Odessa: A Good Stretch (Story)

--Here's something fun, DrAwkward and I played around with some ideas for Odessa,  she surprised me and took those ideas and made this story. I loved it and decided to post it here. Here's the first story I'm ever posting. I hope you all enjoy it!-- 

“Day 21.”

Odessa sat back in her chair, staring at the two words, or one word and one two-digit number, at the top of the otherwise empty page, and stared. And stared.

“Twenty one days of this,” she said, wearily, though not as wearily as one might have expected. She tossed down her pen, and sighed as it bounced and rolled over the edge of the desk and onto the floor. If journaling her experience had lost its purpose, then the tool she used to do her journaling was similarly useless. She couldn’t handle another night spent chronicling, or, the more she thought about it, even just another night stuck in her apartment.

Reluctantly, Odessa put her bra back on and rooted around for her boots. She hadn’t planned on taking any kind of night time excursion, and was as ready for bed as she ever got anymore, so a few minutes passed before she was thumping down the stairs of her apartment building. The warm August night air hit her like a pillow, which is to say ‘not hard but hard enough to know something had happened.’ The humidity was so high she was surprised she hadn’t started sweating on contact.

She wouldn’t, though; not anymore. Sweating took a lot more than a little heat. She was so confident that she wouldn’t that she didn’t hesitate at pulling up the hood on her sweatshirt, which she did more for peace of mind than anything else.

Odessa had lived in New York for almost a year, the actual anniversary still weeks away. Although she liked the bustle and the energy, she was still uncomfortable with how many people stared at her, and that was before. Now?

She grunted, rolling her shoulders to get the hood to sit a bit more forward.

Didn’t want to do this, she thought. Spend another night psychoanalyzing myself. Waste of my time.

Odessa decided, apropos of nothing, to just get lost. She just looked down, right in front of her feet, and watched the breaks in the concrete pass by for a while. She turned here, and turned there, not really paying attention, and for a little while, she got out of her head entirely watching the sidewalk roll by.

***

Four hours later, Odessa found herself in a part of the city she’d never seen before. That wasn’t surprising. During her year in the Big Apple, she hadn’t done much more than commute to and from her office job. Which she hated.

The style of the buildings around her at that moment was different. It was more neighborhood-like than she was used to; more like back home in the suburbs of Toronto. Her apartment building in Queens was just like the dozens of apartment buildings surrounding it. More than once, she’d gone up to the eighth floor of the wrong building and tried in vain to enter apartments with the same number as hers, jamming keys into locks they weren’t made for.

She hadn’t crossed any bridges, and there were a lot of brownstones. Block after block of them. Miles of them, seemingly. Odessa felt slightly out of place as she walked, hands shoved into the pockets of her hoodie. She thought she might have been in Brooklyn, but she knew she was still in New York when she heard hushed-but-urgent voices coming out of the alley across the street. It was with a heavy sigh and great reluctance that she stopped in her tracks and turned toward the sound.

“It’s all right,” she told another woman, who was perched at the edge of the alley, looking on with concern. “I’ll handle it.”

“You’ll… what?” the woman replied, stunned. “Wait!”

Odessa did not wait. She strode forward, determination settling around her like a mantle a little more with each step.

There were two dumpsters on her left, and then another one a little further along on her right behind which two men had moved beyond mugging and into threats of physical violence. Odessa heard the telltale shlick of a switchblade knife extending from its handle just as they came into view. There were two of them, young and wearing ski masks. The further one, angled slightly toward her, noticed her first and gawked. The other one, the one with the knife, seemed to notice something amiss with his friend and whirled.

Odessa grabbed his wrist before he’d finished turning, before he could see enough to bring the knife to bear, twisting his entire arm until his left elbow was closer to his right shoulder than should have been possible. The knife slipped from his shaking fingers, clattering loudly on the concrete, and Odessa kicked it away. The other one lurched forward, possibly to save his friend and possibly to attack her, but she took the choice out of his hands completely with a short jab he wasn’t expecting. It caught him clean in the nose, and his feet ran out from under him.

When she looked back at the first one, the one whose nearly-broken arm she was still holding, she saw that he was feebly trying to reach under his jacket for something, and she rolled her eyes. She used her grip to haul him toward her at the same time she was stepping into a left cross that sent him spinning.

There was a definite crunch, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t dead.

It wasn’t until both of them were on the ground and, for the most part, immobile, when she noticed the older man cowering in the corner where the dumpster met the brick wall. He seemed almost as afraid of her as he did of the muggers, and with another very poorly concealed roll of her eyes she pointed to the mouth of the alley. He yelled something on his way out that might have been thank you and and might have been fuck you, and might have been both.

“You’re welcome,” she mumbled, as she glared at his retreating backside.

The sleeves of her hoodie felt very tight around her upper arms, and she grunted in frustration as she shook them out and tugged on them a little, very very gently. It would really annoy her if she ripped these sleeves open too. She was too far from home to get another hoodie quickly, and it was too late to be able to buy one.

Not that she had the money for that.

She flipped up the top of one of the dumpsters, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and grabbed a length of frayed nylon twine peeking out from under God only knew what. Once the two would-be muggers were tied up, back to back, she finally made her way out to the street where the woman from earlier was still looking on.

“It’s okay,” Odessa said, holding up her hand. “I’ve got them subdued.”

“You do?” the woman said, her brow furrowing. “That’s… impressive.”

Odessa said, “I need to call the police. Have you got a quarter?”

The woman patted her shoulder, and her eyes went a little blank when she realized there was no purse there. Then she patted at her waist, as if there should have been pockets in her skirt, and shook her head. Odessa harrumphed as she looked around on the ground, and bent over to grab a quarter that glimmered in the streetlight.

“Are they coming?” the woman asked, two minutes later, after Odessa hung up the receiver on the payphone.

She was surprised the woman was still there. She said, “I… Yeah. I think so.”

“You think so?”

Odessa didn’t squint at her, but she did look more closely. “Why are you still here?”

Without missing a beat, the woman said, “I saw the whole thing. I thought that maybe, if the police needed, I could testify? Or something? I don’t know how that works.”

Odessa shook her head. “That guy ran. Without a victim, the most they’ll do is hold these idiots for twenty-four hours. They don’t have the capacity to do much more right now.”

The woman cocked her head, birdlike, and said, “If you know that, then… why did you call them at all?”

Odessa took a long breath and stared back into the alley. “Maybe it was their first time. Maybe this scares ‘em. Maybe, next time they need some quick cash, they’ll try something different.”

“That’s a lot of maybes.”

“Maybe,” Odessa said, nodding.

The woman smiled at her, a smile that winked without involving the eyes at all. “Alright then.”

“Alright then,” Odessa said, nodding, and turned. And then paused, when the woman moved to walk right alongside her. “Are you… Do you live this way?”

“Do you?”

This response made her head spin, and Odessa blinked a few times before she responded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“It’s Alex,” she said. “And you are?”

“Odessa,” she replied, and started down the street again. And then stopped when Alex continued to move in lock step. “Can I help you?”

“Actually,” the woman said, “You can.” She put her hand beside her mouth, as if to whisper, and then at full volume said, “I heard a rumor that there’s some muggers out tonight. Could you be a ‘lil cabbage and walk me home?”

“Where is home?” Odessa asked.

Alex turned around and pointed back in the opposite direction with a smirk that said… something. Odessa wasn’t sure what, but it was something. Like Alex was making a joke, and that also maybe Alex was the only one who got it.

“Fine,” she said, with a sigh, and the two of them turned around to walk back past the alley. Then she said, “Are we in Brooklyn?”

Alex just gave her a look.

***

Alex was pretty. She had a patch of white hair right in the front of her otherwise pitch black hair; Odessa was sure it was the first thing anyone saw about her. She also had striking features that seemed too… mature for her. Or maybe it was the way she wore them. The way she held her chin. It was a kind of confidence Odessa wasn’t used to seeing on someone her own age. Her pale skin, so much lighter than Odessa’s own, looked porcelain in the moonlight.

Alex was also very talkative. She filled the quiet with opinions, random facts, anecdotes, and stories about her childhood. Odessa wasn’t used to that either, so she limited herself to nodding and the occasional grunt when it seemed like some commiserate agreement was in order, but the truth was that Odessa was still very much in her own head. She had handled two men, one of them armed with a knife, like it was nothing. Yes, it was maybe a little generous to call them men; she’d have been surprised if they could legally buy their own cigarettes, but that was beside the point. She herself was only in her early twenties.

What really bothered her, though, was how much stronger than them she was. Odessa had always had some curves to her, and there was certainly a level of strength that came with moving a body like hers around day in and day out, but in the past three weeks her body had started changing. She’d felt compelled to work out —driven, even— and the progress she’d made had been both immediate and consistent; she’d gone up five pounds, every day, in her free weights workouts, and had been able to keep up the same number of reps.

She was pretty sure that wasn’t normal.

She was also pretty sure she could do a lot more, of both reps and weight, but she was nervous about making too large of a jump too quickly. On the one hand, she might injure herself. On the other hand, if she pulled it off, it would attract even more attention than she’d already gotten, which was too much to begin with. There was at least one gym rat who had noticed her, but so far his interest was purely selfish and, unless her senses had completely abandoned her as well, completely sexual.

She could not have been less interested in him.

“Why were you still there?” she said, abruptly, interrupting Alex’s monologue, which she was pretty sure had been about the strange ways that the moon had been behaving in the last three weeks.

Alex blinked. “Still where?”

“Afterwards. That guy ran out of there. He was afraid for his life. They had knives and weren’t afraid to use them.”

“I was trying to get a good look at them,” she said.

“So you could report it to the police,” Odessa said, narrowing her eyes slightly as she stared into the distance.

“Yes.”

“Because you were going to call the police.”

“Yes.”

She took a chance. “What would you say if I told you I saw you talking to those two muggers. Beforehand.”

“You… what?”

Odessa counted in her head. One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one—

“No, you… I… I didn’t...”

Odessa just turned and looked at her, giving her a very unimpressed stare.

“But how? You couldn’t have! We—” This time, she cut herself off. She glared at Odessa, and said, “That was a trick. You didn’t see me do anything.”

“Nope,” Odessa replied, “but the way you responded told me enough.”

“How.” More demand than question.

This time, the look Odessa gave her was one of smug satisfaction. “Do you really want to know, or do you want to try to figure it out yourself?”

Alex folded her arms, bit her lip, and continued to stride in silence.

“It’s gonna bug you, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” Alex said. “I’m thinking.”

She wasn’t making any attempt to get away, which Odessa thought was curious. She hadn’t adjusted her course or sped up or slowed down. If she was worried about Odessa, she hadn’t tried to do anything Odessa could see that might indicate she was leading her into a trap. It also didn’t seem like she’d done anything to notify anyone that circumstances had changed... unless she had always planned to lead her into a trap, which seemed unlikely. Not impossible. Unlikely.

All of this strategizing happened in her head in a moment. Thinking through different potential outcomes. This had been happening to her a lot too recently. She didn’t know what it meant.

Alex turned and glared at her. “You don’t want to tell me. I have a tell of some kind. If you tell me what it is, I’ll correct it, and then you’ll lose whatever meager leverage you have now.”

“Nope,” Odessa said, smug satisfaction getting exactly one iota smugger. “I could tell you, and it still wouldn’t stop me from being able to spot you lying to me next time any more than it did tonight.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“And you’re stalling,” she replied. “You’re trying to distract me from the fact that you paid those two to mug that guy, for whatever reason.”

“Ah ha!” she laughed. “I didn’t pay them anything!”

Odessa rolled her eyes. “Paid them, convinced them, brainwashed them, whatever. You were behind that. What the hell?”

“You have no proof!”

Odessa said, “Do I look like a court of law to you? It’s just the two of us here, and we both know you’re lying.”

“Fine,” Alex said, throwing up her hands. “I talked to them. I talked them into it. I told them that he was someone I’d known previously, and that he’d wronged me, and when that wasn’t enough, I suggested that he was worth a lot of money. Pretty sure that was the only thing that mattered, in the end.”

Odessa grunted and nodded, and looked down. Another educated guess. “Is that why you’re wearing heels, when you don’t normally wear heels?”

“How did you know I don’t wear heels?” the other woman said, gait immediately shifting to a stride more befitting her couture footwear.

Odessa just smirked.

“So?” Alex asked, a minute later.

“So what?” Odessa asked.

“What are you going to do with me?”

Odessa said, “Do I look like a court of law to you?”

“No,” she said, sharply, “but that didn’t stop you from kicking the crap out of those two idiots.”

“I was reasonably sure they were gonna hurt an innocent man. Idiots like them, it’s not a matter of if but who. Near as I can tell, all you did was point them in his direction.”

Alex smiled. “And you aren’t worried that I’ll use my wiles on you? Point you at someone innocent and enjoy the havok from afar?”

Odessa chuckled. “Not even a little.”

This made the other woman even more sullen. “Why not?”

“Pretty sure it’s not about wiles,” she said. “Pretty sure you’re just smart. Like, real smart.”

To this, Alex said nothing, and for another minute, while they walked in silence, Odessa tried to prepare herself for anything. The moment balanced on the edge of a knife. There were any number of ways it could go wrong, and Odessa wasn’t even really sure how everything had suddenly become so tense. It didn’t matter, though. She didn’t spend a lot of time on why, as a rule.

Eventually, Alex said, curtly, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Odessa replied, easily. “So, how smart are you?”

This caused Alex’s eyes to narrow to slits. She kept that up for a minute before groaning, adding, “I don’t know. Somewhere over two hundred, though whether that’s two-oh-one or four hundred, I have no idea.”

“Two hundred what?” Odessa asked.

“I…” Alex smirked and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Somewhere off the charts.”

Odessa nodded at this. “And this… off the charts-ness. This is new? Like, in the last three weeks? And here you are, out late at night because you can’t sleep, and maybe you’re trying to figure out what the hell is happening to you?”

Alex said nothing, but to Odessa it seemed like a very conspicuous nothing. Then she said, “And what’s your thing? Is it that people can’t lie to you?”

Odessa frowned in thought. “No,” she said, “I don’t think so. I’ve always been pretty good at sorting that kind of thing out. Most of it’s just common sense, and the rest is when very smart people aren’t as clever as they think they are.” Then she curled her arm, flexing the biceps, and winced when the seams along the underside of the sleeve made a couple of popping sounds. “No, this is the new thing.”

Alex reached over, eyes lighting up as her fingers danced over the knot of muscle. “Choke me, mommy,” she mumbled.

For a moment, just the slightest, shortest moment, Odessa was struck mute. Alex was beautiful in a statuesque kind of way. She was an inch or two taller than herself, but in heels she was a goddess, and it wasn’t hard to imagine her only needing to use a little bit of charm to turn the hearts of a couple men.

It was a bad fantasy; she knew that. The other woman couldn’t be trusted, and any kind of romantic entanglement would be like handing her a knife and telling her exactly where all of Odessa’s weak spots are.

Not that Alex was her type, by any means, but...

Ohhh, but it was tempting, especially given how lonely she was, and how long Alex’s legs were in those heels, and—

“You know I could break your neck, right?”

Alex’s stride changed to be a bit less flashy, and a bit less exaggerated. A bit more perfunctory. “Yes.”

Maybe it was a little bit about wiles, but Odessa wasn’t going to give her that kind of credit. Instead, she continued down an alternate interpretation. “You know you couldn’t get away either, right?”

“Not in these heels,” Alex said, “and they were very expensive.”

Odessa grunted sourly.

“And what is it that you’re doing?”

“Walking you home,” Odessa replied.

“And then… your plan is…” Alex peered at her, and smiled. “You don’t have one. You’re trying to figure one out right now. Oh, we are quite a pair.”

Odessa, who did not have a plan but was trying to figure one out as fast as she could, said nothing. This was her default strategy when she wasn’t sure of something; give nothing away, and wait for someone else to make a mistake.

“There,” Alex said, pointing to the unassuming end of a row of homes. “That’s me there.”

“Hmm,” Odessa grunted.

They continued walking, covering the short distance, and the closer they got the more Alex smirked sideways at her. “So now what?” Odessa’s say nothing strategy was about to backfire, and she knew it, but just as her lip was starting to quiver from the frustration of knowing she’d been outmaneuvered, Alex laughed and said, “Well come on, then.”

Odessa paused at the start of the steps, brow furrowed, but following her felt like the right thing to do. Alex pulled a key from under a ceramic frog, in stride, and unlocked the door. Surely, if it was the lair of some kind of burgeoning villain, she would be able to sense that very quickly.

It wasn’t. It was bland. Likely decorated with items bought on sale, because they were on sale, at a Home Goods or Pier 51. Lacking any sort of flavor or personality. Odessa furrowed her brow, and was about to say something about how awful she thought the decor was, when Alex began to undress.

***

Odessa lay on the bed, blinking furiously. It would have been an overstatement to say she was panting. Her cardio and lung health had improved at the same absurd rate as her musculature, and she was in no way winded… but she was breathing very heavily.

She said, “I’m not gay.”

Next to her on the bed, equally naked, Alex smirked. The tip of her cigarette glowed furiously, briefly, and then faded, and a long jet of silvery smoke wafted toward the ceiling.

“I’m not.”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling you that you were,” Alex said, and took another long drag. “Except that—”

“I can’t be gay.”

“Oh honey,” the other woman laughed, ”slow down. You’re making me wet all over again with all this amazing insight and self-awareness.”

“But,” Odessa said, grasping for any logic no matter how tenuous, “I like penises!”

“Some girls have dicks,” Alex said, easily.

Odessa just stared at her, jaw working quietly, and reached for the disheveled bed sheet to cover her chest. For some reason the fact that her legs, or her middle, were uncovered didn’t matter; what mattered was covering her nipples. It was irrational, of course. The whole business. Completely irrational, and if there was one thing Odessa hated it was being irrational.

But then Alex stood up and walked across from the bed to her dresser. There was a mirror, so Odessa could watch her reflection as she faced away, and the cigarette blazed to life at just the right moment to betray what Odessa could only describe as insecurity across Alex’s features. Doubt.

“Well,” Alex said, turning around and leaning against the dresser, her legs seeming to go on forever. Her expression was all cool calm again, and she crossed her arms and pulled the cigarette from her lips with two fingers. “You…” She’d started to say something, and then stopped as she stared at Odessa: specifically, at Odessa’s arms. “Those weren’t like that at the start.” She gestured with the lit end of the cigarette toward Odessa’s biceps, and narrowed her eyes.

Odessa blushed and sat up on her elbows, and tried not to care when the bed sheet slipped a little. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, okay?”

“That’s incredible. Do you always go through a physical transformation like that when you get all worked up?”

Odessa opened her mouth to respond but nothing came out, so she nodded.

“Make a…” Alex trailed off, and instead just raised her arm and flexed her biceps. Poorly.

Odessa mirrored her, except that her form was significantly better, torquing the wrist down to pull all tendons taut. Her biceps were good but it was her triceps she was really proud of, not that Alex would know which muscle was the more impressive..

Alex narrowed her eyes, and took another long drag from her cigarette. “Wow,” she said, releasing a mouthful of smoke at the same time. The hole in the middle of the cloud billowing from those lips made Odessa shiver. She shook her arm and rolled her shoulders. For some reason, the transformation that hit her when she exerted herself wasn’t dissipating like it usually did, and she still felt amped.

“Do you always grow that much?”

Odessa looked down at herself, twisting her arm to flex it in front of her torso, where she could see it a little more clearly. “No, actually. Most of the time, I don’t… It doesn’t last this long. I guess it takes a little while to really ramp up.”

“Like with those two in the alley,” Alex said, as she put out the smoldering butt and reached for the pack to pull out another one. “That took all of, what? Three seconds? Maybe?”

“I went easy on them,” Odessa said, grumbling.

“I don’t doubt it. If you’d gone in there like this, with the full Rambo, you’d...” Alex lit the fresh cigarette, and held it between her lips as she moved back over to the bed. She put her hands so that the tips of her thumbs were touching, and reached her fingers around, over and under Odessa's upper arm. "I bet you go through a lot of shirts," Alex mumbled, and gave her an arch look. “And your eyes. They’re…”

***

Fifteen minutes later, Odessa was staring at the ceiling in silence. Her brain kept starting the process of having things to think about, but none of those thoughts went anywhere she was prepared to follow and so she shut them down one by one.

"Am I gay?"

"Darling," Alex said, as she reclined against the headrest of the bed, "that is the most pointless question I've ever seen someone have a complete freak out over."

"I'm not freaking out," Odessa said, too evenly, in an attempt to keep down some of the turmoil. "Are you gay?"

Another quick drag, followed by a breath drawn in through gritted teeth. "I don't really do boxes. I like what I like, and I don’t waste time dithering on what things mean what. If I want sex, I go get sex. If I bring home a guy, or a girl, or… you know… whoever, I don’t lose sleep over it."

"I already don't sleep," Odessa said, flatly.

"Oh, join the club,” she replied, with a healthy dose of sass. “You know what I mean."

Odessa sat up and looked around. "Your place is really nice."

"Is it?" Alex asked, giving her a curious look in return.

Odessa shrugged and sat up. "I don't know. I'm just… making conversation."

"I don't do that either," Alex said, turning to look out the window. "So many people with nothing to say." Then she turned back to Odessa, eyes narrowed. "I liked that you were blunt with me before. Don't start disappointing me now by making conversation."

Odessa cocked her head. "You're kind of a bitch."

Alex smirked, eyes returning to the window as she said, "That's more like it."

"I'm sorry for not being good conversation while I go through something."

"Are you?" Alex asked. "Going through something? Compared to… you know… I mean, does this even compare to three weeks ago?"

Odessa looked down at her body, still so muscular even hours later now, and sighed. "No. It doesn't. I think I'm just… you're the first person I met that's… different. Like me."

"I'm not like you," Alex said, taking another long drag.

"You know what I mean."

Alex regarded her evenly, but said nothing.

"You know what I mean," Odessa repeated.

"Fine," she replied, rolling her eyes. "For what it’s worth, you're the first for me too."

This prompted a moment of silence so heavy, Odessa was surprised the floor didn't collapse.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to—"

"I don't know what I'm supposed to—"

They both stopped, realizing they'd said the same thing, and just blinked. Then, Alex took a quick hit from her cigarette and put it out in a mug beside the bed.

"I was thinking. About your arms."

"Already?" Odessa said, turning slightly, eyes wide.

"What?" Alex blinked. "No, not… damn, you are the horniest woman I've ever met. No, I meant, your arms." She flexed her upper arm and grunted. "How big it gets."

Odessa tried to hide her disappointment, and then tried to hide her bewilderment at being disappointed at the not having more sex with a woman.

"You said you keep tearing your shirts?"

"Oh," she replied. "Yeah. All the time."

"You wear a lot of natural fabrics, then? Cottons, wools… maybe some silks?"

Odessa just nodded, and stayed hunched over.

"I don't know a lot about them, but I know some synthetic fabrics have a lot more flexibility. Nylons. Lycra. That kind of thing."

"Are you offering to make me some shirts."

Alex blinked. "Sort of?"

"What stage of the relationship is that?"

"I don't do relationships," Alex said, returning her attention to the window.

"Shocker," Odessa said, and was surprised that she was a little disappointed.

“Do you see that?” Alex pointed, out the window and over the city. To the horizon. “Dawn is coming.”

“Oh fuck!” Odessa bounced to her feet, scrambling to find all of her clothes. They’d been shed in a trail, and how was it that her sweatshirt had made it into the bedroom but her sports bra was way out in the hall, and where was her other shoe, and—

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’ve gotta get to work!” Odessa cried. “I can’t be late again!”

“How far away is your apartment?”

Odessa stopped dressing, and gave the black haired woman, who was definitely at least a couple inches taller than her, a very flat stare.

“How far away from home is work?”

“I can make it.”

“Do you even like your job?”

“Nobody likes their job,” Odessa said.

“What do you do?”

“It’s a call center,” Odessa said, slumping. “It’s not glamorous, but it’s—”

“You moved to New York to work at a call center?”

“No, I—” This time, Odessa cut herself off. It was disturbing that the other woman had sorted out that she wasn’t a native New Yorker.

Alex seemed to sense that something about the question had rubbed her the wrong way, because the follow-up came at her sideways. “Did you move to New York to be a part of something that was here… or did you move here to get away from somewhere else? Someone else?”

Odessa looked down, at the one shoe in her hand, and tossed it across the room in disgust.

“Don’t scuff the wall,” Alex hissed. “The wall didn’t do anything to you.”

“What the hell am I gonna do?” Odessa said, as she slumped down on the edge of the bed. Her back was toward Alex, but she could hear the other woman moving. Slowly at first. “I can’t just be getting fired from good jobs.”

“I might have an idea.”

“I’m not going to be your bodyguard.”

“My what?” Alex laughed.

“Flunkie. Muscle. Thug.”

“No, no, no,” Alex said, as she came around the bed and sat down next to Odessa. She was still naked, and Odessa found herself staring down at her red polished toenails. “There are others like us, right? I mean… if you saw what I saw, then…”

“I saw others,” Odessa said, voice becoming momentarily weak.

“Not all of them are going to possess a strong moral compass... like me.”

Odessa barked. It was like a laugh, except without any mirth.

“Some of them are going to realize that they hate their jobs too, and they’re going to start thinking about other ways they could get money because… we all need money. Some of them might even act on those thoughts, and some of them might be strong enough to get away with taking a lot.”

She grunted, and paid very close attention to the way Alex was moving closer to her.

“Realistically speaking, it’s just a matter of time until someone like that… someone like you or I, does something really dumb, and then…”

“And then what?”

“Then,” Alex said, stretching her pinky finger over to brush gently over the back of Odessa’s hand, “either the city descends into panic, because people like us will scare the hell out of a bunch of normies, or… the city will need someone like you.”

Odessa scowled at her, but she also didn’t move her hand. “Are you trying to figure out some kind of supply and demand scheme? Be the poison, and leash the cure?”

Then, for just a second, there was doubt in Alex’s downcast eyes. A fragility. It was gone in a flash, but Odessa was sure she’d seen it. “No, but…”

“But what?”

“But maybe, if you’re that woman, you know? If you’re the one that saves the bus full of kids, or recovers the stolen money, or whatever, then… maybe there’s a place for me to… help you.”

Odessa wanted to be critical, but when she said, “Help me how?” it came out much softer.

When Alex looked up at her, finally making direct eye contact for the first time in what felt like hours, it was the last straw. She cradled Alex’s cheek, drawing the other woman in, and kissed her. She kissed another woman, kissed her long and full, and the fire in her chest started to spread through her limbs.

Alex crawled backwards onto the bed, on hands and heels, and Odessa followed. On hands and knees. Kissing her. Meeting her. As an equal.

“Ah shit,” Alex moaned, as Odessa crawled over her. She reached up, eyes wide, and ran her hands over Odessa’s shoulders and arms. “Ah shit, look at the size of you!”

There was, buried in with the awe, a hint of fear, and Odessa was surprised to find that she was so in tune with that. That she noticed it among all the reactions. That she’d maybe even been looking for it. She twisted her arm, between their bodies, and brought her curled index and middle fingers to Alex’s slick channel.

“Oh God,” she moaned, back arching, as Odessa penetrated her. “You’re fingers are fucking huge!”

Alex’s left leg immediately spread out very wide. The right would have done the same, but it was trapped between Odessa’s knees, so Alex wrenched her body sideways to open herself up. Tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes as she tried to deal with the strain. Jaw stretched out wide in a soundless wail.

And then Odessa did something she’d never done before in her life. She shifted her knees a little further under herself, for support, and brought her other hand up to Alex’s throat. Very gently cradling it. Alex’s eyes went wide, face already going slightly pink just from the effect her two inserted fingers were having, and she nodded ever so slightly.

With a slight twist of her wrist, Odessa was able to bring her thumb to bear on Alex’s clit, blunt pressure with a slow swirl, as she worked two fingers in and out. Down to the webbing. Out to the fingertip. Dragging the pad along the walls. Alex made a sound somewhere between a croak and a sigh, air escaping slowly through her restricted airway, and her face went from pink to full on red.

“Oh fuck,” Alex said, gasping, as Odessa loosened her grip. “Do that ag-nnnnnnnnngh!”

Odessa leaned in, kissing her full on the lips, shifting her grip so that her fingers were cradling the spinal column and just her thumb was curled around to press on the airway.

As she explored Alex’s limits, Odessa found that with all the increased muscle mass she gained while her heart was pumping hard, she had also gained control. This, theoretically, made sense with how she hadn’t ripped those two kids in half earlier, but she hadn’t really considered that. Even then, as she brought Alex to her fastest, most cross-eyed orgasm yet, she was only really just beginning to grasp what she was capable of.

Alex stared up at her from under very heavy lids, sweating profusely and gasping. Odessa couldn’t believe how quickly she’d overwhelmed the taller woman. She relaxed her grip, and in a moment of inspiration brought her two wet fingers up to Alex’s mouth. The black-haired woman mindlessly sucked them deeper into her mouth, tongue working around and between them, cleaning them, and Odessa couldn’t keep the smug grin from her lips.

This was power. Nevermind that she could bend rebar one handed, she could do this. Odessa had had a few lovers in her time, all men, and none of them had ever looked at her like Alex was, right at that moment, with two fingers in her mouth. There was such… adoration. It was intoxicating.

Without a warning, Odessa ripped the pillow out from under Alex’s head, kicked her leg out, and brought her hips around and over Alex’s head. The other woman only had time to give a strangled whimper before Odessa lowered herself into place, and sighed when the first thing she felt on her labia was a tongue.

God bless that woman, Odessa thought, and God bless her tongue.

The feeling of warmth spread through her again, like a fire catching from branch to branch, as Alex suckled at her clit. It felt really good, and it got even better when Alex reached up to grab her thighs for leverage. It didn’t improve the sensation, directly, but there was something about how completely Alex was throwing herself at the task that stiffened her spine and made her skin pebble.

Odessa rocked her hips slowly. The blood sang in her veins, tingling and prickling beneath the skin from her head to her toes, and there, stretched out before her, was a delightful buffet of woman. When she pinched Alex’s nipples, Alex groaned into her. When she rolled them between her fingertips, Alex moaned even louder. When she delivered an open-handed slap right over Alex’s mound, the black-haired woman bucked, squeezed, and then spread her legs even wider, inviting more of the same. After three more slaps, more spanks than anything because of the lack of follow through, Alex’s lips were puffy and swollen and so, so, so incredibly pink. Odessa swore she could see them pulsing, throbbing in time with the beat of Alex’s heart. It was a revelation.

Odessa leaned forward, eyes full of hunger, and buried her face in Alex’s gorgeous pussy. Her lips and mouth targeted the other woman’s swollen pearl, and her nose slipped between slick labia where the scent was so strong it made her light headed. As she licked, and lashed, and swirled, her hands came around the sides of Alex’s hips. Alex instinctively lifted her legs up into the air, knees coming back slightly, and Odessa immediately grabbed Alex’s cheeks. Alex had a full, round bottom, and yet somehow each cheek was only a handful. She was gripping each in her palm, with fingers outstretched.

Suddenly, Alex’s reaction to having two fingers inserted into her made more sense; her hands were bigger.

She couldn’t see much, between Alex’s legs in the low pre-dawn light, but she could feel, and little by little her fingers crept inward toward each other until one of her index fingers touched the spot it had been looking for. Alex’s other hole. It puckered and tightened at being probed, and Alex herself groaned loudly, almost in protest, but she wrapped her legs around Odessa’s ribs and pulled her in all the same.

There was plenty of fluid. On her back, and as wet as she was, some had been leaking down between Alex’s cheeks for a while, and Odessa merely had to press gently to start moving inside.

Each millimeter inward made Alex groan louder, and louder, amidst everything else Odessa was already doing to her, and it didn’t take long until the taller woman clenched and squeezed with a force Odessa hadn’t thought her capable of, in the throes of another amazing orgasm.

For all of Alex’s poise, and for all of her composure, and for all the stamina she’d shown through the first four orgasms of the night, the fifth took everything out of her. Alex went as limp and spent as every man she’d ever been after just one, but unlike with them Odessa had already had two orgasms of her own and was on the verge of a third. She pushed herself up and sat back on her heels. Between her thighs, Alex was panting and staring up at her.

Odessa bit her lip and swiped her fingers quickly over her engorged clit, back and forth with more wrist action than anything else, and the dam burst.

Once the stars faded from behind her eyelids, Odessa found herself on her back, with her legs twisted at an odd angle. She felt… different. More limber than she had been before. More flexible. Less... massive. When the thought hit her, she tried to raise an arm, but she was tired and it was easier to turn and tilt her head. Her arms were their normal size. The new normal, anyway. Still larger than she had been three months ago, but not the size she grew to when she was worked up. Not as large as she had been a few minutes ago. Had it only been a few minutes?

Alex was using her thigh as a pillow. She looked up at Odessa, winked, and closed her eyes, and suddenly staying awake felt like the most unnecessary thing in the world.

***

Odessa woke up some time later. Alex was still asleep in the bed, though she was using a regular pillow now. She stirred when Odessa got up, but no more.

“What wasss my tell?” Alex said, voice slurred with sleep.

Odessa sat back down on the edge of the bed, sports bra and sweat shirt on, and looked back over her shoulder. “Not a tell. Let’s assume, for a moment, that you did a thing. You know you did it, and I know you did it, but you’re lying. I tell you you did it, you say no I didn’t. We get nowhere fast. The trick was in the phrasing. I said, what would you say if I told you I saw you.

“Now,” she continued, “You know you did the thing, but now you’re trying to think back. Could she have seen me? I was careful, wasn’t I? Were there any opportunities? Any shadows I might not have noticed? Even as smart as you are, it takes time to think through those possibilities and how you would frame them when presented with a hypothetical. Compare that to if you hadn’t actually done anything. It takes no time at all to just reply with nuh uh.”

Alex frowned in thought, clearly no longer pretending to sleep.

“You’re smart,” Odessa said, turning and crawling over the bed toward her, “so you probably thought ahead, but did you think of everything? Every contingency? Every way I might have, even accidentally, seen something I shouldn’t have? Is that even possible? Even if I did see you, could you just pretend it was something else? Come up with an alternate explanation that fast? On the fly? And while you’re doing all that, with that big brain of yours, I’m counting.”

“That’s good,” Alex said, eventually, nodding. “I mean, it takes some intuitive guess work on your part to home in on a question that’ll make the subject flinch, but… flinching seems unavoidable.”

Odessa smirked and kissed her, and then bounded off the bed in search of her sweatpants.

“What would you think of some stars?” Alex called, voice echoing down the halls as Odessa moved. “Reds and blues. Not bright, though. More like... wine, and the ocean.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For your costume.”

“What c—” Odessa stood up straight, and stared back toward the bedroom. “I’m not a superhero.”

“Not without a suit, you’re not,” Alex mumbled. Suddenly the other woman was moving. Collecting her things. Slipping her panties back on. “I’m thinking about nylons.”

“I’m not much for stockings,” Odessa said, chuckling. “They tear enough as it is.”

“No, no,” she replied, head tilted as she pushed her earring back into place. “For the suit. I think, if I can get the right kind of weave, I could get it pretty close to kevlar in terms of penetration resistance.”

“I could be bulletproof?”

“Let’s say bullet resistant.” Alex slipped on one heel, and then the other, and winked at her. “Same time tonight?”

“Tonight? What… What do you—”

At a sound behind her, Odessa whirled around, sweatpants still in her hands. A wire-y, bespectacled man with bags under his eyes set down a briefcase just inside the door, and stopped wide eyed. He and Odessa stared at each other for a long moment.

“What are you doing in my house?” he screeched, taking a step backward.

“Your…” She turned, but Alex was gone. “Ah shit. She got me.”

***

“Day 58. Today I finally finished–”

Odessa let the pen drop and cocked her head. The elevator door opened, out in the hallway. Time was just about right. She waited, counting the seconds, and—

When Alex stepped into the room, tossing her coat to the armchair like always, Odessa’s diary was safely tucked away. Instead, she was sitting on the sofa, smirking at Alex while cutting the last piece of cord with precise, controlled gestures.

Alex’s eyes went from Odessa’s to the piece of yarn work she was holding, and back again. Her expression didn’t change, it rarely did, but Odessa had spent enough time in the previous month watching Alex very closely and she’d learned to spot both curiosity and disbelief.

“What is that?”

“I have been crocheting,” Odessa said and her smirk widened.

“Crocheting?”

“I need to wind down after a busy day too, you know.” Odessa flexed her arm. It drew Alex’s attention, like it always did. The skin made a creaking sound as it stretched, which made her spin shiver, and Odessa felt her bicep grew a few inches in diameter out of sheer arousal. This was going to be so good. She waited until she saw Alex bite her lower lip, and then snapped the metal crochet hook in half single handedly. Alex gasped and her pupils dilated. It was very subtle, but Odessa knew what to look for. She rose and approached the taller woman slowly, with feline fluidness. It was a little harder to pull off with the bulk, but judging by Alex’s breath catching it was close enough.

“I made a present for you,” Odessa said, tucking her hands behind her back. “Pick one?”

Alex reached for her upper arms, stroking both with her palms, but her smirk was delicious. “You know I’m a sucker for surprises.”

“Then I’ll choose for you,” Odessa whispered and kissed her.

When Alex was focused on the kiss, Odessa drew the taller woman’s arms behind her back and fastened them with the purple yarn she’d been crocheting. It took Alex a moment to realize she’d been restrained, however flimsily. When she did notice, she broke the kiss and craned her neck to see what had happened.

“Yarn handcuffs? Really?”

“Oh, they will,” said Odessa, as she ripped Alex’s blouse open almost casually. Buttons rained on the living room floor, and it was with great satisfaction she found that Alex wasn’t wearing a bra; she would’ve ripped that too, but would’ve later regretted ruining something so beautiful. All Alex’s lingerie was pretty, but none of them came even close in perfection to her breasts. Odessa leaned in to flick a nipple with her tongue, and Alex whimpered.

“Because, you see,” Odessa continued, while unzipping Alex’s skirt and pushing it and her panties down past her perfect hips, “you’ll want them to hold. You’ll want to be restrained, because if they don’t hold I won’t keep doing this.”

She cupped Alex’s mound, gripping and squeezing, as her middle finger slip up to the entrance. Alex gasped and stood very straight, and to her gratification Odessa could feel the heat of the taller woman’s sex against her palm. Heat and wetness. She was practically pulsing.

“W-what… what was on the other hand?” Alex’s voice quivered with excitement, but her gaze still held a challenge.

Odessa could feel her own pussy twitch. Damn, she loved the sass on that woman! “This,” Odessa said and pulled the baby pink crocheted blindfold from her back pocket. She swiftly tied it on, and stepped back to admire her handiwork.

Alex looked perfect. She stood there, in her heels, in a wide and open stance. She was naked from the waist down, and her blouse hanging loose behind her, caught at the wrists, leaving her breasts quivering and her perfect, round shoulders bare. Her hair cascaded around her, the white streak tracing a sinuous line along the side of her face.

Odessa stepped closer, stroking the white streak gently with her fingertips, and whispered into Alex’s ear, “I have a message for you.”

Alex’s breath was uneven. She gulped, and then twitched ferociously when Odessa tweaked both her nipples. “W-w-w-whu-what is it?”

Odessa hefted Alex over her shoulder, suddenly enough to spook her, then slapped her ass. Alex squealed, her indignation ripe and full, but she didn’t try to roll free.

As Odessa carried her to the bedroom and lowered her to the bed, face down and ass up, she noticed that Alex didn’t even twist her wrists. Good girl, she thought, her smirk returning. She stroked Alex’s beautiful ass slowly and symmetrically, hands moving around and around, and admired how Alex’s swollen flower peeped from the apex of her long, shapely legs. She slapped each cheek, then bent down to kiss them. Alex arched her back, trying to draw attention to her pussy. It had Odessa’s attention. Almost her full attention.

“The,” Alex mumbled, her cheek flush against the sheets. “The mmm-mm-message?”

“Oh, right. It’s from that new girl? The Amazing Flying Finn?”

Alex whimpered and rocked her hips. Odessa grabbed her to still her, leaning closer and inhaling Alex’s wonderful aroma. Her mouth watered. Soon. Very soon. She blew a breath to Alex’s wetness, making her moan. It was hard to maintain her self control when Alex was so shameless about wanting it. Hard, but not impossible.

Alex only whimpered, but when Odessa slipped a finger in her hot heat, she rocked back against it and cried, “Yeesss, yessssss!”