Notes: for the prompts Beckett/female college friend, discovery, comfort, rough, regret at a kink meme over at LJ. Contains an original female character.

i. the adult version of playing with dolls.

Alice extends the invitation in your empty dorm room, fingering the gap in the paint left by her Radiohead poster. You lean back against your packed suitcase and watch her raise herself on tip toes to peel off the last of the adhesive. She shakes her head, displeased with the state of the paint, and you watch the ends of her hair tease at the small of her back. Indulging in some idle voyeurism, you let your gaze shift to her hand, tucked into the back pocket of her denim cut-offs.

She gives you a coy look. "Are you imagining me in a swimsuit Katie B?"

You smirk. "I don't have to imagine."

"You're right." Ali beams at you. "Because you're going to keep me company while my parents are in Europe; house to ourselves, my parents' top shelf liquor, lounging by the pool." She's stepping closer to you as she speaks and finishes blinking up at you as she wraps her arms around your neck. "My gorgeous best friend. Ah," she sighs. "The perfect way to spend a summer."

Alice is the kind of girl that makes you notwant to say I'll have to ask my parentsso you don't; you just step side-to-side, complicit in her excited dance, and smile right back at her.

Six weeks later, she empties the opaque black plastic bag onto the bed of her parents' guest room as she collapses onto it, bouncing a little on the mattress. You pause in the doorway and watch her. She throws you a lookand shifts as she rolls her eyes, shifting her hips and stretching out one incredibly bare leg.

"Don't tell me you're stillweirdly repressed and embarrassed about this." She rolls her shoulders back, pointedly slow, and you try to ignore the way her chest moves and her nipples tense beneath her tank top. The way she eyes you tells you you're meant to notice, that she's teasing in more ways than one. "I mean, we've already gone and done the potentially awkward public part."

"I'm not a prude Ali." You fold your arms and lean against the doorframe.

"Then stop scowling at me and get over here." She gestures enthusiastically to the space beside her and begins unwrapping one of her purchases. "For the fun part," she adds, cheekily, as you settle cross-legged in front of her.

"I can't believe you bought this in pink," you say, pressing the buttons on 'the rabbit' she bought on the recommendation of Sex and the City. You flick through the settings, smirking a little at its many and varied functions.

"I genuinely like pink." She pouts at you and pokes you with the small, simpler bullet you decided to buy. It's black and … practical looking. (Besides, it was inexpensive and since you've been getting along fine with your own two hands for years now, you figured a costly experiment was unnecessary.)

"I'm just saying, if you wanted to be less of a sorority girl cliché, this is not the way."

She's saved from responding by the blur of ears as you find the highest speed setting. You fumble to turn it off and as soon as you do, Ali giggles and you follow suit.

"Oh my god." She leans forward to lay her hand over yours and the pink rabbit. Her thumb finds the bones of your wrist and then neither of you are laughing.

"Seems like overkill," you say, for something to say.

She nods, leans forward and –

You don't kiss her but she's staring at you like maybe she wants to kiss you, like she wants you to kiss her. The moment stretches – her hovering over you, you debating internally – and it's on the verge of awkward when finally, she lowers her lips to your ear and says, "Maybe we should find out."

You abandon your grip on the rabbit in favour of gripping at her hip and lean up into her mouth. The last time you kissed her she tasted of beer and you were too drunk to care: this time her tongue is precise in your mouth and she finishes with her teeth teasing at your lip. When she pulls back to smirk down at you, straddling your thighs, you decide it's time to regain the upper hand.

Ali has always had a certain power over you – she's gorgeous and loud and a tease – but in bed? You've never been one to submit. And you know that when it comes to this, you have more than experience on your side.

(Ali wantsthis, wantsyou and you've known it for months.)

You run your hand up the front of her shirt, stopping to thumb over her breast. Leading with your nails you reach her neck, draw her down to your mouth. She closes her eyes when she kisses, which you know because you watch her, and you wait until she's groaning against your tongue to roll her sideways.

When you have her pinned against the mattress, your knee pressed against the seam of those ridiculous denim cut-offs, it's your turn to smirk at the way she responds. This is your favourite lesson from your first year of college and it's why you've developed a bit of a taste for lights-on sex: partners respond to you when you take control and you like the shift in their expression, like the way your dominance can excite them. There's a thrill in it that you've chased since you discovered it and you feel it now, when Ali arches into you.

She opens her mouth – to breathe or to speak you don't know – but you kiss her before she can do either.

Her palms are warm against your thighs.

"This is going to have to go," you whisper firmly against the corner of her mouth, tugging at the hem of her shirt. She nods and you pull back, silent in a mutual fumble with her clothing until she's half-naked beneath you and gasping at the contrast of your teeth to your tongue against her nipple.

Her thighs tense around your leg and her hips rock into it when you trace her ribs with your nails.

"You're right," you say, when you've mouthed your way back up to her lips. It's mostly muted by the kiss you press against them. But you pull back properly to finish the sentiment: "We should test our purchases."

She groans at the thought, eyes closed and one arm curled behind her head, her whole body tensing between yours which makes it even sweeter when you extract yourself from her in one fluid movement and watch her go slack with confusion.

"Kate, what are you –"

The question stalls when you undo the first button on your shirt. "I want to play with this," you say, popping a button for every word until your shirt is undone and you're twisting the black bullet back and forth in your hands.

Ali starts forward but you shake your head. "No," you scold. "You stay there."

She tries her usual pout. "Where's the fun in that for me?"

You unclasp your bra and throw it free of the bed, watching her eyes on your fingers as you bring them back to tease at your own chest. The smile you reward her with is sweet. "You get to watch."

And she does watch, intently, as you divest yourself of the rest of your clothes matter-of-factly and position yourself back on the bed. Your desire to touch yourself is greater than your desire to tease her further, so you do, teeth digging into your lip as you watch Ali's face.

You're already wet and you rub the hard of your palm up against it, smearing your hand so it slips against your clit when you fuck yourself with your fingers.

It's Ali who moans, like she's trying to pretend that she doesn't know it's what you need but also, a little bit like she means it. And that's why it works, and you know you could grind against your hand twice and come.

You don't, because you want to draw it out.

You flex your wrist so there's no pressure on your clit and curl your fingers without moving them inside you. With your free hand, you gesture for Ali to come closer. She crawls forward until you stop her with your palm, stroking the side of her face.

"Don't touch," you instruct, holding her eyes until she nods.

Your fingers are wet when you pull them free and you hold them out to her mouth. The flat of her tongue is rough until she sucks on them and then her mouth is warm and soft and even wetter than your hand. You have an impulse, a tender urge to brush the angle of her jaw with your thumb, but you don't. Instead you grope for the bullet with your free hand, manage to twist it on.

The hum of it catches her attention but Ali doesn't stop with the insistent and deft movements of her tongue.

(Just for a moment, before you press it inside you, her tongue makes you you regret the toys, regret the game.)

The sensation is pleasurable but not overwhelming when you move the bullet in and out. Ali releases your fingers from her mouth and sits back, sprawled on the bed and eye level with your cunt, eyes fixed on the repetitive motion. Her hands are toying with the zip of her shorts and that's what youreyes are fixed on.

Your orgasm builds and you become fixated on the thought of working your hand into the front of her pants and feeling how much she wants you until it's unbearable to deny yourself. The vibrator isoverwhelming when you move it to press against your clit. It shudders and you shudder and you barely move it twice before you collapse forward, into the mattress and Ali, moaning in surprise at the intensity of it.

When she moves beneath you, you realise your mouth is pressed wet against her stomach. You lift her chin and give her a predatory smile, forcing your lax limbs into climbing her body until you can whisper it in her ear: "You were right. I think this thing was a solid investment."

She shivers. You watch it creep down her chest.

"But there's always the old-fashioned way."

You reach down and palm your way into the front of the denim cut-offs she is slick beneath your hand.

The discovery has you smiling like you've won something, which is exactly how you like it.

(Ali likes it too. She cries out when you move your hand.)