lost at sea. [ruby]

[FLOR COSTA DU VALE]

Sitting in the apartment, she beat the other girls once again in Scrabble, her shoulder blades jutting out sharply in her back against the flimsy white tank top that clung to her slender frame. Simple satin teal underwear was covering her private areas. It was like her to always walk around partially naked. It was like she wanted their attention but in the same way she didn't. Lounging around in baggy clothing wasn't something she found incredibly comfortable. She felt fat, dirty, and all around unattractive whenever she did that, which was a one in a million chance. Regardless, she stood from her spot, not saying much to the other females. She knew English, perfectly actually, but always preferred to speak in Portuguese. She'd picked up Polish and French since arriving in New York City, finding it an advantage if she at least knew the basics of certain other languages. Italian and Spanish soon followed and those were as easy as cherry pie.

The tall and leggy female felt her muscles lock at the sound of the rain pouring outside. She disliked the rain...it was why she never went out when it was. The other females had gotten up, all chattering away about one thing or another, and it was then that she heard the thunder and she practically flew into the bathroom, into the tub, and pulled her legs sharply up toward her chest, thin hands going up to her ears that were surprisingly not pierced. The other girls didn't seem to notice. They never did and as much as she loved attention, their attention to her weaknesses she didn't like. She liked it better when they told her, "Flor, you look amazing today!" or "Wow! You really know how to clean up!" or even, "Damn Flor, you look good enough to eat!" Now the praise...she could never get enough of.

Hearing the thunder and the cracks of lightning, she felt her body tremble with the fear that suddenly shook her. She hated these episodes. She'd hide in the tub for hours on end until it was all over and she would climb back out and to the safety of the world not turning upside down. Usually she had Diego, her stuffed lion toy that she took with her everywhere despite most people finding that childish. He was her security blanket. He reminded her of Ruby.

The first thing she noticed upon meeting her when they moved in together was her hair. It was like a lion's main and she immediately imagined herself running her fingers through it, grabbing and pulling to make her moan under her touch, wanting every little piece of her to call her own...But she never got around to it because she was too busy with so many photo shoots and then hiding out in the tub whenever it rained or stormed that Ruby eventually became a bit like a figment of her imagination even if she saw her every single day and continued with that same urge to plow her senseless while using her hair as a leash. She was sick wasn't she? No. She wasn't. She was normal. Rain and storms freaked her out because she would always hear that same echo of her mother's ghastly scream before plummeting to her death with her father. That was reasonable right?

Another crackle and this time she closed her eyes tightly and started singing, "estas são as manhãs de pouco em que o rei Davi cantou e todos os passarinhos cantavam a lua foi dormir acordar o meu acordar até bom rei olha aqui o sol surgiu e todos os passarinhos cantavam a lua foi dormir," a small lullaby she couldn't remember ever learning-just automatically knowing it's existence. She was whispering the Portuguese words to herself softly and made sure to block out the rest of the world, not noticing as the door to the bathroom clicked shut. Rocking back and forth, jumping a bit whenever there was a thunder clap, she kept her eyes tightly shut, continued her hushed singing, and waited for it all the be over.

---

the song she's singing only in spanish lol

[ruby wilhelmina daniels]

The phrase 'when it rains, it pours' had never been so completely accurate in all of her life. For some strange, most likely scientific reason that she never tried to understand – her high school science classes were spent tilting her head repeatedly to and fro with the rhythm of the clock – it didn't rain very often in the city. Actually, scratch that. It did rain, and quite frequently, too, but perhaps the term she was searching for was more of a storm; it hardly stormed. On the rare days when lightning and thunder accosted her from every angle, she curled up with a movie, the minute crack at the bottom of her window not enough to call attention to, but it served it's purpose regardless - to keep their small apartment from becoming a hotbox of nicotine. Today wasn't necessarily a situation very different from the other wet experiences she'd come across so far, and while she'd failed to notice the retreating Brazilian hiding out in the bathroom every single time a hint of rain fell from the sky, her blue eyes followed her into the narrow room now and watched as she disappeared behind a wall, traces of her perfume left behind in the air but no actual indications of her existence securely proving to the frizzy-haired girl what she'd just seen. Slowly, she stood from her position, stretched, long legs protruding from the edges of age-old levi's cut offs. She refused to spend money on clothes when God knew, she knew too, that eventually she would stop fitting into the sizes so small, so ridiculously tiny, and begin again to stretch the fabric when she wore it. She would be fat and old and stout and all of her shitty eating habits would catch up to her; that or she would die with red hands and feet because it was too much work for her body to get the blood to them. As far as she knew, she didn't have Reynaud's, but if things persisted the way they did with the loss of feeling in her extremities whenever she was presented with cold weather, eventually her behavior could only be conducive to it.

Her spine cracked three times in quick succession when she stretched, her long arms rising to make way for the sliver of stomach that fell from the bottom of her tank top. She didn't bother pulling it back down again, stubbing her cigarette out in one of their various thrifted ash trays – they all smoked, but rarely did someone have an addiction as encompassing as Ruby's – and poking her head around the corner of the bathroom with an interest in Flor that didn't surprise her. She was beautiful. On those few late nights when she'd amused herself with alcohol and perhaps the odd joint, fingers floating over her own face in the mirror, she imagined occasionally that the hazy image of Flor cropping up, her hands brushing aside the trendrils of hair that drooped into her eyes, her hands rubbing down over her shoulders, that belly button, her perfect hips. Never did she consider this a strange habit, for in the past and in the present she frequently found herself propelled towards women, wishing desperatly to catch their attention with the furiosity she sometimes found men donating generously to her fund. This was different. Sometimes, when she slept, feet curled in their fuzzy socks, she caught Flor reciprocating her looks.

Seeing her curled up inside the bathtub only made her smile. A child. Guilt coursed through her for the inevitable attaction, pushed against the constraints of her mind as she retreated, pulling from her bed a couple of the many blankets she kept for good measure and a small box of thumbtacks. When her brother was little, he'd had a cornucopia of strange, manipulative fears – lightning and thunder was one of them. Every time it rained (quite frequently, considering the rate it rained wherever it was they were living was; always rainy, always), she would build a fort out of the bathroom and bring in a tub of cookie dough, where they would sit with twin flashlights and spoons and eat until the rain stopped. Unfortunately, the girls had turned their fridge into something of a closet and abandoned the original concept of it in favor of storage – they didn't cook, ever, and never cooled their drinks with anything but ice, so a personal friend had helped to shelve the inside half of their refridgerator and left alone the freezer, so cookie dough was out of the question. The first pin went in with hardly any effort, the second pushed onto the indent and she cried out, alertin the crouched girl of her presence. She glanced over, “I'm making a tent,” she said it like that explained everything. Flicking on the fan in the bathroom, she tossed her a pack of cigarettes, “Here, smoke one of these.”

[FLOR COSTA DU VALE]

The song continued on as she sang it in a ridiculously hushed tone. She could still feel the cold rain sliding down her skeletal frame, feel the soaking hard packed dirt and pavement under her bare feet as she clutched her favorite toy lion to her chest. She could still see herself attempting to reach her parents, watching them as they stood on the edge, the horrible scream from her mother, and their bodies go limp as they simply let themselves fall. To this day she couldn't understand why they had done it, blaming herself for not trying to stop them or even going with them. Weren't they suppose to be a family?

But the deeper she fell into her thoughts, the less she realized what was going on around her until she heard someone cry out and she jumped up quite obviously, bright hazel green eyes bursting open with such a speed and intensity that it almost seemed like she was a little girl again in Brazil watching the events that would mark the end of her childhood unfold. Hands gripped the lip of the tub as if it would somehow protect her from whoever was there but as her ears perked at the sound of the familiar voice, she loosened up a bit, suddenly not wanting to seem like a scared child and more like the grown woman she was. She watched her carefully, eyes following the other female's delicious frame as it moved about, catching the cigarettes a bit off guard because she was distracted by both her and the storm outside.

Shakily, she stood from the tub, attempting to help her build the fort. She'd never built one before, but she'd built a tent out of palm tree leaves once or twice. It was the same thing, right? Sort of the same concept. But as another crackle of lightening appeared, she seemed to immediately be back in the tub, in a corner, not wanting to move. However, craving more of Ruby's attention, she reached out and tugged a bit on her pants, "I want your hair," it was a strange thing to say, but she did want it. Wanted to pull on it, run her fingers through it, use it as leverage while she...well, did unspeakable things. It wouldn't be fair to the audience of thirteen and younger reading this. Sorry. Proboard Terms and Conditions. Bummer, huh?

She looked up at her, the undeniable attraction sketched out within her round orbs seeming almost like a predator patiently waiting for its prey. Out of all the girls in the apartment, Flor had instantly always wanted Ruby's attention. She was the only one who wasn't crazy about Scrabble. She was the only one with that crazy halo of curly locks. She was the only one who wasn't everyone else. So, of course, she had to be Flor's. She had a right to want her, yes? Want every little inch of her skin touching her own with not even air between them. Catching her attention was harder, however, than it seemed especially when she wanted to do it in a subtle manner.

---

the song she's singing only in spanish lol

sorry it sucks. it'll get better. xD

[ruby wilhelmina daniels]

A typical response from an insecure girl, the jump that followed Flor's original nervous movement elicited a nervous chuckle from Ruby, who hadn't in the slightest meant to scare her. She shrugged, gently, “I didn't mean to scare you..” somehow, being around the girl in the current setting was a little awkward, but she refused to push things into place before they settled themsleves and thus she was resigned to the awaiting awkwardness, to the endless streams of one sided conversations that played only in her mind, and finally to the slow, blinking eyes of her friend here, huddled over in the tub despite her efforts of helping. Setting a washrag on her head, piled on top of the sloppy curls that fell around her heart-shaped face, she wiggled her neck and adjusted, “Just call me Mary, for I birth the children of your lords and ladies; I always remain quiet at the back of the room and tonight on the Mayflower voyage, I'm bringing you the nursemaid you've longed for.” and with that, she pushed in the final tack, sliding into the tub next to the girl and slipping a fragile arm around her, bruised, slender, cracking with every passing moment, each side of her joint filing upon the other like a cheese grater, shaving away bits and pieces until eventually there would be nothing left and she would lay on her flat stomach, with her flat hair and flat, dead eyes. She hated dead bodies. They were the epitome of disturbing in her (however judgmental) gaze, and she couldn't handle to be around anyone even resembling the ghostly haunts that hung around when she slept, or when she tried to sleep. People form her past. Those girls who died in the car accidents in her high school, their clammy hands gripping the inside of their boyfriend's thighs. She blinked, returned to Flor for further consolation and amusement, adopting the british accent that came so easily to her after spending countless years attempting to perfect it. “And who are you?” cocking her head to the side with an amused grin, she retrieved the pack of cigarettes from between them, digging through the pack and bringing an unlit cancer stick to her lips. “You must be the consuela,” and with a joking smirk, she gently bumped the girl's shoulder, enjoying every moment of contact that was coming from being confined in close quarters.

Exhaling a cloud of smoke into the small bathroom, she watched it circulate towards the light and abandon them, slipping through the crevices in the door with an ease she longed to attain. Slowly, she brought her hand up to the back of Flor's head, and negated her statement with a vague sort of amusement that constantly filtered over her features whenever she entertained the brasilian beauty's personality; “No, I want your hair.” When she was little, Ruby used to tell everyone who would listen that she wanted to be a hair dresser. Several justifiable reasons occurred to her now that she reflected, lips pursed in an expression of remembrance. Hers wasn't to be played with. A brushing could result in hours of painful yanking – she remembered asking her parents once, just once, where it had come from since they both had such lovely, pin-straight locks, and they'd looked at each other and shrugged. She never did get her answer. Still, eternally it seemed, she pensively ran her fingers through the locks and considered, perhaps, that she was adopted, that she was the unwanted child of a foreign diplomat, and not simply Levi and Minnie, the two parents who could. But she was. Everything down to the tips of her never-painted toenails screamed Minnie and Levi, every mannerism, every twitch, every flash of her blue eyes. She'd grown accustomed to people she'd never met asking if she knew them. It happened, surprising, all the time in the industry, mainly with people from the Georgia area, and she'd just smile and shrug. Yeah, she'd met them once or twice. “It's so.. soft.” she took another drag, adjusted herself, towel still on her head, so that she could play with it. Entranced, she continued running the lengthy digits through her hair until the action seemed repetitive enough to almost stop, although she never desisted.

“Your skin is soft too,” she added casually, her hand having slipping from it's course of action briefly, brushing the other girl's arm. Faintly, she realized a blush had scrawled across her cheeks, and she dropped her hand back to her lap. The circumstances that can come from two girls sitting in a tub together.

[FLOR COSTA DU VALE]

The craving came back.

It was that longing for attention that surpassed her urge for drugs and alcohol. It was that craving of sexual want that made her skin itch, made her hips ache so terribly it was like someone was ripping her in half. Her eyes made a side glance at Ruby, catching on to her blush. Should she or should she not dare cross that thin line all the girls seemed to place around themselves? Who was she to ever really confirm to anything? Might as well cross it. It was there as a reminder, but not as a boundary. In one smooth and graceful motion, she had one leg on either side of the other female, crouching over her like a tiger ready to pounce on her prey. This was typical Flor fashion to act in such a manner. If any of the gals ever saw her at a photo shoot, on the runway, at a club; they'd know there were very drastic sides to her already strange personality. Her sexual appetite with anyone mildly attractive was probably, to most, her biggest flaw. That hunger for it wasn't normal and it was very dangerous because she ended up forming relationships with people she barely knew just because she liked their eyes to only be on her and not away...looking at the storm...screaming...and then jumping.

Leaning in, she brushed her full lips against the outline of her jaw, her eyes half lid as she fell under a sort of trance, "Let's see if your lips are," her voice was quiet and she liked this little fort thing. It was like a whole other world in the damn bathroom. Holding herself up with one skinny arm, she used the other to slowly reach up and under Ruby's shirt, grabbing at her silky skin under the annoying fabric, wishing with all her might to just tear it off and have her way with her. Clothing was always such a hassle. It was why she made it a point to barely wear any at all times, "Mmm," she smirked as her lips moved to Ruby's, biting down gently on her bottom lip, "just like I imagined them...only better," another smirk and then that hint of danger and violence flickered into her bright eyes. Without a second though, she had her fingers in Ruby's hair and had pulled her down so she'd be laying underneath her.

Dominance. Control. Flor never had any control of herself and it was probably why she wanted to have so much control over others or for them to completely dominate her and 'put her in her place'. Either extreme she had a craving for and it seemed like Ruby would fill any extreme with ease. Pulling on Ruby's hair probably wasn't the brightest lightbulb in the box but Flor couldn't help herself. It wasn't like she did it that hard anyway-just enough to show how much she just wanted to....UGHHHHHH!.

It was starting; deep within the pit of her stomach, blossoming out into her hips, taking a hold of her spine, and then locking up her muscles. She had to get rid of it. She had to fuck her to get rid of it, "You're so beautiful..." her voice was heavy, the sounds of the storm all but fading into the back of her mind as her source of distraction started serving its purpose. And with that, she leaned in and hungrily let her lips meet with Ruby's, crashing with such a force, she'd probably leave bruises with how much Ruby bruised like a peach. But Flor wanted her...right now she only wanted her in the most purest of sexual ways but she knew that when it was over she would still want her...only as more than just her fuck toy.

---

i hate boys.

[ruby wilhelmina daniels]

When she was little, she used to sit on the chairs in the department stores and watch the parades of beautiful people tromping out. Her dad used to slide up next to her, wrap his arm around her shoulders and kiss the top of her head, ask her what she was doing, and she used to look up, innocent, with a shrug. It wasn't until she understood the definition of lesbian that she imagined she might fit it; she had no problem with this deduction, and often times would parade around her small hometown declaring these realizations with a smile on her face; her parents would chuckle and ignore her, call her a crazy little girl and pass it off like no big deal. Only a word she'd learned. In time, she'd begun to believe them, and eventually all thoughts of being a possible sapphist had fallen out of her world, landing in the abck of her mind with a resolute clanging sound that left her amused and oddly reminiscent when she bothered to think about it. Occasionally, in her field, some of her tomboyish habits would be brought about and she would blush, knowing they were right but feeling incapable and useless in her ability to say something; suddenly her tongue weighed a thousand pounds, and she closed off from the conversation, claiming she had to go smoke a cigarette, she'd be right back. Outside, she'd hold her head like it weighed a thousand pounds and breath deeply, and when she came back inside she laughed it off with a skill that came from nowhere. She was not a lesbian. Her few adventures with guys had turned out too pleasantly for her to really claim it, and she had nothing to base her attraction off of. Sometimes, she thought that perhaps it was the idea that got to her, and others she imagined that living in a house full of attractive girls didn't exactly help her situation.

And her thoughts were interrupted by a mistaken thud, a skull cracking against the tub that surely wasn't hers, Flor's mouth hot and insistent against her flesh. Her thighs rose like white mountains on either side of her creamy, smooth tanned flesh and she released a satisfied sound, fingers tangled in the long strand, her initial task forgotten and her cigarette dropped, stubbed out, onto the tile at the outside of the tub. Her spine arched, eyes closed, hands undoing frantically whatever it was that bound Flor's naked skin and suddenly, she stopped.

She sat up, gently pushing the other girl off, a slow chuckle released from her throat as she realized her shirt was off, somewhere. She didn't bother finding it and putting it on, instead sitting with only a tiny pair of shorts separating her from the bliss that would obviously be Flor Du Vale. Slinging her legs over the edge of the tub, she rested her head against the cool tile, embracing the closeness but not pushing boundaries she hadn't even had the time to set yet. Ruby was a quiet soul, really; she spoke only to an extent and breathed regularly just like every other girl her age on the earth. Slowly, her fingers ran over the skin of Flor's cheek, and she let the ghost of a smile fall over her lips. “Not today.” there really wasn't anything else for her to say, and she lit another cigarette, hunting for her shirt while she scrounged the shirt up from the floor and climbing out of the tub, “I think it stopped raining, do you want to go do something?” the distant sounds of thunder and lightning had abandoned them, and she pushed her hands through her hair for good measure. Surely they knew what they had been doing in there – it was no secret, hearing the noises and rustling, and when she came out she fully expected the four other girls to be sitting around outside the door with wide, triplet twins on their faces. She glances back at Flor, handing her a shirt that had made it's way over to the door. The feeling of her hands lingered on her flesh, and she absently pressed her palm to her own side. “Tonight they have the opening of Half-Baked,”