Night-blooming Jasmine
@gracetopher-week
Day 3, Fic Day
Rated R, still unfinished, set in the The Last Flowers universe after Chrisanthemum
The point is, Grace doesn’t actually know how to have sex.
Giving her history, she should. She really should. But she’s never been an active participant: in the past, with her... clients―she has to stop calling them that―she just... lay there, closed her eyes, and thought of England. Occasionally, which meant nine times out of ten, she also suffered like a dog.
Nothing more.
By now, though, she’s come to understand that her firsthand knowledge of sex has nothing to do with how sex is usually experienced; even less, with how sex should be experienced. She was too young, for starters, which is something Cecily, and Cordelia, and Anna, and everyone worth their salt never seem to stop blabbering about; moreover, she’s been sold, trafficked, stripped of her every right. She’s never had a choice.
And, maybe most importantly, she’s never truly wanted it.
Well, not until this moment, at least.
She wants it. She does, she really does, she’s ready to swear it on the Angel if need be.
She’s just not sure what she wants, exactly.
Which is why they’ve ended up here. She and Kit, that is. Sprawled on the bed in her room at the Institute, laying on their sides, kissing.
The kissing is... good. Nice. They’ve done it before, of course; as a matter of fact, they’ve never done more than that. It’s been a couple of months since Kit kissed her for the first time, and that was a good ten days after her trial, when she’d been cleared of all involvement with the whole Belial-and-Tatiana-related mess and could finally start making her peace with it―start making her amends to those she’d hurt, either willingly or not.
Kit liking her, kissing her, opening his heart up to her, hasn’t been much of a surprise.
Everything that’s happened since...
Yeah.
She should stop overthinking it. She should just do what Kit told her to, last week, and get this over with already.
Problem is, that’s a thing she has no idea how to do. To tell the truth, it’s the very reason why they’re on this bed and Kit’s hand is slowly, so slowly, making its way between her legs.
Listen...
She tried, alright?
If anything, she knows what it’s supposed to feel like. It isn’t as though she’s never come before: statistically speaking, it just had to happen, sooner or later. Mere physical stimulation can, and sometimes will, be enough. And some of her cl―abusers prided themselves on being able to bring their women to orgasm, and had a penchant for rubbing her like they were hacking at a particularly persistent stain on their fancy church clothes.
So, she has experienced climax.
And she’s never failed to hate herself for it.
She’s perfectly aware that that’s the problem. And, as she’s told Kit half an hour ago, the only solution is for him to―quite literally, as it turns out―take the matter into his own hands.
She knows he’s an overthinker, just like her. She knows there’s a fat chance neither of them is going to get anything out of this. But she’s used to yielding control, she’s done it all her life, and she isn’t―yet―able to function in any other way.
The silver lining is that Kit has already had her remove her undergarments, which is a step further than where she’s taken this when she made her failed attempt. She’s still got her dress on: he doesn’t want her to be naked in front of him, not when it could be uncomfortable for her. Besides, with the fire having wilted down to embers hours ago, the room is chilly.
The goosebumps starting to show on her skin have nothing to do with the chill.
Kit’s lips are a kiss away from hers. His eyes are half-closed, as though he’s squinting to be able to look at her. (He doesn’t have his glasses on; she removed them as soon as he came into her room. But he’s near-sighted, so his vision should be good).
He’s staring at his hand on her inner thigh, she realizes. She’s willing to bet he’s as tense as she is over what they are about to do. What he is about to do.
“Kit,” she whispers, not even knowing why she spoke in the first place. Maybe it’s because she wants to reassure him. Or maybe it’s because she wants to reassure herself.
“Grace,” Kit echoes, the tips of his fingers drawing circles on her skin, his free arm sliding underneath the pillow on which both their heads are resting. “What do you want me to do to you?”
She lets out another, “Kit,” and it’s halfway between a scoff and a plea. “If I knew that, I would have succeeded in doing this myself.”
They make eye contact. Kit’s pupils are dilated, the violet of his irises reduced to little more than a ring around ever-growing black. He wets his lips, opens his mouth, inhales... and stays silent.
He’s at a loss for words.
Her third, “Kit,” is barely a breath. Soft. Acknowledging his worry, his unease, his feeling of being inadequate. “Whatever you do, I’m going to like it.”
She wants to eat her words the very second they leave her mouth. It was the wrong thing to say.
And indeed, a shadow falling on his handsome, boyish face, Kit replies, “How can you be so sure?”
“Kit.” She can’t get enough of saying his name, tonight. It grounds her, reminds her of who she’s with. “I chose this. I chose you.”
The title, Night-blooming Jasmine, refers to a work of the same name by Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli, which you can find here in the original Italian and a pretty good English translation. Pascoli wrote it for the wedding of a good friend of his, and it's obvious from the text that the poet thinks of sex as something violent, not gentle, something that crushes the petals of the flower ("si chiudono i petali un poco gualciti").
My co-author @zoyalannister learned to hate this poem in school (it's taught, at the very least, during the last year of high school), but I think it's a perfect metaphor for Grace's past and her journey in The Last Flowers.
Come check out the series if you hate yourself and want to suffer!
9 notes
·
View notes