Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13086510.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F, Multi
  Fandom:
      We_Know_the_Devil_(Visual_Novel)
  Relationship:
      Jupiter/Neptune/Venus_(We_Know_the_Devil), Jupiter/Venus_(We_Know_the
      Devil), Jupiter/Neptune_(We_Know_the_Devil), Neptune/Venus_(We_Know_the
      Devil)
  Character:
      Venus_(We_Know_the_Devil), Jupiter_(We_Know_the_Devil), Neptune_(We_Know
      the_Devil)
  Additional Tags:
      Post-Canon, Post-True_Route, Canon_Lesbian_Relationship, Canon_Lesbian
      Character, Trans_Female_Character, idiot_teenagers, Self-Indulgent,
      spirituality, Past_Child_Abuse, Slurs, Gender_Dysphoria, Angst_and_Fluff
      and_Smut, Misunderstandings, devil_sex, Praise_Kink, a_hand_for_every
      kind_of_touch, Spanking, Dirty_Talk, Degradation, Risk-Aware_Consensual
      Kink, worship_kink, Different_Pairings_In_Each_Chapter, Other_Additional
      Tags_to_Be_Added
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-12-21 Updated: 2018-01-24 Chapters: 3/4 Words: 16405
****** The Three-Body Problem ******
by Sub_Rosa
Summary
     "The three-body problem, in astronomy, is the problem of determining
     the motion of three celestial bodies moving under no influence other
     than that of their own kinetic energies and mutual gravitation."
     Or: the one where the Group West girls bang.
***** The Infernal Venus *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
  Jupiter - “to rule/to be ruled” (lit., grasp). Inwardly, it’s self-control,
   personal rigor… Outwardly, it’s the ability to exercise that control over
others; it’s that patriarchal charisma that makes people want to be their best
                                 self for you.
           -Postmortem: 100 Days On We Know The Devil, by Aevee Bee
                                      ===
The very first night was probably the most amazing thing that Jupiter had ever
experienced. (The second-most amazing thing was, of course, the look on the
Bonfire Captain’s face when she finally took something for herself, and dropped
the cabin on top of his stupid fucking guitar.)
The first days were also amazing, in a different kind of way. Every littlest
thing once covered under the thinnest veneer of the fear of God, exploding into
different bodies, and different languages, and different feelings-
The first days seem far behind them, now. Those were days or weeks ago, and
they're a camp of teenagers and young adults, each and every one of them become
the Devil; the first days may as well have been weeks or monthsago. Distant
history!
In that light, it takes far too long for Jupiter to notice that Venus is
dimming, and dimming, until she's already dark.
“That’s super fucked up,” Neptune says, when Jupiter tries to point it out and
explain.
“It’s fucked up that it took me so long to notice?”
“No? Chill, babe, I’m just saying it’s super fucked up that Venus is going
dark.” Neptune lounges across the lake shore, drying out in the baking sun and
imagining dark and brooding things.
Jupiter marshals her thoughts, but Neptune interrupts her before she knows what
she's asking.
“On the other hands, maybe we’re assuming too much, though,” Neptune says. “I
mean, it’s not like she’s running back into the closet, right? She’s not
turning into a boy again, she’s just going darker. So maybe it’s just a fashion
statement? I don’t want to dim-shame her or anything.”
“Neptune, I don’t think anyone has ever been dim-shamedbefore in all of human
history, what are you on now?”
“First time for everything,” Neptune says. “But that’s not what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that I’m not an expert in Devil-ology because someonewas a
little hazy on the terms and conditions.”
“Nobody reads those, Neptune.” Let alone you…
"What I’m saying is, I can tell you what a deficit of phlegm and bile means for
me. I can’ttell you what turning off the light means for Venus. That’s not me
or my Devil.”
“Maybe we should ask Venus,” Jupiter suggests, having already given up on
getting any conveniently pithy advice from Neptune, at least for now. She’s
worldly, but she’s not a goddess, as much as they can all agree that’s an
absolute travesty. “Did you ask her about it?”
“Nah, I didn’t ask. Mostly because she looked fine when I saw her, actually.”
That’s how Jupiter decides to go and see Venus herself.
Venus is where she normally is, in the ruins of what was once a secluded shed
(before Pluto got a little too drunk, and smeared it across the woods). She’s
surrounded by the remains of dozens of radios, shattered by eager kids when
they realized that they didn’t need any devicesto transform anymore.
The destruction is a good thing if you only care about the magic and the
transformation sequences, but it’s a bad thing if you actually care about
radios. Venus actually cares about radios; at least when they aren’t tuned to
evangelical channels, like K-LOVE and METATRON.
“Hey Venus,” Jupiter says.
“Oh-” Venus says, blinking dust out of her eyes; she had seen the other girl,
but she hadn’t seenher. “Hi, Jupiter!”
“LOGARITHMIC IS THE LEPROSY-” her radio crackles. Still looking at Jupiter, she
tries to push a crystal into place with her thumb; it fractures, but doesn’t
break, as it goes.
The crystal finds its place in position between metallic coils, and Venus
begins wheeling through the channels without glancing at the dial, too fast for
Jupiter to make out much. “-THAUMIEL, THE DIVINE LIGHT IN THE ABSENCE OF-” “-
MIXED METAPHORS-” “-LIKE A CONTROLLED USE OF SHARED MEMORY-”
The very sound of it is an eyesore.
The machine (assembled together from six broken radios, the wiring of a phone
that Venus had snatched from the Bonfire Captain, and the glue normally
prescribed to hold together shattered dreams) finally fades into static. It
begins plumbing the depths of frequencies normally blotted out by God’s
broadcasting, and the results go to tape.
Venus pulls away from the mechanisms, and Jupiter can see that she looks
absolutely exhausted.
“What are you working on?” Jupiter asks, already falling into orbit together
with the other girl. Her heart falls into her stomach and leaps into her
throat, and she’s pulled in as if by magnets, the hot iron in her blood.
“This?” Venus smiles, looking embarrassed. She isembarrassed, for her hobby,
but also for being caught before her project is done. “It’s, well, a surprise.
It’s not done yet.”
“Oh,” Jupiter says, trying to imagine what it could be. (If she were able to
imagine it, though, she could probably build it herself; and she knows she
can’t.)
Venus is still smiling and glowing, but as she’s been for some time, the glow
is entirely metaphorical. The glow isn’t literal. Her eyes are wide and blue,
but the proportions are earthly and human, and the blue doesn’t beam. She has
no wings. Not her old body, but not her new one, either.
Jupiter can’t help but worry. And Venus worries, too, because she’s alone with
Jupiter and she knows that things are… awkward… between them.
“So…” Venus trails off. “How are you?”
“…that was… what I wanted to ask you, actually.”
“Um,” Venus says. “You’re asking me how I am? I’m okay.”
Jupiter sits down on an overturned crate, putting her hands on her knees.
“That’s good,” Jupiter says faintly. “I wanted to spend time with you.”
It isn’t even a lie. With the magnet dragging her in, she can’t help herself.
She’s being carried along for her own ride.
Tension rolls through Venus’ spine, and she turns back to the radio to continue
working. She etches an alchemical design into the existing symbology of the
circuit board, but her heart isn’t in it.
“You’re worried about me, aren’t you?” Venus asks.
“Yeah,” Jupiter admits. “I am.”
Venus looks away from the circuit board, down across her body, and she can see
that it’s plain.
“You looked… really happy when you became the Devil,” Jupiter says. “It’s-”
Sad? Scary? “-worrying to see you, and notsee the Devil.”
“You never felt worried for me before all of this happened, when I always
looked like this,” Venus replies. Guilt stabs Jupiter in the gut, but Venus
giggles; she isn’t quite upset, and she shows it, light rather than heavy.
“Inever felt worried for me before all of this happened, either. Not for the
way I looked. I don’t blame you.”
Jupiter struggles to meet Venus’ eyes. “You didn’t look like this before.”
Venus seems to dim even further. “I know.”
“Neptune isn’t worried about you, but I am.”
“Neptune doesn’t worry because I never worried about her,” Venus offers,
closing her eyes. She never worries about Neptune, because Neptune doesn’t
care…
“…you were worried about me?”Jupiter asks, hopelessly confused. Venus chews on
her lip for a long time.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m weird,” Venus says. “Really weird. And I can tell that
Neptune doesn’t care, because she thinks that weirdis cool. ‘Oh, your arm just
fell off and you’re growing wings, that’s so metal, can you talk dirty in
Enochian!?’”
It takes a valiant, outright heroiceffort for Jupiter not to file Neptune’s
question under ‘blackmail material’, before the solemn atmosphere returns.
“Sorry- I- when I think too much, I worry about whether I’mtoo much- I, I doubt
anyone cares if I’m just a girl, or I think I can deal with it if they care?”
Venus’ voice quavers. “But I look like an angel, and God is exactly who we’re
trying to get away from.” The true shame, the creeping worry that on some
level, maybe she’s always going to be God’s creature…
“And I saw you kept, just… not looking at me. So I thought I was too bright,
like the sun,” or maybe Jupiter doesn’t care as much as Venus hopes she does…
“and, and I worry a lot of ways. Sorry. I know that’s silly.”
Better to be dim, if you think that being bright is an imposition. A dark lump
rises in Jupiter’s throat. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“So- okay.”
She really wants to hug Venus, reassure her. What do I say, how do I explain
myself?
“Venus… you’re…” One of the most normal people here? That’s true, especially
when you compare her to people like Saturnine and Jack. But that isn’t actually
what’s worrying her. “I wasn’t looking away from you because you were too
bright… or angelic, or scary.”
Venus opens her eyes and meets Jupiter’s gaze. “What?”
“I was looking away from you because I felt guilty… and scared of myself.”
The crystal in the radio at Venus’ side cracks completely, too small for its
setting.
“Oh,” Venus says dumbly. “Oh. I feel really silly now.”
She curls her arms around herself and her ill-fitting shirt.
“You shouldn’t,” Jupiter says, frustrated or helpless. “It’s my fault… for not
being able to explain my feelings.”
Venus shakes her head. If the way she was acting is a problem — even if she
thought she was doing it to help — then she has some of the culpability there,
too. “You don’t have to explain anything,” she says. “I’d like it if you told
me how I can help you, but you don’t haveto tell me that, either?”
“I shouldexplain,” Jupiter replies.
“Should, nothing.”
Jupiter swallows the lump in her throat. “It’s gross... and you would think
differently of me.”
“I already do think differently of you, Jupiter,” Venus replies. Jupiter looks
panicked, though, so Venus continues hastily. “You’ve changed. I’ve changed,
too? People would call me gross, too.”
It isn’t untrue, either, and both of them know it.
“I want… so many things,” Jupiter confesses. “I want things that I probably
never would have wanted, before I saw you as the Devil.”
Venus blushes deeply, red-hot glass in her cheeks. "It's okay to want… things,"
she says. She can almost guess what Jupiter wants, which is still so unfamiliar
to think about. But she made a choice to believe that wantingwas right. “I
promise.”
Jupiter doesn’t feel nearly as bad for wanting Neptune, because on some level
she always expected herself to want Neptune. Neptune is and was a self-
proclaimed bad girl, and Jupiter thought she knew her type. (Why am I so fucked
up that I want that, stupid, stupid-)
But Venus was always an inoffensive bit character in Jupiter’s world, until he
became a friend to her, in the narrowing window of time before they met the
Devil. And now she isn’t a bit character at all, and now… Jupiter wants
something from her. A lot of things, maybe everything.
She wants Venus so, so, sobadly. The same whole-hearted heart-sick way she
wants anyone. She wants to hit her, pet her, grab her, hold her, spank her,
grope her, choke her-
“I feel like a predator,"Jupiter confesses. “I wanted to look at you, and… and
touch you… almost as soon as I realized that you were a pretty girl.” As soon
as the dust was clear.
And how gross is that? Everything overturned, reduced to the base facts of
Venus’ flesh. Neptune was uncomfortably right, making stupid jokes about ‘dim-
shaming’, because Jupiter misses Venus’ radiance and beauty as the Devil.
Just when she had a grip on things, things changed; and now, maybe she doesn’t
really care about Venus, maybe she just wants to screw her. Because maybe she
didn’t reallycare about Venus until Venus was fuckable-
What is wrongwith her?
“I don’t think I mind,” Venus says, cutting clean through Jupiter’s chain of
logic.
Jupiter looks at her, really looks. A soft light is creeping into her eyes,
happy and sad, and something else.
“I’m happy as the Devil,” Venus tries to explain. “I’m not offended or hurt if
I can make you happy too, as the Devil. Or if being the Devil gives you the
chance to see something in me that you couldn’t see before, or if the Devil
gives me something that I didn’t havebefore?
“Does that make sense?” Please understand, Jupiter…
“...I think so,” Jupiter says, but she’s torn.
Venus’ face wavers with indecision, but she’s resolved. And then-
The light she choked down lights up the room, once tucked away and folded in on
itself, and Jupiter expects that any minute Venus will rip out of her own
fleshy body. Like kicking out of an egg or cocoon, the way she did once before.
But instead, her body wavers like a beam of light through mist, and her wings
contract into visibility, where they were once outstretched and unseen.
She blocked her light with her wings, and covered her face with her wings, and
then she covered her wingswith her wings, a traditional demonic exercise in the
logically impossible. But covering something up doesn’t make it go away; it
just makes it harder to see. Venus never went back to any other body, or
stopped being the Devil at all.
“Venus… you’re…” Now Jupiter has a hard time tearing her eyes away, or even
speaking. Venus still half-covers her body in her wings, a nod towards modesty,
but she’s recognizable as the Devil again.
“You can look,” Venus says, vulnerable and yet assured. “It’s okay.”
“I don’t just want to look,”Jupiter says, desperately trying to choose to be
okay. Venus’ light caresses her skin. Venus is the epicenter.
“I think that’s okay, too.” Venus takes a deep breath. “I… I really like you,
Jupiter. Not because I’m idolizing you, or because I wish I was you. And I
want, too, so you shouldn’t be ashamed-”
“Stop,” Jupiter says, not cruelly. She reaches out, taking one of Venus’ many
feathers between her many fingers, impossibly warm and soft, not just in the
flesh but in everything else. She wants to bury her body there, light all
around her, and take the light inside her, and…
Venus watches and waits.
“Would you tell me?” Jupiter asks. “Can you tell me if I do something wrong, or
bad, or if I hurt you? I… I worry, too. I worry so much.”
“I would tell you,” Venus says. “I promise that, too.”
If Jupiter is waiting for permission, that’s about it.
Perhaps they shouldn’t be nervous, not when they’ve already bared their souls
to each other, and helped each other shuck off their old bodies. But this is a
different kind of intimacy; not an intimacy of desperate wish and dream, but an
intimacy of yearning want and desire.
Venus’ body is warm to the touch. Not made of flesh, per se, but pale and tawny
starlight. She isn’t wearing her shirt, or any clothes at all; the ill-fitting
shirt was only a curtain of wings and feathers, and now Jupiter sees all of
Venus, the contraction of sweet light.
Jupiter runs a hand along Venus’ shoulder. Fuzzy down feathers brush against
her palm, fine and inviting all across Venus’ body. Venus squirms at the
contact; it feels good to be touched,but her body’s first reflex is to flinch
away anyways.
“Did you really mean what you said?” Venus asks.
“Said what?”
“...did you mean what you said, when you said I was a pretty girl?”
“I did,” Jupiter says. The truth is, Venus ispretty, in a way that Jupiter
never imagined for herself.
“I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before,” Venus murmurs, melting
against Jupiter’s touch; her soul fills with the color of soothing.
“Do you want me to stop?” Jupiter asks.
“No!” Venus blurts out. She claps a hand over her mouth, looking mortified.
“No, um… I… kinda liked it…”
Jupiter extends a hand, curling her fingers around Venus’ wrist to pull it away
from her face; and now Venus doesn’t flinch away. “Have you wanted to hear
something like that before?” Jupiter asks quietly.
Venus can’t answer, but Jupiter understands, at least a little. “That’s sweet.”
Venus is glowing again, and smiling with her small upturned lips. She can’t
stop herself from smiling, and Jupiter wants to touchher.
Kissing Venus makes Jupiter as warm on the inside as Venus’ skin is on the
outside, pressed against her body.
“You arepretty,” Jupiter insists, as she pulls away from Venus’ lips. “You’re
beautiful.”
“Y-you shouldn’t just sit here complimenting me,” Venus says, just as sure but
even more flustered. “What do you want me to do…? What do you like?”
I don’t know, Jupiter thinks, which is complete nonsense; she only believesthat
she doesn’t know. “Just you,” Jupiter says, which is so completely true it
hurts a little. “Your wings, can you cover us-?”
“My wings?” Venus asks. Then: “Oh!”
Venus wraps herself around the both of them, cradling them in a hidden place,
suspended light and thunder. Jupiter’s stomach flutters like Venus’ wings,
because everywhere she turns she can look directly into the other girl’s eyes.
But she’s already returning to the kisses, her hands against Venus’ chest;
moving her lips down across Venus’ body. “You’re beautiful here,”she says,
kissing across Venus’ gossamer jaw, “and here,” kissing across the curve and
hollow of her neck, “and here,” kissing down the expanse of her collarbone.
Venus trembles, not from dull panic or fear, but because she’s luminous,
because she doesn’t need to hide from Jupiter after all, because she feels
safe, and this feels right.
“H-ah!”
Jupiter’s hair falls upon Venus’ body, clasping at her exposed torso, before
Jupiter brushes it back.
If she keeps going, she isn’t sure she’ll be able to stop herself.
She keeps going anyways.
The Devil was kind to Venus, if she chose Venus’ body for her; maybe Venus was
kind to herself, skipping all of the steps and fulfilling every wish of her
eyes. She never restrained her wishes, because she never saw her own wishes
head-on to notice what God would call excess.
Now you can’t notsee her wishes, beautifully blinding and blindingly beautiful.
Broad hips and plush rear, legs for light-years, a cherubic face glittering
with sex and desire and other, simpler things.
The swell of her breasts demands Jupiter’s attention, and after weeks of
restraint, Jupiter allows herself to do what she wants, and takes them in
hands.
Venus gasps out loud, stifling herself again, and the absurd thought comes to
Jupiter: I may be about as new to Venus’ body as she is.
She can’t help but want all of it, and she can’t help but want to treasure it.
“Your voice is beautiful, too,” Jupiter says, her mouth absolutely dry and
parched. “You don’t need to keep quiet.”
A soft sound breaks out of Venus’ chest, shining with bliss, as Jupiter
continues to test the curves of the her body, heavy with a weight beyond mere
starlight. Holding her as if she’s never going to let go.
It makes Venus feel appreciated, rather than just self-conscious. Her own
errant fingers clumsily begin to peel Jupiter’s jacket away, and Jupiter’s
hands act unbidden to help her from there, unbuttoning the flannel underneath.
Jupiter’s breasts are much smaller than Venus’; becoming the Devil didn’t
change her body much, because she was (and is) a creature of doing and feeling
rather than being. Her body is rough and hewn from hours of rough-and-tumble,
and her raw skin has healed raw red, blush-stained the color of blood all
across her smaller and slender body.
There’s a small note of disappointment, the sinking sensation of coming short
at the last second, compared to the beauty in her arms. But Venus sees
Jupiter’s body, and although she doesn’t understand why Jupiter’s body is the
way it is, her heart still pounds harder and harder in her chest, and she wets
her lips without thinking about it. She takes in the sight of Jupiter’s body,
and her gaze is still entranced, and she reaches out to touch Jupiter’s chest-
Somehow, Jupiter forgets that she’s supposed to be worried.
Jupiter’s own arms move in absolute defiance of geometry, as the Devil always
can; she branches every which way and then some, in order to explore Venus’
body further. She runs languid fingers through the vanes of Venus’ feathers,
and Venus gasps.
“I-it hurts to pull on those,” she whispers, and Jupiter pulls her hands away
from Venus, whose face falls. “I’m not telling you to stop, I’m just, um,
asking you to be careful?”
“The same way I’m careful with these?” Jupiter ask, breathless. Hands slip
around Venus from behind her, and Jupiter tweaks the other girl’s nipples,
before shifting to cup and tease her tits again. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to
hurt you." Not like that.
Jupiter returns to carefully combing through Venus’ feathers, working out every
kink. But Jupiter’s hands on Venus’ breasts are like nothing Venus had ever
felt before. Dizzy fire blooms in her chest from one moment to the next, rising
to her skin until every delicate touch and tender squeeze sends wafts of hazy
pleasure through her.
One of Venus’ wings twitches, extending to its full length and knocking over a
pile of radio wreckage. She doesn’t care or even register it, too wrapped up in
the feelings that Jupiter is giving her.
Jupiter takes her time in attending to Venus, and savors every moment as if it
will last forever or end in seconds. She gives Venus’ nipples gentle pinches
and runs her calloused thumbs around her areolas, as her hands continue to
descend. Beneath and below six wings, she grabs the small of Venus’ back to
pull her in until their hips are touching, and Venus moans into her.
Venus is so pliantunder Jupiter’s hands. Hers to touch and to hold. She wants
to pin the luminous girl down against the earth and fuck her until she’s
screaming her name. She wants to prop Venus up against the empty vault of the
sky and fuck her until all of the pleasure is wrung out of her.
Jupiter’s hands continue to fold and breathe against Venus’ body, meeting the
hollow glass bones and joints of her wings to stroke them, back and forth.
Caressing the supple, hollow crook of her wings. Venus shifts and squirms
almost cutely, rubbing her thighs together, arresting Jupiter by the closeness
of their bodies.
“Jupiter, I-” Venus whimpers, and chokes, not because she doesn’t want to
speak, but because words have failed her. Her cerulean pupils yearn open, wider
than the sky, and slick arousal drips down her legs.
“Yeah?” Jupiter asks. (In fairness to Venus, Jupiter isn’t doing much better.)
Venus doesn’t want this to be weird. She wants it to be the most normal,
natural thing in the world. “Please… I want you to keep going.”
“Keep going?” Jupiter asks. It wasn’t what she wanted to ask, she wanted to go
to hell with questions. But somehow, she can’t do this if she thinks she could
misunderstand, she needsto make sure, she’s scared of herself. “You need to
tell me what you want, Venus.”
“I-” Venus takes in a gasping lungful of air. Even self-knowledge can’t stop
Venus from being stricken bashful again (so turned on she could just die, so
needy for Jupiter’s fingers between her legs). “-I-I want you to touch- I want
you to put your-” Say it,“-I want you to fuck me!”
Her skin turns terribly wan, and Jupiter smiles a crooked smile. “I think
that’s maybe the second or third time I’ve heard you curse, ever.”
“Sorry- I mean, uh!”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Jupiter says, and now her voice is actually
admonishing. “It’s… actually hot, to know you can let go like that.” Venus’
embarrassment itself is cute, but a hand reaches inside Jupiter and thumps at
the thought that she can so overwhelm the other girl’s mouth. How many more
times can you make her curse?
At the words ‘let go’, Venus finds herself faint. She’s even fainterwhen
Jupiter’s hands trace up her inner thighs.
“Thanks,” Jupiter whispers. “For telling me. Reminding me more like, haha.”
She’s being silly — do it, just do it.
It’s such a littlething, thanking her, but Venus begins to shine even brighter,
and her wings flutter as if they’re preening. The idea strikes through Jupiter
like a lightning bolt, voiced simply: “Good girl.”
And Venus just goes slack, her breath coming in glorious tatters.
It’s so, so, so easy to just forget why she ever hid anything, even hid from
herself. Easy to just take this as it comes without having to chooseit; easy to
accept that she’s happy, and she feels good, and this makes her happy, and it
feels good.
And it’s sinking past Jupiter’s skin and into her bones that this is real, that
she can touch, and it’s okay, and even wanted. There’s a feeling of power: not
power over Venus, but power withVenus.
Jupiter’s hands hook around Venus’ legs (she’s weak in the knees, in every
limb) and spread them open, exposing her completely. Jupiter’s fingers drum
against Venus’ inner thighs (she’s so sensitive ) and grip Venus’ ass (so
soft).
“Good,” Jupiter says, reassuring herself as much as reassuring Venus. “Stay
open for me.”
Venus whines, plaintive, and Jupiter circles her fingertips around and on
Venus’ clit, getting her hands wet with Venus’ need. “Oh,” Venus exhales, and
her hips jerk sharply against Jupiter, even as hands and arms hold her in
place. Jupiter, please, more...
Jupiter holds Venus close and facing her. Like a lover, skin-to-skin. Feeling
Venus shake and quiver. She pushes a finger further down, then further in; and
Venus yields, her breath hitching while her body comes apart around Jupiter’s
touch.
“Are you okay?” Jupiter asks. Venus’ breath is coming in gasps.
“Y-yeah, I-” Venus strains to take a deep breath. “More intense than I
expected,” she chokes out, her eyes blown over like morning fog. “Not bad.”
Exactly the opposite, in fact. The exquisite promise of more.
Jupiter moves in Venus, and Venus is closer to Jupiter than she thinks she’s
ever been with anyone before. Her legs wrap around Jupiter, and she
involuntarily clenchesaround Jupiter, as Jupiter inserts another finger.
Venus already feels impossibly full, filling to bursting with Jupiter’s body,
scintillating with her own radiance; Venus is impossibly hot and tight and wet
around Jupiter’s fingers, like she’s reaching inside of a star. That’s its own
reward, and it’s worth it, to leave Venus like this.
“You’re doing good,” Jupiter whispers, her own voice drawing out into a ragged
live wire. Her fingers move just soinside of Venus while she thumbs her clit,
and Venus cries out, tender, stricken wordless.
“Th-there! Harder!” she croaks, and Jupiter kisses her on the jaw, beneath her
ear.
“Good girl,” Jupiter murmurs. Venus’ vision blurs as Jupiter continues her
assault. Any coherency Venus might have mustered leaves her, now, weeping from
her eyes or leaking from her pussy. There’s nothing inside of her but Jupiter;
Jupiter, the name falling out of her mouth between her gasps and moans;
Jupiter, looming large enough to engulf her until she loses herself.
She already has.
Jupiter hits something deep inside of Venus, and Venus breaks open, warm and
spilling. Coming around Jupiter’s hand, burying her face in Jupiter’s neck and
babbling, crying out. Jupiter, don’t stop, Jupiter, please, don’t stop, don’t
stop don’t stop you’re so so good I love you so much I can’t don’t stop-
Every inch of her body is glowing, and her heart is throbbing, her heart might
as well be pouring out of her. She didn’t realize that she was crying; she
didn’t even realize that she was speaking, let alone that she was screaming,
but now her lungs are hoarse, and her breath is shaking harder than she is, and
her cheeks are wet (although her legs are wetter).
For every kind of touch Jupiter has, it’s the hands stroking through Venus’
long, long hair that ground her against Jupiter’s body. Bringing Venus back to
the two of them, their bodies twining together into the tangle of limbs that
cradles them both. Jupiter’s palms trace circles across Venus’ pounding chest.
Venus lies there, her body in absolute surrender. Not just surrender to
Jupiter, but also to herself. Her body aches in her sensitivity; her limbs
tremble, weak and quivering Doppler shifts.
A hand rises up to brush away Venus’ tears, punctuated by the look of concern
on Jupiter’s face, and Venus nuzzles her cheek into Jupiter’s fingers. Jupiter
relaxes, and strokes her knuckles across Venus’ face.
Jupiter looks like a mess, too, with wind-blown hair and skin sticky with
sweat. She fights to catch her breath, and her jeans are uncomfortably rough
and damp on both of their skin, now that they’re clear to think of it-
“You’re still wearing pants,” Venus says faintly, some faint accusatory note
completely lost in the afterglow.
“Ah,” Jupiter says. She frowns, and looks away. Her skin is still raw, but it’s
only sunburned rather than bloody. “I think I had more important things to
worry about. You, I mean.”
Even manifesting a thousand and one hands, she wouldn’t have felt like she had
enough. Every hand she wasted on herself was a hand that she couldn’t have
touched Venus with.
Now, her blood is cooler; merely warm, instead of boiling to a storm. But she’s
spent, at least for now.
“Are you disappointed?”
“Maybe a little bit,” Venus says. Her cheeks burn, and she buries herself in
Jupiter’s chest almost as soon as she says it. Jupiter returns to stroking
Venus’ hair.
So, Venus is actually still… well, Neptune might call Venus a super-dork.
Thoughtless, maybe.
That isn’t a surprise to Jupiter, it’s screamingly obvious. But it still means
that she has to confront an awful truth: anythingcan be cute and attractive, in
a girl that she already found a way to crush on.
Why am I such a dyke?
And Venus was incoherent towards the end, but she was still so fucking
beautiful that Jupiter had to hold her. And even if Venus was just drunk on
sex, right now Jupiter understands exactly why you might love someone — and
tell them as much — in the heat of the moment.
The look on Venus’ face and the feeling of her shaking body when she came in
Jupiter’s arms is easy to fall in love with. The way she lit up with every last
sweet nothing, warm against Jupiter’s skin. Jupiter thinks maybe she already
hasfallen in love.
Why am I such adyke?
But… the sky isn’t actually falling on them. If this feels hollow in her chest,
it’s only because she expects it to feel hollow, and she doesn't have to feel
that way.
Instead, this is… it feels… nice. Jupiter takes Venus’ hand in her own, and
feels that Venus is still splayed and weak.
“We can take off my pants later,” Jupiter says, and to absolutely no-one’s
surprise, she means it.
A heartbeat.
“Thanks,” Venus says. “I mean, uh, not for taking-off-your-pants. That too, but
thanks for all of that. That was… really good.”
“It wasn’t something you asked me to do,” Jupiter replies. If Venus didask
Jupiter, it was only because Jupiter asked her to ask… right?
Why does this have to be complicated?
“Still,” Venus says. “Thank you.”
Maybe it isn’t complicated at all.
“It was my pleasure,” Jupiter says, and she finds herself smiling widely, as if
the very corners of her mouth and the muscles in her cheeks are being taken and
lifted by unseen hands. Then she remembers this is what smiling really feels
like.
They hang in the ruins of the shack in the woods, weightless, and the only
thing that matters to Jupiter in this one moment is the feeling of Venus’
breath on her chest, the feeling of Venus’ hand in her hand. The only thing
that matters to Venus in this moment is wrapping herself in that eye of the
storm, for just a little while.
Venus is smiling, too.
“Hey — Venus?" Jupiter cranes her head very slightly. "Do you see where I
dropped my jacket?”
“Oh,” Venus says, and furrows her brows. “I think Neptune came by and took it
while we were busy?”
“Neptune was here!?Why didn’t you say something!?”
“What-? I thought you noticed her!?”
Chapter End Notes
     So this is the part where I spontaneously combust from shame, right?
***** Punishment Fantasy *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
  "Jupiter I promise on a stack of bibles it's not your fault and I will slap
 your face if you say it was. I will punch you in the face for every word you
                            say. I am so for real.”
                              -We Know The Devil
                                      ===
The first girl Neptune ever kissed was a beautiful liar.
The two of them met, and each of them thought the other one was super hot. They
didn’t fall in love, because Neptune couldn’t say the word ‘love’ if it killed
her, and the other girl didn’t want to be too forward. They didn’t go on dates
because they would be flayed alive for it by their parents, possibly literally.
So mostly they just kissed each other in broom closets, until the janitor
walked in on them as they were hitting second base, and it was all fucking
over.
“Neptune made me do it!” the other girl said as they were dragged out for the
crowd, sobbing and lying through her teeth. (Neptune couldn’t blame her, but
she totally begrudged her, anyways.) And that was how Neptune came to be known
as an evil seductive temptress, and it was how she got sent to conversion
therapy, aka the Summer Scouts, for the first time.
Well, she was hardly opposed to the idea of being a temptress. It seemed fun!
There was no reason not to play into a role like that, if you could enjoy it,
if you were already a bad kid. She was going to seduce good women, to make them
love-slaves before her feet, to hear the lamentations of their men!
She was gonna be God-damn Lilith in the Garden of Eden, and she was gonna be
like: “Hey Adam, can I be on top this time?” And Adam would be like “Fuck no,
bitch, I’m the dominant one here,” and she’d be like “Fuck you Adam, I said I
wanted to ride you cowgirl, not that I wanted to be the domme, you
hypersensitive control freak, I’m getting a divorce.”
And then God would make Eve as a replacement wife for Adam, and Neptune would
be like: “Hey Eve, what was the last time Adam helped you get off?” and she’d
demonstrate her technique on Eve, and Eve would be like “Oh, Mistress, sit on
my face!” and they’d leave Adam all alone in the Garden, that absolute fuckboy.
Hell yeah.
So Neptune spent a lot of time thinking about biblical lesbian sex. Yeah, she’d
admit it. It wasn’t like she had much else to do, getting lore drilled into her
skull.
On the night they met the Devil, Neptune played the role of the seducer, and
Jupiter the part of the seduced. But really, what little thing did it take
Neptune to persuade Jupiter, the two of them sitting together and alone in a
closet? What erotic intrigue did she have to play out?
Neptune said a lot of things, but really she was only saying one thing, in six
different ways: “No one is going to know what we do in here.” And then Jupiter
scraped her tongue along Neptune’s teeth, and grabbed her waist with fingers
like iron, and then there was no pretending that anyone was making Jupiter do
anything.
                                      ===
When they first heard the Devil’s voice, she said the bodies she could give
were weak, and her stories were impossible... but she was probably lying.
Now, beginning to grow into the fullness of themselves, they are strong;
because if they can’t or won’t be strong, they have each other to lean on. The
Devil’s stories surely aren’t impossible, because they’re all living the
stories.
As far as Neptune is concerned, the Devil’s obfuscation probably came to her
the same way it came to all grown-ups, all flowery and esoteric. Maybe the
Devil was talking herself down as some kind of secret demonic test of
character. Because… the Devil really isn’t a total bitch. She’s actually pretty
awesome, all things considered. But she’s still the Devil; she’s about as
transparent as God on a good day.
Jupiter… well, she doesn’t give any mind to the Devil being a liar. She doesn’t
even give (much) mind to the heresy and sin they’ve remade themselves in. But
she’s still scrupulous.
“Being the Devil is totally unfair,” Jupiter says, one day, while she and
Neptune are curled up underneath Venus, like a blanket. Venus is already
asleep, and her breath pushes and pulls at her hair as she snores.
“It’s totally unfair in our favor, though,” Neptune quietly drawls. “So we’re
not supposed to complain about it. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and
all.”
“I can’t not think about it,” Jupiter confesses. “It’s too weird. Forget
everything else for a second. Isn’t your first time supposed to hurt? Did we
get to skip all of that because we turned into the Devil? Some messed-up
demonic thing? Are we, I don’t know. Cheating?”
Oh, well, of course they’re ‘cheating’. Who exactly decided how their old
bodies would be able to have sex? God, that fucker. Even if the Devil is just a
metaphor for yourself, there’s no way she would let that slide.
That’s not what Neptune says, though, because even if she knows this, she
doesn’t know that she knows it, and she doesn’t know how to say it.
“You’re going to make me cry, Jupiter, that is the lamest thing to ever feel
guilty about missing out on and I fully encourage you to cheat when it comes to
— how did my youth pastor put it? — the pleasures of the flesh.
“But secondly, how can you tell that the Devil changed our bodies like that?
Isn’t it just as likely that our laughable excuses for ‘sex education’ just
totally lied to us?”
“Um.” What.
“I mean, come on, Jupiter.” Neptune’s voice takes on a nasally tone. “‘Oh yeah,
the first time you have sex it’s going to hurt like Hell and you’re definitely
going to hate it. But only if you’re a girl.’ Doesn’t that just sound like the
perfect story for fun-hating grown-ups to use to scare girls into staying
virgins?”
Jupiter frowns. “I-” Venus exhales deeply, still unconscious, blowing a lock of
hair across Jupiter’s eyes. “-can’t actually argue with you. That’s
suspiciously convenient, on your part, I mean.”
“I’m the Devil, sweetie. Suspiciously convenient rationalizations for the
pleasures of the flesh are my job.”
“Hahaha,” Jupiter giggles a little. “I’m sure there’s an answer to this.
Someonehas to know. Maybe we have to get an opinion from someone who’s not a
creepy abstinence-only preacher.”
“Mmm,” Neptune murmurs. “Shall we go seduce some young virgin women, then, and
find out?”
Jupiter stares at Neptune, and her stomach does a queer sort of flip. Are you
serious?
She’s in a relationship with Neptune and Venus both, she likes them both, but
it never occurred to her that they could go even further in that regard. She
doesn’t think she wants to go further. She doesn’t want to go off ‘seducing
virgins’ because — for once — she’s happy with what she has right now, and not
because she’s crippled by her fear of being bad.
“Just kidding,” Neptune says, and she winks at Jupiter. “You know I’d never go
off seducing virgins without the whole crew. We’d need to wake Venus up first,
and I just can’t bear to disturb sleeping beauty.”
“Neptune!” Jupiter huffs.
“What? I literally just said I was kidding,” Neptune says, and Jupiter gives it
up as a bad joke. She wraps an arm around Neptune, and the other girl squeezes
it.
On some level, there’s a sort of vertigo. She and everyone else believes that
this is okay — they know it’s sin, but they believe it isn’t ‘bad’. But what if
she and everyone else is wrong? The wild excuses are peeled away, exposing a
deeper anxiety, is this life too good to be true?
“You look like you’re about to cry,” Neptune says.
“Ugh,” Jupiter replies. “You think Venus would take it the wrong way if I used
her wings as tissues?”
“Nice distraction, Jupiter.”
Jupiter shrugs a little, and Neptune scowls.
“I can totally tell you’re being mean to yourself, so fucking stop it. The only
one allowed to be mean to you is me.”
Jupiter rolls her eyes, but the vertigo is thoroughly broken. “Thanks, I love
you too, Neptune.”
“GOD, you bitch, you figured me out. You figured out that I love you, and I was
trying so hard to hide it, too.”
An idle hand tumbles across Neptune’s face, like, I can’t be bothered not to
fall on top of you. Neptune pushes it away, but doesn’t complain; the two of
them lie in a comfortable silence until they begin to fall asleep.
The only one allowed to be mean to you is me.
It’s a bad joke, a ridiculous joke. Cruel things and dark things spilling from
Neptune’s lips, instead of welling up from the scars of old habits. It should
be an absolutely terrible idea. It should hurt so much more for Neptune to be
cruel to Jupiter than for Jupiter to be cruel to herself.
She thinks of Neptune’s voice, dripping with disgust and sadism, and it should
mean you’re loathsome and I want you to suffer. But instead it means anything
else. Something unutterably private, unforgivingly affectionate, as Neptune
always is.
It is an absolutely terrible idea. But she thinks about it anyways, until she
closes her eyes; and when Neptune wakes her up in the morning for pancakes, she
feels as if she left her skin behind in her dreams.
                                      ===
It’s surprisingly easy to get internet in camp. You can get radio in camp — you
can get radio anywhere — and if you can squeeze the word of God himself through
the radio waves, you can fit anything in there.
What you can’t get in camp is… just about anything else. You want chocolate?
Good luck torrenting that. They can’t get it delivered directly to them in the
mail, either, because what the hell address would they mark down? They’re kind
of totally in a cold war with the church and they’re only metaphorically living
on the campgrounds because they’re really living inside of the metaphor itself;
the practicalities give Mars headaches and the metaphysics give everyone
headaches.
This is why Jupiter and Neptune are driving down a road in the ass-end of
nowhere, in the truck they stole from the Bonfire Captain. Because Jupiter
wanted chocolate. And no-one ever leaves camp without someone else to lean on,
no matter how short the errand might be; but they also can’t bring three people
out at once, because there are only two seats in the pickup.
Now, Jupiter is sitting in the passenger’s seat. Instead of thinking about
defying geometry and retrofitting the car, she’s thinking about the mistakes
she made in the convenience store, and stress-eating some of the candy that was
meant to last for weeks; an arm hangs out of the open window, and she cuts the
wind between her fingers.
“You know you’re not the only one to fuck up, right?” Neptune asks
rhetorically. “Once I was out at a library with Apollo and checking out some
gay porn — I mean, ‘romance’ — when I thought of you. I got so wet the
librarians thought I pissed myself.”
“Jesus, Neptune.” Jupiter screws up her face, but her cheeks turn tender and
red.
“Yeah, I bet Jesus would be mad…” Neptune crushes a can of something
disgusting-tasting in her hand and throws it into the back-seat. “...if there
was anyone alive who could actually channel him properly!”
“Not the point,” Jupiter grumbles.
“It’s totally the fucking point, nobody’s actually perfect, so stop beating
yourself up. If you’re bad then everyone is bad.”
That would be reassuring, if ‘everyone is bad’ wasn’t a self-consistent moral
position held by about half the population of their shitty country. Total
depravity. Jupiter can hear her mother’s voice running down the back of her
neck, hot words and cold breath and hot breath and cold words.
“I could have gotten us in really serious trouble,” Jupiter says. If she had
just kept her hands to herself, if she had managed to pass as a human for more
than thirty seconds… She was so, so bad at pretending, when it was most
important.
Where her hair tie used to be, her wrist feels vaguely open and exposed. She
wishes Neptune could hold her hand.
“No-one actually noticed you, Jupes,” Neptune replies. (The cashier was too
busy looking at her legs to see Jupiter’s arms.) “Besides, this is liminal
middle America, do you have any idea many monsters they probably get out here?
I think the chick behind us was a vampire. If they called the church for
everyone who didn’t look human they’d need six and a half hotlines.”
“That’s suspiciously convenient,” Jupiter says.
“Yeah, well, sometimes life is suspiciously convenient.”
Jupiter closes her eyes against the wind that buffets her face. Neptune floors
it down the long, languid stretch of the highway, and jerks the wheel to the
side, sending them up and around a local complex of allegories.
“What do you think of me, Neptune?”
“Wow, is that a loaded question or what?”
Jupiter shifts in her seat. “I know I’m messed up, right? I know I’m good. I
know that sometimes I’m dumb enough to believe that I’m bad. Would you rather I
tried to accept that I’m already good? Would you rather I tried to become bad?”
“I think both of those would be pretty good looks on you, honestly.”
“Haha!” Jupiter laughs, and forgets for a moment.
Neptune doesn’t say anything else, watching Jupiter out of the corner of her
eye.
“It’s hard to do both at once,” Jupiter says, clutching her knees. Neptune
shakes her head.
“I care about you,” Neptune says. “I wish you cared about you, too.”
“I do care about myself,” Jupiter replies. “But…”
“But?”
Jupiter is scarred and raw, physically and mentally, but that doesn’t mean she
hasn’t healed at all. The problem isn’t that she’s worried about being bad, the
problem is that she wants to be better.
How can she say that she has any self-esteem at all, if she sometimes wants
Neptune to treat her terribly? She doesn’t want to abuse herself, she doesn’t
want anyone to abuse her; but somehow, if it’s Neptune...
“Nevermind,” Jupiter says.
And Neptune looks at her. Her pupils have swallowed the colors and whites that
should surround them, leaving gaping black pools in place of her eyes, deep
enough to drown in and live forever.
“Let’s just go home,” Jupiter says.
                                      ===
The first girl Jupiter ever kissed was an ugly liar; she was beautiful, but her
lies were ugly and her truths could be uglier.
The first girl Jupiter ever kissed was Neptune. Jupiter wasn’t sent to the
Summer Scouts because she was caught out as a lesbian, but just because she
fucked up and messed up on missionary work.
...at least, that’s what it said on the paperwork.
Jupiter’s mother knew that there was something wrong with her, deeper than
making a mistake. She always knew, like God, looking down from above and seeing
souls laid out in tracery. She knew that Jupiter was a mistake, even before
Jupiter had the chance to do what she wanted to do.
Jupiter has nightmares, sometimes, of what Hell might be like. She has always
dreamed of Hell, bodies and hearts blooming into perfect suffering under the
hands of perfect punishment. Hell may be a metaphor, but that doesn’t mean that
it isn’t real enough to trap you inside and make you hurt.Rip, tear, crush,
burn, cut, spindle-
She has always dreamed of the Devil, but now she dreams of the Devil as
Neptune, holding her in loose limbs that won’t let go, and it’s not quite a
nightmare. I’m going to hurt you, and the only ‘trap’ is that you’re going to
want it; maybe because you know you deserve it, or maybe just because the pain
feels good. And none of that is quite true, even in Jupiter’s dreams, because
it’s just some intimate cipher. Or it is true, but it doesn’t hurt, because
it’s built on something else-
One part is certainly true: she does want it.
                                      ===
“You’ve been very bad, Jupiter, haven’t you?”
It’s a parody. It’s a perversion, sexual debauchery and sin; it’s a perversion,
an old thought bent into a new shape. It feels exactly like Jupiter expected it
would. It feels completely different.
Neptune is standing in front of the edge of the bed; Jupiter is on her knees in
front of her. The other girl’s hands gently press down on her shoulders until
she’s sitting on her heels.
“Yes,” Jupiter admits, in the same tone of voice she always uses. Father,
forgive me, for I have sinned…
“I thoughtso,” Neptune says. Her voice drips with disappointment, coiling heavy
around Jupiter’s body. “I also thought you were better than this, Jupiter.”
Jupiter’s face burns. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Neptune drawls. Absolutely disbelieving. “That’s an awful lot right
there, all in one little word. What are you sorry for?”
She’s naked on the ground, and Neptune isn’t…
“…I want to look up your skirt right now,” Jupiter admits. It comes out of her
mouth just like the way she wants to peel Neptune’s skirt away from her legs,
and Neptune’s lips curve into a triumphant smile.
“Oh, Jupiter. What are we going to do with you?” Neptune leans back and sits
down against the bed. “Come here.”
The carpet scrapes painfully against Jupiter’s legs as she moves closer; they
replaced the old hardwood floor in here ages ago, a quiet way to make something
new out of things, this is our room now.But the floor isn’t any more
comfortable than before.
Neptune takes Jupiter’s chin in one hand, with slow and deliberate movements.
Up close and down against the floor, Jupiter can see up Neptune’s skirt after
all; the other girl isn’t wearing any panties, leaving her cunt exposed, wet
and overflowing.
Neptune grins smugly at the look on Jupiter’s face, dredging her mind into a
tizzy of filth. “Th-that’s not all I’ve done,” Jupiter stammers.
“So tell me about it,” Neptune replies. Her words are yet another kind of
touch; they trace the pulse on the inside of Jupiter’s neck, and hold against
her breath. “On my lap, now.”
It’s not just about getting off, or giving in, but it’s about… acceptance,
maybe. If you can do something for real, in some small measure, and it doesn’t
destroy you, then maybe it doesn’t have to haunt you in any measure at all.
(But, yeah, it’s also about getting off.)
Jupiter pushes herself off of the floor; or she lets herself go, to float back
upwards, lighter-than-air. After lowering herself for Neptune, all down against
the earth and twitching with careless anticipation, her knees are red and sore
like crushed pomegranates.
She moves to sit in Neptune’s lap-
“Not like that,” Neptune murmurs, throaty by Jupiter’s ear, and she reaches out
to grope Jupiter’s ass.
They’ve talked for hours; they each managed to say what they wanted to do, what
they wouldn’t do, but Jupiter left a lot to Neptune. Somehow, even having said
she wanted this, this feels like a surprise.
Neptune barely needed Jupiter to tell her anything, which was either sexy or
terrifying. Possibly both. But Jupiter trusted Neptune.
Jupiter trusts Neptune. She steps back and angles herself around Neptune’s
body, until she’s bent over Neptune’s knees. Neptune is still wearing her
clothes, dressed up like a proper Christian girl, and Jupiter is still naked.
Exposed and open.
Her mother used to spank her with her hands, until — she moved onto using her
belt? Corporal punishment is nothing unusual, which only makes it harder to
confront how terrible it was. Her mother eventually moved onto less direct ways
to punish her, but she can’t remember why. She supposes that might be a good
thing.
But Neptune isn’t using a belt, she doesn’t even have a belt, she’s Neptune,
she doesn’t own a single pair of pants because fuck you, if wearing pants
‘gives boys the wrong message’, I’ll wear a dress and say the message to their
faces, anyways.
“You were saying something?” Neptune croons, bringing Jupiter back to the here
and now. Her fingers run down the length of Jupiter’s spine, down to her
tailbone; the flat of her palm moves across Jupiter’s bottom.
“I’m bad,” Jupiter says, and it’s thrilling because it feels like a lie. A
game.
“Oh, we established that already, Jupiter. Do go on.”
Jupiter takes a deep breath. “I have sex with girls.”
Neptune’s hand raises and then falls again, hammering against Jupiter’s ass
with a thundering crack. Her expectations are torn apart, obliterated straight
through in a thin split-second of pain; her mouth parts with a gasp.
Jupiter’s body is so tense (so other) that Neptune might as well be trying to
beat through iron. Her arm ripples as the blow lands.
“And you want to lay with me, too, don’t you?” Neptune asks. They both know the
answer, but dragging the wickedness out into the air makes it delicious. “I can
see the way you look at me.”
“I do,” Jupiter says. Her voice is weak.
Crack.
Neptune’s hand descends again and again, finding new patches of untouched skin
to break upon. “Is that all, Jupiter?”
“No,” Jupiter gasps. She’s absolutely aware that Neptune can see all of her.
Her reactions are obvious enough to lay her feelings bare. “I have two
girlfriends at once,” she says, spitting further in the face of who she’s
expected to be. “Last night, I fucked them with my hands while I made them eat
me out.”
Crack. Jupiter rocks forward from the force of the blow; Neptune’s rough skirt
scrapes against her stomach like it’s going to carve something out. “Th-then, I
helped one of them fuck the other with a-”
Crack! Jupiter forgets what she’s trying to say. Neptune continues spanking
her, over and over. Each hit is sharp enough that she curls her fingers into
fists, and she twists in Neptune’s lap like she’s simultaneously trying to pull
away and get closer. She feels woozy down to her toes.
(Even with Jupiter slowly relaxing into the ‘punishment’, Neptune’s hand is
stinging harder than Jupiter’s ass. But she’s far from complaining; it’s better
than hand cramps, and every sharp noise spilling from Jupiter’s throat more
than makes it worth it.)
“You’re laying it on thick,” Neptune says with a chuckle, when she finally
stops. “Are you so eager to repent?”
“No,” Jupiter pants. “I’m enjoying this. I want you to keep spanking me-”
Crack! The blow is enough to leave her seeing stars.
“Unbelievable,” Neptune says, her voice low and mocking. “You are enjoying
this.”
(How can she enjoy this?)
Neptune palms Jupiter’s ass, and her fingers slide between Jupiter’s thighs.
Jupiter makes a sound, diminished and crushed.
(This isn’t the first time or the first way Jupiter has found love and pain so
entangled. Her mother loved her because she could hurt her. Her father hurt her
because he didn’t know any other way to show his love.)
“You’re making such a mess,” Neptune says, and she’s perfectly sincere. Her
hand comes away dripping with a sheen of wetness, and not all of it is
Jupiter’s. Sweat runs down her skin, salt-water and brack and oil slick.
“You’re making me make a mess. You’re making me just as dirty and filthy as you
are.”
(Neptune is hurting Jupiter because she loves her, because she asked. They
could show their love any other way, if they wanted; there is only one way to
be good, and a thousand and one ways to be evil.)
Jupiter tries so hard not to reciprocate, not to touch. She’s restrained by
herself, rather than obligation. But a hand slips free from her shoulder,
hiking up Neptune’s skirt as it moves to touch her ribs, and-
Crack!
Jupiter whimpers at the sudden return to form, and the entire lower half of her
body vibrates from the force of the spanking. Forgotten pain and pleasure mix
together with the dull static that gushes through her head.
“What do you think you’re doing, Jupiter?” Neptune asks rhetorically. Her
lashes drop and ripple down her eyes.
“You said I made a mess, right?” Jupiter says, blushing heavily. It takes a
moment for her to pull herself together, and she rolls herself about in
Neptune’s lap to face her more directly. “I should clean it up...”
“Oh, really?” Neptune smirks, but she’s breathing harder now. “You would enjoy
that, too, wouldn’t you?”
She extends her hand, covered in Jupiter’s own arousal, and Jupiter parts her
lips without thinking about it, leaning in to suckle on Neptune’s fingers.
The two of them together taste like petrichor.
“You’re absolutely beyond salvation,” Neptune says, fucking Jupiter’s mouth
with her hand. Jupiter mewls piteously, muffled by wickedness on her tongue.
“You don’t want to take responsibility for your sins, or make up for them. You
just want to keep sinning.”
Jupiter can hardly say no. (A hand holds the back of Neptune’s neck, telling
her anything she might want to hear.)
Neptune pulls her hand from Jupiter’s mouth with a pop. Her mouth hangs open in
an ‘o’ for a moment, before Neptune drops her other hand to grope the soreness
still clinging to Jupiter’s ass.
Jupiter can’t resist groping back again, reaching up Neptune’s shirt and
filling the gap between their bodies. She isn’t wearing a bra, either.
Crack! Neptune’s hand slams into the back of Jupiter’s thigh, and Jupiter
audibly moans.
“You’re such a whore,” Neptune says, her words sounding blacker and blacker
even while they run clear. “A stupid dyke. A slut for punishment.”
(The words are the same words that people have always used to hurt them, but
Neptune says them the same way she would say “I love you”.)
(Neptune has always been too forceful and cruel with other people. I’ll force
yourself down your own throat even if you don’t want to be yourself, because I
can’t stand your suffering. It’s a strange relief to “force” this upon Jupiter,
and see her willingly swallow.)
“I am,” Jupiter stammers.
Neptune grips Jupiter tighter in her own arms (less numerous, but not weaker)
and throws her around onto the bedsheets. She hits the mattress, and Neptune
practically crawls over her, pinning her against the bed with unyielding force.
Neptune grabs Jupiter’s hair, and Jupiter dimly realizes through the rush of
static that her own hands have torn Neptune’s skirt away.
“You deserve this,” Neptune says, grabbing one of Jupiter’s breasts and
squeezing hard enough to make her yelp. “Do I even need to fuck you to make you
cum? Or should I just keep punishing you?”
Jupiter keens, high in her throat. Neptune already betrays her arousal,
grinding against Jupiter’s body. Jupiter, more willing than she is needy, and
needier than she is willing. It’s one of the hottest things Neptune has ever
seen.
“Please,” Jupiter rasps. “More.”
“More?” Neptune puts on a sneer. “You’re so desperately gay, Jupiter. I could
fucking crucifyyou and you would beg for more, just because it was a girl doing
it to you, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes!” Jupiter squeals. She spasms underneath Neptune, who continues to buck
her hips against her. Neptune’s fingers slip between Jupiter’s legs and pinch
at sensitive skin.
Jupiter’s hands extend in earnest lust and need, pulling Neptune closer. Their
bodies seem to unfold, unspool, entwine; Jupiter’s arms, already everywhere and
nowhere, give Neptune something to grind upon, and Neptune pushes Jupiter’s
head into the pillows until she’s all but gagged. “Raise your hips, Jupiter.”
The spankings that Jupiter are expecting don’t come. Neptune just massages the
blotches of deeper red skin across her rear and legs, the beginnings of welts
yet to come. Attending oh-so-lovingly to ravage and ruin. (And somehow, that’s
even more intense than the pain.)
Neptune is already coming, after winding herself up so much; her pussy throbs,
hot around nothing but her own relief and her thoughts for Jupiter. Ichor and
brine have stained the blankets.
She’s still incredibly horny. But even even that won’t stop her from wrapping
Jupiter around her little finger; she exhales deeply. “I will, nnh, make you
orgasm so hard it hurts.”
Jupiter moans into the pillows, Neptune bearing down on her pussy and pushing
against her hips until she wonders if her body is going to splinter. This sort
of cruelty is awful, agonizing, terrible on multiple levels, every level, but
by some alchemy it has been transformed.
She can’t think about how cruelty should make her feel, or how cruelty has made
her feel before, she can only think about how good it feels, and how she wants
to keep going forever.
Neptune rubs her thumb, slippery with arousal and wickedness, against Jupiter’s
asshole, and Jupiter whimpers. Shame twists and jags with static and pleasure,
this is gross but I don’t want you to stop-
She’s going to be torn apart into scraps, and it will feel good-
This is gross but Neptune won’t stop just because of that-
I’mgross but she won’t stop because of that-
For a second, in the fog of a fuck, Jupiter is disgusting again. Gross. But
Neptune doesn’t care, right now she sees Jupiter from above in more ways than
one; she sees every facet of her grossness and sees through it, peering through
frost and glass to the clouds beyond, you’re gross but I love you anyways.
I’m gross-bad-wrong-sinning-disgusting — but Neptune still loves me — fucks me
— touches me — loves me —
Jupiter shudders under Neptune’s hands.
(Really, Neptune is the one who’s supposed to be the seductress, and both of
them know it. But Jupiter is a siren song of temptation, too, in her own way.
Neptune couldn’t still her wicked tongue if she tried, and right now she’s only
using her tongue to speak.)
Jupiter simply sobs. Drawn, narrowing, expanding, unfolding; Neptune is larger
than life. Neptune inside of her doesn’t feel good the same way she feels
against her clit, but Neptune inside of her is a blistering reminder of
everything else Neptune is to her, a reminder of everything the Devil promised
her in every person and every body.
Neptune returns to touching herself with her free hand, fingering herself like
she’s trying to hold herself inside of her body, and Jupiter's hands join her-
Jupiter comes around Neptune, only made of iron until she melts. Not molten
iron, just… molten. She makes the most pathetic noise neither of them have
never imagined, lowly, love me, I’m sorry, fuck me, hurt me…
“Neptune,” Jupiter whimpers. “Neptune.”
“Shh,” Neptune croons. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Jupiter keeps her nails perfectly short, but bloody crescents still line her
palms, where she’s folded in on herself hard enough to break skin.
                                      ===
“I’m sorry,” Jupiter says, after they’ve cleaned up enough to get some sleep
without needing to burn the sheets in the morning. One of her hands curls
around the hem of a fresh blanket, wrapping it around them.
“Jupiter, is that your way of saying you’re not done with the scene, and you
want me to keep punishing you?”
“Oh, ha ha,” Jupiter says. She’s kind of using Neptune’s hair as a pillow. “No,
Neptune, I’m saying I’m sorry, for real this time.”
“What for?” Neptune asks, slow and careful, half-expecting to have to beat
something stupid out of Jupiter’s head.
Jupiter shrugs a little. “It’s fucked up.”
“You’re apologizing because you did something fucked up?”
“I’m apologizing because that was fucked up,” Jupiter says, like she’s saying
something simple and trying to beat it into Neptune’s head.
Jupiter expects Neptune to argue that it wasn’t fucked up. It wasn’t fucked up
that we were role-playing in the vein of the people who abused me.
“I disagree, obviously,” Neptune says, according to expectations. “But so what
if it was? You don’t have to apologize for that,” she continues, not according
to expectations. Jupiter closes her eyes.
“...you’re a real bitch, Neptune. Thanks.”
“No problem, babe. It’s my job.”
It’s funny, really.
Neptune has always aimed for being Bad. And now, she is terribly Bad, drinking
and doing drugs and fucking girls, but… is she Bad or Good, fucking girls in
the image of Good abusers?
If Good is abuse, then isn’t Good bad? If Good is bad, then how do they get
anything good out of playing at it, even having twisted it again?
Maybe it doesn’t really matter. Even if they’re Bad, they shouldn’t have to
feel bad.
Good and Bad have always been fake, anyways.
“You don’t think badly of me, do you?” Jupiter asks. Her voice is more brittle
than she wants it to be.
(She literally just fucked the living shit out of me, I think if she didn’t
like me, she would have been a bit more hesitant. I know this is just an
intrusive thought catching on old habits-)
“Nah,” Neptune replies. “Everyone wants me to punish them, you know. Even
Venus. Even the Bonfire Captain.”
“Jesus, Neptune!” The anxiety is brutally defanged, murdered by Neptune’s bad
attitude.
Neptune laughs, and her eyes dip dark. She throws an arm around Jupiter
properly, squeezing tight. Like water pressure. Like a blanket you won’t take
off.
“Really, Jupiter. You’re okay.”
And she is.
Chapter End Notes
     Venus/Neptune up next.
     All comments are appreciated!
***** False Idols *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
              What is the speed of sound through a belief system?
                  -The Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures
                                      ===
These are the facts:
Venus and Neptune are draped together over the couch, less than ten feet from
the kitchen where Jupiter is cooking. Venus’ head is in Neptune’s lap, with
most of her eyes closed, and Neptune is on the phone again, hammering at it
hard enough that you would probably assume she was texting again.
None of this is unusual for them, save for the fact that Neptune is asking some
very personal questions; seventeen of them so far.
“Hey Venus, what’s your birthday?”
“Ah… don’t tell me you don’t remember?”
“I totally remember your birthday, Venus, I’m getting you presents and
everything, I promise. I’m asking you what year you were born in, because I’m
too bored to do math.”
“Uh, it was the year before the year that you were born in?”
Venus doesn’t like thinking about the fact that she’s the oldest one, although
she can’t put a finger or wingtip on why. It’s not even the mere fact that
she’s older, it’s just… everything else.
“Mmm.” Neptune presses her lips together. “Come on, come on. Uh, think of your
favorite bands, were there any songs with numbers in them?”
“Uh… I don’t know? 1989? 1945?”
“Guys!” Jupiter yells, and Venus smells ozone. “Breakfast is ready!”
These are the facts:
Neptune’s phone is broken. Venus is perfectly happy to give her old phone to
Neptune, but she doesn’t actually remember the numbers to the password. Neptune
would cry ironic tears in order to cover up unironic frustration, if becoming
the Devil hadn’t made her tears indistinguishable from every other ounce of
bile.
But she goes ahead and tries Venus’ latest shots in the dark.
“Oh my god, Venus, you actually used song lyrics as your password, you’re such
a dork. A veritable super-dork.”
Venus rolls her eyes, getting up and floating into the kitchen to grab
Jupiter’s cooking. “Stop bullying me, Neptune?”
“Denied.”
Neptune turns back to the phone, also shuffling over to grab food, when she
opens the browser, and she sees it.
Venus can see out of the back of her head. She sees the look in Neptune’s eye.
She knows she’s even more doomed than she already was.
“Venus, what are these search suggestions?”
“I don’t know,” Venus says. “I haven’t used that phone in like, two years.” It
got taken away from her — which certainly didn’t stop her from getting into ham
radio — and she only got it back when they all started taking steps to
seriously cut ties. Neptune’s idea of cutting ties involves breaking and
entering and vandalism, to Jupiter’s chagrin.
“Okay, I’ll take a look myself,” Neptune says, tapping at the screen.
“Is anyone even hungry?” Jupiter asks rhetorically, pulling off her apron.
Then porn music starts playing from Neptune’s new phone, and Venus startles.
“Oh god,” she says. “I was hungry.”
“I want to see,” Jupiter says, and she leans over to get a look, misting
through the air. “‘Forced Heresy general thread?’ Oh. Oh wow.”
“These are actually kind of cute,” Neptune reluctantly admits. Various pictures
scroll across the screen. “Almost cute. Too bad most of these are fucking
straight.”
“Nah, Nep, see those ones, with the gay dudes?” Jupiter shrugs and steps away,
grabbing plates laden with pancakes and depositing them on the table.
“Oh man, that’s even worse. Venus, please tell me you weren’t a fushoji.”
“Oh god,” Venus croaks out. Her entire body burns scarlet, an incandescent
light. “Please no bullying! I won’t have it!”
Neptune keeps reading, and she shoots Venus a grin.
“Jupiter, Neptune is still bullying me! Make her stop?”
“Neptune,” Jupiter says. “Stop bullying Venus.”
“Can’t do it, babe, Venus didn’t say the safeword.”
You accidentally say the safeword out of the bedroom just once, and you never
live it down-
And the awful part is that it actually kind of works, because we’re all
troubled and traumatized into a twisted relationship with the word ‘no’. It’s
positively easy to say ‘Mammon’ in comparison.
But even worse than that is the fact that I’m probably going to accidentally
say the safeword in public to someone else and they’ll be like ‘Wow, Venus,
what does the Demon Prince of Greed have to do with anything-?’
“Oh, hey, here’s some lesbians,” Neptune says mildly. “‘Oh no, my best friend
turned into the Devil, and then she turned me gay!’ I think you bookmarked this
one, Venus. How in nine hells did you ever think you were a straight boy?”
“What! I? I thought all straight boys liked lesbian porn, okay!?”
Jupiter can’t help herself, and she laughs out loud. But she sees the look in
Neptune’s eyes — the kind of look that always comes with collateral damage —
and she knows that she might not want to be in the splash zone until things
cool down.
“Oh, gee, Venus, it’s just too bad that both of your best friends are the Devil
now, Venus,” Neptune says. “I guess we’ll just have to turn you… double gay,
won’t we?”
“You’re awful and you’ll never let me live this down, will you?” Venus moans.
“It’s your fault for having awful taste in porn.”
“No? No! I don’t have bad taste in porn! I just… I used to have bad taste in
porn!”
Jupiter starts digging into her pancakes.
                                      ===
When Venus was only a little kid, she had an imaginary friend, and his name was
God.
She wouldn’t have put it in those terms, of course — even the “atheists” knew
that God wasn’t imaginary, even if they didn’t worship him. But Venus’
relationship with God was like the relationship of a child and their imaginary
companion. God was her safety blanket, her confidant.
She was lonely. She couldn’t see what other people could see; she couldn’t see
what failures other people might see in her, that they would choose to leave
her alone.
God is omnibenevolent, her teacher at Sunday School had once said. Venus had
gone to the library afterwards, cracking open a 500-page dictionary devoted
solely to ‘o’ words:
Omnibenevolent. Adjective. All-loving; generally used in reference to THE LORD
OUR GOD.
If God was all-loving, then by sheer logical necessity he had to love her, too.
There was nothing she could do to change that.
She spoke to God at night, while she laid down her head and closed her eyes.
She imagined her head in his lap while he sang lullabies. Not like an old man
in the sky, or like her father. Like the old man who had once lived next door,
someone else’s grandfather. He had let her read his books, stolen early from
libraries. He had told her stories of when he was growing up and running away.
She imagined what God might be like, if she herself was made in the image of
God. Like the books said, the books most people wouldn’t let her read, because
lay children could only misunderstand and mangle the word of God: In the
beginning, God made Adam Ha-Rishon as androgynos, or male and female alike; but
Adam Ha-Rishon withered in loneliness, so God divided them into the male Adam
and the female Eve.
Adam Ha-Rishon, made in the image of God. You weren’t supposed to divide God,
even in image; it was blasphemy even to imagine it.
And if God was alike the Adam Ha-Rishon, did God wither in loneliness, too?
Would God divide himself?
(Was that why God made the Devil?)
“I’m sorry if it’s true,” Venus once murmured, staring up into the dead of her
ceiling, her heart aching with remembered pain. “I’m sorry if you were ever
lonely. I know what that’s like. Even if you don’t care, I’m still here for
you.”
God didn’t say anything to her. She wondered if God was still lonely.
She wondered what Adam Ha-Rishon felt as their female facet was sundered. Like
being split. Like having a rib torn from your chest.
Did it hurt?
                                      ===
Now, Venus’ problems aren’t as simple as she wishes they were.
She has a grip on morality, right? She doesn’t need to let God or the Devil or
anyone else override her own judgement, and she can choose her scruples. She
also knows how to be honest, and how to lie, and how to be sincere, and how to
be bitter. She doesn’t have a religious or moral complex about who she is and
how she wants to live in the world.
She just sort of wishes she was someone else, anyways, as a matter of personal
taste.
Even now.
Looking at other people, Venus can always take them as they are. The Devil lets
anyone be themself; she is the oldest dream, turning stories into reality.
But Venus looks at herself, and sometimes she can barely take herself at face
value. The Devil made her story real, but who was the author of the story? Was
the author a girl inventing herself against reality, or a dumb horny teenage
boy?
It’s unbearable. It’s not right that her story can end up so hopelessly
entangled with its own negation; you want to be a pretty gay girl, but maybe
that’s only because you’re actually a weird messed-up boy!There is nothing
extricable from the negation; there is nothing which cannot be everted and read
as a sign of some underlying maleness.
It’s asymptotic. She knows she’s only tripping herself up,but that doesn’t mean
that she isn’t tripping herself up.
This is probably why her period comes in.
No-one else still deals with that, as far as Venus knows, because it’s only
some stupid bullshit curse that God came up with to punish women. Becoming the
Devil is an exercise in imperfection, but there are so many other ways to be
imperfect, beyond going along with arbitrary divine torture — really, who would
choose to become the Devil, and still go along with that?
Venus goes along with that, apparently. Brilliant.
Every iota of her being understands that she’s being unfair to herself. This
isn’t just an arbitrary reality she has to live with; by God’s own malice and
her own inaction, by God’s own apathy and her own misplaced self-flagellation,
this is a reality on purpose.
She doesn’t tell anyone about it, because… some things are just too awkward to
broach. And weird, and physically gross, and maybe kind of interpersonally
gross, even if it isn’t morally gross, and honestly she should probably just
say something before someone asks-
“Venus, are you alright?” Neptune asks.
They’re lying on the couch again, streaming shitty television on Venus’ laptop;
she holds the computer to her stomach.
“Um. Er. Ah. Why do you ask?” Venus stammers out.
Neptune sighs. “Because you look fucking constipated and you’ve looked that way
for hours.”
“Shut up. I’m not constipated. I’m fine.”
Neptune gives her a look. The patented number twelve ‘I know you’re fucking
bullshitting about something but I’m not quite how to push you on it, or if I
should’ look.
“Should I hold you down down?” Neptune asks, and Venus flushes like a red
dwarf. “Until you admit what’s wrong, I mean.”
“No!” Venus stammers. “Don’t, no sex!”
“I wasn’t talking about sex,” Neptune tries to say. Then she pauses. “Venus,
are you on the rag,” she asks rhetorically, which is to say that she already
knows the answer.
“Augh. Yes I am, shut up.” Venus slumps further back against the couch. “This
sucks absolutely and I hope I’m annihilated from the face of the earth. Why did
we ever decide that transforming ourselves into the physical manifestations of
our internal conflicts was a good idea?”
Neptune pats her awkwardly; there are some hurts that words aren’t suited to
comforting. “It’s hells better than the alternatives.”
“I know. This is still awful and I still hope I’m annihilated. I am a fool. The
most foolish fool to have ever lived. The most foolish fool to have ever
fooled.”
Sometimes Neptune wonders if she’s doing the wrong thing, being as supportive
as she is. Will the others lean on her too much, taking something that she
can’t afford to give, until she’s dead and dry?
But as they are now, they don’t drain her, because she only overflows. “You’re
a fool for being yourself?”
“No, I’m a fool for having… whatever hangup is doing this to me.” Because she
doesn’t really choose who and what she is, as the Devil, any more than she ever
chose who she was as a human.
Being the Devil is only another way to be yourself, and sometimes that means
you carry your baggage with you into your new body. You can choose who you are,
but you’ll always be you.
“You’re still my girlfriend,” Neptune says. “Even if you are the biggest fool
in all of history. We can get that looked at, if you want.”
“I think I’m going into shock,” Venus says.
“...from the pain?” Neptune asks carefully.
“No, from the fact that we’re girlfriends. It’s too much. I’m going to faint.”
“Venus, you are such a little shit,” Neptune laughs.
“I was being serious though?”
                                      ===
When Venus was thirteen, she was still as much a child as ever, but she
imagined that she needed to be tall. Strong.
“I don’t want grape juice,” she insisted stubbornly, and her father laughed and
ruffled her hair.
“Just a sip, then,” he said, the same way he would agree to let her have an
extra cookie after dinner. She drank the consecrated wine and it tasted like
rotting fruit. So sour it hurt her tongue. So bitter it made her ill.
The priest led the congregation in prayer and in song; his voice dripped with
static and radio wire, the echo of a gamma ray burst all of the way on the
other side of the spectrum.
She wasn’t sure when it started. Her mind drenched with drink, she found
herself floating in the divine light, like a corpse floating atop the salt of
the dead sea. She found herself struck by the most immense, total realization
possible:
She loved God. God loved her.
There was nothing extricable from the love; every iota of her being was united
in a single overpowering urge to pour out her soul for GOD, and it wasn’t even
the urge that was important. It was only the skin, like a shell covering the
seed which was her love.
There was nothing apart from the love, or even against it. GOD could do nothing
to reduce her love for Him; there was no possible world where her love would
not increase, because she saw that everything was a sign of His love, by
logical necessity. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent; every
unfolding facet of the universe could only be another facet of His love for
her, His love for everything. Even if it hurt her, no matter how badly she
hurt.
Infinitely far away, her body was singing along with the rest of the
congregation, one long perfect note in sync with the radio, every bit as
singular and all-encompassing as GOD was. Perfect totality.
Infinitely far away, her voice cracked; the perfect note became imperfect, but
she couldn’t stop singing, like the song was singing her-
The imperfect sound was the first chip in a fine sculpture. The vision strained
and broke like the shattering of a Dutch tear.
She fell back into herself, thrown into her body again, and for a moment she
grieved at the feeling of love she had lost. Then she remembered who she was
again, and felt the most profound feeling of terror she had ever experienced.
She bent over and vomited all across her best shoes; stomach acid stained the
leather, speckled with the blood of Jesus Christ.
“That’s my boy,” her father said with a hearty laugh. “I was always a
lightweight, too.”
She never spoke to God again.
                                      ===
“Look at yourself, Venus,” Neptune says, reading through the script with
perfect verve, an agglomeration of navel-gazing masturbation. “You’re such a
fucking sissy.”
Venus is years away from the stupid kid she used to be, far away from
transubstantiation and revelation, and she’s still picking up where she left
off. Why is she doing this? She’s lying back in their ginormous bed and she’s
so obviously vertiginous that Neptune can feel her skin going clammy even
through her feathers.
“Mammon,” Venus gasps out, and Neptune pulls her hand away from between Venus’
legs. Neptune isn’t even surprised.
And Neptune would know, really. Venus isn’t just the girl with her heart on her
sleeve; Neptune is the girl who sees through the bullshit. She doesn’t need
seventy-two eyes to look through the surface of a lake to the silt and rot in
the lake-bed.
To Neptune, the face of things always fades into transparent irrelevance.
“I don’t want to do this after all,” Venus whispers.
“I heard you the first time,” Neptune replies. She crawls further up onto the
bed. “Do you want to talk about it?” Please be comfy talking about it, if we’ve
chased your head up your ass again I’ll throw an awful shitfit the likes of
which haven’t been seen since the Flood.
“I don’t know. It’s really weird and I don’t know where I’m at right now.”
Venus closes all of her eyes, which is quite the feat.
“You can take your time,” Neptune says. Venus looks like she’s somewhere at the
intersection of ‘horny’ and ‘nauseous’ and ‘REGRET’ which is completely
understandable. Neptune looks like the Devil, which is to say, she looks like
herself. She never changed on the outside; only on the inside.
“I guess it was super hot when I first got off on this kind of thing,” Venus
admits, and she blushes. “On this dumb fetish stuff. And it was super hot when
you reminded me of it. But it’s not actually hot to do it now, though?”
Neptune leans in and kisses Venus, feeling the other girl’s skin warm and
brighten under her lips. Venus is smiling a bit, when Neptune pulls away.
“Do you know why?” Neptune asks. She cups Venus’ cheek, trying to see through
her.
Something she doesn’t like to make a production out of is just how much she
wants Jupiter and Venus to be honest and open. Not just because that makes for
a good relationship or whatever, but because it kind of makes her horny.
“I guess back then, I got to imagine myself as a girl?”
“‘Imagine’, huh?”
“Ugh, you know what I mean,” Venus replies. “I wasn’t trying to imagine my way
out of some... self-image problem. Not back then. But now it’s complicated and
unhelpful and not even any fun to imagine myself as a boy imagining himself as
a girl.” Venus bites her lip.
“I suppose there are much more interesting mind games to play,” Neptune says
slowly, drawing out the words. Venus shudders; under Neptune’s shadow, she
can’t stop herself from imagining it. Mind games and mind fucks.
“Haha, um. When you were dragging that old fetish stuff up again, it made me
feel… embarrassed? Really embarrassed. And… small? But also good. I guess
that’s what confused me. Your attitude felt good.”
I want to fuck your shy little smile until you come around me. “We can always
dream up some new dumb fetish stuff, if you like, Vee.”
Venus jitters with want, and Neptune leans in to plant wet kisses on her neck,
leaving smears of oily black behind where her lips pull away.
“L-like what?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Neptune croons. “Tell me again if I’m on the wrong
path, or if you want us to stop completely. But tell me: do you want to feel
small? Embarrassed?”
“Yes-s,” Venus stutters, and whines. “You’re too good at this!”
No, I just saved up literal years of dirty talk and heresy and cruel trappings
for a rainy day. Every last possible wicked thought, hidden inside her and
waiting patiently for the right moment to pour out and spill over. “I would be
a pretty shitty Devil if I couldn’t make your knees weak from twenty paces with
only the sound of my sexy, sexy voice.”
“Gyah, you sound like you’re trying to record an ASMR video.” Venus shudders in
Neptune’s arms, ashamed of her next thought. “Could you… not be the Devil?”
What. “What?”
“I don’t mean that — I don’t want you to change who you are or how you act.
Could you just. Not be the Devil, for a little while?”
“You’re going to have to be a little more clear about what you mean there,
Venus.”
“I’m tired of… Abrahamic theology getting tangled up in everything.” It’s a
strange thought to be thinking, when their entire world is shaped by Abrahamic
theology. “Even sex.”
“Oh, well that’s easy. We can dream up some new theology, too.”
Venus laughs, and Neptune scowls.
“You think I’m fucking with you but I’m 100% totally serious. I mean, I could
be a god.” Neptune nips at one of Venus’ nipples, and Venus gasps. “Hell, I’m
already a sex goddess, aren’t I?”
“Ahhh-! You… don’t t-take this the wrong way, but, but you don’t stack up very
well compared to God,” Venus offers.
“That’s like saying an apple doesn’t compare to an orange. No-one compares very
well to an ontological principle.”
Venus laughs again between her moans, breaking through dignity and
vulnerability.
“But really,” Neptune says. “If we went far enough back in time, people would
worship us as gods.”
“That w-wouldn’t actually make us gods, though, Neptune!”
“What does, then?”
Nnn, that’s a little deep for dirty talk.
“Come on…” Neptune says teasingly, and she grinds against Venus’ hip. “Wouldn’t
you want to worship me?”
“I won’t say I don’t…” Venus murmurs, and her smile widens. “What sort of
goddess are you, then?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Neptune says, sultry and low. “Look at me, all ocean and
ooze and ichor and bile. Forget Baphomet, I’m a completely different black
goat. The primordial soup giving rise to one thousand young.”
That’s rather a stretch, Venus thinks, but Neptune reaches down between her own
legs, getting her fingers wet with oily slick and then bringing them up to draw
angles across Venus’ chest; and what Venus actually says is: “Does that make me
one of your young, then, Shub-Niggurath?”
“Of course it does.” Neptune shuffles back on the bed, continuing to smear
iridescent-black arousal across Venus’ body as she goes, and she stares up at
Venus through lewd, lidded eyes. “I’m still inside of you, you know. Do you
know why blood and the ocean both taste of salt?”
Venus is spellbound by the expanse of the story Neptune is telling; she can see
where it’s going, but she can’t see where it ends. “No,” she breathes.
“It’s because they’re both the same. You carry a little bit of the ocean, a
little bit of me, with you wherever you go.”
And Venus isn’t just flesh and blood anymore, but her blood pounds so hard that
she can feel it in her skin and hear it in her ears. Suddenly, every heartbeat
feels like it could be Neptune pumping her fingers inside of her.
“You are my creature,” Neptune says slowly, almost tasting the words. You’re
mine, to love, and cherish, and fuck.
“I’m yours,” Venus echoes, staring at Neptune with lovely doe-eyes, and Neptune
is painfully aware that she could reach out with hand or voice, and break her.
It puts a pang in her chest. She would never do it, it’s a thought to flinch
away from. But knowing that she could makes the world snap into hyperreal
clarity. It makes her ache with the desire to run in the opposite direction,
and bend Venus instead, for the both of them. Black blood stains the inside of
her skin grey.
“You owe me everything,” Neptune hisses, softly and almost gently, teasing more
of this sex story out of her lips. “I cared enough about you and yours, to stir
your oceans until your ancestors could crawl out of the mud. You should throw
yourself at my feet with your devotion to me, just because you have the chance
to look upon me now.”
“Thank you,” Venus whispers, infinitely far away from herself, in Neptune’s
world.
“Don’t thank me with your words,” Neptune says. “You can put your tongue to a
much better use.”
She’s sitting across from the headboard on their bed and spreading her legs,
and for a moment Venus flounders, jarred back into self-awareness; then she
falls back into the story and sits up, finding a new way to fit their bodies
together.
And Neptune watches Venus, crawling across the bed when she could be flying.
Venus isn’t graceful, but that’s okay. She’s always earnest and dedicated,
instead. She runs her tongue along the inside of Neptune’s thighs, collecting
ichor to pool in her lips; her mouth banishes the stagnant chill that Neptune
feels in her blood.
(Neptune looks like she’s made of hate, a wellspring of poison, but she tastes
normal. Human.)
“Hhaaah, that’s good…” Neptune pants, as Venus drags her tongue across her
entrance; she curls her fingers through Venus’ hair, and gently pulls her in,
pressing her against her own body. The teeming ache in her cunt intensifies,
and finally subsides in Venus’ lips.
It’s like holding Venus’ head underwater, in more ways than one. Neptune has to
spread her legs wider to give Venus more room, and objectively speaking Venus
might as well be drowning; but she’s still looking up at Neptune with real
love, and she’s trying to drink every inch of Neptune in.
Venus thrusts her tongue into Neptune; practically suckling at the slickness
and arousal inside of her. She wraps her hands around Neptune, grabbing her ass
as if for leverage, and she pulls her tongue back out, running it against
Neptune’s clit with long, forceful licks.
“Good,” Neptune says again, letting out a long sigh.
Venus doesn’t need to be told twice, redoubling her efforts with an enthusiasm
that Neptune can feel. Coiling her insides up, warm and hazy and tight.
“Good… yeah, just like that,” Neptune goes on, her voice husky, and Venus
squirms between her thighs, or maybe it’s Neptune squirming against her-
Neptune comes, rocking so hard against Venus that Venus can barely keep rhythm,
and she dissolves on Venus’ tongue more literally than anyone else can, leaking
pleasure and satisfaction across her partner and against the bed-sheets, almost
forgetting what she's supposed to be doing with the two of them.
When Neptune grips Venus’ hair to pull her away, her mouth and jaw are stained
and dripping with mottled ink, a beautiful mess.
“Did I… did I do good?” she asks, breathing through her wings, thirsty for
approval like she’s stranded in the desert. Rivulets of Neptune run down her
chin to fall on her breasts.
“You did very good,” Neptune replies, shifting in their bed to steal a kiss, a
taste of herself, and a bit of Venus’ smile for herself. “You have pleased me,
so... I will… grant you a reward as my disciple.”
Venus giggles, lightheaded and lighthearted, and Neptune’s stolen smile twists
dark and teasing.
“Do you think I’m joking, Venus?”
“No!” Venus yelps, but she’s still smiling, and the teasing is infectious. “Not
at all… my goddess.”
“I could get used to that,” Neptune says wryly. “I’m your goddess. Are you just
my creature?”
Venus intends to say something comparatively normal, like ‘I’m your good girl’.
But they’re telling a new story, and the story is a spell, and the spell is
powerful, and it’s their spell, just for them-
“I’m your sacrifice,” Venus says, and she can feel her pussy flutter. “An
offering, from me to you.”
Neptune sucks in a breath, and then she sucks in the skin in the curve between
Venus’ shoulder and neck, and feels Venus ascend in their embrace.
There isn’t a square inch of her skin that isn’t drenched in her own
wickedness, streaming over the edge of the bed to soak into the floor,
sublimating into the smell of sex and desire and sin.
Neptune drenches Venus just as thoroughly, as if for Venus to shed her worries
by being blotted out. Blotting out Venus’ mind until she doesn’t have to think
about anything at all, save for Neptune’s fingers pumping inside of her, each
heartbeat stretching out in delirium.
Venus floats in Neptune like she once floated in the divine light, and it’s
beautiful because now she is present in herself, complete in herself even as
she’s devoted to Neptune in this moment.
Neptune pours herself down Venus’ throat; she fills Venus’ insides with tongue
and fingers and wickedness on every front. Venus is a vessel for everything
that overflows in Neptune, a receptacle, a hollow, a vial. She is filled with
every possible wicked thought like every slow, tender, inescapable thrust;
until she, too, overflows, filled to the breaking point, shattering across the
bedspread.
She screams Neptune’s name like she screams for God.
                                      ===
They’re sitting in the bathtub with the drain open, and Neptune is flowing
clear against Venus’ skin, scrubbing away impossible iridescent oils from where
they cling in Venus’ wings.
Venus’ eyes cling hungrily to Neptune, the glint of adoration, and maybe
something else.
“You can spit it out, you know,” Neptune says, and Venus breaks into laughter
again.
“Shub-Niggurath, Neptune? Really?”
Neptune shrugs. “Don’t judge. That was based on a wet dream I had when I was,
like… fourteen?”
“And you say I’m a super-dork.”
“Oh no, you caught me. Don’t tell Jupiter. My reputation as a vaguely aloof
mean girl would never ever recover.”
Venus snorts. “Your secret is safe with me. But now I know you have no ground
to bully me for being a dork!”
“I’ll just bully you for something else. I’m very creative.”
Just like that, Venus is exactly where she was before, half-embarrassed and
half-happy, and Neptune loves these kinds of moments, throwing clear clarity
through murky water.
A lot of the time, Neptune’s teasing is only another language of love: I love
you, warts and all. But when her girlfriends lean into into it, it becomes
another story: you trust me enough to believe that I love you for the things I
tease you about, rather than in spite of them. You trust me enough to relax and
be yourself.
Why does it feel so good merely to be so trusted? It’s a kind of redemption and
healing she never expected or asked for. She never quite realized that she was
hurting without this.
“You know,” Venus mumbles into Neptune’s chest. “Just for a few minutes, it was
nice to be loved by a god who was enough of a person for me to love back.”
That’s a low bar, Neptune thinks, but on some level she totally understands.
She wants to breach the vault of heaven and annihilate every possible Godhead,
but other people just want a kinder God.
And maybe that’s actually a high bar to reach, but she was able to clear that
bar anyways, and it felt good.
“I love you so much,” Neptune whispers, and she realizes that she’s crying,
just a little bit. Crystal clear tears trace down her cheeks.
“Neptune-? Oh, don’t cry!”
“I will cry if I want to and nothing can stop me,” Neptune says.
Venus reaches up and wipes Neptune’s tears away, to mingle with the bathwater
and sin, washing down the drain.
“I love you too,” Venus says softly, and she kisses Neptune at the corner of
her mouth, where paint begins to dry.
Chapter End Notes
     Both “androgynos” (“intersex”, roughly speaking) and “Adam was
     created androgynos” are not original ideas; they have their roots in
     real-life Jewish lore and tradition, although they aren’t necessarily
     mainstream.
     (At least, they aren’t necessarily mainstream in the real world.
     Things are murkier in (my interpretation of) the WKTDverse.)
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