XVII: Lonely with Company
Liam
Liam raised an eyebrow and twisted to look over his shoulder as the door to Blake's room opened slowly. He felt a smile curling the corners of his lips--he had forgotten she was here.
She must have either had one hell of a night or one hell of a show if she--
Liam rose to his feet when he saw Blake's expression, only just remembering to his laptop carefully onto the couch before stepping around it.
"Blake."
He closed the distance between them in just a few strides. She was still blinking up at him in confusion. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and more bloodshot than they had been this morning. Why did she look so tired, so sad?
"Liam," she looked almost dazed as she said his name. Her voice sounded...strange. Her eyes focused on him then, but only for a moment before she looked away.
"I was just going to take a bath," she murmured, "What are you doing here anyway? Where's Marie?"
She didn't even wait for an answer before trying to step pass him and continue toward the bathroom. Liam caught her arm before he realized what he had done, and almost let go when Blake started. Something he couldn't name flashed in her eyes, but she didn't try to pull away. Instead her shoulders sagged. Liam's tensed in response. He shifted his grip on Blake's arm and turned her to face him. She didn't look up at him.
"Blake--" Liam paused--he had about to ask if she was okay, but that would have been stupid, "Can you tell me what's wrong? You're not okay."
She hesitated, eyes flashing up at him for just a moment, pleading, "Is Marie here?"
Liam shook his head.
"Why are you still here then?"
Liam shrugged, but he could feel his face heating up, "She wanted to--you know, before she went out with some friends tonight, and asked if I would mind staying over so that I could be here when she got back."
"I'll bet she said if you are she'd make it worth your while, didn't she?" Blake asked, though her voice held little mirth.
"Come on, Blake," Liam said, "I thought we were friends. Shouldn't that mean we can talk to each other? I get that sometimes you just need to be alone, but I don't buy that this is one of those times. Tell me what's wrong."
Blake bit her lip, not looking at him for a while. When she did, her face was unreadable. He didn't know how to react to that.
Finally she sighed, hanging her head, "Fine. I need to take a bath or shower or something though. I feel disgusting. So you can either wait until I'm done or follow me."
Liam hesitated, but followed. He had a sneaking suspicion that she would stay in the bathroom as long as she could if he agreed to wait until after to talk.
Blake opened the door, then stopped. She turned to him, holding up a finger, "One minute."
Then she disappeared inside the bathroom.
Liam waited a bit longer than a minute, and his guess was confirmed when he heard the toilet flush, and then the sink. When Blake reopened the door a few moments later, her gesture for him to come in seemed a bit warmer than the one to follow her had.
Closing the door behind him, Liam looked on as Blake walked--rather gingerly, he noticed--straight to the tub and closed the drain before turning on the water. Rather than sit on the edge or on the closed toilet though, she leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes. She looked exhausted. Liam said nothing, though. Not yet. He had a suspicion that things would go better if he waited for her to decide what she wanted to say.
The roar of the deluge of hot water filling the tub echoing off the porcelain and tile walls of the bathroom was the only sound for some time as they waited for the tub to fill. When the water level rose to about halfway, Liam looked to Blake, but she hadn't moved. He realized she hadn't even looked at the tub since turning on the water. She wasn't asleep--he could see that her eyes were open, if just barely. Liam wanted to hug her, but he wasn't entirely certain about her mood, and given that she was only in a towel, and he was in here with her, he was skirting the line as close as he was comfortable with for the moment.
Instead, Liam leaned over and shut off the faucet. The sudden lack of noise broke through whatever fog had caused Blake to drift off, and she started, clutching at the towel with one hand while she steadied herself against the wall with the other. She blinked a few times, then looked to Liam. For a moment she appeared surprised at his presence. Then she shook her head and moved toward the cabinet under the sink.
"Thanks," she murmured, retrieving a bag of epsom salts and some bubble bath before closing the cabinet and settling herself down carefully on the edge of the tub. Liam thought he saw her wince.
Is she sore?
He knew she worked out every once and a while.
Taking a seat on the toilet, Liam watched with a bit of interest as Blake did some sort of magic with the bubbles and salts and draining and filling the tub that he had never been able to perform with any success. Personally, he preferred leaning back in the shower as the water rained down on him rather than sitting in a bath. Jacuzzi's and pools were good enough for that.
Eventually, Blake seemed satisfied, and Liam's eyes went wide as his friend stepped over the edge of the tub and started to pull undo her towel.
"Uh, Blake?" He began, immediately looking down. He froze halfway, however. Blake's movement had lifted the bottom of the towel just enough to reveal a patch of bright red skin on one pale ass cheek. The implied size of the glimpse Liam got before Blake remembered him and began re-covering herself made him a strange mix of angry and uncomfortable. The discoloration seemed worse for the contrast with Blake's normally near-white skin.
"Can you just close your eyes for a sec?"
Blake's voice sounded tight, and Liam bit back his questions for a moment, nodding and doing as asked.
He heard the soft thump of the towel falling to the floor, then the rattle of the curtain being pulled wide, and finally the sloshing of water and a faint hiss from Blake.
"Fuck. Okay, you're good. Can you hang that up?"
Liam nodded before realizing Blake couldn't see him. He rose and did as Blake had requested before returning to his porcelain chair. It wasn't the most comfortable, but he could manage. Blake hadn't pulled the curtain all the way closed, he realized. A thin opening remained, allowing him to see part of her face. She was biting her lip, not looking at him. The muscles of her neck and jaw seemed tight.
Liam waited, unsuccessfully trying not to stare at her.
"Who did that to you?"
Blake seemed to shrink in upon herself, and Liam blinked. He hadn't realized his tongue had slipped, nor how long he'd waited before voicing his thoughts.
"I'm sorry," he said. He was, if only for making her uncomfortable with the question.
"Don't be," she said, seeming to bite off the words. A few minutes when by before she answered.
"I did it to myself," she said, voice trembling, "I was an irresponsible idiot."
Liam blinked. Spanking had never really been his thing--to watch, at least. He'd smacked Marie's ass often enough, playfully and in the heat of the moment during sex, but he just didn't really get the fetishization of that. He remembered watching a few shows where Blake had smacked her ass with either her hands or a paddle--most of the camgirls he had seen had a tip level for it--and seen the bruises left over from previous shows. The old ones had been small, the fresh ones usually just a faint handprint done specifically for that effect. But what he'd seen tonight...
"Liam?"
Blake's voice broke him out of his thoughts. It sounded so small. He looked up, and found dark blue eyes staring back at him.
"Do you--" she began, then bit her lip, glancing away for a moment, "What do you think of me? Knowing that I would do something like that--that I do things like that? For money?"
She slumped deeper into the bubbly water at that, shoulders disappearing below the foam as she pulled her gaze away. Her mouth tightened again.
"I think you had bad night, and your day didn't go much better," he said simply.
Blake barked a laugh then. Or maybe it was a sob. Liam decided not to acknowledge it. When she remained quiet after, Liam rose from his seat and settled himself next to the tub, holding himself up with his arms around his knees. Blake didn't shrink or shift away from him this time, and he allowed himself a small smile at that.
"I think that you were stupid and got carried away," he said, "but I don't believe you would intentionally do something like that--cause yourself that much pain--just because it got you some money. People don't always think properly when they're horny. I'm pretty sure every guy that's tried an extra-long jerk-off sesh has wound up jerking off to something just plain weird or gross." Liam bit his lip for a moment, then added, "I know I have." He wouldn't tell her what that had been, though it would probably make her feel a lot better about herself, though he doubted she would be surprised given her familiarity with the internet. She would have to get him dangerously drunk for that to come out.
"Just don't do something like that again okay?" He asked.
She met his eyes.
"I don't like seeing you hurt, and I could tell how much that hurt by how you hobbled in here."
That got a smile out of her, if a weak one.
"Thanks for sitting with me," she said, "Even though I didn't want you to. I was lonely."
Something in her voice told Liam she still was.
"I get that," he said. He thought he knew the kind of lonely she meant, too, "I've never had a ton of friends, just a handful of really good ones. My...family is always there, none of them more than an hour away unless the traffic is awful, but I felt lonely a lot during High School and my first year here. Things got pretty weird and complicated for a bit the few times I tried to find someone that would make that go away. Its better now with Marie, but it's not something another person can do away with entirely."
He saw Blake nod on the edge of his vision.
"How do you make it stop?" She asked.
Liam shrugged, shooting her a grin, "I'll let you know if I figure it out. Don't get me wrong, I can shut myself away in a room for hours working on something and be perfectly happy to the point where I get annoyed if someone tries to interrupt. Then there are other times where I just want someone there, but either there's no one around, or too many people, or just not the right ones."
Blake seemed to have no response for that. Liam didn't try to fill the silence though. He let his mind drift for a bit, coming back to the present only when Blake turned the water back on.
***
Blake
Blake shut the water off and tried to relax and enjoy the fresh heat of the water as she laid her head back against the edge of the tub, closing her eyes.
She knew she should have closed the curtain all the way, but when she had tried to, she had found herself unable to do so. It would have been the same as just shutting herself away behind another door, even if Liam was only a few feet away through the thin barrier.
Now he was only inches from her, and it wasn't close enough. She wanted him.
No, I don't just want him, I need him.
And that made all the difference.
If Blake had just wanted him, she could have gotten over it eventually, likely without changing anything about their friendship.
But she needed him, so she knew that wouldn't happen. She'd expected him to joke or balk or just pepper her with questions she didn't want to answer, yet he'd said nothing, agreeing simply to follow her into the bathroom. He'd paid attention even when she had slipped back into that fog, trying to will herself awake from a terrible dream. Hoping she'd be able to wake up in that nameless brunette's apartment and entice the girl into making her forget all the complications of her life for a little while longer. The idea of it had made her wet again despite the pain that had set in to her ass along with her general aura of grossness.
Blake hadn't meant for Liam to see when she'd stepped into the bath. Just thinking about him seeing those bruises again made her chest grow tight and mist well up in her eyes. She'd forgotten about him again, mind slipping off into a haze until Liam had spoken.
And even then he'd remained silent. Waiting to ask until Blake herself had been unable to stand the silence, about to ask if he had seen or tell him she'd done it herself.
The low anger in his voice had sent shivers down her spine. Blake still wasn't sure how she felt about that. It was the first time she'd ever felt anything even close to fear concerning Liam, yet at the same time, that subtle growl had seemed to vibrate throughout her body, making her tingle from her head to her toes to her sex. That he could get that angry from the thought of someone else causing her pain...it made her feel protected, even safer around him, yet guilty that she was the cause of that anger.
Then a worse fear had settled in her mind. Did he think she was a freak now that he knew she'd done that to herself? That she'd done it on a show in front of people she didn't know, likely to be on the internet for people to see forever in one form or another? Even if she'd done it for her own pleasure, she wouldn't have been surprised to hear disgust in his voice.
Yet there had been none. She hadn't heard a lie either. He told her she was an idiot, but he hadn't rejected her. She could have sworn she almost heard something in his voice when he was telling her not to worry. Shame maybe? The same kind she felt? Blake knew she was imagining things then--there was no way Liam could have ever done something he or anyone should be ashamed of. And if he had, then he was just being too hard on himself.
And you? Doesn't that mean you're being too hard on yourself?
Blake told herself it was different. She wasn't as good as Liam. He was as damn near perfect as a guy could get.
Blake's eyes drifted to Liam of their own accord then. He had been staring off into space, but her eyes met his. She held that gaze only for a few moments, though, and traced the contours of his face, neck, and shoulders with her vision, memory filling in the rest of him. She suddenly had the strong impulse to pull the boy into the water with her, clothing and all. She'd enjoy peeling it off of him. Maybe ripping some of it off, too.
Blake's eyes returned to Liam's, and she felt her face heat immediately. Yet she didn't pull her gaze away. She couldn't. Another annoying effect he had on her that she liked for some reason.
"How?" She breathed, "How can you not judge me for what I do? Even after seeing that?"
He raised an eyebrow, "I thought we'd been over that?"
"And I know you didn't tell me everything," she said, taking a shot in the dark.
From his sigh, Blake knew she'd been right.
"I told you, it's not that I don't judge people," he said after a while, "It's that I know I have no right to. Even if you and I had been best friends for years and knew almost everything about each other, there would maybe be one or two judgments I would be justified in making about you. I could call you on your shit, just like I'm pretty sure you know how stupid it was to do that to yourself."
Blake winced, but she knew he was right.
"Even if we were together almost all day," he continued, "I have no clue what goes on in your head, or what you feel at a given moment. I may be able to guess well enough, but even if you tell me exactly what you're feeling one moment, I still won't be certain about the next. I have--I had a friend once. Someone I was became really close with. They weren't a best friend, but I told them things I hadn't shared with my best friends, and they did the same. I haven't spoken to them other than a text or two in over a year. I don't know what's going on in their life or if they're okay, and I'm pretty doubtful that they are. I know some bad choices they made. And I would say I judge them for that, but another part of me wonders whether I would have done any differently had I been in their situation. I like to think that I would, but I can't be certain, and that terrifies me."
He paused with a deep breath, and looked away from Blake. When he continued, he was still looking away.
"A few months after I met them, they told me that they were pretty sure I was the only reason they were still alive--the only reason they hadn't killed themselves. That they had tried once or twice before hand to do so, and their reasons why. I don't agree with their reasoning--that's never been something I've even come close to considering as an option for myself--but to a point, I can understand it. And I know it's not my place to judge them for it. If something does something I don't agree with, my mind might jump at the chance to make a snap-judgment and condemn them, but I know doing that wouldn't bring anything positive, and it would only make things worse."
He looked back to her, "I don't know what's going through your head, Blake. Not right now, not when you hurt yourself. Like I said, I think it was stupid, and I'm a little pissed that you did it. But I know I don't have all the information. You've been acting weird all week, you had a shitty night last week, and it seems like you had a pretty rough day. If I knew a bit more, I might be able to understand it a bit better. I'd like to be someone you can share things like that with, because I think you need someone like that. Seeing you like this, like you were last week, makes me think I'm less okay with you camming, but that's your business, not mine, and I don't think I'm really in a place to talk, seeing as you're not normally like this because of your shows, and I used to enjoy them quite a bit."
Liam snorted, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he shook his head, "Sorry. I kind of rambled a bit there." He met her eyes again, "I'm not going to judge you unless you do more seriously stupid shit like that, Blake. I don't have the right, and neither does anyone else. I've always hated it when people made snap judgments without really knowing me, so I try not to about anyone, even when I know them better than most."
Blake bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood. She stopped, partially because she guessed Liam wouldn't like it.
"Thank you," she whispered, "And I--I'd like to have someone to talk to about that stuff, especially you." She sighed, "My life just--" she bit her lip again. How could she say this without giving herself away?
"My life somehow got a lot more complicated than I'm used to handling before I even realized what was happening," she sighed.
Liam barked a laugh at that, "I think I know what you mean."
Blake gave him a tight smile, then looked down at the bubbly water, "Mostly I've just felt really lonely lately, and it's hard to fix that when people can just search you up and see you bouncing up and down on a fake dick."
Blake couldn't hold back a smile at the strangled noise that came from Liam's throat. She didn't make a show of it though.
"It's just hard to find someone that sees me as more than just a sex object. When I'm doing my show it's fun most of the time. I could do without the unsolicited dick pics, but I definitely get something out of knowing the effect I have on people."
"Yeah," he said, "I get that." He glanced at her, "I've never been in the same situation as you, but I kind of had the inverse of it until I met Marie."
Blake raised an eyebrow, "You...want people to see you as a sex object?"
"Not exactly," Liam said, leaning back on one arm while he swept his free hand through his hair again, "During high school I was the 'nice guy.' I don't like just hanging out with a bunch of random people and I wanted to hang out with my friends when I was at school, so I would ask out girls that I thought were pretty to try and get to know them better. Never really worked. Not saying none of it was my fault--could have been more socially adept in that area. Waaayyyy more socially adept--but I had a lot of female friends that didn't see me as anything else. I was also a twig, so that might have factored into it. I still don't know if I've actually improved at all since then, or just got lucky when it came to Marie." He stopped then, and looked at her for a while, capturing her again with those eyes, "If you don't mind me asking--if camming has just made you feel shitty lately, have you considered just stopping?"
Blake shook her head, "Even if I didn't need the money, stopping just because people got to me would be giving them power over me. When I stop camming, it's going to either be because I make enough money other ways and I just don't want to anymore, or because I got a bit too old and wrinkly and start to consider Botox or something like that."
She and Liam shared a laugh at that, and Blake grinned, deciding to be a bit bolder. He just looked so wonderful, "And it's the internet--my problems wouldn't just all go away because I stopped. I protect most of my stuff with copyright and DCMA, but I'm not stupid--I know there are pictures and videos with something in at least one of my holes out there." She raised an eyebrow at Liam, "Maybe on some hard drives?"
Blake lost it as Liam's face went bright red. She accidentally got more of her hair wet than she had wanted to, and just dunked her head below the water for a moment after taking out the tie. When she resurfaced and cleared her eyes, however, Liam's face was still a bit red.
"You've really gotta work on that, dude," Blake said, a bit of laughter still bubbling out at Liam's expression, "You make it too easy."
He frowned, sticking out his tongue, and she almost flicked some soapy water at him. Knowing how easily that could get out of hand held her back, after it almost didn't.
Maybe if I can just manage to be less lonely that will work. Maybe.
"I have kind of a weird favor to ask," she said, trying to keep her voice from wavering.
"Whatever you need," he said with a smile, and Blake swallowed hard. She had to throw up a mental wall to keep her mind from racing off with those words.
"Sometimes I just--" she began, then bit off the words, trying to find the right ones, "Shit just gets overwhelming sometimes, and it's nice to have someone I can go to have a weird conversation with, or just for a hug. Chloe works for that sometimes, and Marie too, now that we're getting closer again, but--"
"Sometimes you just need someone bigger with some muscles?" Liam supplied, grinning.
Blake smirked, "Yeah."
Liam grinned, and Blake's sore pussy pulsed unexpectedly. If anything showed on her face, he didn't seem to have noticed.
"I can try to find a girl from the crew or basketball teams for you to go out with," he said, throwing his hands up immediately after. This time Blake had splashed him, "Dick."
"Ohhhhh, you didn't tell me that was a requirement, too,"
Blake raised another hand threateningly and Liam dove under the rim of the tub, "Fine, fine, I'll stop. No more splashing."
"No promises," she told him.
He was smiling when he reappeared. It was annoyingly nice to look at.
"Just let me know whenever you need anything, Blake," he said, "I'd be happy to be your go to for hugs and weird conversations."
"Are you sure?" Blake asked, "I don't want you to feel burdened or like you're doing something bad toward Marie or anything like that."
He met her gaze, "Can I be kinda blunt?"
Blake nodded.
"Would a hug and a conversation like this have prevented your ass from looking the way it does if we'd had it earlier?"
Blake nodded again, "I think so."
"Then there's nothing to worry about."
Blake smiled, and felt a warmth spread through her. This might work. I hope it does. Oh please let it work. When Liam smiled again, another wave of warmth spread through Blake, and she had no problem with the effect he had on her.
"I'd give you a hug right now," he said, "But that's one of the few things I think Marie would have a problem with?"
"What would I have a problem with?"
Blake's eyes went wide as she heard the door click and open.
A/N: That's a bit of a cliffhanger, isn't it? Also, Liam's just the best. And, this bathtub convo actually draws from real life. Had a (much less serious) conversation with a friend like this.