Though the previous tenant's portable biosynthesizer’s case was cracked and periodically reeked of stale ammonia, Elyna still thought it made a damned perfect footrest.
Languidly stretched out on the similarly cracked, but thankfully not leaking, Eurospace crashbed they'd scored from one of the many les marchés aux puces they frequented, she sipped her less-orange-concentrate and more vin blanc mimosa.
Relishing in her decreasing sobriety, absently wondering if any Bouffon Théâtre dress rehearsers were able to see her afternoon sun-dappled bareness from across the Rue de Meaux, she said, "How about Fontainebleau? That picnic with Jules and Jules was pretty fun. What was that, five years ago … forever and then some, I guess."
Perched on their balcony's railing, their own plastic cup half filled with less wine and more juice, Nour rocked their head from side to side. "Has to be next week, ma colombe."
Swirling her drink, Elyna pretended to be fascinated by its shimmer. Then, with a dramatic flourish that threatened to further stain the bamboo decking, said, "Tout à fait--it's not going anywhere."
Mimosa's finished, afternoon edging towards the high thirties, they retreated to their apartment's darker, cooler interior.
Habits honed to a fine edge, Elyna went straight to their modular bathroom unit to mist herself clean as Nour, Minicom tablet in hand, sat on the built-in sofabed, legs knitted neatly under them to, they always put it, "check on the state of their freelancing world."
After toweling herself off, Elyna pressed herself up against Nour's resolute shoulder, which, however often she leaned on, still made her nipples twitch, and grazed their cheek with a delicately brief kiss.
Smiling with it, Nour blanked the screen. Turning to bring their lips together, they softly murmured, "Sorry."
The kiss resumed then continued until their mouths found other places to nibble, bite, lick, and suck. From Nour's to Elyna's breasts, nipples, navel, clit, and her large and small lips. From Elyna's to Nour's chest, nipples, thighs, cock, and their own set of smaller but more sensitive majora and minora.
Reinforced by conjoined satisfaction and shared desires, they rolled from one position to another; one feverishly impassioned step after another as Elyna's guttural growls faded, vanished, and blasted outwards with release, and as Nour's steady, regular hissing signs crescendoed into a deep bodied climax.
Arms and legs interlaced, quivering limbs fading into satisfied and blissfully indolent muscles, they inexorably neared their usual late afternoon, early evening nap.
Before succumbing, Nour lifted their head up.
"Sorry," they repeated, the single word punctuated with a returned, equally butterfly-wing light kiss to Elyna's nose.
Half-asleep, barely-awake, she replied, "I understand." But before completely asleep, not-at-all awake, Elyna frowned to herself, lamenting how she hadn't gotten a look at what had been on Nour's tablet.
Worthy, Elyna briefly thought, of the Bouffon Théâtre's stage, her self-congratulation appearing as an invisibly wry smile; Elyna downed the can of Auftrieb coffee substitute, grabbed her imitation Polène bag and left a full half hour ahead of Nour's usual emergence from under their bed's voluminous comforter.
An hour later, her chromatically dyed hair — a currently-stylish birthday indulgence that fortunately hadn't fallen out of fashion … yet — tucked under an ash grey beret covertly purchased the day before, she kept Nour's finely shorn head ten meters ahead of her as they strode down and then along De la Villette Boulevard.
Seated under a soaring expanse of pearlescent pseudo-silk, so diaphanous the night's constellations winked down at them through it, as Erté-inspired serveurs elegantly plied them with deco-age appropriate cocktails, Nour had told of their upbringing in El Qanater El Khayreya; about distant relative named Zaaef taking them in after the death of their parents in the 2029 uprising. Years, Nour had said, of sunlight and rain: brightness in Zaaef's unwavering love for them, oppressively overcast as the region inexorably slid socially, politically, religiously backward.
One night Zaaef bundled the ten-year-old Nour in a cumin, coriander, and cardamom redolent rug and drove first to Israel and then, costing their more-than-a-father, less-of-an-uncle, everything he had, a one-way ticket to Marseille and a thousand Neufrancs shoved in Nour's pocket.
Down De la Villette Boulevard to the Stalingrad Metro station, eyes pinned to her lover's finely plained skull. When Nour boarded a northbound car, she did as well, staying close enough to not lose sight of them, not too close for them to see her.
United Nations drones dropping out of a smoke-choked sky, they'd huddled together with former neighbors, now foxhole friends on a Ménilmontant rooftop as the city popped and cracked them from nanotech-seeded smart ordinances keyed to the smell of gun oil, thermobaric reactants, and hopefully a very specific set of genetic markers.
Hands held bodies pressed together, Nour spoke of being in an unfamiliar land, surrounded by unfamiliar people speaking an unfamiliar tongue. Hard years followed. Every step, every motion, every moment, inescapably knowing a moment's lapse would expose who and what they were.
A too-close, too-loud shockwave had made Elyna shriek in fright. Tugging her close and stroking her hair, Nour whispered of when it became a familiar land, filled with familiar people talking a familiar tongue. The day they looked up and out of the old rug they'd kept wrapped around themselves and were seen then welcomed, welcomed then embraced by those like them.
Whisper becoming cooing comfort, they told Elyna of their rebirth. Or, happily correcting themself, not a re but an actual, true, and honest beginning of who they truly are.
Transitioning from he to they was, to Nour, comedically simple: bemused by their patient's giggling fits, wishing they could have explained the laughable juxtaposition between what they'd been told about the procedure versus that day's reality.
But, with more giggles, as Nour tried to reassure a frightened Elyna, they said it probably would have spoiled the joke.
Into Porte de Pantin Metro station and, as the midday throng eclipsed and eclipsed again Nour's baldness, she stayed with them as they uncaringly went from train to station to street. Jean Jaurès Avenue used to be, and largely remained a residential above, small business below, Parisian thoroughfare.
Seeing the apartment buildings on either side quickened Elyna's already drumming pulse. Too-vivid images of any or all of their doors opening, an exchange of torrid smiles, behind any or all of those doors, Nour and someone else in each other's arms, clothing hurriedly discarded, her lover giving someone else the passion she thought they only shared with her, loudly colliding inside of her skull.
Nour stopped, and Elyna's heart nearly stopped with them. Her urge to twist, turn and run in the opposite direction, a plucked piano string in her chest and legs, a distant work crew's jackhammer matching her pulse. Then Nour swiveled to the right, entering a nearby lobby.
Fixing its exterior details firmly in her memory, she fought her fight or flight urgency and quickly closed the distance between them. Mind increasingly turbulent with each step, she was battered and baffled by what she thought she knew about her love and what they'd kept from her. Likes, dislikes, fantasies, the hypocrisy of their mutually assured monogamy, the lies of their future together, the shame of falling for their lies…
Here was their once-a-month secret, the inescapable proof of her worst fears lying in how Nour's attitude changed. Before they were sullen and withdrawn, afterward joyful and outgoing. Only someone else's body, someone else's naked body, someone else's love making explained it.
Then she was standing and staring at a glossily professional receptionist, who sat and stared back at her from across their elegantly simple desk.
It was the right building. She was sure of that, but instead of elevators leading up to someone else's apartment, there was a holographic logo, its typography and name not suggesting but boldly proclaiming she was in the lobby of some sort of medical facility.
To be continued... Check the Erotica section of Kinkly next week for the... titillating conclusion.
