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It comes up at dinner when Peter is making a joke—at least Mantis thinks it’s a joke—about kicking someone’s groin to escape a heist gone wrong. He snickers over his post-dinner Tarkalean tea, and Drax starts the same boisterous laugh that makes Mantis smile even when he’s too loud for her.
“A kick to the groin!” Drax says. “Not honorable, but effective!”
“Ball shot,” scoffs Rocket over the remains of his curry. “Real classy.”
“I must try it the next time this one”—he points to Nebula—“blocks me from accessing the command hub.”
Mantis glances at Nebula and winces on her behalf. Nebula, on her end, seems unphased. The Guardians have just finished dinner at their usual table in the back of Knowhere’s central cantina, and most have finished eating. Nebula has never had the largest appetite, and it shows now. She hunches with her elbows on the table and stirs the remaining mushy rice on her plate with a spoon. She grants Drax a snort but not a glance.
“Drax,” Mantis says, “I don’t think it’s the same situation for girls—”
“Her female balls, then,” Drax says dismissively.
“Lady balls,” adds Peter, eying Nebula as if she may actually have them. “Balls of steel, though, if we’re talking about Nebula.”
“I am Groot.”
“No, not literally,” says Rocket, “although I could put together a prototype. Some protection down there could probably come in handy.”
“Don’t bother,” says Nebula. She lifts her eyes to Rocket for just a moment, and one side of her lips quirks up. “There’s nothing to kick.”
Nebula returns to stirring her food, and the boys crack up, thinking Nebula’s talk is all swagger. Only Rocket seems to pause. Mantis looks between him and Nebula, wondering for the umpteenth time what secrets those two shared with one another in the five years that the other Guardians were wiped from existence. From Mantis’s perspective, one day Nebula had shoved aside “that damn rodent” to reach part of the ship, and the next day, she and Rocket were handing tools to one another like they spoke a secret language. It was bizarre to think about, even though Mantis appreciated that Nebula had warmed up to at least one of the Guardians.
So, with Rocket looking briefly perturbed about Nebula’s latest comment, Mantis imagines he hears something in her words that the others don’t. She wonders what it is. Not because she’s nosy, she reminds herself. Not because Nebula is the most difficult of the Guardians to read. Not because even her stomping has a sway to it that Mantis has caught herself watching when she’s supposed to be painting the exterior of Knowhere’s old shops. No, Mantis is just…concerned.
Perhaps she doesn’t need to be concerned, anyway. All species’ bodies differ, and Mantis has never met someone like Nebula, whether in appearance or personality. What gives her pause is that in terms of reproduction, most sexually dimorphic species share the same traits: penis, uterus, and the accommodating systems that make each one work. It’s the same reason that so many species have two eyes or opposable thumbs—the traits evolved randomly and worked well enough. Most females in these dimorphic species have no external gonads, so in a literal sense, Nebula most likely doesn’t have “lady balls.” But females in these species have some bundle of nerve endings that can’t withstand a kick. A clitoris, or something similar.
The conversation simmers down after a few minutes, and one by one, everyone starts making excuses to return to their living quarters. Mantis waits until Nebula has left, then excuses herself at the same time as Rocket.
“Rocket,” she calls once they’re outside the restaurant. He turns to look at her.
“You want something?”
Mantis steps as close to him as she can and—as always—resists the urge to kneel down and talk to him like the small animal he is. She hopes her voice is inconspicuous. “What did Nebula mean just then?”
Rocket blinks up at her. “I dunno what you mean.”
“She said…well,” Mantis says, hoping that Rocket will fill in her blank. He doesn’t. “She said there’s nothing to kick. That was just slang, right?”
“Sure.”
“Because you weren’t laughing.”
“Wasn’t funny.”
“The others seemed to think so.”
Rocket sighs and runs a tiny hand down his snout. “Look,” he says. “I don’t know what kinds of conversations you think Nebs and I got up to during the Blip. We definitely didn’t go there. But based on where we did go… Well, I can make a guess.”
Mantis thinks of Nebula’s assorted cybernetic parts. She knows the cruel basics. Every time Nebula lost a spar to Gamora, Thanos saw fit to replace whichever part of her he thought had caused the loss. Fortunately, Rocket has given her upgrades and created a frankly astounding prosthetic left arm that can turn into any shape Nebula can think of. Still, the necessity of those prosthetics turns Mantis’s stomach when she thinks about it too hard.
“You don’t think…?” Mantis says. She doesn’t want to finish the thought.
“Why’re you asking me?” Rocket says. “I told you, I don’t know.” He looks away. “I just have a guess.”
Rocket nods goodnight and scampers down the street to catch up with Groot.
Mantis swallows and walks to her quarters. First, she tells herself, Thanos couldn’t be so cruel as to remove such a delicate area. Nebula’s bodily autonomy has been violated countless times, but Thanos’s interference in that…particular area would be humiliating on top of cruel. Second, what business is it of Mantis’s?
It’s not her business, she reminds herself, but she can’t stop thinking about the possibility of Nebula losing parts of herself that Mantis still feels uncomfortable naming. If Nebula were really changed in that way, when would it have happened? Why? Would she have had any chance to know what she was losing?
Mantis has learned recently about her own desire. When she lived on Ego, she feared doing anything in her bed but sleep. Ego was everywhere, and he would know whatever she chose to do. Even if he didn’t notice, he was near enough that Mantis never let herself relax enough to even think about self-pleasure. But here, on Knowhere, with her own private quarters and friendly-enough faces outside her door, Mantis relaxed increment by increment, until one night she allowed one hand below her waistband.
At first, she was only curious about the sensation. She’d felt her heartbeat pulse between her legs enough times to know she experienced arousal; she’d just chosen to let it die out on its own. That night, for the first time, she allowed herself to find the source of that ache.
Lying under her blankets, she took a few shallow breaths and moved her hand deeper, deeper down. She located the nub further down than she’d expected. She grazed it with one finger, expecting a moan to come out of her mouth like in the pornography she’d been exposed to on Ego’s trips to seedier parts of the galaxy. No moan came, but her breath caught, and a small heat began to gather low in her stomach.
As she stroked the nub and played with the sensations, her thoughts became fuzzy. She’d begun her exploration with her eyes open, but her eyelids drooped to half-mast. She let herself imagine for a brief moment that she wasn’t touching herself but rather being touched. Someone else’s finger was exploring her, holding apart her labia, watching her nub redden and swell with each stroke.
By this point, the heartbeat between her legs had turned into a throb, and she let her fingers stray for a moment to feel herself deeper. Her fingers came back slick with a substance she knew she could produce—she found it on occasion when she relieved herself in the morning—but hadn’t yet used. She brought the slick finger up to her nub again, and the frictionless glide of skin on skin made her sigh.
Maybe her imaginary partner would be pleased to see how wet she was. She swallowed and let herself think for a moment that she was wet for this partner. As her breath came faster, the hand not under her waistband came to rest beside her head on her pillow and brush against her antenna. She gave the antenna a stroke and let out a shuddering breath. The two sensations combined, one wet and warm and one soft and cool, quieted her mind until all she could experience was her touch.
She wet a second finger and rubbed the two in circles, catching the tip of the nub with each rotation. Her head dipped further back into her pillow, and her lips parted without her permission. They felt as swollen and red as her labia probably were, and she ran her teeth over her bottom lip to confirm it.
She couldn’t remember when her eyes had fully closed. She slipped deeper into fantasy and imagined cool blue fingers between her folds, a metallic palm on her inner thigh, eyes watching her dark and glassy and intent, and—
By the time she realized who she was imagining, it was too late. Her legs hitched, her back arched, and she whimpered through a series of convulsions that rippled from her antennae to her toes. She fell limp into her mattress and, for a few precious minutes, had not one thought at all.
Her breathing began to slow, and then it hitched. She remembered the partner she’d summoned for herself, the image that had pushed her over the edge.
Nebula.
Mantis swallows and raps on the door. This isn’t her business, she scolds herself. This isn’t her business. But her concern won’t leave her alone.
Nebula answers. She’s in her usual skintight uniform, and the only sign that she’s relaxing is that she’s taken her boots off. When she sees Mantis, she leans one arm against the doorframe and holds the door open with her other hand. “What.”
“Hi, Nebula. I…” Mantis feels her face heat up. She’d been so wrapped up in her own thoughts, ping-ponging between the tentative thrill of her own sexuality and the horror that Nebula may not have that same option, that she hadn’t rehearsed what she was going to say. She’d barely processed that she was approaching Nebula’s door instead of her own.
Nebula looks her up and down and seems to sense something in her discomfort. She grunts, tilts her head back, and retreats into her quarters. Mantis catches the door before it swings shut, steps inside, and takes off her shoes.
It doesn’t surprise her that Nebula keeps such a sparse setup, although it saddens her for reasons she can’t quite name. A few packs on the floor stand up by themselves in the entryway, probably filled with supplies in case Nebula needs to leave at a moment’s notice. Her combination kitchenette/sitting area to the right has enough supplies for one: one cup, one spoon, one pot. The only exception is that her round table has two chairs. To the left, most of her sleeping area is occupied by a twin bed. A single chair at the head of the bed and a wardrobe at the foot make up the remainder of her furniture. The walls are metallic and bare. Her bedding is a standard gray.
Nebula sits herself at the table, her back to the kitchenette, and nudges the second chair out with one foot. Mantis takes the cue to sit to Nebula’s right, facing her flesh arm rather than her prosthetic.
Mantis folds her hands in front of her on the table and wishes she could wrap her hands around something. Nebula, seeming to notice, stands up abruptly to pour some water into her one mug. It’s green, Mantis notices with a spark of pleasure, like grass. No, like the sheen of a beetle. Nebula places the cup in front of Mantis.
“Thank you,” Mantis says, taking the cup into her hands.
Nebula grunts.
Mantis sips politely, and the two sit in silence. Nebula does her the dignity of not staring at her, but she looks at the frosted window while keeping Mantis at the corner of her eye. Mantis tries not to choke.
“At dinner,” she starts, and then stops herself.
“What about it.”
“Well, the boys were talking about, um, genitalia—”
Nebula snorts.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Nebula turns to properly look at her. “It just figures that you’d have a hard time saying it.”
“Well, how would you describe it?” Mantis’s face warms even further.
“Ball shots, just like Rocket said.”
“Right. So they were talking about that, and Drax was saying he should do it to you—and I’m sorry about that, by the way, I keep trying to tell him he should stop using other people as examples, but he—”
“Is that why you’re here?” Nebula leans back in her chair, unimpressed.
“No?”
“You apologize for him a lot. He’s not your responsibility.”
“He’s my friend,” says Nebula petulantly. “And that’s not the point, anyway. You were saying that you…um, didn’t have anything to kick.”
Nebula stays still.
Mantis swallows. “What did you mean?”
Nebula looks down at the table, as if there were a pattern there to analyze beyond the grain of the wood. Nothing changes about her, not her breathing or her pose, but Mantis senses a darkness that she doesn’t need her power to understand.
“You know my history with Thanos,” Nebula says. Her voice is even, but the words come out on top of one another like she’s trying to exorcise them. “He took what he saw as weak.”
Mantis’s stomach sinks. “But he couldn’t possibly think that…”
“That my clitoris would make me weak?” Nebula’s shoulders jerk in a silent scoff. “Gamora got in one good shot. That was all it took.”
“Oh, Nebula.”
“It’s fine,” Nebula says, half an octave lower. “I don’t miss it.”
Mantis feels the question leaving her lips and tries to soften it as much as she can. “If you don’t mind me asking, did you ever get a chance to…try it? Use it?”
Nebula glances up at her, and Mantis senses that she’s trying to decide whether she’s offended by the question. Her eyes return to the invisible pattern on the table, and she hunches like she had at dinner. “I didn’t think about it. Only the night before the surgery. But I was so focused on how I lost to Gamora again, and failed Thanos again. Masturbation felt like the last priority.”
Somewhere amid the horror and sorrow on Nebula’s behalf, Mantis admires her ability to speak so plainly about herself. Mantis is only just becoming familiar with her body, let alone with naming what she’s doing to what parts. Maybe Nebula’s nonchalance about sexual terminology is because it feels so distant from herself.
“And you don’t experience any attraction?” asks Mantis. “Is that standard for your species?”
“Why do you want to know?”
It’s a fair question. Mantis presses her lips together, begging herself not to blurt out whatever comes to mind first. Unfortunately, nothing comes to mind at all.
“Well?” Nebula’s voice takes on a tinge of irritation.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Mantis says softly.
“Then what did you mean?” Nebula takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, and Mantis recognizes that she’s trying to calm herself before her emotions take her any further. “It’s not anything the boys asked me. Is this girl talk?” Her gaze snaps to Mantis suspiciously.
“How would I know? I didn’t get to talk to many girls.”
“Ego didn’t have girlfriends over?”
“Ego mostly kept his…conquests off-planet. I was only invited when he had deals to make, or when he was restless.” Mantis’s thumb strokes the side of the mug.
“Do you masturbate?”
Mantis blanches. “What?”
“That’s what you just asked me, isn’t it?”
“Not that directly.”
Nebula growls to herself and rubs a hand across her head implant as if it were hair. “I’m just trying to figure out why you care about this. No one has ever asked me before.”
“How many times has it come up before?”
“Not often.”
Mantis nods.
“Is this pity?”
“No!” Mantis says, then catches herself. “At least, I don’t think it is. I’m sad for you, at least. It’d be one thing if you just didn’t have a…anything like that—”
“A clitoris.” Nebula almost sounds amused.
“Yes, a clitoris,” Mantis forces herself to say. “Or if your species were asexual, or anything like that. But it sounds like Thanos took a very special part of you that he had no right to take.”
“Like my arm?” Nebula asks, deadpan. “Like my eye?”
“Those too, but a clitoris is different. He didn’t just take something you use, he took away something that wouldn’t have done any harm except for that one kick from Gamora. It was a kick, right?” Nebula nods. “He took away your chance for pleasure, your choice to have children—”
“No, he didn’t.”
Mantis blinks.
“He said my reproductive system could have its uses. That stayed. It was just the clitoris.”
Mantis’s lips part. “I…I’m so sorry, Nebula. Not in a pity way,” she hastens to add, “but in the way that I’m horrified that someone thought that way about you. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You don’t have to.” At Mantis’s confused silence, Nebula nods up to her antennae. “You could prove it if you wanted to.”
Mantis takes a hand off her mug and hesitantly reaches out for Nebula’s arm. Instantly, Nebula has her wrist in a vice.
“That wasn’t an invitation.”
“Maybe I have an invitation.”
Mantis processes the words after she says them. Her face, which had cooled during their conversation, flares in heat again. She hasn’t let herself acknowledge it, but she does have a reason to care about whether Nebula can experience attraction, doesn’t she? Every night she explores her body a little more, Nebula always comes to mind somehow. At first Mantis tried to push the images away of Nebula kneeling on her bed, Nebula lying pressed to her side, Nebula breathing in her ear…but they came back as she relaxed into her touch, and in recent days, she’s stopped fighting them.
The person before her isn’t the Nebula of her fantasies, but it is Nebula, looking suspicious and cautious at once. She hasn’t let go of Mantis’s wrist. “What is it?”
“Well…” Mantis swallows. “You’ve never gotten to experience what it’s like to. To masturbate. And you know I can share feelings.”
“I know you can change them.”
“And share them, too. Sometimes they come directly from me. And I do have a clitoris. And…well, if you wanted…”
“I could feel it through you.” Nebula stills for a moment, then frees Mantis’s wrist. Mantis snaps her hand back to the mug, holding it so close to her chest that she might crush it. Nebula has to be disgusted by the thought. Mantis has invaded her apartment like an infestation and asked Nebula to not only recall a painful loss but deal with Mantis’s own sexuality, the one she’s only just learning to navigate, one that Nebula almost certainly doesn’t want anything to do with.
“Are you sure you can?”
Mantis’s eyes raise to meet Nebula’s, which are boring into her like an X-ray. “I’m pretty sure. Not that I’ve tried before, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Nebula repeats. Her gaze stays trained on Mantis, but she looks far away, processing thoughts that Mantis can’t begin to guess. Mantis holds her breath.
“Show me.”
Mantis blanches. “Here?”
“Not here, but just…prove you can. Start small.” Nebula lifts her organic hand from the table and offers it, palm down. “You need to touch me, right?”
Mantis swallows. Does she need to touch Nebula? Now that it might be an option, the thought of her fingers sweeping across Nebula’s skin, blue as Neptune and probably just as cool, makes her dizzy. She then realizes that Nebula is referring to her power. “Yes,” she says belatedly, and extends her left hand to take Nebula’s. She rests their forearms on the table, and she drums the fingers of her right hand against her thigh before she realizes she’s doing it. She hopes Nebula doesn’t feel her hand trembling.
She takes a shaky breath and, with her exhale, connects herself through Nebula’s skin. She knows how to project calm even when she doesn’t feel it herself, and she does so now.
Nebula’s hand is stiff in hers, as if she thinks Mantis’s hand will crumble if she twitches. “Now what?”
Mantis drums her fingers once more before bringing them to her left arm. She traces the soft skin of her forearm, so light that it would tickle if it came from anyone but herself.
She shivers at the touch, and Nebula’s breath catches.
“You felt that?”
“Yes,” Nebula says distantly. After a moment, she shakes her head and straightens. “I guess you can after all.”
Mantis looks at Nebula with wide eyes, trying not to move. She feels less like she’s been caught by a predator and more like she’s approaching a scared Abilisk. If she can only stay calm, project calm, she can stay in its presence.
“So what’s the plan?” Nebula clears her throat. “Were you going to…”
“Oh! I, um…”
They look away from one another. Mantis steadies herself, then withdraws her hand and takes the leap. “It normally works best on a bed.”
Nebula nods and stands. Mantis hurries to stand too, and Nebula whisks past her to the sleeping area on the other side of her quarters. She picks up a single folded blanket from the chair beside her bed, places it in the closet, and plants herself in the chair. She manspreads as much as she can in the cramped space, as if steadying herself.
Mantis peeks into the sleeping area. “Your metal arm will be facing me.”
Nebula stares down at the bed to her left side, as if just realizing so herself. “Maybe I can turn the chair to face you.”
Mantis imagines them sitting somewhat face-to-face, with Nebula staring at her with those endlessly black eyes as Mantis touches herself. The image seemed so attractive in her head, but now Mantis only feels self-conscious. Besides, she would spend the whole time in an awkward handshake with the star of every one of her fantasies.
“You get on the bed too,” Mantis says. “Put your back against the headboard.”
Nebula does so silently. She sets the pillow on the chair she’d just occupied. Mantis eyes it and says, “Don’t you want it against your back?”
“I’ll manage.” Nebula has her legs stretched out and crossed in front of her, taking up half the length of the bed. “I can take off my socks if you want to grab my ankle.”
That isn’t the idea Mantis had in mind. “Spread your legs like you were doing.”
Nebula uncrosses her legs, and Mantis approaches.
“Wait,” Nebula says. “Aren’t you going to…?” She looks at Mantis’s legs questioningly.
Mantis looks down at her leggings. “Oh. I, um, usually keep them on. I’m just touching one small area.”
For the first time in this conversation, Nebula looks lost. “Ah.”
Mantis steels herself, sits on the bed, and gently slides Nebula’s thighs further apart until one of her legs is on the floor and the other leans against the wall. Then, tense and brittle, Mantis turns around and sits between Nebula’s legs.
She feels Nebula take a sharp breath through her nose. “Are you sure?” Nebula asks. Her voice, so near and so soft, sends goosebumps down the skin of Mantis’s neck. She hopes Nebula doesn’t see.
“I thought you might want something close to the real thing.” Never mind that this exact pose is one that Mantis imagined herself and Nebula in. In the fantasy, however, Nebula’s arms were wrapped around her waist, her chin was on Mantis’s shoulder, and her hands were the ones pulling Mantis’s legs gently apart.
Maybe one of the three can come true. “I use my right hand,” Mantis says. “Put yours on my stomach.”
Nebula does so much slower than Mantis would have anticipated. Her palm begins at Mantis’s waist and slides around and across her abdomen, as if she’s feeling out where she’s going—which of course she is, Mantis reminds herself. Nebula can’t see her left hand waiting at her stomach to hold Nebula’s. Nebula wouldn’t touch more of Mantis than she needs to.
Nebula’s hand covers Mantis’s. Her fingers rest in the divots between Mantis’s knuckles, and her thumb scrapes her palm once, fleetingly. Mantis thinks that the thumb alone, if Nebula keeps stroking, will be her ruin.
She takes as deep a breath as she can without pressing into Nebula. It’s hard to do when, with her right arm trapped under Nebula’s, she’s being embraced. She steels herself, tilts her hips slightly upward, slides her hand under her waistband, and dips a finger into her folds.
She’s already wet, she realizes with embarrassment.
“Did you already start?”
“Oh.” Mantis realizes that she hasn’t shared any of the sensation with Nebula. “Sorry.” She activates her power—turns herself on, she thinks, a giddy moment in the middle of a churning sea of nerves—and her antennae start to glow. She’s in no state to project calm right now, and so Nebula gets the full force of her emotions.
“You’re nervous,” Nebula whispers.
“Not just that.” Mantis gulps. “But yes.”
“We can stop if you want.”
“No. I want to.” Mantis swallows again at the admission.
Nebula leans her forehead against the back of Mantis’s scalp. Mantis can feel her sigh on the back of her neck. “Okay.”
Mantis gives herself a tentative stroke, and shivers course across her body from that one motion. Nebula’s breathing remains steady, but her chest expands wider with each breath.
“Alright?” Mantis asks.
Nebula nods her forehead up and down against Mantis’s head.
Mantis nods once herself and nudges the left side of the hood covering her clitoris. She likes to start here because it stirs her in a deeper way, as if other parts of her body are awakening. Her eyes are already halfway closed, and she tries her best to keep her head level. After all, she can’t lean back into Nebula in the same way that she can her pillow.
Still, as she gathers her slick and starts running little circles across her hood, she finds her spine melting into Nebula’s chest regardless. It’s a bit of a slouch, given that Nebula is literally breathing down her neck, but it allows her access to a surprisingly warm and supple body. Her left fingers curl around Nebula’s thumb, and she reminds herself that she’s transmitting as much as feeling. What she feels, Nebula can feel, and Nebula deserves to feel good.
She starts focusing on the right side of her clitoris, and her eyes fall closed for just a moment before she opens them partway again. She’s had little time to develop sexual fantasies, and she takes a moment’s thrill in acknowledging that one of them is happening so soon after she imagined it. Nebula isn’t pulling away. If anything, she’s—
Moving her head to rest her chin on Mantis’s shoulder, just like she imagined.
“You were leaning your head back,” Nebula says as Mantis does just that. She lolls her neck so the side of her head rests against Nebula’s.
Her mouth is next to her ear, and she murmurs, “Sorry. I usually do that.”
Nebula stays silent a moment before her grip on Mantis’s left hand firms. “Don’t be sorry.”
Mantis sighs and moves her fingers deeper between her legs. She hasn’t fingered herself—too much acrobatics for now—but she allows herself a moment to touch her entrance and stretch the thin skin. She could lie and say it’s habit, but really, she wants Nebula to feel good in a place she actually possesses. She presses her middle finger in to the first knuckle before trailing it all the way up through her labia to her waiting nub.
Her entire pelvis throbs in time with her heart, and she suspects Nebula can feel it pounding in her chest. But Nebula says nothing.
Mantis adds a second finger to the small circles she’s making, then takes a moment to pinch her clit between the two. “It feels different when you touch it in different ways,” she says.
Nebula snorts. “I could guess that.” A pause. “What do you prefer?”
“Circles. I like to stay on the sides and the outside at first. The bottom part is usually too sensitive until I’m close.”
“Close,” Nebula repeats. Mantis knows she understands, so she wonders about the repetition. Nebula’s throat pulses against her shoulder, and Mantis realizes that she’s swallowing.
“Show me,” Nebula whispers.
Mantis adjusts her hips between Nebula’s, and Nebula somehow spreads her legs even wider. Mantis doesn’t know what Nebula has where a clitoris would be, but she finds herself wishing to touch whatever scars are there and somehow soothe them. She swirls her fingers deeper into herself as if she can heal Nebula’s wounds herself—and that’s sort of what she’s trying to do, isn’t it? She’s showing Nebula how pleasure can be.
Her eyes fall fully closed, and she becomes hyperaware of Nebula’s hands. The right one is holding her hand in a death grip, while the left one has snaked itself lower down on her abdomen. The cybernetic thumb is rubbing itself across a patch of Mantis’s stomach. The small intimacy of that act, the stroke that doesn’t come from her own two hands, causes her to whimper.
“Alright?” Nebula says.
“More than alright” Mantis sighs. Her clit has swelled up, and she takes a moment to stroke it in circles counter to her usual rhythm. She whimpers again.
“Can I help?”
Mantis stiffens. Can she help? Witnessing is one thing, participating quite another. If it wouldn’t crick her neck so horribly, she’d lean away to look at Nebula’s expression. All she has to go on is her breathing and that left thumb which hasn’t stopped petting her through her tunic.
Nebula waits, breathing slowly, and her hot breath runs across the skin of Mantis’s neck like the aftershock of a bomb.
“Kiss my neck,” she says.
Nebula lifts her chin from her shoulder and pecks her jugular.
“More,” says Mantis. “Please.”
Nebula presses her lips in the same place for a few seconds.
“Wetter.” Mantis’s voice comes out as a whine. “Or…or maybe suck it, or—”
Nebula kisses her neck with just a hint of tongue, and that’s the sensation Mantis is looking for. She gasps and leans her head further back, exposing more skin. Nebula places a string of kisses down her jugular, not quite licking but blotting her tongue with each kiss. When she hits the base of Mantis’s neck, she starts again at the hinge of her jaw and this time introduces the lightest nip of teeth.
Mantis yelps.
“Too much?” Nebula leans back, and Mantis stubbornly leans further against her.
“Perfect.”
Nebula tentatively returns to Mantis’s neck and begins showing it the kind of fastidious attention she’s only paid to machinery before. Mantis loves watching her repair ships, watching her become greasy and sweaty as she turns a broken husk into something humming and thriving. Her throat jumps as she swallows at the memory of Nebula’s last repair day, her clothes ratty and oil-stained, her hip cocked to one side as she examines the ship carapace, the slight lift of her breast as she reaches up to access a high panel.
Mantis is making noises she hasn’t made before, small whimpering sighs that seem to come with each breath. She feels hot and hotter with each moment that Nebula’s hand is in hers, her mouth on Mantis’s neck, her breasts against Mantis’s back. She’s almost forgotten that she’s touching herself until she brushes against the bottommost side of her clitoris and startles.
“Close?” Nebula says against her skin.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Show me.”
Mantis feels a ping of shock: she’s stopped transmitting to Nebula. She restarts the connection immediately, and some of her enthusiasm dampens.
“It’s alright.” Nebula says, probably sensing her remorse.
“How long did I leave you out?”
“A few seconds.”
“Tell me if I do it again.”
Nebula hums and starts to suck on a part of her neck that, based on the feedback she’s probably getting from Mantis, is particularly sensitive.
Mantis makes herself shove away the regret and focus on her fingers. This close to orgasm, her legs begin to twitch in anticipation. On a particularly good day, the twitching goes down as far as her toes. Today is a very good day.
“Jumpy?” Nebula murmurs.
Mantis can’t answer. Shivers radiate across her scalp and the neck that Nebula is paying such loving attention to. Her lips are almost certainly swollen, and they haven’t been touched the entire time.
Her breathing comes rapidly, and her lips part fully. She bites her bottom lip and grids her hips into the mattress, into Nebula. Still, she’s so lost to sensation that her teeth free themselves from her lip and she begins to moan from somewhere deep in herself:
“Oh—oh—oh—oh—oh—oh—”
Her legs lift of their own free will and spasm against Nebula’s. The back of her head digs itself into Nebula’s clavicle as she rocks into her fingers, panting desperately. Only through sheer force of will does Mantis dig her hand into Nebula’s and transmit as much of the wonder as she can.
Her brain becomes soup. Her chest heaves as she comes down from the height of her orgasm, and her antennae wilt as she loses the energy to keep the connection with Nebula. Even without it, she feels Nebula’s breathing, the rapidness and the depth, match hers.
The two slump as one against the headboard of Nebula’s bed, and Mantis lies stunned in Nebula’s arms. Her hands are still, no longer stroking, but she hasn’t lost grip of Mantis. As Mantis’s breath slows, Nebula’s doesn’t.
Mantis finds her voice again. “Did you…?”
“Come?” Nebula exhales. “No. But I felt yours.”
Mantis suppresses the urge to bring Nebula’s organic hand up to her lips and kiss it. The window where such things are acceptable is closing fast. “I’m sorry it’s not the same.”
“You didn’t know.” Nebula leans her head against the wall and seems to force her breathing to steady. Her arms loosen, and her hands fall to Mantis’s hips. No longer embracing, but still touching her. Mantis sighs.
Nebula pauses. “Why is my cunt throbbing?”
Mantis snorts out a laugh. “Is that what you call it?”
“What do you say, vagina?” Nebula sounds a twinge indignant. Her fingers splay across Mantis’s hips. “It’s a cunt. And mine is…”
“Awake?”
“I was going to say ‘weird.’ But sure.”
“I’m sure you have a very nice cunt.”
“So you can say it.”
Mantis laughs. At that sound, Nebula tenses, and Mantis cuts herself off abruptly. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” Nebula says, sounding otherwise. “I just need to get it under control.”
Mantis sits up and scoots herself into a cross-legged position facing Nebula. The sight of her—legs splayed open, arms slack, eyes dark and endless—makes Mantis’s heart twang with longing. “What do you usually do?”
“I don’t usually do anything.” Nebula averts her eyes. “Sometimes I spar.”
Mantis frowns. “You do the thing that made you lose so many parts of yourself?”
“It made me stronger.” Nebula’s voice thickens. “Made me remember why they fixed me.”
Mantis’s mouth opens, then closes again. She knows that Nebula is still reflecting on Thanos’s impact on her. What Mantis doesn’t know is how much of his monstrosity Nebula can afford to acknowledge.
“Well,” she says finally, “I’m not very good at sparring. Maybe we can do something else.”
“We?” Nebula raises an eyebrow. Her right leg comes up to rest on the bed, and she rocks her hips to crack the joints.
“Yes, we,” says Mantis. “It’s not fair if I don’t help you. You were supposed to feel good.”
Nebula’s gaze softens by a degree. “I did.”
Mantis sighs. “Well…maybe we’ll have to leave it at that.”
Nebula looks down.
“Hey,” says Mantis. Nebula returns her gaze. “It’s not a requirement to finish. If you’re satisfied, I am too. I just want to help.”
Nebula swallows. “I know.”
Silence falls heavily between them. Mantis, for the first time in a while, recalls that she’s in Nebula’s space and not her own. She doesn’t want to overstay her welcome, but her limbs are still so loose and her head so light. And Nebula is right there, looking softer and more comfortable than she has any right to be.
But Mantis was the one who invited herself in. Nebula gave consent, but she didn’t ask for any of this. And now Mantis has put her in a frustrating position.
“If you think of anything that I can help you with,” Mantis says slowly, “I will.”
Nebula’s gaze penetrates her. She nods once.
“I’ll let you know.”