To Be in That Number

Harmony had run face first into one of Rachel's boundaries. It was natural to keep someone from ripping your clothes off, wasn't it? Harmony didn't see anything wrong with what she'd done. Then, looking left and right, Erika and Megan offered little more than stern disapproval. They were on Rachel's side of this issue. The pecking order among the Saxettes was clear and Harmony realized one action too late that she occupied the lowest rung on the ladder. No matter how called for it was to stand up for herself, she'd sacrificed plenty of other things to get the opportunity to march.

She just had to add her own dignity to the pile of burnt offerings. Harmon's hand loosened.

Rachel pulled the shirt tight. Her forearm muscles were taut like tight rope. In measured deliberation, Harmony's belly button was exposed. Then her floating ribs. The freckles that were body-wide poked into the light one by one like dark stars on her olive-toned skin. Rachel's right hand, apparently bored of stripping the top half of Harmony raw, began at the hem of her shorts and journeyed in the opposite direction.

Rachel's touch was tearing Harmony to pieces.

The back of a left thumb bumped into the bottom of Harmony's luscious breasts. So soft, it could have been an accident. Secretly, subtly, Harmony remembered how cloistered and tight her bra was; how her flesh felt like a prisoner within it. Then Rachel's grip pulled harder, raking the soft cotton so it wrapped Harmony's northward curves like a conspicuously tempting Christmas present.

"You're fucking huge. . ." Rachel spat. Funny, as those same words felt like a compliment on the lips of a lover. "This won't cut it. Erika, come show her."

Erika took a minute to rummage through a gym bag at the back of the room. As she waited, Rachel didn't release Harmony. She held her hostage — dared her to move or complain. Harmony didn't, even as the pink of her left bra cup poked out and the low-hipped frill of her panties were exposed.

Her lungs felt ready to pop. Rachel was just too close.

"See?" Erika held up part of the outfit. A strapless top. "Yea, there's just no way."

"There are pasties that would be more modest than her wearing that. . ." Megan reacted. Experimenting, she stretched the black, white, and hot pink slip against Harmony's torso. Her mind churned visibly as she visualized Harmony dancing, playing, and teasing in a latex strip. "I. . . kinda like it."

Then, the back of Harmony's head found a soft, smooth touch, presumably Rachel's breasts. It had to be her imagination, but it matched the tightness with which Rachel was grasping her hip and shirt. Rachel was squeezing her closer, shielding her from Megan's compliment. "Fuck you, Megan," Rachel blurted with a rage that could quickly go violent.

It would have been scary if Megan didn't back off giggling.

"You don't eat a damned thing. Just water. Add a lemon if you like, but no sugar and nothing solid."

It occurred to Harmony that she was being talked to. She'd focused exclusively on her own body, framed by the members of the Saxettes, being held against her will by a brutal dictator. "Okay," Harmony chirped, terrified and begging to have her clothes back. Her breathing made the underwire dig into her skin. She swore she was bleeding.

At last, she was released. Her body tumbled forward once it was hers again. Her flushed cheeks glowed in the mirror as her thighs trembled. She felt absolutely zapped.

"You're here in this room at five in the morning, every morning. If you're a single second late, you're running laps. Now leave."

Harmony bent to look in Rachel's direction. Her full neck was extended and exposed, swelling around the water she was drinking from the bottle Harmony had filled. After reminding herself that Rachel was indeed human, she took her leave.

The previous twenty minutes were a wasp sting in her memory. It throbbed unignorably, and anything that registered on one of her five senses burned implacably. She had to take the next few minutes alone. She did so, her back against the wall. Soon, she heard the kick drum again, the pounding of the pop music and Erika's counting. Practice had resumed without a hitch. Harmony's visit had been a single, inconsequential interruption.

Something about that hurt like liquid-filled blisters on her heart.

Then, she checked her phone. It was twenty till seven. The premise of being present for a romantic dinner with Chris was still around. Where would she gather the frayed emotions — the togetherness she needed to put her mask on for Chris? All she could feel was rawness and exposure. She felt so much more scattered than the bundle of skin that surrounded her organs.

One hand caught the wall. The other hugged her chest. Sharp air hissed through her teeth; it felt like shards of glass in her throat.

Whiskey glass.

__________

The weeks leading to homecoming almost took Harmony to a mental ward.

Sheet music went missing. Apps were deleted from her phone. Her saxophone was relocated to storage after being 'mistaken' as one of the school-owned models. Her transit driver took an alternate route and made her late for dance practice. She had to run laps in her underwear at five-ten in the morning. After which, she spewed her guts all over the pavement and tasted nothing but stomach acid as she collapsed.

Chris was worried sick. Harmony never told him why she was found next to her own bile at half-past five. The doctor suggested it was drugs while she was unconscious, he said, but he didn't want to believe them. He couldn't believe that his Harmony would ever resort to drugs for any reason.

She'd tried a few baggies of something the night before —supposed to help with fat burn and anxiety. But wrapped in a hospital gown at noon while looking like death was no time to mention it. It was better to let Chris think whatever her wanted.

When Chris went to find the cafeteria for lunch, Harmony walked out. When momentarily paused by guilt of leaving without a peep, she convinced herself of being too tired to deal with hospital dismissal and too busy to be guilty. One thing mattered to her and it hardened her will even as the edges of said will were shaved away.

Her ambition resembled a knife; deadly, stainless, but paper-thin.

Homecoming day came. There was a practice with the Saxettes all morning in preparation for their featuring in a number of events around campus. By eleven they'd done more than Harmony felt capable of doing in an entire day. Her muscles felt dry and fibrous. Sleep deprivation swole the bags under her eyes.

Erika and Megan were dismissed to a lunch of saltine crackers and water. They left the studio, leaving Rachel and Harmony alone.

"Do the last twenty measures of 'Worth it' again."

Rachel's words were will-negating: When Rachel spoke, Harmony danced. Come what may.

The only sound in the room was Harmony's feet; heels smashing the floor and ballet flats slipping and sliding.

"Again."

This time, Harmony's dance had Rachel's clapping for accompaniment. Not as encouragement, but as a harsh metronome. The time keeper finished as Harmony's chest rose and fell.

"You're dragging."

It was fact, not criticism. It pissed Harmony off to know the gap between her potential and her current powers. But every time she felt like pushing, she also felt like crumbling into a pile.

Dark swallowed her up.

Unaware that she'd blanked out — apparently going faint at the mere thought of pushing any harder — Harmony found herself propped against her mentor.

Her senses felt like dying flames. Sight failed her at this range as did smell. Movement registered in her but whether she was going up or down, left or right, was still mysterious.

"You're no good to me like this," Rachel's words were murky water.

Harmony made out the message amidst the bubbling in her ears. "Sorry, Rachel."

"The hell are you sorry for?"

"I-. . ." Harmony fell into jagged coughs.

"You feel like a fucking oven. You must've managed to get sick. Useless. . . You do know we have to dance in three hours? You have to. So why didn't you start taking vitamin C tablets? Or doubling fluid intake. It's fucking cold out, Harmony —dressing like you're on a damned beach."

Harmony's perspective lowered. She was on the ground, seated. Over her, injecting herself into this vulnerability, Rachel occupied the spot between her knees.

"Hey! Don't you go to sleep. . ."

Rachel clawed Harmony's cheeks, shaking her chin till her copper waves danced over a freckled face.

"Do you need to go back?" asked Rachel.

That, Harmony could answer. "No." She hated hospitals; hated the sick, the dying, and the blatant refusal to accept it all. She'd rather die playing the sax with a fever of one-oh-four; facing death.

"Well, you're dead weight at the moment. You'd best be thinking of a way to get to feeling better."

Harmony thought. Then she thought again. Then she thought better. Nothing.

That pissed her off. She had good instincts but nothing came except survival. Even the energy reserved to be mad at herself was being syphoned over for better use.

Instead of fighting or being upset, her chilled bones craved external heat. She knew it was her fever making her shiver, but that didn't cancel out the knowledge of her frailty. Heat was needed quickly. Feeling better could only take three hours. She would take heat no matter the source. In the moment, that source was Rachel's hand against her cheeks. Forgetting momentarily, she rolled her ear into Rachel's palm and cupped her hands behind it like a pillow.

It didn't feel so bad if she could pretend it was some disembodied, floating hand.

"Yea, I bet you're cold. I bet you're freezing to fucking death," Rachel's eyes were a paint roller, applying a messy coat of consideration and thought to Harmony. And, much like painting a room, the first coat was not sufficient and a second had to be applied. Then a third.

One area refused to turn the color she apparently suspected. Her gem-like eyes narrowed at the precipice of Harmony's halter top. Regularly, her gaze tumbled over onto skin; freckle-spangled velvet as sturdy as a couple of jellyfish latched to Harmony's torso.

Subconscious, Harmony rolled. She wasn't fully aware of what she was doing, but acted anyway because doing so would improve her condition; a warm place to hang her drifting body.

Rachel sighed like an evil spirit left her.

Harmony's chest had squeezed it out.

Hot enough to sizzle, Harmony found new strength in new fire. Her body rose as did her torso which dragged her weighty, bulging bluff against the Saxette leader in a clumsy embrace.

"You're delirious. . ." Rachel uttered, only Rachel had never said anything so empty to Harmony before.

The mooring of bitter words wasn't there, so Harmony went about easing the agonal chill in her bones. She sought fire, canting herself toward it, hoping to share herself with it — a human offering. When she found that it wouldn't leave, she wrapped herself around it. Afraid, she kept herself loose while maintaining a familiar closeness.

Rachel huffed. "You're a pity, Harmony. A pity," her body's frame folded downward of her own accord till Harmony's back was on the cold ground and her front was amassing atop it. "All my efforts to make you strong just made you dependant."

She didn't know why a zing ran over her at the word 'dependant'. In the haze of exhaustion and stagnance, though, such feelings were all she could make herself work for. Harmony breathed when Rachel did. She synchronized herself to her mentor. It was easy because she could feel Rachel's torso against her own; feel their shared masses molding and matching, accommodating one another. She wanted to feel the body-arching zing once more and achieved it when she made Rachel's heady inhale her own.

A layer barely protected their supple, femininity from touching. As they moved, and their clothing grew thinner still, Rachel swore. "Dammit, Harmony. You'll regret this."

Harmony hadn't known what was meant until she felt sudden jerks. The hem of her top was bunched under her arms and the tops of her pectorals. Masses of flesh were lined by a thinning elastic underneath. It was her flesh — her chest and the messy sport's sling she wore to keep them from slapping her in the face.

Chris showed her chest utmost care. Rachel mauled them as if to make them over again — another part of Harmony she wished to make in her own image.

"Damned things. You lost inches everywhere but here. You have ribs sticking out but you have tits too?" Rachel scolded.

But her hands didn't stop.

Round in circles then sharp angry tugs. Harmony hissed. Momentarily from pain, then exclusively from the pit being dug at her core. Her body weeped to have its way, to have attention on her bulges and nails plowing her swells. Fruition arrived each time Rachel found a new direction to knead.

Her lip fell in a sigh and her bottom teeth showed as her head thunked the hardwood ground.

Rachel was silent. Her moves seemed calculated to take and take and take. She gave little, only the darkness in her eyes and the bliss accompanying the shifting of weight on a torso. Surprise was an alien expression on her face. Awe, though, and appreciation were harder to hide. It was the glimmer in her dark eyes and the gentleness amidst her marching along. As grandiose as she considered herself, her practice, and her reputation she was capable of reducing it and relating personally.

"There. . ." Harmony groaned as a stray thumb — though also potentially a planned thumb — caught itself on her nub.

Her stomach cratered inward when air was punched out of her by the sensation. Right at her peaks happened to be exactly where she yearned for hands. In the delay between her request and its fulfillment was absolute hopelessness. She was starving and thought maybe the intensity of feelings was connected to her water fast. That ache surely remained.

When she'd dressed in school bathroom after abandoning the hospital, she thought herself a ghoul. Her hips and thighs used to have life and size to bely their stubbiness. Now they were both stubby and phallic and outlined the balls of her knobby knees.

Her limbs were not graceful like Rachel's no matter how she'd hoped they might be. Nor was her face sharp nor skin smoothly featureless. Rachel's judgements of her were fair; her body was starkly below average masquerading under twenty or so pounds of fat.

But one thing — the central thing — that stood the rigor of cardiovascular catholic school were her breasts. They took on a new meaning to her because of that.

Rachel perceived this meaningfulness and life and tried snuffing it out just as she had so successfully with other freshman. But she could not. She squeezed and abused and flesh oozed from her fingers. In a desperate rage, she pulled and snapped the stretchy mesh that hugged them lovingly, hoping the sting would bring pain instead of pleasure.

Harmony contorted, her shoulders lodged into the ground and hoisting her middle higher. She wanted more punishment, not less — all that Rachel could dish out.

From the outside, they were rough and tumbling and hormone-driven. Their training had given proximity to their need for touch and skin and like a spring morning they were unashamed to stumble into their passion. Their tops were strewn about them in the wake of their need to taste each other fully. Then their naked bodies kissed; momentous as pairing opposites could be.

Inwardly, though, such beauty was complex. Rachel would not be sated and clamped her teeth down into the vulnerable pile of nerves at Harmony's left peak. The squirming reactivity curled her lips, the feeling of control over another body. Her tongue took ownership and pet damp spots where her teeth had attempted incision. Deliberate, her actions said 'If you submit, fully, I'll give you everything you desire'.

Harmony believed it no better than when a hooked finger caught her tights and forced them down. At first the warm fleshy blanket provided by her section leaders lithe body lifted. Being separated in such a state felt like death. Once more, though, her trust in Rachel was cemented. Even as her nipple burned under a pinching vice it would be comforted and in like manner, if she was patient and malleable to Rachel's harsh ideals, she would be rewarded.

"You're going to change into your uniform and dance again. You won't get a break till you get it right," Rachel chastised, but her breath was on Harmony's neck. "So you won't be needing these."

With her height, she could bring Harmony's black tights down to her knees. She was attentive enough to include the panties in the disrobing, and impatient enough to ignore all pretense and proceed down Harmony's patch to her hidden split.

Accommodating, Harmony opened her legs. It was the comfort she needed — her payment for weeks and weeks of unending, unfaltering loyalty.

And she got it.

In stars in her eyes, and magnets in her blood. She contorted as lust was exorcised up and out of her. With the rigid constraint of the industrial, triple D bra gone she could focus on freedom in her sapphic pleasures; the thrill of womanhood in coordination with still more womanhood.

When she realized it, Rachel was done. Harmony was spent. It had come and gone so fast! One moment, she was so close she could see over her climax and the next she could nary remember it.

Harmony tried getting up then slumped to her left. Her head landed against Rachel. Seeing the success and pleasure of having her face and nose curled into the girl, her remaining strength pushed her over till she was in full embrace. Her thighs and the underside of her ass was wet and powerless. Never had Chris left her such a knotted mess; a pile of girl where there used to be woman.

"Rachel. . ." Harmony cood.

She stayed there till sleep came. It did just as swiftly as she had. Only after did she dance for Rachel again, prove herself capable, and dress for the performance. There was new energy in her. It had come from Rachel's fingertips.

__________

Harmony had fans when she entered the stadium.

Music and Goldsdale were inseparable as it was, but the band had special clout. Students understood how hard it was to be a member — plenty were probably players who'd flunked out or caved under the pressure — and saluted those who sacrificed. Others only needed to know that some members had ended up with samples in pop music and photos in magazines.

But Harmony had cheers for other reasons.

Her family was there. She'd met them before she had to get ready — her brother, mother, and father. They all wore grins and patted her on the back for making the Marching 100. Even her father was able to say a positive word.

"You look beautiful," he told her. She still had her Saxette makeup on. "We're gonna grab some grub before we take off going home. Tell me you'll join us?"

She'd hoped they would stay for more than the night, but dinner would be fine — if there was a place with an open seat on Homecoming night. She couldn't wait to rub her marching uniform in his face.

Chris was in the crowd as well. Things were awkward between them, mostly on his side. He could detect some change in Harmony and in their union, but didn't mention it. He offered congratulations instead. She would have preferred he bring it up. Chris should have been mad. Why couldn't he be suspicious? He couldn't slam her into a wall and demand answers? Why wouldn't he defend their relationship even if he knew it was dissolving? He never acted. He didn't hold her accountable. He didn't act possessive over her — mentioned that she was sexy a few pounds lighter, but nothing else.