Chapter Text
Summer here is more temperament than where you remember growing up.
You wake to damp sweat curling the hair around your ears and forehead, warmth prickling on the exposed skin of your face, and a thick heat brushing in through the nearest open window. Your eyes are closed, your fingers curling into fists and reaching to settle over Donna’s side of the bed, brushing against the sticky warmth of her skin.
You recall last night and the flush of her cheeks, the flat of your tongue on her, the hand she had buried in your hair. It comes in a slow flash, a sudden remembrance. It had been warm then, too, but she’d been pressing kisses to your neck all evening, and you’d blushed at the touch of her hand on your hip as you’d scrubbed dishes in the kitchen sink.
Donna always takes her time; she spends hours building up the coil of want inside you, planting seeds of ardour that she’ll cultivate come nighttime.
There are some nights where she’ll spend hours brushing her fingertips featherlight over your skin, murmuring Italian that reddens the tips of your ears, kissing the length of your body, muttering about the softness of your skin against hers, laughing at the leaf you find in her hair.
As the weather has warmed, she’s taken to reading in the garden before sunset. The garden is part hers, part yours, but under the withering summer sun, it is the sole source of colour in a place as dreary and isolated as this.
You might’ve lost your mind here years ago if not for Donna and Angie. It would’ve been easy back then, you know. Little recollection and only the clothes on your back, a family and life just out of memory’s reach— so, you made fresh memories, assimilated into a new family that has made your jumbled mind okay with never knowing how to connect the pieces you don’t know.
You brush your hair out of your face, wincing at the sweat along your hairline. In the night you must’ve kicked the covers off because they’re gathered at the end of the bed, tripping over themselves in your haste to get them away.
The crackle of humidity in the air reminds you of torrid summers in your childhood, ones you reach for but lose the second you get close. Your memories of summer are predominantly of Donna— tying her hair in intricate braids to keep it brushing her nape, long cold baths, waking to find the other curled too close in the heat, watching your garden shrivel under the too-hot sun.
As you flutter open your tired eyes, it’s then you see it.
Donna, awake on her side of the bed, dancing her fingers in a fractured kaleidoscope of gold pouring through a window you had put it some time ago.
You forgot to pull the curtains closed and the dawn is illuminating every corner of the typically darkened room, waking the both of you well before the real start of your morning.
“Donna?” you murmur.
Her one good eye drifts to you, and the smile she reserves for you transforms the usual stoicism of her features. “Buona sera, amore mio,” she greets.
Her fingertips dip into the light as if she can feel it, and you watch her in amusement, aware of the minor tension loosening in your shoulders. Sometimes she wanders about the house in the dead of night, tending to her dolls or reading in a different room to avoid waking you, but this morning she’s here. Still here.
“What are you doing?” you ask, raptly. You lean your arm on the cushion, supporting your exhausted head.
Donna blinks, attention caught on the sun. “Thinking,” she admits.
On the bedside table beside her, a vase you made a few years ago holds flowers Angie pulled from the garden. They shine yellow and pink in the sun, and even cut they seem to lean towards it, seeking its warmth.
A mirror image, you think, of yourself and Donna, and the magnetic draw of your hand up her arm as you count the new freckles brought forth by her afternoons reading on the porch.
“Did you want to share?” You have to muffle a yawn in your hand, blinking away the watery state of your vision. “I promise not to fall asleep.”
She smiles. “You are tired, and you should get some rest. Angie will wake you later when she gets bored and wishes to see our garden.”
Not yours. Ours.
Donna spent most of the winter tending to it, and the memory makes you smile. Despite the tired blur of your eyes, you manage to draw them over the bleary features of her face and then down, floating over the small freckles on her bare shoulders to the curve of her breasts, to the soft plush of her bare thighs.
The two of you have taken to sleeping stripped down, in varying shades of underwear and loose shirts— if you had to guess, it’s why most nights end with the crook of fingers and the press of tongues, and most mornings start with the clumsy press of your thighs between each other’s legs.
In all the years you’ve known Donna, there have been few places you've grown to prefer than the valleys of her body. Your gaze trails off, silently cataloguing familiar stretches of her skin visible in the light streaming through the window, and your other hand reaches to nudge into her bare side.
“Make sure she wears a hat,” you manage. The sight of Angie adorned in the small hat Donna made her a few summers back makes you smile outwardly, whether because she hated it or out of fondness for your small family, you’re not sure.
Donna looks at you then, her eyebrows gently furrowed. A warm hand brushes your hair out of your face, the back of it pressing to the heat of your cheeks. “You’re tired,” she murmurs. “I can think alone. Go back to sleep, my love.”
“You’ll still be here?” you ask, and immediately cringe. There’s a needy tug in your voice, one too revealing, and it makes your shoulders tense up in realisation.
Donna, however, softens. The hand on your face nuzzles at your jawline affectionately, her thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone, and her impossibly dark eyes fall on yours. “I’ll be here, treasuro.”
The breath of her voice and the gentle consideration of her touch lull you into a deep sleep.
.
Afternoon finds the Beneviento house with haste, bringing alongside it a cool breeze that relieves the heat glistening on your skin. It’s been cooler in recent years, but this summer is considerably warmer, and it’s left you leaning over the sink to soak in the refreshing change of the air’s temperature.
Angie watches you from the counter, her hat crooked on her head. One of her eyes is fixed on the floor, an imperfection Donna has wished to fix since the past week when Angie toppled off the porch steps and dislodged her left eye.
That one eye is fixed to lavender finally bloomed. They’re pooled across her lap, saved for a tea you wished to make once nighttime fell and the stove’s radiating heat wouldn’t feel like you were melting the flesh off your face.
As you’re watching the outside, peeking at the bright pink of new roses blooming wild along the edge of the old fence, Angie’s footsteps scatter. You whirl and find her previously occupied spot empty, save for the lavender she left in a messy pile on the counter and her hat, discarded on the floor.
“Donna?” you call.
And there she is. Dressed in all black despite the heat, the braids you put her hair in haloing frizz about her head, a half-read book held gently in her hands.
“The birdbath,” she explains, simply. “Angie wished to see.”
You close the distance between the both of you, working her book out of her hands to slip an old receipt in its place. “I see I need to make bookmarks, next,” you murmur, then blush at the endearing hmm of laughter that sounds in Donna’s throat.
Smiling, too, you press a chaste kiss on her cheek. She’s forgone the usual patch that covers her eye like she does most days, and you allow your thumb to trace the scarred mark on her face, a line that doesn’t inhibit her beauty in any way.
If anything, you like the way she leans into you as you do so– the ultimate display of trust to do so after a childhood you were told about in whispers under bed sheets.
“Warm outside?” you ask.
Donna shrugs under the swarthy fabric covering her shoulders. “Cooler in here. Spring is missed.”
And then you’re leaning forward, kissing the inviting pink of her mouth. She reacts immediately, though stands as still as ever, her hand shifting to your hip and bunching your skirt in her creaky fingers. Her other hand presses against yours, keeping your palm on her cheek, and her breath is warm on your face.
She leans into your touch, tilting her head to kiss the bone of your thumb. “Dolcezza,” she breathes, kissing a path to your wrist and smoothing her lips over the jump of your pulse. “I want…”
You don’t let her finish, giving into the magnetic pull of your lips to hers and slipping your hand into her hair. It tangles carefully closest to her scalp, aware of the pull of her braids down her back and the frizzed curls loosened by your fingers now falling in her face.
“Angie’s not here,” you breathe, lips brushing hers. “If you want to…”
The part of you not desperate to have your finger crooking her to orgasm almost thinks it funny that the two of you are forced to find private moments behind the back of a doll. One Donna’s had since childhood, yet one that seems like a child you’re forever wishing to keep safe out of reach of the world.
You are, also, aware that if anything were to bite Angie, she would bite back. If anything, the world should be glad she’s out of their reach. Still, you think. It’s the thought that counts.
“I want to,” Donna replies. Her fingers grasping your waist begin to play at the hem of your skirt, drawing it further up your leg to give her a glance at your thigh. “You first?”
Protests are drowning in your throat as she leads you back, guiding you against a counter. Her lips find your neck during the motion, tongue drawing over a spot she knows will have you pressing into her, bucking your hips into a hand that seems too far away.
But then, it’s there. Sliding up the length of your skirt and rubbing your inner thigh, making you keen into the knuckle pressing against your clothed clit.
“Donna,” you breathe. “Please hurry up.”
She takes her time. Always. You would have been content to press against each other and rut to climax, then drag her away to a cool shower to wash off the labours of summer sticking your hair to your face, your neck.
If Donna is feeling the flush of the temperature, she doesn’t show it. Deft fingers work at working your skirt down your hips, your thighs, and letting it slip off your ankles, then find the hem of your shirt. Your aged necklace gets tangled as she tugs it over your head, and you’re sputtering in laughter as she tries to free you.
She likes this, you know. Her clothed, you spread out in front of her. How many times has she taken you while dressed in full garb, knowing you craved more than anything the smooth press of your skin together? That you need it?
Donna’s skin is like porcelain, pale and cold against your own. The brush of her fingertips up the lengths of your thighs, the sudden press of her mouth to the curving valley of your breasts— you involuntarily shiver and yet you loathe the idea of her moving away.
In a clumsy attempt to keep her close, your fingers hesitantly comb at her fringe to get a loose grasp on her hair, something she welcomes with a soft hmm.
“Donna,” you whisper. “Okay?”
“More than okay, treasuro. Relax.”
So, you do. You steady yourself on the counter, letting her body part your thighs, and focus on the brush of her lips against your skin. Some nights she will do this in the dark, hovering over you, kissing any part of your body she can find.
You imagine it’s part sensory— the other, that after so long alone, friendless, bullied, there’s a part of her that simply enjoys the pleasure of touching someone who wants it, who whines and whimpers and wants her touch. Someone who kisses the scar over her eye, and keeps the cupboards stocked with sheets for complications with mirrors, and someone would be happy to spend any manner of time with their head in the apex of her thighs.
The way she is between yours now, hooking your ankles over her shoulders and pressing her lips gingerly to an old scar you have on one of your thighs. It’s an act of worship all on its own how reverently she caresses your plush skin, tracing absentminded patterns with long fingers as she does so, and finding all the places she knows will have you tightening your grip on her hair.
Donna never gets impatient. You could spend an hour exploring the curves and depths of her body, and she’d be content to let you.
You, however, are different.
“Come on,” you whine. “Please. Please, D—”
And then she’s there, finger sliding between your folds, tongue licking a stripe. You nearly jolt off the counter at the touch, and then she’s cradling your hips in her hands and readjusting your position, giving her the room to get properly between your thighs before you trap her between them the way you know she likes.
“Patience,” she says, muffled as she leans back in to taste you.
You chase the relief of her finger slowly gathering your slick, coating it until the tip of it is nudging its way inside you. It’s muscle memory, you think, the way it slips in so easily. You’re close to begging for another when her mouth becomes your focus, writhing close to where you need her most.
Ankles hooked over her shoulders, you use a heel to draw her in impossibly closer. She hmms against you and you squirm, ticklish, your hand in her hair moving her hair from her forehead. There’s sweat on her forehead but you don’t have it in you to care, using it to slick her hair back and out of the way, and resting your fingers in a tangle atop her head.
Her tongue heightens, gathering the wet at your entrance and around her finger upwards, and poising her mouth over your clit. The tip of her tongue ignites the simmering heat in your belly, so close to pushing you over an edge she’s brought you over a hundred times in the past, that you feel your breathing hitch.
“There,” you gasp.
A cool breeze hits the sweat on your skin and brings relief, and you tilt your head back until it hits a closed cupboard, and release a moan so guttural it sounds obscene. Donna’s finger inside you becomes more insistent, wiggles until she’s up to her knuckle in you and you can hear the squelch of your own wet.
“Sei molto bella,” she murmurs, her aching jaw settling a kiss on your hip. “Sei molto sensibile quando ti tocco.”
The whisper of Italian falling so easily from her lips, pressed against you, is what finally does it. She must know, because she moves to grasp onto one of your thighs to hold you in place, lapping at the slick already coating her chin, already sweet in the cavern of her mouth.
You close your eyes, letting your orgasm ferment as she carries you through it. The heat in your stomach lowers to a simmer now that it’s freshly bubbled over, and you loosen your tight grip on her hair.
“Sorry,” you apologise, smoothing a hand over her scalp. It’s tender, but your fingers are shaking too much to be sure. “I got a little too enthusiastic. Next time, you tell me if–”
“I didn’t mind,” Donna interrupts, words rushed. A brush of cold hits your thigh as she wipes her face against your skin then busies herself cleaning her fingers.
You laugh, aware of her gaze following your own, now latched onto the sight of her tongue cleaning your juice off her hand. “I know, but I do, Donna,” you manage, voice strangled. “Next time, let me know if I pull too hard. I’ll stop.”
Her porcelain cheeks redden, eyes ducked to search for your discarded clothing. “I liked it,” she answers, honestly.
And, oh. That’s new. You think of all the times she’s grasped your hand and brought it to her hair, encouraged you to hold tight as she buried herself in the soft of your cunt, and it’s also enough to ignite that slow heat deep within you. But her, first.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” you answer slowly, bringing a hand to her face. You trace the edge of her jawline, dotting your thumb on a new freckle like a dot of ink on a cheek.
Donna leans into the touch, inhaling a breath that seems to bring new life into her. “I am very lucky to have you,” she breathes. “My treasuro. Sei il tesoro più prezioso che ho trovato e che vorrei custodire per sempre.”
You grasp her chin, lifting her gaze to yours. “Ti amo tanto.” Then, leaning to catch her lips in a kiss that tastes like you, “I’ll return the favour in the bath?”
Donna kisses you back so fiercely, your laughter fills every hall of House Beneviento.