. “Throw me a shirt or something, I’ll see if it fits.”

     She grabbed a couple of the button-downs at random and threw them in his general direction without looking. Presumably they reached the bed, because he didn’t comment further. July returned her attention to sorting through the women’s clothes, attempting to find anything that wouldn’t make her look like a Republican mother with a minivan and an office job.

     Eventually, she came to the conclusion that it was a lost cause, and she’d just have to wash the filth and blood out of her uniform and hope it dried while she slept. She did, however, find a little pink nightgown with lace edging to wear in the meantime, and if she was being honest, she was kind of excited about it.

     July took her find over to the mirror to try on. Overcome with a sudden burst of daring, she dropped her towel and turned to view her nude curves from a three-quarters perspective in the mirror, making a silly kissy-face at herself as she did. Ears visibly bright red (dammit), she peeked at Lake behind her in the mirror, who looked… amused? Definitely not horrified, at least, but also not overcome with lust or anything.

     That was probably good. July was a taken woman, after all.

     (Back in the hallway, June giggled.)

     She gave herself one last once-over. The burn wound on her leg really fucked up the overall effect, mottled angrily with bright cherry-red and sickly beige, but July wasn’t going to act like she didn’t know she was a damn attractive girl. Having big boobs helped with that; so did her broad shoulders, products of hours of push-ups and weight training. So did her mother, whose vehement rants against diet culture echoed in her head every time she looked at the soft swell of her stomach and dappled folds where her waist twisted.

     July hastily pulled the nightgown over her head and gave an experimental twirl. The soft tulle of the skirt swished giddily around her thighs, coming dangerously close to flying up and exposing her crotch. She stopped, giggling manically. Wearing someone else’s panties was a step too far, even for her. Everyone else would just have to deal.

     “When was the last time you wore a dress?” Lake asked. His voice was casual, like it was the most normal question in the world.

     It made the breath hitch in July’s throat anyway.

     She began scanning the room for anything useful she could bring to Cass. The empty nightstands and abandoned mess of a desk held nothing for her. Over by the door, there was a large wooden cabinet with glass doors, filled with—oh, that was interesting.

     “Not since the invasion,” she finally said lightly, walking over to the cabinet. “There’s meds in the bathroom. I’m guessing you want to look at them?”

     “Might as well.”

     “There’s also…” July opened the cabinet door and pulled out one of the many large bottles inside. She turned around and made eye contact with Lake, hefting the bottle by its neck—a clear glass jug, equally thick with dust as the rest of the house, dark brown liquid sloshing inside as she brandished it in his direction, all covered by a paper label proclaiming it to contain spiced rum—and grinned widely.

     He squinted at the rum, then at her, then broke out into a wide grin himself. “Fuck it.”

###

     “This was the best decision we’ve ever made,” July announced loudly, reveling in the windfall this house had proven to be. The spoils of their search—clothes, canned foods, bottles of medication, toilet paper, even a pack of wet wipes that somehow hadn’t dried out—lay scattered around them in the living room, bathed in dappled patches of sun shining through the windows.

     July felt warm and sleek and sexy. She hadn’t felt so nice in years. The sun was enticingly hot on her bare skin as she lay stretched out on the couch, burned leg propped up in Jasper’s lap as he carefully applied aloe vera gel.

     “Stay still,” Jasper chided.

     She rolled her eyes and downed the rest of her drink, smacking her lips at the not-entirely-unpleasant burn of undiluted citrus and alcohol, then tossed the disposable cup at Cass’s head. Cass caught it in mid-air; her reflexes were surprisingly sharp, considering how much rum she’d consumed over the past hour.

     It hadn’t been difficult to convince Cass to accept the alcohol proposition. She didn’t even say anything when July and Lake came downstairs with their bounty, just disappeared back into the kitchen for a solid few minutes, then returned with a can opener, several cans of pineapple chunks, and a stack of disposable plastic cups.

     “There you go,” Jasper said, patting just above her knee approvingly. She flexed her leg experimentally; it felt fine, the cotton pad he’d taped on in no danger of falling off, although ripping the medical tape off her leg hair was going to be a bitch later. She blew him a grateful kiss before hopping up and twirling around giddily, delighted by the swish of her skirt on her thighs.

     “Gimme another, Cassie,” she said, giggling slightly.

     “Y’all are fucking alcoholics,” Lake said, which was pretty funny coming from his position lounging upside-down on the other couch, his head dangling off the cushion and his legs hooked over the back. The effect was topped off by the slight slur in his speech, which was becoming more and more apparent as the day continued.

     “I don’t think you were supposed to mix those medications with alcohol,” Cass informed him as she cracked open the final pineapple can.

     “Ain’t that just the way,” he said affably. July laughed outright, giving her skirt another twirl.

     “Have any of you actually drank before?” Jasper said. As he continued to drink, he got—and July was rather embarrassed at herself for thinking this, but there was no other way to describe it—fruitier and fruitier. There was a distinct lilt to his voice, and he moved with a certain effeminate flair that she usually associated with Axel on his least annoying days. Not that she found her boyfriend annoying typically. Or, well, not that annoying.

     Brushing her wayward train of thought aside, July stopped spinning and put her hands on her hips dramatically. “Where do you think a good Jewish girl like me would be getting alcohol from?”

     Cass snorted. July rounded on her, only stumbling a little bit in the process, and peered down with cartoonish faux offense at her friend squatting on the floor by the coffee table.

     “Are you questioning my moral… uh… morality?”

     “Your upstanding moral character? Yes.” Cass handed the disposable cup back to her, now half-full of swirling muddy liquid and the occasional pineapple chunk. “I’ve seen what you get up to.”

     “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” July sniffed and took another swig.

     “Sit down before you break something.”

     July rolled her eyes at this, but unfortunately, Cass had a point. She pointed at Lake, who gazed at her from the floor with a wide-eyed deerlike expression. “Schooch. You’re taking up the whole couch.”

     Behind her, Jasper was saying “I’m asking because this feels like the lamest high school house party I’ve ever been to,” which raised her hackles a bit on principle.

     Any defensive comments she would have normally made were derailed by the fact that Lake re-positioning himself to sit normally was a long, involved, and incredibly ungainly process, involving his limbs jutting out and crossing over one another at improbable angles. She watched this operation unfold with more than a little fascination.

     “You look like a scarecrow,” July told him, unable to repress a grin. Overcome with a sudden burst of bravery—or stupidity—she gathered herself up and sat directly in his lap, scooting herself back to press her back against his warm, lithe torso.

     “Hng,” he said. For a moment, she was worried that she’d massively overstepped, but then she felt his long fingers curl around her hips, gentle but insistent, and she let herself breathe in sharply, once.

     “Yeah, I went to a couple back in high school.” Jasper was still talking, gesturing in the air with his cup in a way that made the contents slosh around enthusiastically. “I graduated the year after the invasion.”

     “You’re old,” July said.

     Right by her ear, Lake’s slurred drawl crawled down her spine to vibrate in her torso, resonating with his chest, separated from her only by a couple of thin layers of fabric—the t-shirt he’d dug out of the top shelf of the wardrobe (which she was too short to see) suddenly seemed obscenely flimsy. “Does that make me old, too?”

     His fingers felt red-hot in the divots of her hipbones. Maybe her nightgown was a bit too thin, as well.

     “Oh, get a room,” Jasper said loudly.

     Blood rushed through many different parts of July’s body at once; it roared in her ears and set her face on fire. Wordlessly, she brought her cup back to her lips and chugged, ignoring the acidic burning in her throat, until her head was tilted all the way back and her cup was empty; she tossed the cup to the ground in front of her and took a deep breath. The world was spinning slightly. It felt better.

     “Impressive,” Cass said dryly.

     Wiggling her hips ever-so-slightly, July turned her head to Lake and murmured “Should we?”

     “Mm?” He seemed distracted. As she moved her ass against his lap, his thumbs rubbed burning circles into the lines between her stomach and her thighs.

     “Should we get a room?”

     The next several minutes were a frantic, hurried blur. She only remembered a wolf-whistle, and staggering around with Lake’s arm wrapped around her waist, and Cass saying “At least be safe?” and a dizzy flash of stumbling up the stairs, and then they were upstairs in the bedroom again and she realized she had to stand on tiptoe to tangle her hands in Lake’s loose curls.

     July’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. The world continued to spin. She dragged his face down to hers; he stooped down, hands pressing against the small of her back, and—oh they spread across her back, covering the breadth of her like it was nothing.

     He kissed soft and sweet, chapped lips moving against hers gently. He kissed like a gentleman.

     Her veins sang, twisting under her skin, blood humming tantalizingly at her pressure points. It made her want to shout, to grab and rend and crawl inside of him. She wanted.

     With a whine that surprised even her, she bit at his bottom lip; he drew back and said “Ow,” and she panted and said “Sorry,” and he said “Are you okay?” and she grabbed the hem of his tshirt and yanked it up, and it got stuck on his shoulders and he stumbled back, half-laughing.

     There was something empty inside of her, something missing deep in her core. As Lake pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor, the yearning grew teeth, a feverish mouth pulling at every part of her, filling her with horrible desire that made her hands shake.

     She threw herself on him again, pressing her body up against his, pressing her hips against his; it drew another half-laugh from him, something like “Woah, hey,” falling from his lips, but she barely paid any attention, the feeling of his cock pressed through his sweatpants setting her on fire all over again. (Was he hard? How was she supposed to tell?)

     On impulse, she dropped to her knees in front of him, nuzzled at the front of his sweatpants—there it was—his bulge was soft but firm, hot against her cheek and smelling slightly of salt. As her face brushed up against it, his cock twitched; she could feel his pulse even through his sweatpants, and he whimpered.

     He kissed like a gentleman, but he moaned like a slut.

     July sat there for a moment, her hands hovering at his waistband, and let the world spin around her.

     “Are you okay?” he asked again.

     “I,” she started, and just as quickly stopped to gnaw on her lip, fingers twitching. Anything she could say would make her sound like a stupid child. “I don’t know,” no, that was terrible, try again, “I haven’t done anything with a dick before.”

     July felt very small and very dumb. She tried very hard not to think of Axel.

     “Oh, honey,” Lake said, his hand gently combing through her hair. This made the hole in her gut want to scream. He took her by the hands and pulled her to her feet, led her to the bed, laid her down with a tenderness that thoroughly snuffed out the fire burning under July’s skin.

     Lake lifted her dress and pressed kisses down her stomach, along her hips and thighs; she curled one hand into his hair and sighed and gasped at all the right moments.

     As his tongue swept along her folds, circled her clit, his hands grasping at her hipbones, she thought Well, at least I know what to do.

###

     The room was dark. July’s head throbbed in time with her pulse. The silence was visceral, a palpable feeling in the air; she couldn’t even hear Lake breathing. She rolled over, grasping blindly for his body, but found nothing other than cool, slightly damp sheets.

     She was alone in bed.

     July got up.

     The ground pitched and tilted beneath her feet; she swallowed heavily, repressing a dry heave. Darkness yawned around her, toothy and wide, and settled into a drooling grin.

     She stumbled to the bedroom door and yanked on the knob. As it swung open, her heart dropped in her chest, sinking down somewhere around her stomach; behind the door stretched a seemingly endless corridor of doors, a dark hallway spooling out impossibly into the horizon.

     June stood in the middle of the hall, sporting a grin full of sharp teeth.

     “Hey, sis,” she said. “How’s it hanging?”

     “I wanted some water,” July said dumbly.

     “I don’t have any.” June marched right up to July and cupped her face in one hand, looking at her coolly. Her coal-black eyes made her expression impossible to read. “I miss you.”

     July’s heart fluttered, a moth weakly beating its wings against her ribs. “I’m sorry.”

     “Sorry doesn’t fix it, does it?” June withdrew her hand and began examining her nails carefully—they were painted blood-red. “Go away. Daddy had a bad day, and that means I’m in a bad mood.”

     She didn’t question it. She didn’t want to be there in the first place. July slammed the door and ran back to bed, and she threw herself into it and pulled the quilt over her head with the heart-slamming terror of a child trying to hide from her own nightmares.

     She did not cry. That would have been stupid.