Chapter Text
I was surveying the damage done by Shatterbird in my territory along with my lieutenants, Sierra and Charlotte. It was exhausting and depressing work, combing through building after building with flooring scuffed and mutilated by the glass explosions that had rocked the city, but somebody needed to do it. People were hurt, too.
We were entering the 2nd floor of what felt like the 700th building, an old neoclassical office building that had been converted to a hipster, "bohemian" apartment complex. The kind of place that Lisa would like. Up a beautiful marble staircase, I caught a glimpse of it through an ornate door frame. A gorgeous floor, perfectly aligned rows of polished square-cut tiling in a repeating dark grey and white pattern - it nearly took my breath away. Glass damage appeared to be minimal - the windows were tiny and high up on the walls, a small blessing. This floor had had a lover, judging by its immaculate upkeep despite the state of ruin and decay the city as a whole found itself in, and I needed a private moment with it.
I turned to Sierra and Charlotte. "Guys, move onto the next building please, I'll be keeping an eye out with my bugs there. I want to check something out here for a bit."
"What is it?" Charlotte asked, clearly a bit worried that I was planning on starting - or finding - more trouble.
"Don't worry," I smiled back at her, then realized that the smile would not at all translate through my full-face mask. "Nothing's wrong, I just want to make sure of something. Superhero work. Or villain work. Which one am I again?" I asked, transfixed on the floor and barely able to think straight.
"Villain, I think," replied Sierra.
"I think the whole thing is an allegory for how the lines between good and evil are often blurred beyond recognition, and that sometimes good intentions lead down a path of ruthlessness and moral grey areas that can often be perceived as villainy. Take, for instance, your membership in the Undersi-" Charlotte began.
"Yes, yes, that. Thank you both," I replied, cutting off Charlotte. "I'll see you in the next building, okay?"
They both shot me a weird look - Charlotte concerned, Sierra skeptical - but finally left me alone with the floor after a few more moments.
I couldn't resist my urges any longer - it had been a while since I had gotten any action for myself. I had had a wonderful, private moment with a beautifully polished aged wood floor in the Brockton Bay Central Bank, but circumstances then had restricted it to the flooring equivalent of a quick peck on the cheek. Since then, my life had been work nonstop, going from one crisis to the next, with barely a moment to cast my eyes down at the floor, except when trying to get my footing or avoiding stepping on sharp things. Never for pleasure. I deserved this, and this floor did too.
It was a good thing I was trisexual, because I wasn't sure what gender this floor was - ceramic or porcelain- and I was too impatient to ask. I got right down to business, slowly caressing my feet against its smooth, solid surface, enjoying every inch. I was hypnotized by the straight, even lines of grout between tiles, clearly laid with care by a master of their craft.
The pièce de résistance (Latin for "piece of resistance") was in the corner of the room, where a rusted pipe came up through the floor at an odd angle, disrupting the neat, orderly tiling pattern. Here an amateur craftsman would have hacked through virgin, untouched floor tiles and crammed them in however was convenient, ruining the pattern work, or even worse, lazily filling the whole corner with grout, leaving the rest of the floor aching to join its tiled brethren. It was sufficiently common for Taylor (I tended to switch to the 3rd person when sufficiently aroused) to see, and it broke her (my) heart every time.
The artist responsible for this floor, however, had committed no such atrocities. Four smooth diagonal cuts in four tiles, each expertly and carefully made, surrounded the pipe on all sides, with neat and tidy grout work connecting the four triangular tiles, each continuing the square tile unimpeded past the pipe. I couldn't stand this foreplay any longer - I slowly sauntered into the corner, trying my best to look sexy while still enjoying each and every cloudlike step on this work of art, and crouched down next to the pipe.
I didn't like being this forward on the first date - I thought of myself as a classy girl, not some skank who fell to her knees at the first sight of a parquet - but I was pretty touch starved. Brockton Bay had a lot of shitty contractors, and the water damage wrought by Leviathan had been a disaster to the flooring of the city. Probably other stuff too, but I was mainly concerned with the flooring.
No time like the present. I began slowly running my gloved right hand all around the tiling at the base of pipe, enjoying its grooves and peaks, exploring every inch. I slipped my glove off and enjoyed the skin-to-tile contact - fuck I was a slut. My left hand was feeling pretty lonely, too. I gently ran it all over my body, starting from my head and hair, down to my neck and chest, emulating the strong grasp of a floor that would never be able to hold me in its arms unassisted, one of the tragedies of life. My left hand started to wander with a mind of its own, lower and lower~~
Until my hand stopped at my knees, enjoying the strong support that this flooring gave them and the masterfully aligned and leveled tile work. I was getting close(r to the floor) and it was time for my secret weapon. I called in all the bugs I had scattered around me, and they all at once flooded the room, feeling the tops of tiles, their precisely cut edges, the smooth grout work in between. The sensory feedback was like a lightning bolt through my body. I fell on my back - scandalous! - and sloooowly ran all my limbs back and forth and back and forth on the floor while my bugs overwhelmed my senses, sending me sensory info on every single inch of the floor at once. Sure, I was more well-endowed than most girls, but I was simply using what Nature and a parasitic, space-bourne brain worm gave me. I didn't remember if I was supposed to know that at this point in the story, but my brain was too tile-enamored to care.
I felt the warm waves of relief roll over my body as the floor and I became one. I drifted off, letting my eyes relax for the first time in what felt like ages, the union between girl and tile being consummated.