The Good News Basement (A Dancers Who Undress Story)

A quick, perma-exclusive side-jaunt between Briony and Dara, in which they attend an event at Briony's family's church as "friends." Please note, lots of references to religious trauma, sexism, and homophobia as the bad guys here. The actual sexual is enthusiastically consensual.

Enjoy!

***

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I asked for about the millionth time, while Dara dug through her wardrobe for something you could wear to brunch at your girlfriend’s former church.

The fashion parameters for such an event could not have been farther from either her personal or professional style, but Dara’s closet was deep, and so far, she’d managed to unearth a long floral skirt and a button-down blouse. Now she just needed something to keep her bra from showing through it. The blouse was ridiculously see-through for a garment that was intended to be demure.

“I’m good at smiling and looking pretty for people I disagree with,” Dara pointed out, unearthing a wrinkled undershirt and pulling it on. “I just don’t get why you want to go.”

I sighed. “My parents are going to be there.”

“We could always meet them somewhere else, if you want.”

“I don’t want,” I said. “But my brother wants a report on how they’re doing. He’s worried about my mom’s drinking.”

I sat at Dara’s dresser to use the mirror while I fitted on my wig cap.

“If he’s that worried…” said Dara.

“He lives out of state,” I explained.

Dara kissed one of the stray rainbow-colored locks still sticking out of my cap, and then gently tucked it away.

“I love you,” she said. “That makes it my job to tell you that you don’t have to show up for people who don’t want you to show up as yourself. Not for free, anyway.”

I let out a breath and kissed her hand.

“I get it,” I said. “And I appreciate it, really. But I kind of want to… I want to see how far I’ve come, you know?”

Dara buttoned her blouse, sat down on her bed, and propped her chin on her hands, looking at me intently as I pulled on my plain blonde wig.

“I’m not sure I do know,” she said. “But I want to.”

I turned the dresser chair to face her.

“I want to go back there, knowing that I’m not the one who’s wrong. I want to know what it’s like to be there without wanting their approval, without them having that power over me.”

She considered this for a moment. “Is that what’s going to happen?”

I took a long breath.

“I really hope so.”

Dara nodded.

“Okay. Let’s try it.”

#

The Good News Church of Our Lord looked smaller than I remembered, even though I’d grown to my full height before escaping from my biweekly visits here.

I thought that was probably a good sign. I’d built it up larger than life in my head, and now I was going to correct that misconception.

I parked near the back of the lot and checked my makeup in the rearview mirror —cute enough to prove that I had made an effort, yet subtle enough to avoid giving the impression that I had a wicked desire to be desirable.

The lipstick was a light pink, far, far away from red, and matched my long-sleeved floral dress. I felt like a child’s porcelain doll, painstakingly crafted to divorce beauty from allure.

With pointed contrariness, Dara squeezed my thigh through the brightly printed fabric.

“Massages after this,” she said. “And a shower, together.”

I smiled, and took a quick look around the lot. With everyone headed toward the entrance, no one was looking directly at us.

I leaned over and stole a quick peck from Dara’s lips.

It was a good excuse to stall another few seconds, while we both double-checked that we had no smears, no telling transfer between our slightly different shades of pink lipstick. But eventually, there was nothing left to do but retrieve the home-baked apple pie from the back seat and walk toward the crowd that was gathering in the vestibule and the small rose garden out front.

My parents weren’t difficult to spot.

Dad was currently talking Pastor Martin’s ear off about some idea he looked furiously impassioned over. Pastor Martin vacillated between humoring him with polite nods and scanning the crowd for anyone else who might urgently require his attention instead.

It had always been a grim amusement of mine, to see Pastor Martin’s own talent for lecturing overcome by my father’s, just so long as neither of them were focused on me.

Mom was helping to arrange the fold-out potluck tables, and snapping at a younger woman for adjusting her placement of the legs to keep them from tipping over.

Her hands shook an alarming amount for her age as she slammed her potato casserole into the position of pride in the center.

I pointed out these key players to Dara in a whisper, before taking a breath and setting the pie on the dessert table, between a cherry cobbler and a hummingbird cake.

“Briony!” Pastor Martin spotted me, and made the ill-calculated choice to use me as his escape from my dad.

Dad, of course, could not be seen to ignore me while Pastor Martin was paying attention. He followed along, hissing and swatting the air to induce Mom to do the same.

“Well, I see your sweet tooth hasn’t gone anywhere,” Pastor Martin said, chuckling indulgently at the pie and reaching out to pinch the chub of my cheek, as if I were still nine. Not that I’d been a fan of it then, either. “I kid, I kid,” he said, and pulled me into a straitjacket of a hug.

When he finally let me go, an expectant silence opened up, and my parents each took their turns hugging me as well, for the first time in two years. Neither of them met my eye as their faces passed mine, though I could feel them looking intently at Dara behind me.

I could smell the sickly sweetness of Mom’s sweat under her sicklier sweet perfume.

There, I’d checked on her. I could give my brother an accurate report, if not the one he was hoping for.

“I have to say, out of your old clique,” Pastor Martin pronounced the word with subtle distaste, “I wouldn’t have bet on you to be the one to grace us with your presence again. And to bring along a friend!” He held a hand out to Dara. “Welcome to Good News, perhaps you’ve heard of us?”

He chuckled at his own very old joke.

“Thank you for having me.” Dara shook his hand, unfazed. “Briony’s told me so much about you.”

“Oh of course, you’re welcome, it’s never too late to embrace Good News,” he said. “Something you might remind your other friends of,” he added to me. “Assuming you still care about their souls.”

“Yeah, I’ll be sure to tell them,” I said.

“While taking no responsibility whatsoever for the path to the flames, I’m sure,” he said as casually as if he were commenting on the traffic.

Dara’s smile didn’t waver.

Neither Mom nor Dad had yet managed to muster one.

“Actually, Briony’s a wonderful influence,” Dara jumped in when the silence grew too long, patting me tantalizingly, on the shoulder. “I once saw her rescue an unfortunate friend from making fool of himself, well, a bigger fool of himself, during a night on the town. He could have been in a lot of trouble, even hurt someone, if she hadn’t been there.”

Pastor Martin blinked, seemingly testing out the mental image of me protecting a man from the consequences of his own actions, just as he’d always taught me to do.

Before he could decide whether he believed it or not, Mrs. Campbell, the church’s perennial and mediocre organist, called out to him from the fully laden tables. “Pastor, I believe we’re ready when you are!”

“Excuse me.”

Pastor Martin extricated himself from my family and went to stand by the vestibule door, in easy view of the whole garden.

“Welcome, welcome, all!” He allowed his voice to rise to its full, preferred volume. “Before we dig into this fine-looking spread, let’s join hands.”

Dara and I instantly took advantage of this socially acceptable moment to do so. Others filled in around us, forming a winding, looping serpentine of bodies throughout the garden and parking lot. My parents thankfully ended up a few spaces down from us. On my other side, I ended up holding hands with the woman who’d known how to set up a folding table. She gave me a friendly smile.

We all bowed our heads under the next booming wave of Pastor Martin’s voice.

“Thank You, Lord, for bringing us all together in Your light today, and for the food we are about to receive. Thank You for guiding the lost back to the flock, and for bringing us new friends to share Your word with. We ask that You make us thankful, and humble, and grant us the strength to resist those who would lead us into temptation.”

Dara ran her fingertip along the sensitive crease where my palm met my wrist, and my skin broke out in goosebumps.

“Let us not be swayed by the Devil’s words, whether he speaks with the tongue of an enemy or a loved one.”

She shifted her hand to lace her fingers through mine.

“For the Devil takes sweet guises. He promises love to the lonely, strength to the weak, a free pass to those burdened with shame. He’s the voice in our ear, telling us it’s okay to give in to what we think we want. It’s okay to turn our backs on family. It’s okay to reject the role You designed for us. It’s okay to deface our bodies, and lie with people who were not made for us.”

I was pretty sure Pastor Martin’s version of saying grace had gotten even longer and more specific in the years I’d been gone.

“The Devil flatters us that we don’t need Your redemption. That we are worthy of love without Your grace. But we know the truth. We know our sins, but we also know the Good News. We know that we don’t need the Devil’s cheap knockoffs of love and absolution, when we have the real shebang in You. And by gum, we know not to question it when we’re getting a good deal!”

There was a polite titter of agreeable laughter, and then a round of “amen,” before hands broke apart and reached for plates to fill.

Dara was a wonder to watch.

She introduced herself as my “friend” a dozen more times without flinching. She laughed sweetly at off-color jokes about kids these days, and backhanded compliments about how nice it was to see a girl who knew how to dress like one.

“Oh, I think so many young women these days underestimate the power our bodies hold!” she exclaimed to one older man, who nodded and went on talking, completely unaware that Dara would have placed that power unreservedly in each woman’s hands if she could.

She filled her plate with exactly the right amount of the right things, to look effortlessly un-gluttonous without implying that she cared about her appearance or thought she was better than anyone else.

“So, is this everything you were hoping for?” she asked me in the brief moment between snippets of painful chitchat.

My skin was crawling. Angry pulses of adrenaline were making my blood run hot and cold like a rundown shower. I wanted to scream and throw things and run away. I wanted to demand that Pastor Martin mock every heavyset man in attendance, including himself, about their “sweet tooth.” I wanted to ask if turning your back on family was still a sin when you were the parent in the equation, and your kid had grown up differently than you’d planned.

But there was a wild tinge to the old rage inside me. The giddy thrill of having a secret, and someone to share it with.

“You’re so fucking sexy right now,” I whispered.

Dara snorted.

“Oh yeah? This does it for you? Me covered in scratchy linen, eating terrible potato salad, talking about how to be a custodian of myself for my future husband, like the perfect piece of hot property?”

“No,” I said. “Like a badass spy. It’s awesome.”

Dara tapped a finger to her lips. “Watch it, you’ll blow my cover.”

I checked behind us, and then furtively brushed a lock of hair behind Dara’s shoulder.

“Do you want to see the basement where we used to sing ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ and learn about how losing our virginity makes us worthless?” I asked.

“So enticing,” Dara answered, with the briefest flick of an eyeroll, but followed me from the tables into the church proper, and down the unmarked stairs on the left.

The smell of the place hit me harder than I’d thought it would.

It was just dust, and wood furniture, and disintegrating couch upholstery, but the blend of those things was different in this room from anywhere else.

The folding chairs used for classes and meetings were set aside, so there were only the permanent couches arranged around the edges of an empty floor that had been used for countless deeply awkward ‘formals,’ as a substitute for those of us whose families considered a public school prom too risqué.

That was the corner, right over there, where I’d had to kneel and pray for forgiveness for hurting the feelings of a boy whose request for a dance I’d turned down.

The memories must have showed in my stance, because Dara touched my back particularly cautiously.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her into a heavy kiss.

“I’m crazy about you,” I said.

Dara broke into a grin, which remained as I kissed it, over and over again.

“I’m crazy about you too,” she breathed softly.

“Now,” I whispered. “Here.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t want to get you caught, if you’re not ready to—”

“I don’t care.”

I shoved her against one of the ugly old couches. She gasped happily.

“This is not how I expected the day to go,” she said. “…But I kind of hoped.”

I opened her blouse, barely restraining myself from tearing off the buttons and leaving us with an impossible story to spin later. I pushed her breasts up out of her bra and bit them gently through the thin undershirt, savoring the texture of her excitement.

Dara gasped and reached up to wind her fingers through my hair, thinking better of it just in time to spare the wig. She stroked my back instead.

I rolled up her skirt, pushed her panties to the side, and licked the moisture beneath, drawing a soft moan.

“We could stop here,” Dara whispered. “If you’re just trying to make a point to yourself. We could say we had sex in the church, even if we didn’t finish. We could quit now and get away with it forever.”

“If we do that, they win,” I said, “even if they never find out about it.”

“How’s that?” Dara managed to ask, with my tongue probing between her lips.

“Two women leaving here hot, and worked up, and unsatisfied? There’s nothing revolutionary about that,” I said, lightly kissing her clit in every slight pause. “Sure, back then it was, ‘You can sit together, but you can’t lie down. You can hug, but you can’t hold hands, except when you can. You can kiss the air beside her cheek, but not her cheek itself.’”

I kissed Dara harder, right on that delicious, sensitive spot that had been so forbidden we had no name for it here.

“It was never quite, ‘You can taste, but you can’t finish.’ But that would fit right in,” I said. “Every second in this place was about finding something to deny, no matter how many hairs you had to split to do it.”

I gave her a long, slow lick.

Dara propped her head up on her hands to meet my eyes. “But you love to be teased,” she said, with a playful lift of her eyebrow.

“Yeah, go ahead, psychoanalyze me,” I said. “And never stop teasing me. But on our terms. And not today.”

I slipped in a finger to tickle her g-spot while I lapped at her.

“Mmm, works for me,” Dara moaned.

I dug my fingers into the flesh of her ass, reached up under her undershirt to squeeze her breasts, tried to take in every inch of her through every sense that I had.

“Come here,” Dara sighed, and I didn’t understand at first. How much more here could I possibly be? I wrote it off as sweet nothing, until she said it a few more times, and then began tugging up on my dress. “Come here, come here.”

I got the message and crawled forward to kiss her on her mouth. I left my finger inside her and slipped in a second, trying not to let up the attention on any part of her.

“Join me,” Dara whispered, leaning up to kiss me along the jaw. “Right now. Don’t wait.”

I took her left leg and propped it over my shoulder. I pushed my own panties to the side as well and straddled her hips, to press my pussy directly to hers. I pulled out my hand and grabbed the cushion next to her head, not caring that my fingers were coated with her fluids.

No, I liked feeling her wetness stain that ugly upholstery.

“Is this…” Dara panted, “is this a good moment to point out what a bad girl you are?”

“Yes!” I said, nipping at her neck. “Yes, that, tell me that.”

“You’re a bad girl,” said Dara, reaching down the high neckline of my dress to pinch my nipple. “And it’s magnificent. You’re fucking your girlfriend in church, right under the feet of all those people up there.”

“Damn right, I am,” I said, grinding harder.

“Ooh, and blaspheming too!” said Dara.

“Fuck yes,” I said.

“Not technically blasphemy,” Dara pointed out.

“But they’d disapprove anyway,” I said.

“Then do it,” Dara said, with a light giggle.

“Fuck yes, fuck yes, fuck yes,” I murmured with the rocking of my hips, kissing her along her raised knee, her neck, her lips again.

“Oh god,” Dara gasped, her breath quickening.

“Am I making you blaspheme too?” I asked.

“Make me do it again.”

I swirled my hips around in a tight circle, rolling her nipple back and forth between my fingers in the same rhythm.

“Oh god, oh god….”

Dara reached for my hair again, stopped, and grabbed her own instead.

“Oh god, god, fuck, yes, fuck!” Dara’s body shuddered, and she moaned loudly enough to make me afraid, thrillingly afraid, that everyone upstairs would hear her and know exactly what we were doing down here.

Tingling chills ran down my back, my chest, gathering hard and heavy down in the pit of my stomach and my pelvis.

When Dara stopped shaking and lay panting under me, I slid down to grind against her thigh instead, holding her pussy steady with my hand. It took only a few extra seconds for me to catch up with her. The pleasure burst outward, all the way down my legs, up to the top of my head, gathering particularly along every cell of skin that was touching hers.

“Holy fuck. Holy fuck,” I gasped.

“Yeah,” Dara panted. “You could call it that.”

I laughed out loud and shrugged. “Holier than anything else that ever happened in this room, I guess.”

There was a creaking at the top of the stairs.

Both of us sprang upright instantly, tugging our bras and panties and skirts into place. Dara reached over and straightened my wig the moment Pastor Martin poked his head in.

“Girls?”

“Hello!” Dara greeted him with the brightest, most innocent smile I’d ever seen.

Pastor Martin pursed his lips and sniffed disapprovingly, but there was no look of recognition as the thick air entered his lungs.

“The potluck’s upstairs,” he said. “Don’t you think you might want to talk to some people you didn’t come with?”

My pleasure-altered mind delighted a little too much in his unintentional pun. A spasmodic laugh bubbled up my throat, and I had to hide it in a cough.

“Of course,” said Dara, rising lightly to her feet. “I just wanted to see the place where so many of Briony’s happy memories happened. She talks about your youth services so often.”

Pastor Martin fought hard to keep his face from becoming any less sour, and won.

“You know, it’s rude to come to a community gathering and then hide yourselves away,” he said.

“Sorry!” Dara said, far too sweetly for a first-time guest being so needlessly picked on. “It won’t happen again.”

She reached out and took my hand, under the pretense of helping me up from the couch, and held it for exactly the acceptable number of seconds before letting go.

Content that we were following close behind, Pastor Martin started up the stairs.

“He really can’t tell,” I whispered.

“Of course he can’t,” Dara replied, her voice even lower than I could drop my own. “How would a man like that possibly know what a wet woman smells like?”

She breathed this next to my ear without breaking for a moment her immaculate impression of a perfect, ignorant flower.

I, on the other hand, doubled over in a fit of laughter I could only hope to keep silent.