Going Home

It was a quarter past ten o'clock in the evening, and the sun had long since set. Yi Lan stood before the door to the apartment that she and Lu Jiao Jocelyn shared—no, that wasn't right; it was Jocelyn's apartment, not Lan's at all, even though she had been living there for a number of months. It never felt like home when she walked in the door. It felt alien, and every time she walked in Lan had the instinctual feeling that she had opened the wrong door, and was stepping into someone else's space—someone else's world. Those feelings caused her stomach to churn, and it protested every step further into that place that she took, insisting that she leave immediately and find her way back to where she belonged. That she find her way back home.

Lan resisted those instinctual urges every time she stepped inside. But there were some nights where she was tempted—very sorely tempted—to abide by them. This was one of those nights.

As soon as she opened the door and took that first step inside, Lan was immediately bombarded by a riotous cacophony of sensory data. Smells, sights, faint sounds, and that peculiar tingling feeling one felt when another human being was unexpectedly close, as if the flow of air itself through the apartment was being disturbed in a way which was somehow noticeable. The urge to leave was immediate and intense. Lan knew by the clothes, underwear and all, discarded haphazardly on and around the couch what had been going on here tonight, and she would have been perfectly within her rights in abandoning this place right this instant, taking her meager belongings and never coming back.

But she was not leaving without closure. If she had been willing to pack up and simply disappear, she would have done so a long time ago. Lan was not willing to vanish and be forgotten like a sweet scent in a strong breeze. She had been doing a lot of thinking. She had been building up the courage necessary for a confrontation. It seemed that tonight was the night that she was going to have to stand up for herself. Tonight, no matter what, you cannot be a doormat, and you cannot back down, Lan thought to herself, as she would walk over to Jocelyn's bedroom and open the door.

As she thought, Jocelyn had someone sleeping with her, and by the looks of it they had done much more than lay down for a quick cat nap. They were naked, and Jocelyn had her head buried in the other girl's ample chest. Lan blushed a little bit as she couldn't help but stare for a second. The girl—who was Chinese, like Lan and like Jocelyn—was quite attractive. Quickly, Lan turned away and walked back into the main area of the apartment. It didn't feel right to look at that girl while she was sleeping. Lan didn't even know her.

She wondered how well Jocelyn knew this girl—or if Jocelyn even knew her at all.

Lan sighed and started to sit down on the couch, then thought better of it, seeing all of the discarded articles of clothing and imagining what must have happened on that couch, and fetched a chair from the table to sit down on. She grabbed the television's remote control, hesitated for a second, and then pressed the power button. Her finger slid down and began to toggle the volume up button, raising it to a loud, if not deafening, level. It might have been a passive way of waking the girls in the bedroom up, but she was not just going to rush in there and start screaming like a jealous, jilted lover. That was not, after all, what she was. This would be sufficient for her purposes.

Jocelyn groggily stirred at the sound of the TV slowly increasing in volume. Her eye twitched and then she opened one and looked down at the softly sleeping Mei-Li. She didn't know what was going on at first, but it quickly became clear.

Yi Lan was home and she didn't seem to want to just crawl into bed and snuggle up with the snoozing pair. Not that Jocelyn needed that response in her life, but she certainly didn't need this one either and pushed off of Mei-Li and staggered out of her room completely nude.

She stepped into the living room and scowled harshly at Yi Lan. She was so irritated and annoyed, that her first reaction wasn't to speak Chinese, even though there was no need for English in the apartment. "What the fuck are you on about!? I'm tryin to sleep! Turn that shite down!" She barked angrily at Yi Lan.

The television slowly came on, the sound first, and then, gradually, the picture. The station was set to one of those inscrutably Japanese shows that the natives of this country loved, and that Americans loved to make fun of, but that Lan had very few feelings about at all. It was all just white noise. She couldn't remember if she had set it to this station herself late one night in an attempt to drown out some of her worries, or if Jocelyn had been watching it for some reason or another.

Lan didn't have too much time to think about harmless, silly things like that. Jocelyn wasn't exactly a heavy sleeper, and Lan only had to idle on that chair for a minute before she heard Jocelyn's shrill condemnation, in her slightly lilting Australian English that Lan had grown accustomed to but still had not quite accepted. Lan turned to her and automatically blushed when she saw that Jocelyn had strode out to confront her completely naked, not bothering to dress herself at all. Lan would stand up, remote control in hand, but she wouldn't turn the television off just yet. She walked towards Jocelyn, keeping eye contact with the darker-haired girl, then moved past her towards the door of Jocelyn's room. Lan glanced inside at the still-sleeping girl on the bed. Quietly, she closed the door. Then, she shut the television off.

There was no reason to get that girl involved in whatever was about to happen here. Lan didn't blame her for anything, though it was, regrettably, tempting. Hopefully, things wouldn't get violent or loud enough to wake her. Once the door was closed, Lan would turn the television off, then take a couple of steps into the kitchen and set the remote down on the table. She turned back to Jocelyn and would cross her arms over her chest.

<Please, find something to wear, Lu Jiao. Preferably something...clean,> Lan would say quietly, glancing wearily at the clothes which were strewn across the sofa.

Jocelyn watched as Yi Lan got up without turning the television off and walked right past her. She scowled and was tempted to go at her, but she just crossed her arms and watched her as she closed the door to their bedroom. She didn't really want to involve Mei-Li either, but she hadn't really been concerned whether it happened or not as Yi Lan continued to meticulously go about her business, finally turning the television off and then asking her to put some clothes on. In Chinese, no less.

Normally Jocelyn would prefer it, but something about the way Lan spoke, made her almost offended to use that language. She shrugged at her ashen haired country woman and turned. "Why?" She replied. "The tele's off. I'm goin back to bed." She said fully intent on doing as she said.

Jocelyn seemed to calm down, at least as much as a naturally fiery personality like her could, but she remained defiant, steering well clear of admitting any sort of fault or wrongdoing, and completely ignoring the obvious conversation that the two of them should be having right now. Lan once again felt a pang of desire to let Jocelyn go back to sleep, then pack up her clothes and her electronics and what little else she had brought with her and be gone before morning. But Lan was not in the mood to just drop whatever had happened these last few months and leave it without some sort of closure to it all.

Of course, if Lan had a choice of how things would go down, she knew what she would choose. Some part of her still liked Jocelyn, or at least the idea of Jocelyn that had been constructed inside her head based on an unholy combination of incredibly fleeting, perhaps imagined, looks that Jocelyn had given her during the first couple of times they had met and unwarranted optimism. Lan would have been thrilled if she had been able to change Jocelyn. Every now and then the Chinese-Australian wrestler showed her what seemed to be a softer side. But it never lasted. Nothing but the anger and the bitterness seemed to last very long with Lu Jiao Jocelyn.

Lan sighed as Jocelyn told her that she was going back to sleep, in English no less. The flaxen-haired girl was not going to let her countrywoman do that. She would take a couple of steps over to once again stand in front of Jocelyn's door, blocking her path. Lan uncrossed her arms and slid them down to clasp her hands behind her back instead, thinking that it seemed slightly less confrontational.

Lan would take a deep breath as she waited to hear what Jocelyn had to say.

Jocelyn stopped as Lan slipped past her and stood in front of the doorway and looked at her. Her eyes narrowed for the moment, but as Lan's body language became more passive, Jocelyn leaned forward and rolled her shoulders back.

"Get out of the way." She growled at Yi Lan and then stopped. She tilted her head and lifted up a hand to press it against Yi Lan's chest, just above her small, soft bud of a breast. Seeing Lan like this had emboldened Jocelyn. If the girl was just going to be like this, then maybe she could handle coming and going as she pleased. A minor nuisance, sure, but then again, if she was drunk and horny, Lan would most likely be willing to give her what she wanted until she was ready to breeze on out again.

The more she thought about it, the better the set up seemed to be for the Chistralian. She just needed people like Mei-Li to be cool with it. Well, she didn't even really care about that either too much, even if she liked Mei-Li. Was it the same way she liked Yi Lan? She wasn't sure but smiled cruelly at the girl as they touched.

"Unless you're lookin to join us, Sheila?" She had to admit, she still hadn't quite sobered up, but she wasn't worried about that either. Yi Lan's little stand was actually starting to get her a little excited again.

Lan insisted to herself that her assumption of a less purely aggressive posture was not because of her passive nature, but because she did not want to offend or incite Jocelyn more than she had to for this conversation to occur. She still felt powerful, powerful enough to stand up to Jocelyn, or so she thought until the darker-haired girl placed a hand on her chest, her palm resting just above Lan's small breasts. Lan's blush got a little bit brighter, and her hands would unclasp behind her back as her body instinctively started to shrink away from Jocelyn's touch.

For a few seconds, Lan had felt as though she were in control, but now, Jocelyn seemed to have the advantage. She obviously thought that she was going to walk all over Lan, the way she usually did, the way she seemed to try to do to everyone. Lan had known that this sort of reaction from her "roommate" would be coming, and she had prepared herself mentally for it. Still, she hesitated for a second before she was able to breathe again. She sucked in enough air to seemingly inflate herself again, straightening her posture and reaching up with one hand to grab onto Jocelyn's wrist, giving it a hard squeeze as she would try to pull it away from her body.

She stared into Jocelyn's eyes. <I'm n-not looking to join you. I d-don't want...to involve her at all. She should—should just sleep. You are the only one I need to talk to.> She blinked once, then resumed eye contact. <Now...please speak in our language. And put something on. You can borrow something of mine if you need to, because I'm n-not letting you in your room.>

Jocelyn watched as Lan started to shrink. She would take her into the bedroom, fuck her, then Mai-Li again and leave Mei-Li to cook Yi Lan breakfast in the morning while she rolled out of the place. Mei-Li didn't deserve it. Yi Lan certainly didn't either, but Jocelyn wasn't in the mood for this shit.

However, when Yi Lan grabbed her wrist and shoved it off of her, Jocelyn's eyes widened. She stared at Yi Lan and her lip curled up into a sneer. She was in disbelief as Lan spoke to her. She was most offended by the fact that she demanded to speak in Mandarin. That meant she definitel wasn't going to. "Piss off! English too good for ya now?!" She barked, her volume increasing. "Is that what it is?!" He old habits suddenly emerging. "I come home for one night and ya can't even be arsed to look at a mutt anymore!? Fuck on off outta my way, ya bloody Ocka." Jocelyn growled. She pushed her hands back into Lan's breasts, this time both palms full and gave the girl a hard shove into the door to try and force it open. That seemed to spur Jocelyn a bit and give her the edge she needed to take whatever moral high ground could be salvaged from whatever was happening.

Though, Jocelyn knew what was happening, really.

Lan remembered the first night after she had moved into this apartment with Jocelyn, when showing a little initiative in bed made Jocelyn much more...malleable might have been the best word for it. Submissive. At the very least, open to suggestion. Lan had been hoping that asserting herself in this way would force Jocelyn to at least sit down and listen to what she had to say. Unfortunately, it didn't seem as if it was going to work that way.

"Ummph!" Lan grunted, as Jocelyn, rather than taking her hands away from the lighter-haired Cantonese girl's chest, instead put both of them on it and shoved, forcing Lan to stumble back and almost crash into the door that she had only just closed. Not wanting to make this any messier than it had to be by waking the girl whom Jocelyn had been sleeping with, Lan reached out to brace herself against the door frame, her butt pressing only lightly against the door itself. She grunted and dug in her heels, then would try to reach out with her hands to grab onto Jocelyn's shoulders in order to shove her back.

Hearing the ridiculous, inane things that Jocelyn said, Lan decided to briefly bend in order to accomodate Jocelyn, and maybe coax her into accepting the fact that Lan wanted this conversation to be in Chinese. "N-no. D-don't say stupid things," Lan would say, quick dispelling the idea that she was tired of Jocelyn because she was a mutt. <You know why I want to speak in Chinese. It's easier, and it is p-part of our shared heritage...! Now, y-your clothes...!>

Jocelyn stumbled back from Lan's shove and narrowed her eyes while the girl spoke. She didn't like it one bit. "Well, life ain't fuckin easy and I ain't puttin on clothes." Jocelyn said and crossed her arms under her small chest. She glared at Yi Lan and looked the girl up and down.

Did she hate Yi Lan? She really didn't have a reason to. the girl had given up so much with little question of it. She was a good girl and a nice girl and anyone deserved to have her as a friend, housemate or lover.

Except probably Jocelyn. All of her hate was so irrational. She had no reason to hate so much and yet, that was the problem. Looking at Yi Lan, she knew she didn't deserve a girl like her and that pissed her off even more. She'd make sure that she had a real reason to not deserve her.

"My clothes are in my room." She said and nodded past Lan. "And if you go and get clothes from your room, I'm going in that door and I'm gonna shag that girl in there again and make her scream so fuckin loud that your passive aggressive tele shite isn't going to do the trick. Got it, Sheila?" Jocelyn said and smiled cruelly at Lan.

She then leaned forward, so their noses almost touched. "Remember when we used ta wanna shag?" She asked and pressed her finger tips into Yi Lan's soft bud.