this is Beth's fault

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

Claire didn't have affairs anymore.

Claire didn't have affairs anymore, but then again Claire never really had affairs. Claire had sex. Plenty of it – with many people, all while in one relationship, or at least something pretending to be. Many of her boyfriends (except for Alex, Mark and Patrick the word 'lover' never did apply) just hadn't cared. Trick hadn't known. Alex had taken advantage of it. Mark accepted it as just a part of Claire being who she was. But Geraint – not boyfriend or lover but husband, a class all his own – didn't take advantage or accept it, and Claire wasn't about to lie. So Claire wasn't quite having as much varied sex as she was used to.

Usually, that was okay. Sometimes, she got bored. Often, she got lonely. Claire, sore and tired and yet never unhappy with her pregnancy, had found herself more craving a gentle touch and a string of affectionate whispers than anything sexual. Sure, she still wanted sex, but there was a sudden strong desire for something more, and something constant.

A Seattle fashion editor wasn't really where she expected to find the pieces that would fill her holes. But Anthea – Aphrodite was the name she couldn't call her, and it wasn't the name she printed under anyway, so why did it matter? – she knew desire better than anyone else except perhaps for Fire. It was the nature of her magic and the nature of her, as a person.

Claire didn't have sex with her. Not even close, at first. She wouldn't. She didn't swing that way, and she was really trying to keep to this 'monogamy' thing. She told herself that over and over and over, as she began to spend more and more time with Anthea. (Not Aphrodite. She was a person, not a myth. Claire wouldn't be intimidated like that.) Anthea, who knew everything it was Claire desired. She held her and talked to her and laughed with her and gave her constant focus – whenever they were together, everything was about Claire. Claire wasn't just at the center of her universe, she was her entire one. Geraint never gave her that. His mind was at least partly on Newhaven; Claire was never everything all at once. She and her precious unborn baby were everything to Anthea.

"Even when you're not with me you're always in my mind," she would whisper in Claire's ear as she riddled her neck with gentle kisses.

(It was what Claire wanted to hear, and she knew it.)

"Yeah," Claire agreed, realizing it was true on her part as well.

Aphrodite had wanted to seduce her at first, maybe, but this was better. This was what Claire truly wanted – and actually liking her, as a person as well as a concept, 'Dite was proud to let her feel whatever it was. And wht Claire truly wanted, truly needed, was undistracted, pure, devoted love and attention.

Maybe the love she gave Claire wasn't romantic, but it was every other kind. Friendly and familial and close and mutual and trusting and even somewhat sexual, though that came as a surprise to Claire. She stopped it before it went too far, no matter how much it hurt to do so, because she had fooled herself into thinking she was still being monogamous.

Everything else, though, stayed, and the heavy sexual tension never stopped lingering there.

So, Claire thought, I guess this is an affair.

First time for everything.