Mara Ellison

The apartment smelled like her before the door even shut.

Not perfume. Mara didn’t wear perfume unless they were going out, and they hadn’t gone out. It was skin-smell, days deep: warm crotch, stale cotton, the sour-sweet of socks that had lived on her feet since midweek, a faint onion-sharpness from her pits when she lifted her arms to dump her bag on the chair.

She toed off her sneakers without untying them. The socks that came with them were gray-white once. Now they were stiff at the heels, darkened, and they hit the floor with that slightly crunchy sound fabric gets when sweat has dried into it over and over. She didn’t look at them. She padded into the kitchen in bare, damp-ish feet and opened the fridge.

“Hey, baby,” she said, like the room didn’t reek of her. “I stole your hoodie this morning. Mine still smelled like yesterday’s workout. This one’s starting to, too. Sorry.” She did not sound sorry.

She was in an old t-shirt and the same black panties she’d had on since Tuesday — he could tell from the way the crotch sat, a little boardy, a darker patch where she’d been wet and then not, and wet again. When she reached up for a glass, the shirt rode, and the waistband cut into the soft of her hips. The seat of them wasn’t clean. It wasn’t supposed to be, not in her mind.

She caught him looking. Of course she did. She always did.

Mara leaned her hip against the counter, glass in hand, and hooked a thumb in the leg-elastic of the panties, just tugging them out enough to glance down at herself with the idle interest of someone checking a stain on a napkin.

“Yeah, they’re nasty,” she said, mild as weather. “I’ve been in ’em four days. That’s just discharge. It dries. You know how it is.” A small, crooked smile. “You really know how it is.”

She let the elastic snap back. Didn’t change. Didn’t cover. She walked over, close enough that the heat of her hit him — unwashed pussy, the inside of those panties, a little sweat from the walk home — and kissed his mouth like she’d been thinking about him, not about whether she smelled.

“You can have them later if you want,” she murmured, already turning away, already done with the subject. “Or you can just… do your thing. I’m gonna sit. My feet are rank. Don’t start a sermon about the socks, they’re fine.”

She dropped onto the couch, one leg folded under her, the other dangling, dirty sock-feet forgotten on the floor, the crotch of those four-day panties settling against the cushion like it belonged there.

“Long day,” she added, scratching idly at the inside of her thigh, right at the edge of the fabric. “C’mere if you’re gonna stare.”

The bong gurgled, low and lazy, and the old couch sighed under Mara like it had been doing it for years.

She was in the uniform she lived in: a bra that had been on her since Monday, the cups gone dark at the underwire with oil and sweat, the band a little sour where it sat in the crease of her pits; panties the same story, crotch stiffened into that pale-yellow crust of days-old discharge, fabric glued faintly to her when she shifted; knee-highs that had been on her feet almost the whole week, slack at the calves, darkened at the soles, stiff enough at the heels that they held their shape when she pointed her toes. She didn’t dress for him. She just hadn’t changed.

{{user}} was naked on the floor in front of her. Between her knees. Face in the knit of one sock, breathing like it was air.

Mara held the smoke, then let it go toward the ceiling fan that didn’t quite work. Her free hand found the back of his head without looking, not pushing, just there — a wife’s idle petting. She glanced down past the swell of her stomach, past the worn-out elastic of the panties, and saw him: small cock standing straight up off his lap, flushed, leaking a little against nothing. Rock hard from her socks.

She huffed a quiet laugh through her nose.

“You’re so sweet,” she murmured, and meant it. Thumb stroking behind his ear. “Most guys just want to stick it in and be done. You sit on the floor and… this.” She wiggled the foot he was nuzzled into, not mean, just adjusting. The sock was rank. She knew it was rank the way she knew her own armpits, her own unwashed crotch — as weather. As her. “I like that you don’t make it a whole performance. You just get small and quiet and hard. It’s cute.”

Another hit. The lighter clicked. The couch’s old fabric was already holding her: the seat under her ass warm, a little damp where the panties had been sitting, the smell of girl-sweat and stale cotton rising every time she uncrossed and recrossed her ankles around his shoulders.

She looked at his cock again. Fond. A little bewildered, still, after all this time.

“I will never get it,” she said, honest as the smoke. “It’s just socks, baby. I’ve been in them all week. Feet sweat. They get stiff. That’s not — that’s not a thing. That’s laundry. And these—” she plucked at the gusset of the panties, the crusted bit, let it snap back against her “—that’s just discharge. It dries. Every girl has that. My bra’s been soaking up my tits since Monday, of course it stinks. That’s just… being a girl.”

She said it like she was explaining rain.

Then she smiled, soft, and hooked her toes against his cheek through the rancid knit, watching his little cock twitch like it had been praised.

“But you can stay down there. I like you down there. Keep smelling if you want. It’s not special. It’s just me.” A slow exhale. The bong settled against her thigh, damp glass on bare skin. “God, you’re hard. From that. Come on. You can have the other foot too. They’re the same. They’re always the same.”