Sisterhood

Intentionally squicky. Read at your own peril.

Disclaimer: Gunslinger Girl is not mine.

Night was the safest time for them. During the day, with everyone up and about, someone would have heard them together, would have found out what they were doing. But at night, in the dark, they could be alone together. There, Rico could give Henerietta some respite from the tension that thrummed in her body.

Henrietta moved her hands under Rico's shirt as she moved her mouth to Rico's lips. The other girl hugged Henrietta close and returned the kiss.

There were no cameras in the rooms, and anyway, who would have been watching, at twelve o'clock at night? No. This moment in time belonged to them, to make the best of it they could, and they both knew it. Henrietta was always calmer, in these moments, than she was at any other time Rico saw her. If Henrietta wasn't with Jose, she wanted to be with him. If she was with him, she didn't want other people with them. And on the rare occasions when Rico had, unseen, glimpsed them alone, Henrietta's desperation to make Jose happy was as visible as explosives going off in the dark.

Rico slipped her hands into Henrietta's clothes and moved them low, between Henrietta's legs. Henrietta moaned, her eyes alight with pleasure.

For Henrietta's sake Rico had gotten good at this, improved since the night when Henrietta, brimming over with shyness and embarrassment and painful, thwarted longing, had asked her if they could please sleep in bed together the way husbands and wives did, the way princes and princesses from fairy tales did, even though they weren't either, because she had asked Jose, and she didn't know what her feelings meant, or how to live with them, when they made each moment feel overwrought with tension...

Henrietta was Rico's friend. She hadn't needed to ask twice.

Rico writhed under Henrietta as the other girl moved her hand in that spot between the legs that felt so good. Henrietta slipped her other hand behind Rico's neck and kissed Rico on her throat, making Rico sigh loudly with pleasure.

Unlike Henrietta, Rico did not love her handler. She couldn't have explained why not, but the feelings the other girls had for their fratello, that buttery, prickly, wonderful and painful love that Henrietta had once tried to describe to Rico, that love didn't belong to Jean. Instead that love went to her body, her ability to move. Each day at the Agency was a gift, for Rico. The Agency was a place where, after being a helpless, immobile spectator to her parents' frustrated bickering, she had freedom. Friends. The ability to act, as she wished, and whenever she wanted, as long as she followed the rules.

Rico and Henrietta panted, and moaned, and sighed as pleasure coursed and grew inside them. Hands that had practiced this act with far more enthusiasm than they had ever taken to gunplay now moved and caressed, bring and taking pleasure. "Jose," Henrietta begged. "Jose." She breathed his name, over and over, imagining that she was in his arms, that he was the one she was touching and being touched by. It was difficult; Rico's body was far different from Henrietta's lover, but Henrietta tried anyway. She needed this so badly.

Rico didn't love her handler, but she knew how much Henrietta loved hers. Rico could see the pain in Henrietta's eyes, the tension in her body, the awkward longing in her voice, for the need for things that Jose would never fulfill. So Rico did what she could to make her friend all right, to take the pain away. And as Rico took Henrietta's pain away, she tried to make herself believe that it didn't hurt when Henrietta cried out to Jose. Rico tried to make herself that it was a small thing, the fact that in bed Henrietta saw Jose and not her, that she was just an object Henrietta was using to help pretend in the reality she didn't really have.

Jose was Henrietta's life. He was gentle, and kind, and loved her and her alone. He was her whole world. Everyone else on the planet could die, and as long as Jose was there for her, Henrietta would be all right. Henrietta had tried to describe those feelings to Rico once, how her love for Jose sat in her stomach like a small sun, warming and burning at the same time. She loved Jose, loved him the way people did in Claes's romance books, would have given anything to have him love her back like that. Henrietta loved Jose, was bursting and overflowing with emotions she could barely understand.

Pleasure came for both of them, building to that point where it filled the body and exploded through it. "Jose!" Henrietta cried out, lost in ecstasy. "'Etta!" Rico answered her desperately. "Jose!" Henrietta shouted in counterpoint. "'Etta!" Rico responded with a savage thrust of her hips. "Jose!" Henrietta screamed, thrusting deeper inside Rico with her fingers, and clamping her legs over the place where Rico had her own hand. Their pleasure grew, and together they reached the brink of that explosion. Then they fell into it together, and they both screamed long and loudly in sheer pleasure.

Afterwards, Henrietta always climbed back into her own bed, wishing to spend the few hours before dawn by herself. Rico watched her friend go. She would have to get up early tomorrow, wash the mess they made out of the bed sheets. She never mentioned the mess to Henrietta. The things they did together made Henrietta so happy, washed away for awhile that desperate, painful undertone in her voice. If that was what Henrietta needed, then Rico didn't mind a few sticky sheets.

For now, Rico settled back into her bed, feeling the damp parts of her bedding on her body, and pulled the covers up to her neck, thinking about the strange pleasure she and Henrietta had just shared. She glanced up to the bunk where her roommate slept alone. Henrietta was thinking of Jose, Rico knew. For Henrietta, the fact that she had been with Rico didn't mean anything to her. The things they had done, the past few hours, had been Henrietta's way of pretending to have something that she would never truly own. Rico herself, for all that Henrietta liked her as a friend, hadn't meant anything to her as they lay together.

Rico closed her eyes and tried to pretend that none of all that bothered her. "Good night, 'Etta," she breathed to herself. No, Rico didn't mind a few sticky sheets. And if it was for her friend, she could tell herself she didn't mind going to bed, after their shared intimacy, alone.

Nachtsider has pointed out that Rico never displays the slightest hint of affection for Jean, and a look for myself at the series confirmed this for me. Even the episode that focuses on her has nothing to say about Rico's handler; she talks about how important her body is to her. Henrietta would die for Jose in an instant; Rico thinks the problem through before being told that she should by Jean. Nachtsider believes that Rico obeys the Agency out of gratitude for her new body, while I disagree; Rico obeys simply because she believes she is supposed to.

The inspiration for this story comes from a picture someone posted on the Gunslinger Girl forum. There's nothing x-rated about the picture itself, but it comes from a doujin that's apparently rather adult in tone. (Doujins are fan-created manga of an existing series, by the way.)