Chapter 7Scalding Hot Girls27 January 2022Ace isn’t quite sure how she managed to get herself stuck in this situation. She is sitting on her best friend’s bed, her best friend who has been at least romantically interested in her for the past months and who is now staring her in the eyes, pupils big and smiling like she’s won the bloody lottery.

  It’d be completely fucking weird if it wasn’t, objectively, a rather normal experience that many people have throughout their lives. People get attracted and end up being intimate with each other. Another big fucking deal, Alice. Really good anxiety she’s got going on there, describing a completely natural event in the lives of the vast majority of the world’s popution as something that could be anything even approaching weird.

  The actually weird thing here is that Amy has seen Ace and decided to love her anyway–

  Her fingers interce with Amy’s, who pushes Ace gently backwards until the back of her head burrows into the duvet of her friend’s bed.

  “I told you to stop worrying.”

  “Um. I– I’m sor– sorry.”

  Ace feels rather embarrassed for fumbling over her words. She would perhaps be blushing in response to it, though the kiss had already made any additional visible shyness and/or embarrassment impossible. Now, she’s staring up at the girl leaning over her, Amy’s hair glowing in the bright white lights just above the bed. She seems a little bit annoyed with her, but not in a way that makes her look actively angry. Instead, she is looking disappointed, as if she both hoped Ace would be better than she is whilst also not expecting much better than she got.

  “Are you, now?” Amy crosses her arms, looking down at Ace still, daring her to do anything but watch in awe. “Because I need you to make it up to me. And I’m really vain and have a really fragile ego.”

  Ace thinks about the stories that Amy tells her all the time, about her time working as an actor at a major theatre in Bristol. The roles she would py, the songs she would sing, how she could pretend not to be the boy that she used to be for even just a little moment – and do so in front of crowds who would appud her for it. How it gave her the massive, but fragile ego she likes to py up time and time again. Ace isn’t even sure if it’s real.

  More immediately relevant is that it also gave her all the skills necessary to make Aoife’s amateurish attempts at domination look absolutely pathetic. Because where Aoife tried to make Ace submit from a position of absolute power, Amy does so from calcuted vulnerability. She does so with the minute details of how she holds herself and looks at Ace, who is cowering below her like a mere mortal brought before a goddess. She makes Aoife look like a fool, talking to Ace, negotiating with her where Amy simply holds a finger under her chin, pressing her nails ever so slightly against the skin as a warning and a strategic whisper.

  “I asked you a question, Alice Howells.”

  “You’re– You’re, uh– really, um, pretty.” Ace manages to utter with only marginally less confidence than she usually speaks with.

  “Just pretty?”

  “Really… pr-pretty.” Ace hopes this pleases Amy enough because she really can’t talk much more right now.

  “Am I not beautiful? Not cute, or fit, or amazing or tempting? Do you not think of me as being one of the kindest and sweetest people you know, someone you think yourself lucky to know at all? Are you, by omission just now, implying that you do not necessarily believe yourself when you say I’m the best person you’ve ever met?” Amy doesn’t just list off everything she would have liked to hear but drives the point home by counting to nine on her hands.

  “Y-Yes.”

  “What am I?” She rolls her eyes, though there is no amount of bitchy energy she can channel to avoid Ace’s conclusion that she seems to be enjoying the situation rather a lot.”

  “Byu– Byuu– Beautiful. And the be– best person–”

  With Amy’s hands now enveloping her wrists, Ace can do little but watch as her friend kisses her on the lips again. Ace is held down more and more tightly as Amy leans in towards her ear, just to whisper words she should have expected but still never prepared for hearing.

  “You’re quite cute too.”

  “No–”

  “Yes. I don’t want to hear disagreement from you today. Understood?”

  Ace is lost for words – either in response to Amy or to say something positive about herself – and just nods affirmatively.

  “Good. You will love yourself, silly. Now, because I am quite sleepy, and lonely too–” Amy drops herself down into the duvet right next to Ace. She quickly pulls her into an embrace, with her arms around Ace’s stomach and her legs around Ace’s shins, linking feet in front of them. “I need a little nap.”

  She feels helpless and unable to escape. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe Amy, after talking to Ace for almost a year and wanting to do this for at least half this time, just wants to hold her close and tight for as long as possible.

  Ace is not sure what she’s done to receive Amy’s love, and quite sure she doesn’t deserve it, but it seems to be a rather done deal at the moment. Chances are that she is not going to let go of her for a while. Maybe she should just let things happen for once.

  Also surprisingly sleepy and tired after the events of the morning, and probably not having had the best sleep in the first pce, Ace joins her friend in a warm and cosy nap, even if the nap seems to be happening just as much to punish her as it exists to give Amy something warm to hold onto.

  ***

  “Mimi!” Kelynen calls from the other side of the door, knocking on it for good measure.

  After a few seconds, Kelynen knocks on the door again before opening it. “We need yer help with– Oh! That’s cute.”

  Amy slowly stirs from her sleep. Rather than responding to Kelynen, she pulls Ace deeper into her embrace. Eventually, after ten or so seconds, she does decide to respond to Kelynen’s request for whatever was going on.

  “Do I really have to, Loonie?” Amy sighs theatrically, kissing Ace on the cheek for good measure. “I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Yes, ye have to. All the first years’ are doing their best to not do any actual work today, which means we have to conscript ye girls.”

  “I want to he–” Ace tries to say, having a hand put in front of her mouth before she can finish her sentence.

  “We want to rex a little longer.” Amy finishes an entirely different and opposite sentence for her. “She’s really tired after being, you know, put into a cell against her will all morning.”

  Kelynen raises an eyebrow at her. “Aoife told us she got herself stuck in there.”

  “Alice said there was like, this really mysterious sexy dy kidnapper who put her into a cell. And that it was really hot. You should have been there, really.” Amy’s hand ruffles through Ace’s hair, finding a few longer hairs and twisting them around one of her fingers.

  “Don’t joke about it, dy kidnappers are real. I would know.”

  Is Kelynen the one who put her into the cell yesterday? That would make absolutely no sense– or maybe that is just Ace over generalising from knowing the woman for a total of three days. Maybe she would do something like that.

  “Yeah. You know it’s a really traumatic event, Loonie. She needs to rest. With me, if possible.” Amy performatively pulls Ace deeper into her embrace.

  “Ye don’t seem to be taking it very seriously, Mimi.” Kelynen leans against the wall, crossing her arms.

  “I am performing important emotional bour right now–”

  “Yes, you are. And I know we’ve put ye on the reserve list for the basic chores of the first floor, because technically it’s the first years’ responsibility, and that ye have a right to refuse, but Mimi– please? It’s work enough trying to get the first years to take care of themselves, let alone do the actual work they signed up for.”

  “Only if Alice gets to help.” Amy suggests, like it is some kind of compromise position rather than what Ace wanted to do in the first pce.

  Kelynen rolls her eyes. “Yes, Ace gets to help. She should be the one working in the first pce! Ye can’t just take her to yer room and get all cute during work hours!”

  “Fineeeeee,” Amy stretches out the vowel to a point where Ace would expect her voice to break, or at least creak – which it doesn’t, because Amy has a really nice, clear voice due to the many years of singing practice. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thank ye, Mimi.” Kelynen rexes a little in relief that today’s chores will at least all get finished. “And Ace too– though we need to talk ter today, young woman.”

  “Understood, Ma’am.” Ace finally gets to talk now that Amy’s stopped holding a hand in front of her mouth. Kelynen, satisfied, leaves the two to get ready in Amy’s room.

  “Don’t take her so seriously.” Amy whispers into Ace’s ear. And maybe she shouldn’t. She isn’t quite sure what the consequences would be for disobedience, other than what seems like mild discomfort as the sponsors slowly turn up the heat to see what does get the girls to cooperate. But the question of where that escation ends up is one she doesn’t want the answer to.

  Maybe Ace is just a little too soft to be disobedient in the same way all the other girls here seem to be. She definitely doesn’t understand why they would be so disobedient – though the reasons seem to be more disparate than an united theory of one single element leading to the current dynamic.

  Amy, for one, simply seems to enjoy not listening to what Kelynen and the other sponsors have to say and pushing their buttons ever so slightly, and she’s always been someone to do what she wants regardless of what others think. Ace supposes that Gwen is trying to invite punishment, or thinks it’s funny to be annoying – Aoife, generally, seems to genuinely just be zy and prefers to spend her time away from the rest, which is why she cshes with Gwen.

  At least: that’s her working theory for what the fuck is going on here. She wasn’t expecting a fully calm transition behind closed doors, or rather, locked gates, but she thought it would be more brainworms causing those issues than… the girls.

  She just wishes people wouldn’t get her into trouble all the time. Because now her disappearance has not only caused people to have to go looking for her, but also led to Amy having her free afternoon ripped away from her, as well as having Ace ripped out of her arms and being made to go… clean, probably.

  Amy steps out from behind her, taking Ace’s hand and softly pulling her up onto her feet. “Ready?”

  “Are you ready?” Ace asks, looking at Amy and finding the fact that she gets to wear whatever she wants – in this case, apparently an oversized white shirt combined with some shorts that looks really nice on her – whilst Ace has to wear what can best be described as a French maid uniform from the fetish store she knows is somewhere in one of the more queer neighbourhoods in on the edges of central Leeds but never dared to visit herself. Lost for words, she simply gestures at her clothes as she mumbles. “Like–”

  “Oh? We don’t wear those anymore. They only make you wear these uniforms for the first three years.” She ughs, heartily. “God– you have three more years of that to come. Just wait for when you grow into them more, they look really nice around the breasts. And when you learn how to do matching make-up. You’ll be so pretty!”

  “Three years?” Ace asks, now definitely getting a little concerned. “How are we supposed to learn about fashion?”

  “You have free time, don’t you?” Amy smiles. “Ask Kelynen for more clothes and if you behave, she’ll probably get you some!”

  “I do behave!” Ace protests.

  “Plural you.” Amy admits with the slightest hint of enjoying Ace’s current situation.

  “Why do we have to wear these stupid things anyways?” And they really are stupid things. Hard to believe Elle Lambert would be into them, as someone who seems like they would enjoy the finer things in life. At least, their aristocratic background would imply that it’s about more than simple chasing.

  Right?

  “Because the girls they take in would probably never start wearing feminine clothing unless they were forced to, Ace. And yes–”

  “–I know–”

  “–that very much includes you.”

  Ace blushes, holding the ends of her skirt with her hands. Amy knows her way too well. “Yeah. Probably.”

  “Good that you admit it. So if your only choice for clothing is very stereotypically feminine, you’ll get used to it quicker and also realise that it really isn’t as big a deal as you think it is.”

  “Surely that can be achieved without the kind of uniform you’d see in a shitty porno.”

  “Well, your job description is technically that you are a maid.”

  “Very old school, 19th century imagining of maids you have.” Ace protests.

  “Perhaps. It’s a rather aristocratic institution, really.” Amy smiles, then giggles. “And I guess I missed out on the most important reason of all, which you should get used to, Ay. It’s funny.”

  “It’s funny?”

  “Yeah. It’s really fucking funny. That’s why basically everything that happens here happens in the first pce.”

  “It’s not funny to me.” Ace leans back against the wall, unable to believe Amy for a moment.

  “Think of it like a sorority. To join the sorority, you need to do the silly little things too. A shared suffering, you know. Loonie told me all about it, how it creates bonds that will never break, because your sisters are the only ones who understand.”

  “Sisters who understand being turned into a girl through silly uniforms, busywork and sleeping in a single bedroom with a bunch of annoying young women?”

  “Yah.” Amy ughs more and takes Ace’s hand. “Now, stop waiting around, we need to go do some work that your little friends have scked on.”

  “Not my little friends–”

  “Sure, cutie.” Amy kisses her on the cheek and walks her to the door. “We can talk about that whilst doing the dishes.”

  ***

  “Oh. My. God!”

  They’d barely finished their work, with Ace rather quickly being conscripted into cooking as well – that is, cooking rice because they don’t quite trust her to do anything more complicated than that yet – and now the little bit of calm and retive freedom Ace was able to get is disturbed by one of the two people she really couldn’t deal with today.

  “Ace! You’re okay!” Gwen says, seeming genuinely excited at seeing Ace again. “I was a little worried there. We couldn’t find you all day, and–”

  Ace tries to pay attention to the pan of rice that is currently being cooked right in front of, rather than the girl trying to get her attention like her life depends on it.

  “Aoife said she really missed you.” Gwen starts to expin. “That she’d looked everywhere, even in the celrs, and that you weren’t anywhere to be seen. And now you’re just– You’re here again! Ace, you really don’t want to know how terrified I was of the idea of spending more time with Aoife and just Aoife. She’s so– you understand, right?”

  Ace wants to think she understands, but is equally unsure that the things she finds hard to like about Aoife are the same that Gwen would dislike.

  “What happened to you?” Gwen asks, taking Ace’s arms and pulling on her until she’s forced to look Gwen in the eyes. “Are you okay?”

  Given that the results of telling the truth to Aoife was to be made fun of, and the result of telling Amy the truth was a rather quick dismissal of the whole concept just to tell her friends off from trying to steal her friend from her, she’s not particurly incentivised to tell Gwen – the likeliest to bully her for it – the actual story.

  “I got lost.” Ace says, trying to avoid her lie being too obvious by speaking softly, quickly and communicating in short sentences. No facts to check there.

  “Yeah. I get that. It’s a really big pce, you know. I was surprised too. Vivi said there are over a hundred rooms in this pce, and whilst I’m pretty sure we got most of them, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are ones we couldn’t find. And they were so dusty, most of them. Like no one ever uses them! Anyway, it’s just so good to see you again.”

  “Yeah.” Ace agrees, listening to Gwen talk about pces she’s never been rather than paying attention to her big pan of rice to make what has to be Wales’ biggest curry ever. Trying to avoid thinking about how frustrated she is with the girl.

  “What are you making?” Gwen eventually asks. “Smells nice.”

  Ace snaps. “The meal that you should have been making!”

  “Well, I’m sorry–” Gwen tries to say.

  “No, you’re not. You’re fucking not.” Ace talks to herself more than Gwen at this point. “You don’t care. I’m here doing your fucking work so we don’t all get punished, and they had to conscript Amy and Jen and Fey to do your work. Are you proud of yourself? I was put into a cell against my will and rather than, you know, trying to rex so I can cope, I’m here cooking a meal for you when you wouldn’t even make one for me.”

  She can feel something on her leg. It’s incredibly painful. But it’s hard to care in the moment, and even harder to care when Gwen pushes her, because of course she did, the girl would rather push Ace away than listen when she’s saying something important, something Gwen could learn from.

  Gwen then screams something, seemingly in pain, and multiple of the girls seem to be getting quite busy around them, helping Gwen with a burn to her hand and Ace with a burn to her leg.

  Oh, she left the rice on the gas for too long, didn’t she?