Peer Pressure
by Valasania
Inspired by @puari-vol's 'Peer Pressure,' over on Tumblr.
The night of the sleepover, I carpool with a few girls I know from class. They don’t know me very well, and I don’t really know them, but when they ask how my week’s gone I mumble an answer and they’re merciful enough to take up that thread and run with it.
They twitter like birds between themselves, laughing and giggling and poking and shoving each other around. A soft, warm body squishes me against the car door, and I’m too pathetically grateful to have been invited to say anything about it.
Accepting the invitation seemed like a good idea at first, even if it felt like I was a bit of an afterthought.
My reasoning? It’s a way to get together with new people and maybe make a friend or two. I’ve been here for months now, after all, and I still always find myself retreating back into my room at the end of the day instead of joining any of the clubs or activities I know are available. This is an opportunity to push myself out of my comfort zone a little.
I don’t like being alone after all… but it’s safe. My walls don’t judge me for being awkward, and my books can’t criticize me for being quiet.
And if I feel politely overlooked for other, more interesting people, well I can’t really take it personally when it’s an inanimate object doing it.
We arrive and I follow the girls inside, and I’m immediately aware of how everyone else is wearing the same kind of soft, colorful pajamas, the two-piece kind with the button-up top and pocketed pants. More than one of the girls who aren’t running around barefoot or busily painting each other’s nails have slippers to match, cutesy things with floppy ears or patterns.
In my ratty t-shirt and shapeless lounge pants, I naturally stick out in the worst sort of way.
It’s fine, I think, already edging away from the pack. I’ll just go over here.
And I do, drifting toward an unoccupied corner away from everybody else.
Nobody gives me a second glance.
Thank god.
Before I know it, it’s been an hour since I got here, and without saying a word to anyone I’ve already run out of things to say.
Despite myself, I fidget. I’d try my luck and slip outside, call a rideshare and eat the wasted night, but someone would probably notice it, and I can’t stand the thought of those eyes on me, judging.
“Oh, Hazel!”
I flinch and turn my head to look over at the voice, and see our host – Alex, isn’t it? – approaching, two party cups in hand, one of which she presses into my belly.
“What’re you doing, hiding out over here?” She smiles kindly. “I promise, we don’t bite.”
She’s got pajamas on too, a plush, fluffy two-piece in pink, the top four buttons unfastened at the neckline. My eyes are drawn to her exposed collarbone and the lacy, upper edge of her wine-red cami there. With a twist in my stomach, I can’t help but think of how pretty she looks, and how careless I must look by comparison.
“I don’t have any pajamas,” I blurt, not wanting her to think I’m some sort of slob. “I don’t want to…”
My cheeks burn and I clamp my mouth shut. ‘Stand out’ is what I was going to say, but I’m not just going to say that out loud.
“Yeah?” Alex doesn’t seem to mind. She looks me up and down with a shrewd look on her face, and I straighten beneath her assessment. “I don’t know what you’re worried about, that’s cute on you. If you want, though…”
She nods to herself decisively and presses her cup into my other hand. “Hold this. I think we’re about the same size. Gimme a few minutes to change and I’ll come grab you.”
My thoughts skip. “Oh no, that’s not what I–”
But her bell-like giggle silences me, prompts a flush to climb my neck to my cheeks, and I can’t meet her eyes for sheer mortification.
“You really don’t have to do anything,” I mumble, staring at a plastic ficus.
Alex smiles at me kindly. “Shush you, it’s just fine. I have just the thing. C’mon, follow me.”
She grabs me by the wrist and starts pulling me along. I stumble along clumsily, trying my best to avoid crashing into anyone while balancing the two precariously sloshing drinks in my hand.
She takes me down a hall to a room I assume is hers before she lets me go, and then disappears inside for a minute.
I chew my lip and stare at the drinks, and decide to take a fortifying sip of what I’m pretty sure is mine.
My face wrinkles. Fruity and almost unbearable sweet, whatever it is, it’s definitely spiked.
I take another.
Alex throws her door back open again, clad only in her cami and a tiny pair of shorts, takes in my expression with a knowing smirk, and then takes her drink from me. Without breaking eye contact, she throws it back like a seasoned professional, spilling not a single drop in the process.
My cheeks turn pink.
She wipes her mouth and sighs pleasantly. “Y’know, it’s pretty smooth of you, getting me out of my clothes this soon.”
And then, lazily running her eyes down my body and back up again, she licks her lips.
Pink turns to something blotted and ugly – puce, probably – and Alex’s unholy cackling carries over my stuttered objections as she drags me into her room.
“Sorry, sorry,” she says after she’s caught her breath, totally conversational. “If you can’t tell, I’ve already had a few.”
I laugh nervously. “Oh, no worries. It’s fine.”
She stands me in front of a wardrobe with a mirror on the inside. I pause when her hand leaves my wrist, the echo of her body heat stamped on the skin there, and ignore the urge to rub it. It’s tempting to look around, but I’ve never been in a bedroom that’s not mine or my parents’ before, and I’m afraid of breaching Alex’s privacy, or of bumping into something.
Alex has no such problem and putters around carelessly.
“Here,” she says, pressing a neatly folded set of pajamas into my hands. “I’ll just wait outside while you get changed, okay?”
I stare at her, the pajamas she’d been wearing still warm with her body heat in my hands. “What about you?”
“What, you don’t think I can pull it off?” Alex flips her hair over her bare shoulder, one of her cami’s straps carelessly loose against her bicep, the uppermost curve of her breast revealed by the slumping fabric. It’s a size too small for her, baring a gentle curve of smooth skin beneath her belly button, and the loose, satiny shorts she has on reach only a little ways down her thighs…
Fingers on my chin, tilting my head up. It should feel terribly invasive or condescending, but it doesn’t.
Her thumb is a heavy weight just beneath my lower lip.
Her eyes gleam. “Get changed, I’ll see you outside.”
X_0_X
The pajamas smell like her, strawberries and warmth and skin.
Wearing them feels obscenely intimate, like I’m surrounded by Alex and identifiable by her scent. Nobody gives me more than an appraising glance, and clad in fuzzy pink armor like it’s the heraldry of the lady of the household, I can slip a little more confidently amidst the soft press of giggling bodies.
Still, I’m still the oil slick in the pond, included with but separate from the rest. I drift back into the periphery until someone catches my wrist and drags me over to the couch and television, where Alex is fiddling with a pair of remotes.
Everyone else is settling down, blankets and pillows and stuffies going around until there’s a small, amphitheatresque semicircle gathered around. I follow the hand leading me down into the press of femininity, and I end up between a stranger and one of my carpool companions, pulled up against the couch with another girl’s bare legs hanging over my shoulders.
Her smooth thighs bracket my head, tempting me to ask if my hair is tickling at all. There’s a loud voice in the back of my mind that can’t seem to focus on anything else but the wiggling, painted toes next to my belly, or the fact that the back of my head is all but pressed against her crotch.
Alex figures out the settings she wants, the lights dim, and I let out a quiet sigh of relief as a documentary on South American cloud forests begins playing. I honestly expected some sort of romantic comedy for everyone to giggle over.
I expected more noise in general, actually.
As the documentary slowly moves through from the undergrowth to the canopy, not a single whisper breaks the collective silence. Nobody ever tries to get up to pee, and there isn’t even a chorus of ‘thank-yous’ when a package of gummies are passed around, until they reach me.
“I’m alright,” I whisper when my neighbor tries to press a few into my hands.
Between the shape and the logo, I can tell that they’re one of those new kinds of ‘party candy’ that have gained enough notoriety online that even I can recognize them. I don’t want anything to do with them. The two drinks I’ve had are already two more than I’m strictly comfortable with.
A soft pair of thighs squeeze my head between them. “You should take one, Hazel.”
And then, suddenly, I can feel the collective attention on me, an almost physical presence lifting the lid to examine the salt in the honey. I have to fight not to squeak. “Oh no, I don’t–”
A gentle set of nails reach over to scrape through my hair. “Trust us, you’ll love what they do.”
I shrink away from it. “No, really…”
A companionable shoulder bumps into mine. “Everyone else is having one. No need to worry.”
I feel crowded, small and shrinking even smaller. “I– I guess…”
Something gently touches my lips, and I turn to see my neighbor smiling at me enigmatically. “Open.”
I blink, rattled by the onslaught, and before I know it her hand is withdrawing.
“Good girl. Chew.”
I exhale, and a few moments later realize my jaw is obediently working.
There are two flavors on my tongue; huckleberry and cherry, both strangely potent. Good.
I make some kind of noise, pleasant surprise, I suppose, and a half a dozen warm points of contact seem to light up as the other girls press closer in solidarity.
A little light feels like it’s glowing in each of my cheeks as their attention withdraws, the unsightly wrinkle smoothed away and no longer needful of it. My ears ring, a buzz and a hum that crowds out the soothing sounds of nature and feminine breathing, slowly fading.
I sigh, and chew.
The frisson in my shoulders begins to work its way out, taking my anxiety with it. The previously awkward warmth of a dozen and more bodies is still, well, very warm, but it’s also… nice.
The lights seem gentler now, a flickering caress on her skin.
The sounds softened, droning. Comfortable.
Maybe this isn’t so bad…
The girl with the bag touches my face. “Have another.”
I swallow, and she presses another past my lips.
Strawberry.
It’s a struggle not to pull up the collar of my shirt to rub my face against it, to inhale.
“Good.” A soft hand on my cheek, pushing me so I’m facing forward again. “Now, watch.”
I exhale slowly and watch.
“Good girl.”
It’s a good documentary, for all I won’t remember any of it in the morning. The directors captured some quality footage, and the soothing voice of the narrator fades smoothly into the background ambience, words and their meaning less important than their comforting rhythm and cadence.
The soundtrack is what really captures me, lovely and subtle with rainsong, sighing wind, and the hum of insects beneath.
Without meaning to, I close my eyes and drift in it for a while.
After a while, a light tap on my head pulls me up out of my pleasant daze.
The girl above me whispers, “Can I braid your hair?”
That sounds nice.
“Yeah,” I mumble.
She gently pulls free my ponytail from its scrunchie and begins running soothing fingers through my hair, untangling it and dividing it into even plaits, and I all but melt against her legs.
It’s so euphoric I’m pulled from my state of near-sleep. Cracking my eyes open to watch the documentary again, I notice the image flickering oddly – like there’s something else behind it – and my brow furrows weakly.
I try to turn to my neighbor to ask if they see it too, maybe ask if someone can smack the screen to try and clear it up, but a soft hand reaches down to turn me back.
“Just watch,” she murmurs.
“But–”
“Shhhh.” Her fingernails drag over my scalp soothingly. “It’s alright. Nobody minds.”
Well… okay then.
I allow my worries to fade into the background and focus on the screen. After a few minutes, the flicker disappears, and I too fade back into that pleasant daze.
Whenever she finishes with my braid, instead of leaving it alone she just unravels it and starts anew. The rhythm of it joins the ebb and flow of the soundtrack in my brain, carrying away all my worries.
Later, I notice the quiet deepen, and it rouses me enough to realize the image has been replaced with a slowly spiralling kaleidoscope of shape and color. The music is still there, but it’s like it’s taken a backseat to the ambient sounds. My eyes flicker lazily to the other girls around me, expressionless, staring intently at the screen.
I smile faintly and turn my attention back where it should be.
It’s a really good program…
A shadow covers the spiral. I blink as a hand waves before my eyes, and slowly force my eyes to focus, a task as monumental as shifting a boulder.
Alex smiles at me, smug mischief written all over her face. “Wow, you’re gone.”
I make a low, confused sound.
“A lot of girls need a few more hours before they get as deep as you are,” she elaborates, patient and pleased. “They’re stubborn. They fight it. But you’re just eager to sink, huh?”
I blink again slowly. It’s like my brain is numb as I try to process. “What…”
“Doesn’t it feel nice to just let all your worries go away, leave all that empty space behind?”
“Alex…” My brow scrunches. “Isn’t this… weird?”
“Is it?” Her patronizing smile makes something in my belly clench. “It feels so good, though, doesn’t it Hazel? Isn’t that all that matters?”
“No…”
Tenderly, she reaches down to cup my cheek. “Why? What’s so important it’s worth holding on to, when instead you can just be a good girl and go blank for me?”
Her thumb rests at the corner of my mouth, which waters with the urge to take it between my lips.
“But I’m not into girls,” I whisper instead.
“Yeah?” Alex leans down, suddenly separated from me by the span of a single, sweet, cherry-scented breath.
She murmurs, “Hold still for me, pretty girl.”
Our lips connect. I gasp, and she swallows it, her tongue swiping past my parted lips to explore my teeth, and–
I go blank again, a long period of static noise in my brain only interrupted by notes of geometry and taste and texture, until she finally pulls away.
“What did you do to me,” I whisper, awestruck.
She kisses me again, slow and warm and deep and sweet.
My mind is quiet when she pulls away.
“Watch the spiral now, pretty girl.” Alex instructs me, tenderly wiping saliva from my lips. “You’ll feel so good, and later we can show everyone how good it feels to drift and drop as deep as you do.”
She leaves then, to seduce some other lost girl or to tend to some other part of the gathering, I don’t know.
I manage to entertain a few brief thoughts about running, calling for help, going to the authorities to report Alex as a bizarre, college-age cult leader. I could probably, maybe make myself persuasive enough to compel an investigation.
Maybe.
But…
I think of a pair of delicious, petal-soft lips against mine, of warm, smooth thighs wrapped around my head, and the potential of belonging I’ve never been promised before, just ahead of me.
I think of an empty room back home, and judging walls. Of quiet, lonely nights spent wondering whether or not this is it, if this is all there will ever be.
Really, what choice is that?
My lips slowly pull upwards into a languid smile.
I let the worry slip out with a sigh and give my attention to the spiral, euphoric with the knowledge that there, at least, I will not be alone.
I hope you enjoyed! Please like and leave a review if you have a moment, they bring me great joy every time!