Little Miss Laser Ch. 02

Milly had to look Laser in the eyes. Didn't.

"Hey-- Milly?" asked Laser.

Milly wanted to give her space, she thought, sit there and take in her tits, respectfully, for the fortieth time today. Didn't realise she'd turned away, groping tremors into the velvet.

Oh-- Fuck. She knows my name. I never told her--

"So how come she's still calling you Hood," Bri asked. "That part of the game?" nodding to the hunch-backed bundle of blankets on Milly's couch -- she was always getting cold in the warehouse, unhelped by how little she wore -- watching her own cartoon and taking notes.

"I haven't uh-- told her my name yet," Milly said, keeping her voice low, "Besides, she must've heard it by now. Maybe it's just part of her game -- like you said."

Bri looked at her with a consternation packed neatly into four, internationally-bound suitcases; the job had gone adequately and she was not interested in acclimatising to this while she waited for the heat to die down. Though, maybe she was still going to entertain it.

"Hey, Little Miss -- what do I call you again?"

Milly spotted the smirk passing over Bri's mouth, a vicious composure slipping just a little. Nothing she was up to could be good -- but Laser was already bounding over, bright-eyed.

"Laser's still totally good. You can say Laz! If you'd like to." She was being very sweet to Bri, apparently having misidentified her as Milly's equivalent to Glass, and trying to make a good impression on her behalf. "There is Alex -- but it's not what I would've picked."

And now Milly was getting straight eyeballed, redder than sunburn. See-- She knows how to be honest. Bri rolled her head around and prompted Laser further, "Didn't you choose that?"

"Naw-- it's what Mom picked."

"Cos see she wanted something neutral; she was that sorta hippie," Laser elaborated, sitting up and munching eagerly on a clutch of grapes, "And when ol' Uncle Sam finally found us, changing it was a rather affirmative No. Easier to scrub me with less trailing papers, so it'd be harder for people to figure out one of America's Sweethearts is a tranny. You know, for whenever some queen like Manning leaks the Department's dirty laundry."

"Weird priorities, I know," she grimaced. "At least they added ma'am when they said it."

Milly was wondering if she should interject, not to stop her -- though maybe she was too honest, Bri would be thinking so -- but to make sure Laser knew she was listening too, "Shit. I'm sorry Babe. Can I ask what you wanted to pick?"

"Francesca," she squeaked, a little tender, "Which-- Fran. I know it's kinda dumpy."

"It's cute, and it suits you." Milly paused, watching for how Laser would respond, if she'd ask what Milly hoped she would, "I could call you that, if you'd like?"

"Nah," she said, "Nah, I like Laser. I like Laz."

Her smile slid, bittersweet, to the side. "Maybe someday, when we're-- past this. But right now? It's what you call me, and it's what Glass calls me. And I like it for that."

Bri pushed her noisy, overheating laptop aside and reached across to rub Laser's cheek. "Thanks Laser, that will be all." It was a feigned comfort, surely, but Laser didn't need to know that, Bri would be gone soon anyway.

"Oke doke!" she beamed, in moments having bundled herself back on the couch, the familiar SFX imitation of her blasts emanating from the front-desk TV Milly had taken with her on the last job.

Bri thumbed through another stack of stolen post-it notes; reams of passwords, emails, and security question answers. She was looking for whatever let her into another one of the hedge-fund fuckboy's offshore accounts, but was stuck with half as much material as hoped.

It coulda been so much more, Milly -- if your head was in the game and not between her--

Biker Hood hadn't enough tricks prepared to keep the reception-level distraction going long enough, and fewer marks to work with meant drawing more from each one. After she'd moved the first few million they'd noticed, and were able to cut her off sooner each time.

"See Milly-- She knows how to trust you."

You.

Bri was making some kind of punishment from this -- not out of malice, just boredom. There was going to be a lesson too, there always was. Bri did want her to be okay when she was gone. The plan was already booked. Not friends, but still peers.

The lesson hurt worse than the punishment.

"And whether she knows it or not, your name -- has it in some crime computer, if she's found your paper-thin shell company -- until you tell her yourself, she's gonna know you don't trust her back."

"Hey-- Milly. Can I--" She almost didn't say it. "--Can I stay over tonight?"

I want her to -- but if I'm not able to tell her--

"No?"

"Oh."

Oh?

"Sorry."

Fuck.

"I-I know it was, like, a big ask," Laser muttered. "I'll go get sorted."

"Ahh," Milly choked, "Wait!" She rushed a pair of gym-addicted forearms around Laser's mid, pulling at sweat-soaked rolls till Laser fell back into her. "You can stay--"

"I want you to stay."

The startled Lil' Miss dropped to Milly's side; she grasped at her loosened bearings and brought a hand to intertwine with the one pulled around her shoulder. "But you--"

"I was scared," Milly said, her breath shattered into broken chain-links, nesting her head on Laser's shoulder so she could press a blooming cheek into her thick, fluffed-up curls. "Just-- a little. I sort of wanted to make sure that I could say it: No."

"Oh. Yeah-- Of course, I'm--"

"Please don't say sorry," Milly begged. Laser said it too much, and Milly wished she could dare to ask: is it because you mean it, or that you think you deserve less? "Please."

Milly squeezed her harder, terrified the precious thing could vanish if she ever let go, and whimpered, "It's all me; me and the dumb, intrusive thoughts I shouldn't have said. Okay?"

She's gonna know you don't trust her back.

"I didn't realise that you knew-- well, me. Millicent. Milly. Mill," she continued. "And I sort of freaked. I should have told you."

Laser rolled into her and clutched at the accidentally shattered handhold when Milly dared not do it herself. "Why're you scared, Milly? I know I'm-- I know how to control myself. I wouldn't even dare to think about hurting you."

Milly forced herself to look at Laser, pulling the buckles of a spiritual armbinder several sizes too small till it pulled into place. "I'm not used to not being in control," she admitted. There was an awful look in her eyes, in the girl who should never have to feel guilty for this.

She won't trust me if I can't tell her -- maybe even if I do.

"Because-- I could kill you?" Laser said. There was no emotion to infer out of her, the realisation of that causing Milly to wince. The girl who could never stop smiling, till Milly made her. "That I could level the building too, while I'm at it. Hell-- the entire block."

An entire-- Fuck, Doll.

Milly needed to let her prosecco-and-orgasm-addled brain process it all, what Laser had just said, arid as the high noon on a gentle, long-forgotten, childhood summer's day.

"And that's what everyone else is thinking!" Milly exclaimed. "They're treating you like this bomb that's a loose or crossed wire from exploding and-- Fuck, it hurts to realise I've thought of you like that too. I never used to."

"No. I get it," Laser said. It still worried Milly how easily she could accept things, fuzzing the line between easy-goer and people-pleaser. "I guess I'm just used to it now."

"And you shouldn't be! You shouldn't have to be used to it at all!" Milly had almost yelled it, kneading Laser's hands with a desperate, reassuring pressure, who'd let out a cosied whine in response. "I'm sorry-- Laz. I really, really am."

And she smiled. Just the smallest amount. Yep. "You're all good." Please continue. "It'd take a lot to burn the goodwill you got out of kidnapping me, or trying at least," she said, bringing herself to a giggle. Milly could feel the ropes unknotting at her heart.

"Goodwill!? Babe, what is wrong with you?" She teased, not necessarily desiring the answer.

"Hmm, so many things. So-- Many-- Beautiful-- Things," Laser said, lolling forward so when she did she was looking up at Milly instead of at her. "It's nice-- when you treat me like there's nothing I could do to stop you. I don't worry about a thing."

"Yeah, except for: the crop, the cuffs, the wand-- what colours of rope do we have now?"

"Alright, stop! Hehehe-- you're so embarrassing." Laser knocked into Milly's chest, laughing before she leapt right back up. "Hey! You wanna know what the other Little Misses are into?"

Milly pinched at the fat on Laser's neck, "Let me guess -- Glacier's super into iceplay?"

"Too obvious. Well-- yes, but only if she's domming," Laser mused, an endearing literalist at times. Milly did not actually need to know even more compromising exposés on the most dangerous girls in the whole world. "Usually the preference is wax."

Laser twitched suddenly, and her brow curled as she mulled how to admit whatever would come next. "We've never had anything, to be clear," she said. "I used to think I'd actually end up with her. But that's not Glass -- she just wants to be like really good friends. It's the same with everyone. Kink is more like a hobby she chats with me about. I keep my stuff--"

Our stuff. "--Private. Speaking of which--"

Brrrrrrt. Brrrrrrt. Brrrrrrt.

She scooped the phone and mashed Busy with a tizzied hush. I didn't mean you. She sighed and swallowed, asking, "Milly-- could you get the cuffs out?"

"There's something I wanna tell you."

Laser kicked at the messed-up duvet till it cradled her unpetite feet. Not askin' how you got this haul, Hood -- but every pretty shoe stops several sizes below me. She was chilling in the warehouse air, faded was the stuffiness begotten from sexed-up biker breath circling about her chest, laying a head on Milly and peering over her neat bust to find some other kind of warmth in her eyes. "Remember when the Lil' Misses and I were fighting this dude a few weeks back, like-- God, Scaremungus-What," she asked.

"I mean, I've met the guy-- once, at this mixer," Milly replied. "He's got that--"

"Jock. Strap. And it's shaped like-- Yeah, him," Laser confirmed, the small, golden chain linking her cuffs twinkling as she fumbled at the well-stretched neckline of her costume.

"Hey!" she realised, "Weren't you doin' one of those saving-the-world sortsa missions a few weeks back?" You're not telling me that-- he's even more laughable than me, Babe.

"Mill. Chill. I'm getting there," snipped Laser, with a chuckle. "So-- we're in this abandoned mineshaft and we're not supposed to, like, kill him because there's this low-key nuclear device in the adjacent town with his name on it no one can get close to and, like, it's putting Tremor out of commission cos there's no cave-collapsing allowed. Sorry-- anyway, I get cut off and he starts uh-- coming on to me with, like, the exact pun you're thinking of, and then he started, like, grabbing himself and--"

She paused, for a moment, Milly drawing in her knees to tip Laser closer as an aching breeze of frustration passed her lips. "I never realised how close he'd gotten and-- he grabbed me, and he knew what I was and when he said that--" Laser stopped, head lurching into her chest with only a whimper escaping.

"Mill, you're the first to ever-- express interest in me; like, the real thing," she said, the words coming slow and practised. "I know what exists on the internet, the Rule 34 and worse, but-- you wanted the actual Laser. Laz. Alex. Francesca. Whoever. Whenever I've spoken to people before it's like they only want the Laser on TV. The doll that comes in plastic packaging--"

"--the one they can throw away, when it isn't fun anymore."

"Should I stop calling you Doll?" Milly asked in a quiet and guilt-ridden whisper.

"I don't know?" Laser replied. "It's me who puts myself up to it. I tried to be that for you, hid myself, before I realised I could--" She pivoted without a lost beat, "Well-- you know that random earthquake in West Virginia? This Appalachian mountain that just fell into itself?"

A few weeks ago. West Virginia. An entire block. "Oh-- God-- Laz?"

"Yep. Lasered him -- and something like half-a-kilometer past him." Laser was looking past Milly, peering into the peerlessly black tunnel she'd carved again in her imagination. "Fuck, it was bad. It was so bad. And it could have been so much worse."

"You stood up for yourself," Milly said -- firmer, like she was almost domming again.

"I've told you I'm stronger but-- Milly, I could pair down the power of the sun till it gives you a tan. That's what I do every time. Stopped his bomb by putting my finger in a vice -- cut a fifty-micron hole into its microcontroller. But if someone just-- ticks me off, in the wrong way, at the wrong time. I could hurt so many people."

Babe. It's not your fault. It's because he--

"I've thought about it and-- I think I could do it, laser to the core, if I managed to get upset enough." Laser breathed, allowing the gem to pulse in time with her, letting it shimmer through to all her extremities; Milly had to think better of the flittering urge to pinch at her luminous, pink-tipped tits. "That's the reason I'm a Little Miss. The real one. Not cos I'm secretly as good as them, but because I'm more. West-Coast girl goes rogue, heel-turns into a parody, and she's under house arrest, but if something went wrong with me? Snipers and drone-strikes. It'd need all of them to take me down -- and they'd have to get lucky."

Milly wished she knew how she was supposed to comfort her. She couldn't just listen, she thought, it wasn't enough. Laser deserved better, she--

"I don't deserve you," she plead -- regretting the words as she said them, seeing it cut deeper, uncauterised, into Milly with each one, and cried, "I-- Milly I'm--"

"Don't apologise," Milly caught. "It isn't a question of deserving it -- you're allowed to have me. I know I was-- particular, in what I said, what I called you, but even from where we started I could never have wanted you if you weren't always there. That courage that glimmers through you, in a world I knew would hate you for it, if they did too."

She hoped it was right, that she understood -- because she was scared she never would, no matter what book she read, what video Laser linked, how much she tried to listen.

"Don't call me brave," Laser told her, rubbing at her tears with bound-up hands.

"Laz. I'm not. I didn't mean to--"

"I don't want to be," Laser cried, her head buried then into Milly's chest. "I want to be scared, and vulnerable. I don't want to answer Glass' calls. I can't go back to HQ, it's why I've been here more and more and more. I want to be safe and to know you'll keep me so."

"Always. I promise."

"But you're--"

"What, Babe, what is it?"

"No-- I'm sorry, Mill I--"

"Please, tell me."

"You know, how you said, you don't feel like you're in control?" Milly nodded in quick, subtle dips -- furrowing her forehead in muscle-ached sympathy. "You're cis, Mill."

"There's part of me that thinks -- no, knows -- you're better than me," she continued. "You want me, my body, and it's-- intoxicating, the affirmation of it. It's like I'm not pretending I'm worth more than I am, or that I have to make up for that -- to give, and never take. I'm not telling you I'm sorry every time I'm not perfect, I'm not worried each mistake will be my last. Except-- now-- I've just fucking vindicated all their worst beliefs about me."

"Everyone else has stood aside, when you needed them most."

"Yeah," Laser muttered, weighed down by the people she could never tell this to, should never have to, in the first place. "Glass-- there's Glass. It's not the same, but when she doesn't understand me she still trusts in me. You trust."

No. I-- Stop. You have to say it.

"Babe I-- I shut up. I listen. I'm not sure I could ever understand it all, and it hurts. It never feels like it's enough," Milly said, her own tears falling into Laser's hair.

"It is," Laser replied, muffled as she clambered till her lips met Milly's cheek, and kissed her in the softest way she ever had. "You are too. And you do understand now, right -- why I'm a freak? Power didn't give me control, it stole the little I even had. If someone could slap some device that nulled me, held me hostage while Fern gave third-degree burns to any villain-fixer she could get her hands on. Well-- I don't know--"

"Did you finish it -- the collar?"

"I did -- after the kidnapping attempt," Milly said. It was a penance, really. Assembled and disassembled and assembled again. She was reminding herself what would've happened if she'd used it. "But you know it didn't work like that -- it was a shock collar."

"I know. It's a-- sophistication of brute force," Laser beamed. "I wonder who that reminds me of." Milly laughed, squeezing her tight, and kissed back at her. When you say these things, Babe. "I just keep wondering, Hey! What if it did work! Don't have to deal with the intrusive thoughts about being pissed off enough to cause the whole-ass end of civilization."

"I-I'm sorry I didn't know, it's bullshit and-- Laz, how come I didn't piss you off?"

"I mean you kinda did-- once," Laser chuckled, while Milly heatedly recalled the plasticated air and the copper droplets running into concrete pores. "Otherwise? Hot and pathetic."

"Ah! Hahaha! Me. Babe. Pathetic." -- "Really?"

"Come on-- did you never wonder," Laser asked, "why none of my girls have dragged you off to jail yet?" Milly was attempting to command even a twitch on her face, and could only blink in stupefied shock. "Cos I specifically told them how literally not-a-threat you are to me," she continued. "That you're like-- exercise."

"Damn. Okay." Milly looked off the bedside, where the batons and laminate planks slipped into the distant, uncared-for warehouse floor. "Makin' me feel bad with that one, hehe."

"Yeah, well-- can always put that energy back into spanking me Little-Miss-Inferno Red."

"Really are a freak, aren't you?" Milly said, tugging at Laser's hand. "I love you, Laz."

"Love you too, Mill," Laser responded, slowly. There was a small part sensing the moulding tone, but she was still stuck in an attempt to diffuse it another way. "That's an actual, licensed colour. Emulsion paint, which was a marketing choice. Didn't let me pick mine--"

"It does hurt though, Laz," Milly said, nervously watching Laser swallow her info-dump and turn into her own shoulder. She made herself finish, "You don't-- take me, Hood, serious?"

There was a chopped-up groan dragging itself out of Laser's throat, which she held onto till she couldn't anymore, till it spilled onto the sheets. "Sorry, I do," she said, looking back. "It's because -- when I tell them that -- like, I trust you. I think I always have, kinda? Because you're, like, a real villain, Milly! Not some up-jumped crook in a costume who's gonna fuck up his kayfabe and pull a gun on me because it didn't go his way."