Heartthrob

Snuggling was soft, as it often - if not always - was.

Bodies entangled, breathing set in rhythm, hearts beating all at once... there was divinity in stillness, a deific touch in this house of God, and it was all manifest within the shared closeness of the three. Purity's face against Est's neck... Est's hands on EJ's hips... EJ's legs wrapped lazily around Purity's thigh... None moved yet their chests, rising and falling in gentle tempo, a temple of their own love now brought together to worship. Seemed fitting, in this house of God, that God may be found in one another's presence.

It was none such a restless yearning for tranquility as oft they shared; there was no unspoken need for sleep, no rush nor thrill of sexual incitement, no touch nor intent that rang in any sense but a deep hunger for silence and calm. Flesh pressed to flesh, soaked warmth that lingered more than skin deep in all of them. It was particularly cathartic to the ghoulette, of course... She who could still feel the warmth and wetness, even dried.

Time dripped by, molasses spilled on the counter, spilling to the tile floor of Chronos's kitchen. Every inhale seemed to drag on forever, though no additional effort was expended... Every blink stretched for aeons before the closing eyes beneath them, a moment drank and savored for each and every one.

But just as there was joy in the still and slow, there was agony. The agony of knowing, of waiting, of anticipating... Testing still, testing further, testing until testing was all done. It was the price agreed - the devil's pact for safety, to become the nunnery's guinea pig to keep Esper James's head and the heads of her lovers below the sightline of Vitus's de-facto owners. A necessary evil, to undergo whatever the convent needed of the housed second-living. The more EJ considered it, the more she had already begun to think of it as captivity.

Purity was notably still; she had been nearly motionless once they were all assembled in their mingled contact, their nest of bodies and breaths barely shifting at all in the first place. However, EJ thought, she was also being quiet... quieter than either of the others were. It wasn't something in the air; it wasn't something she had been slipped, at least EJ hoped not. In all honesty, she was still...

"...Purity?" Esper James snapped the silence like a bundle of twigs struck over her knee, breaking the trio and their dorm out of that thankful freeze. Purity recoiled as if struck, her face taken from Est's neck and directed towards her diminutive delight. When she answered, her words were sluggish as if passed through muck; her throat a mountain pass of broken glass, the words which passed through it sounding ragged and tired.

"Huh? Yeah, EJ? What's up...? Whad'd'you need? Are you feeling alr-" She was silenced by a single finger, one that pressed to both her lips with as much care as concern. EJ was looking up at her now; she rolled over, body now laid firmly across the two other women in their misshapen snuggle. "Hush, love. What do you need? Are you feeling alright? P-Please, you... I don't like seeing you like this, whatever this is. What's on your mind?"

Purity's eyes, having been drooped and weary, made themselves wide and awake, dreadfully aware. She first tried to smile, chuckling softly, playing it off as a silly question... Just a playful line of inquiry, of course, and one that was brought about without any reason. Her faked laughter fell as pitifully as broken glass from a smashed storefront, all flash, no feeling. Useless. Pointless.

Esthrielle rolled over, too, shifting EJ so that the blonde was resting almost entirely on Purity. She looked now to Purity, echoing Esper James's own inquisitorial gaze - free of malice, but drenched with concern. The inkwell of shared hearts had spilled, and the poem beneath had been marred by splotchy, wet discomfort and uncertainty. It was Purity's turn to break just like that silence that had mired the room, her faux smile rent to shreds without so much as an apology for its destruction.

She fell apart in an instant, beginning to outright bawl, gathering up the other two in her arms as powerfully as she could. A gentle snuggle became a desperate, needful press - flesh to flesh in Purity's compactor, an unspoken necessity of more than just the idle contact of lazed languishing. She plead with all her heart, to any God that may still cast his gaze towards the earth, to be able to pull them close enough that they'd never be apart.

It was shocking to EJ, to see Purity crumble like this. Purity had always been so strong... even back in Kehler Complex, when they had escaped with Kell, Purity was solid as a rock. She was undeniable, undefeatable; she was every bit the pillar of stone that EJ had needed, every time EJ had needed it in the last few weeks. She, and Est, had always seemed so powerful... And while EJ had seen Esthrielle at her most vulnerable, at her smallest and softest and weakest, she'd never really seen Purity be so defenseless.

She'd seen her cry, of course. They'd all shed too many tears to count in recent days. This was different.

Purity howled like a wounded beast, the bear trap of emotional bludgeoning having caught her heart in its sharp, cruel teeth. Esper James didn't know what to say - didn't know if there's anything she could say, in all honesty, to try and dam the deluge. It made her tremble, to feel so helpless in the face of her lover's grief... to see Purity shattered on the floor, no glue or epoxy in sight to put her back together. EJ settled for simply welcoming the crushing embrace, and returning it in kind, as best she could.

Est, too, was speechless. From the wobble on her lower lip, though, and the shaky descent of her brows to try and form a small, sad smile, she was barely holding it together. She joined in on the three-way hug, the union of meat, machine, and mortality between them all that much sweeter for its sorrow.

Purity was like a steaming kettle, whistling out shrill wails of absolute devastation and misery that would have made the marquis de Sade upset. Distraught was putting it lightly, and she didn't seem to be working through it with anything approaching expedience. Esper James began to layer kisses upon whatever bare skin she could get at, not daring to interrupt Puri's catharsis - if she was this beside herself, she needed to let it all go, not be cut off midway through. Bottling all this up would do no good.

At one point, the door opened - just a crack, just enough for a nun with a neat white bob cut to peek her head in. Great blue eyes scanned the scene, expression an unusual display of emotion: her lips were curled back only slightly into an awkward grimace, gaze narrowed with concern. Once she saw that Purity wasn't being accosted, and didn't need direct help from any of the convent's regulars, the nun was quick to vacate the scene.

Dilemma wound its way down to dismay; the howling became a harsh, jagged sort of sob, which in turn became gentle weeping. Shedding emotion is like shedding skin: refreshing, cleansing, and exhausting. She yawned once, prolonged and only a few steps from further tearfall, but once it had been made she settled down into a soft whimper. The pink princess shimmied herself down within her bed, gathering up her girlfriends' heads so they each were inches apart. She gave the both of them, one at a time, a quiver-lipped kiss.

Esper James returned the locking of lips emphatically - not from lust, but from love. It was painful to see Purity in this state, and EJ wanted more than anything to be able to be there for her, to give her comfort and love, to do anything she could to steal the pain away. If only she had lips that could kiss Purity's heart better... but she could still try her best with what she had.

Purity sobbed a little into the kiss, squeezing EJ even tighter as they shared the moment; she hadn't the mind nor the intent to make things anything but respectful and loving, and God, she had so much love to give it seemed to overflow from her now. Purity broke away from the ghoul's lips only to turn then to the Wayward, dragging her into just as forceful a mingling - one that was, yet again, unresisted. Whereas Esper James had merely accepted in and offered herself willingly, Esthrielle was more than emphatic: she was demanding. She put physical effort to the same sort of desires Esper James held, drawing Purity in so powerfully that her chest squished against Est's own torso.

Est's tenuous facade was replaced wholesale my a look of determination - the sort of look one takes on when they're fighting for something, for a cause they believe in, or a love that is true. Purity was so fucked up that it wasn't fair to her to need to do all the work, or so Est thought; instead, it was someone else's turn to take some of the pressure off the pinkette's shoulders. Est wanted to be the one to do just that.

Whimpering softened further still, to a gentle sound here and there, on and off. EJ watched while the two other girls shared their kiss, caught between wishing she could contribute and drinking in the scene which lay before her. It was good that Purity was starting to calm down, she thought... She wished she could ask Puri why she was so broken up, though she also supposed she knew. Her leading theory was that it was aftershock from seeing EJ pass out and begin drowning in the pool - the first-living were sensitive to death, still, and the death of a lover?

Well, it was elementary, dear Watson. Just about anyone would be hurt by seeing that, seeing your beloved's body struggle to live, fight to cling to what life remained within it even as it began to die... The girlish ghoul couldn't even imagine. It hadn't really hit her before - what she had put Est and Puri through, in her own bull-headed need to feel validated. It was cruel, wasn't it? She sure felt like it had been a cruel thing to do, in retrospect. She had made them watch her nearly drown, just for her own benefit.

Oh, god. She was just like Judas, wasn't she?

That made EJ's stomach flop over on itself, a sad pancake sent end-over-end in a greasy discount diner skillet. Was this going to be the next few days, or weeks, or months for them? The loves of her unlife, the only loves she had ever truly known, being forced to watch her suffer and struggle just for her own sake? See her get broken down into an observable science, rendered like pig's fat, turned into a palatable little potion that the Easterners could quaff at their leisure?

No. No, no, no. Fuck that. That was worse than death, she quickly and decisively settled with herself. It was worse than being out there, on the streets, hiding from Tsang every waking breath of every single day. Safety was great... but if Judas caught her, then at least it would be over, so long as Judas only caught her. These thoughts began to form storm clouds in her mind, bolts of neural lightning sending energy arcing through her mental storm. A dark, indescribable emotion wrapped her heart like a funeral shroud.

No. Not yet; not as anything but a last resort. But, there was something else she could do, if only to save her loves' hearts from any further pain. Something that scared her... something that made her nervous; made her ill. But it was better than the alternative. Fucking anything was better than the alternative, of putting Purity and Est through this, day by fucking day...

"Hey, sweethearts... I, ah... I gotta use the bathroom. I'll be back... don't worry about me. Please stay here... Please rest. Keep the bed warm for me, I remember where the bathroom is, hahaha..." And without even waiting for an answer, EJ slipped out of Purity's vicelike grip and found her way from beneath the bedspread. Up onto her feet, then, still nude and still cold even with all the warmth she had just been receiving. She went to the closet straight away, throwing on the closest thing to fitting apparel she could find, and then spun to face the door.

Deep breath, EJ. Deep, deep breath - not as deep as the one from the water test, of course, but she hoped she'd never need a breath that deep ever again. With a deep inhale, though purposefully softened so as not to alert her partners, she cracked the wooden door open and freed herself from their presence. Out into the hall... out into the unknown.

She had been lying, of course. Lying about all of it: that she'd be right back, that she needed the bathroom, that she even knew where the bathroom was. The last time she had needed it, Est had needed to lead her there, and she barely even remembered the trip. No, she was headed anywhere but the bathroom. There was nothing out there for her... nothing in any of these rooms, down any of these hallways. Nothing she knew of, at least. Save for one thing, which she was pretty sure she could recall the location of.

The convent's hallways were mazelike and confounding, but she was diligent. Frankly, a part of her considered asking one of the scant few nuns in the halls to phone Luca for her, get him to pick her up and take her there. She thought better of the plan, however, once she considered it for longer than a single, pathetic second - Luca would almost certainly ask her why she wanted to go there, what her intentions were, and why she was alone. He'd tell Est. He'd snitch on her and ruin everything, and that wasn't something Esper James could risk.

So instead, she had to make the trip alone. It took nearly ten minutes of straight walking, though she had the benefit of minute wet spots that had been left on the rug, dropped off her hair not more than an hour or two ago. Ghoulish awareness came in again, so it seemed. A blessing for every curse, she thought, as she ran her pointed tongue along the inside of her fangs' wall.

Nuns saw her, of course, and some of them looked like they wanted to say something - but none of them dared speak, none of them dared broach the ghoulette in a manner either physical or verbal. Every time she met one, she was given a sad, wide-eyed look, but nothing more. It was like they were seeing the world's most malformed little puppy, a tragedy unfolding before their very eyes even as they wished they could pick apart the deformities and right nature's wrongs. EJ knew what that was like, in regards to herself - she had corrected plenty of nature's wrongs in the past, before and after death alike.

And right now? She was correcting something else - not a deformity of the body, but of the soul.

Eventually she arrived. Steel doors sat twinned, looking exactly how they had when she had first seen them - including the fact that they were closed. The hand scanner certainly wouldn't clear her for entry... And, looking around, there were no nuns in its immediate vicinity she could ask to help her in. Hell, maybe some nuns didn't even have access in the first place; this was the first door with an honest to god lock on it she'd seen in the entire convent. Whatever normally went on here, there was a reason it was kept private.

Well. Time for old faithful, the reliable classic. Thunk thonk thunk. EJ knocked, knuckles rapping at polished metal, the sound as hollow as it was solid. And then, she waited. Five seconds... ten... twenty... fourty... two minutes... Nothing. No sound at all - no nuns in the hallway to ask, just as before, nothing at all. The absence was just as daunting as it would've been if she had been surrounded by nuns in that moment; the empty hallways made her think of her dream, the one where she was in a vacant Tsang HQ.

That dream still pissed her off that she had even had it. Of all the things she could've dreamt of, why weren't they all like the very last one? Why weren't they all sweet bliss, gentle love, sandwiches and cake in the sun? Why was there no romance in them? She'd been having such scary dreams recently... but that train of thought led her back to where she was presently, and why she was even there.

To protect what she loved. To do something only she could do, and to do it for the benefit of those closest to her. To try and spare someone else some grief, for what felt like the first time in her life. She placated her stirring, frantic heart by telling herself it'd all be worth it; telling herself that, for once, she was in a position where her own choices seemed to matter. No one else telling her what to do, what to say, how to do or say it... No more getting bosse-

Hiss-ss-ss. The doors opened with the undiluted sound of internalized hydraulics, the same machinery she had earlier heard being set into motion once again. Once the lock was fully disengaged, a brown-haired head poked itself from the thin sliver of void made by the opening of the portal. Zofi, of course - and she was red-eyed and pale, looking weary and haggard, though when she saw EJ she chanced a fang-toothed smile at the ghoul.

"Heyyy, EJ...! Sister EJ, sorry. Gotta... Gotta start thinking of you as one of us, haha. Hey, what's... what's up? You here to take me to task? Tell me how dumb I was being about safety concerns with that test? Or-" It was EJ's fucking turn to cut someone else off. She interjected with brusque force, halting the words in Zofia's throat even as she struggled to push them up and out in the first place. "Sister Zofi. Let me in. I'm not here to yell at you; I've got something else I'd like to discuss. Let me in."

No please; no request, no pleading, no chance for Zofia to tell her no. It was refreshing, EJ had to admit, to tell someone else what was going to happen and expect them to do it - even more so when Zofia nodded, opening the door a bit wider and beckoning for EJ to enter. God damn, was this what it was like? Power, control, influence? Was this what Judas went through every day?

It felt good, she couldn't lie, though she wished she could. Maybe... Maybe she'd try it more often, yeah? But not right now. Not quite yet. EJ stepped in, letting the door slip closed and lock once again after she had made her entrance. The lab was a mess, she saw immediately - things were in disarray, a console had been smashed by only God knew what, and the entire floor was still lightly damp. The observation window had had a hole unceremoniously punched through its expanse, it seemed.

More than that, still, there was junk food littered around. Bags of chips and candy, a half-empty box of stale-looking donuts, a burger so cold that it had definitely just come out of some kind of fridge... it looked like a NEET's disheveled nest, like some of the girls in EJ's anime used to dwell within. She didn't say that aloud, of course, but it certainly helped to paint Zofia in a different light.

Speaking of Zofia, she looked like shit. Eyes were red and puffy, skin was even more pale than usual, nose was stuffy and runny... Her robes were in disarray, her hair was out of its usual pristine styling, and she had crumbs about her mouth. Also, still only one arm. EJ didn't think it wise to ask about that, all things considered, but she certainly was curious; she was sure Zofia had had two arms back at dinner. Where'd the other one gone?

It didn't matter. Maybe she'd ask later, if she had the energy - or anything else - for it.

"So-o-o, Sister EJ, what's up? What did you need? Gah, it feels weird to use my voice, sorry if I sound... weird." Zofia blushed a little, the minor shame seeming major just from the printer paper tone of her skin. She winced and shrugged, the apologia of the flesh evident all about her posturing; EJ wasn't mad at her, but she did appreciate that Zofia felt at least a little bad about everything that had happened.

"Zofia - sorry, Sister Zofia. I need you to do something for me. I need you to keep it... quiet, from Sister Esthrielle and Sister Purity. Please. They... they can't know." EJ put on a brave face, and nailed it to the wood of her heart with every bit of determination she had. Zofi's smile faded almost immediately, realizing just how serious EJ was being about this. She nodded, looking around, and then leaning forward conspiratorially. "Uh, h-hey, I'm... Yes, Sister EJ, I can do that for you. Discretion is key. But, uh... what do you need?"

That was the fucking question, wasn't it, Zofi? That was the hardest part. Saying it. Committing to it. Manifesting her own intentions into reality, through word and action... The repercussions, both large and small, would be immense. Fear leapt and danced in Esper James's heart, the flicker of a flame which burned cold and dreadful; the longer she thought on it, the longer she considered it, the more awful of an idea this seemed. But she had come this far. All she needed to do... All she needed to do was commit to it, right? Commit. That's all she needed.

"Zofi... I'm here to continue testing. Alone. Please."