Tech Support

“Dinah? You doing okay?”

Dinah relaxed back into the bubble bath. She’d worried that a beep on the communicator meant something urgent, but Oracle just wanted to chat. Reclining against the foam pillow put in opposite the faucet, she let the hot water get back to soothing her tired muscles.

“I’m dandy, Oracle. Something on your mind?”

“Today’s mission seemed to bother you. Anything I can do?”

“It wasn’t the mission. It was things on the JSA.”

“Oh?”

It was funny how much Dinah could read into the affectless, electronically modified voice. Oracle seemed to be in a frisky mood—so much wanting to dish—just like a girl. Only sometimes, Dinah could swear that disembodied voice was coming onto her. Not so girlish, that.

Or maybe she was just fooling herself after months of learning nothing about whoever it was on the other side of the internet connection.

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Dinah teased, and a rich laughter came through the commline that even the identity-preserving filtration couldn’t dim.

“Spicy! I know you’re a glutton for punishment, Dinah, but if you’d like to take some time off from our little arrangement, there have been a few heroes I’ve been thinking of recruiting.”

“Don’t tell me you want to see other people. I haven’t even seen you yet.”

Oracle paused a moment. “I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard. You have to be at your best to play this game. Even if you are, that’s no guarantee of winning. So if the JSA needs you more than I do…”

“Where is this coming from? Are you that determined to know what’s going on with me? Your private little soap opera?”

“Oh, please—I couldn’t care less what Green Arrow gets up to…”

“And it has nothing to do with Ollie.”

“Really? I noticed signs of emotional entanglement on the mission. Frequently dilated pupils, higher blush index, quicker pulse rate…”

Dinah glanced around. She knew Oracle probably wouldn’t go so far as to plant cameras in her private residence—least of all the master bathroom—but if she did, the house in her name would be a much easier target than some random hotel room.

“I thought you couldn’t watch me.”

“Monitor. Not watch. I hacked a few security cameras. Standard operating procedure.”

“And that got you my blush index? Sure you don’t have a tiny camera built into my earpiece?” Dinah asked, taking the earring out and examining it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never find room for that and the sound system and the microphone,” Oracle’s tinny voice said, before Dinah plugged the earring back in. “Now, if you were to wear a headband…”

“Oh no. I’m not going there again.”

“Like anyone would care, so long as you have the fishnets on.”

“Spoken like a true fan.”

The hot water should’ve been cooling, but Dinah felt a new heat taking over for it, a warmth that was inside her and growing hotter all the time. All this talk of what had happened, what was different, had gotten to Dinah. Unsettling all the thoughts she’d tried to repress.

She could recall, with perfect accuracy, the feel of skin against her skin. The taste of sweat on her lips. The touch of a tongue on her bare breast, making her feel thrillingly naked in a way that a simple lack of clothes never could.

She could not hold it in. The one way to exorcise this feeling was to do as Oracle wanted and share what had happened. It was too immense to keep fitting inside her.

“You know about Kendra? The new Hawkgirl?”

“The way I hear it,” Oracle said, “she’s the old Hawkgirl.”

“Yeah. It’s complicated. And now Carter’s back in the picture. Unlike her, he remembers everything. He wants what they had back again and Kendra can’t even remember what that is. I went to talk to her, just to give her a chance to vent. I mean, I get it. On the JSA, there are so many times when people look at me and see my mother. I tried to give her some advice and she was crying and I just wanted to comfort her… and if you’ve seen her, you know how good she looks, with those toned arms and the tiny little top that doesn’t touch a single one of her abs and that chic as fuck haircut she has that looks so good on her… I wanted to look like that, when I didn’t have the wig on, but I could never pull it off, so I just grew my hair out and dyed it—”

“Whoa!” Oracle cried. “Sounds like you need to vent a little yourself.”

“It’s just… it requires context. I’m not a slut or anything.”

Oracle was silent for a moment; Dinah had plenty of time to realize what she’d said.

“This is starting to sound like a fun story.”

“Okay, fuck, I’ll tell, but don’t go thinking I seduced her. I did not go to see her for that. I really just wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“Oh, I’m sure she was fine,” Oracle drawled.

“I said something to make her laugh,” Dinah explained quickly, before Oracle could make any bigger a deal of it than she already had. “She has a really pretty laugh, an infectious laugh, so I laughed too, and then I realized… you know… I was in her bedroom, sitting on her bed, she was lying down, we were both wearing what we wear.

“We’d gotten pretty close, talking like we were, and when she laughed, it was like a barrier was broken. Like we were past the point of words. Kendra felt the same way, I guess. She put her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek… just a light, sisterly kiss… but what I started to feel…! Or, I guess, had been feeling, and now had to admit I was feeling—

“I was wet. I mean, really ready for something to happen. It embarrassed the hell out of me. I kept wondering if she’d notice. It wasn’t like I’d ever noticed another woman was turned on, but then, I’d never been in a situation like this before. And Kendra was still holding me—I guess she could tell that whatever else I was feeling, I wasn’t disliking this… embrace… and she started rubbing my back while she held me.

“Just with her fingertips, but that didn’t make it any better, because then it was just how I was feeling, how I was taking it… getting turned on, enjoying it, and at the same time, I was ashamed of myself. I wasn’t sure she meant it like that. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to or not. I had to do something to put the ball back in her court. I couldn’t just keep giving her nothing and letting her caress me. That would be the exact wrong move.

“So I put my arms around her and started running my hands over her back. The shoulder blades first, then down her spine. She’s so thin, you know, but she’s got wide hips, so there was just more to touch as I got down to the base of her spine. Those little dimples you can’t help but see every time she turns her back on you…

“Kendra went to the same space, just two fingertips, but moving from the small of my back to almost the top of my ass, right between the cheeks. Like she might, you know, go all the way down at any time. The thought made me shudder. I mean really shudder. She was actually fondling the little bumps of my spines and if she kept going down…

“Well, she didn’t, but she started running her fingers around my waist, you know, touching exactly where a belt would go? It wasn’t exactly… she wasn’t touching my ass or my groin or anything, but it wasn’t… not not… it was more than I thought she’d touch.

“Then she ran her hand down the outside of my hip, down to my thigh, and started rubbing that. Which still wasn’t quite fondling me, but it turned me on more than ever. She wasn’t groping me, wasn’t doing anything overtly sexual, having her just want to touch me, feel me… that was sexy on its own. And I could smell Kendra’s hair… feel the weight of her head on my shoulder… hear her sighs… and for as long as I’ve worn fishnets, I actually haven’t had someone feel them up all that often…”

“I was really wet. I could feel the moisture like a living thing, extending all the way into me and coming out of me. Slowly evaporating from my pubic hair with this weird coolness that piled on top of the warmth I was feeling inside.

“Some of it actually started to run down my leg. I squeezed my thighs together to hide it. Kendra must’ve misinterpreted that; or maybe I was pretending not to know how it would look. She kissed me again, on the lips this time, and not just once. And she was done caressing my legs. She put her hand on my tits instead.