Ch.48 – Darkroom

Red light under her door.

It was past ten and the house was quiet and Debbie had gone to bed an hour ago and there was a strip of red glowing from the gap between Jenny's door and the carpet. She did this sometimes. The analog thing. Most of her work was digital but every couple of weeks she'd pull out the film cans and the trays and the chemicals and turn her bedroom into a darkroom. She'd hung blackout curtains over the windows and rigged a red safelight to a clamp on her bookshelf and the light turned her room into a different country.

I knocked.

"What."

"It's me."

A pause. "Door's open."

I went in and closed it behind me and the room was red. Everything was red. The walls, the furniture, the posters on her wall, the clothes hanging from the back of her desk chair. Jenny was at her desk with three developing trays lined up and a strip of film hanging from a clothesline she'd strung across the corner. She was in a tank top and underwear and her hair was down for once, loose around her shoulders, and in the red light her skin glowed a color that didn't exist in daylight.

She didn't look up. Her fingers were in the chemical tray, guiding a print through the developer with the tips of her fingers. The room smelled like fixer solution and the faint chemical sweetness that clung to her hands for hours after these sessions.

I stood behind her. Put my hands on her hips. The cotton of her underwear was thin under my thumbs and her hip bones were warm.

Her back pressed against my chest. Just a lean. An exhale. Her head tilted back and her hair fell against my shoulder and the weight of her settled into me and neither of us said anything for a few seconds. The red light made her face look softer. Her jaw, her cheekbones, the set of her mouth. All the sharp angles were blurred in the safelight. Her eyes were dark and her skin was red and her hands were still in the tray and the strip of film on the clothesline was dripping and turning slowly in the warm air from the lamp.

"I'm working," she said.

"I know."

Her fingers lifted the print from the developer and transferred it to the stop bath. She held it under for ten seconds. Her hands were wet and the chemical smell was stronger up close and her hips shifted against me and the shift wasn't accidental.

"This print needs another minute."

"Okay."

She moved the print to the fixer tray. Set it. Wiped her hands on a towel hanging from the desk edge. Then she turned in my arms and looked up at me and the red light was on her face and her eyes were half-closed and her mouth was set in the expression that said she'd decided to take a break and I was the break.

She kissed me. Her lips were cool from the room and her hands were damp on my neck and she tasted like the gummy bears she kept in a bowl on her nightstand. She pulled back after a few seconds.

"Bed."

She pulled me by the shirt. Two steps to the bed. The bed was unmade because Jenny's bed was always unmade and the sheets were twisted and she pushed me down and I sat on the edge and she straddled me. The tank top came off over her head and her breasts were bare in the red light, the skin warm when she pressed against me, her nipples hard against my chest. She was already pulling at my shorts.

"Jenny-"

"Shut up. I've got sixty seconds before that print overdevelops."

I laughed. She didn't. She got my shorts down enough and reached into my boxers and her hand was cool and damp from the chemicals and the temperature difference on my cock made me suck in air. She stroked me once, twice, her grip firm and impatient, and I was hard in her hand, had been getting there since I'd put my hands on her hips and she'd leaned into me. She pulled her underwear to the side and sank down onto me.

Warm. Wet. She was wet already, had been since I'd put my hands on her hips, and she took me in one slow push and the heat of her closed around me and my cock filled her in increments. The first inch where she opened and the stretch was tight and then deeper where she was slicker and hotter and the last push where she sat fully down and I was all the way inside her. She exhaled through her nose and her eyes closed and her mouth opened and a sound came out that was quiet and low and only existed in the red.

"Ah-"

She put both hands on my shoulders and started moving. Her hips rolled, grinding, not bouncing. The rhythm was controlled and deliberate and she was doing most of the work and her pussy was hot and slick around me, clenching on the downstroke, releasing on the up. She was watching my face in the red light with those half-closed eyes and her hair was hanging around both of us and the chemical smell mixed with her sweat and the sheets rustled under my hands where I gripped them.

I gripped her hips. Pulled her down harder on the next roll and the wet sound changed, louder, slicker, audible in the quiet room on each grind. She heard it. Her jaw tightened. I pulled her down again and my cock hit deeper and she was wetter than she'd been thirty seconds ago and the friction was different, easier, her hips sliding instead of pushing. Her nails pressed into my shoulders through my shirt.

"Nn-"

The red light on her body. Her stomach flexing with each roll. Her breasts moving against my chest. The choker dark against her throat. Her hair swinging. The flush on her chest that was darker than the red could explain.

She was quiet about it. Quieter than the bathroom. This was her room and the walls were thin and Debbie was sleeping down the hall and Jenny was being careful. Her sounds were bitten off, caught between her teeth, small "ah" and "nn" sounds that she swallowed before they could fill the room. Her breathing was fast through her nose, matching the pace of her hips, and each exhale had a tremor in it.

My hands slid up from her hips to her waist. I pulled her closer and thrust up into her and the angle changed and she dropped her forehead against mine and breathed "fuck" against my mouth and her hips ground harder and her pussy clenched around me, a quick squeeze that she did on purpose and then again and again, rhythmic, working me from the inside while her hips rolled from the outside.

I was close faster than I wanted to be. She was good at this. The combination of the grinding and the clenching and her breathing against my face and the red light on her skin and the faint bite of chemicals on her fingers. My hands tightened on her waist and she felt it and went faster.

"Come on," she whispered. Her mouth against my ear. "I've got a print dying in that tray."

I grabbed her ass with both hands and pulled her down and thrust up hard and she gasped and bit her lip and her thighs clamped around me. Her hips stuttered. Her rhythm broke. She pressed her face into my neck and her breathing went ragged and her pussy started clenching, hard, fast, waves that gripped my cock and released and gripped again, and her fingers dug into my shoulders and a sound vibrated against my throat, my name broken in half and swallowed before it could become a moan.

She held onto me through it. Her thighs shaking. Her stomach muscles jumping against mine. The last clench lingered, a long squeeze that held and held.

I lasted two more thrusts. Her pussy was still pulsing in aftershocks and everything was slick and tight and I grabbed her hips and pushed up and the heat spread inside her and the red light was on the ceiling and her hair was in my face and I stopped breathing for a second.

She stayed on me for maybe ten seconds. Her forehead against my neck. Both of us breathing hard. The room smelled like chemicals and sex and the red light hummed. Then she climbed off. Pulled her underwear back into place. Found her tank top on the bed and put it on. Went back to the desk. Her print was in the fixer tray and she held it up to the red light and examined it. A photograph. A self-portrait, shot from the waist up, her face turned three-quarters. In the red light I couldn't tell what the real tones would look like.

"Did it overdevelop?" I asked.

"Barely." She clipped it to the clothesline with a wooden pin. Her fingers were steady. Mine weren't. "It'll be fine. Little extra contrast never hurt."

I pulled my shorts up. Sat on her bed and watched her work. She moved the next strip of film into position and her hands were precise and unhurried and she was humming under her breath. Not a song. Just a sound. She was back in the work and the break was over and I was still catching my breath on her unmade bed in the red light.

"You can stay for a minute," she said. She didn't look at me. "But don't talk. And don't touch anything that's developing."

I stayed. Her hands moved through the trays and her face in the safelight was focused and her mouth was slightly open and she was developing photographs ten feet from the bed where she'd just fucked me and the red light made all of it look like it was happening somewhere else. The print on the clothesline dripped developer onto a towel she'd put on the floor. Another print was going into the stop bath. Her fingers moved with the same precision they'd used on my cock five minutes ago.

She clipped the second print up. Studied it. Tilted her head. Moved a hair off her face with the back of her wrist because her fingers were wet.

"That one's good," she said. To herself. To the room.

I sat for another minute. The chemical smell was settling into my clothes. The red light was in my eyes and everything outside this room would look wrong for a while.

I sat for five minutes. Then I stood up. Walked to the door.

"Close it fast," she said. "You're letting in white light."

I stepped out. Closed the door. The hallway was dark and normal and the light under her door was red again and the smell of fixer solution was on my skin and my shirt and I stood in the hallway and breathed.

Debbie's door was closed. The house was quiet. A clock somewhere was ticking. My hands still smelled like Jenny's chemicals and my legs were still shaking and the red light was still behind my eyes.

I went to my room. Lay on my bed. Stared at the ceiling.

The popcorn texture. Same ceiling as every night. My body was cooling down and the room was dark and normal and the red was fading from behind my eyelids. Jenny's hands in the chemical tray. Her hips in the red light. Going back to work like I was a commercial break.

Twice in two days. Neither time lasted more than ten minutes. Both times she'd decided when it started and when it ended and what happened after. In the bathroom she stole my toothbrush. In the darkroom she went back to developing prints. Jenny treated sex like a snack. Necessary, enjoyable, over in a few minutes.

I was a coffee break.

I fell asleep smiling.