"I don't have time for this," Valentina mutters as she shifts in her gaming chair, the skin on the underside of her legs making a faint sucking sound as it unsticks from the sweaty pleather. She folds her freckled legs up like a grasshopper's and presses her feet onto the edge of the chair as she clicks her mouse in short, irritated bursts.

The doorbell rings again. So much for ignoring her problems.

Grumbling, she stands up and pushes her messy brown curls out of her face. She hasn't tended to her hair in three or six or more days (don't ask her, time flows like all the bottles of Lime Cucumber Gatorade she drinks when work is in a crunch), and she's been playing with and chewing on the curls the whole time, so some of them are frizzy while others are soggy. It occurs to her to sniff her armpit, but she doesn't like the results.

"Why do I fucking bother," she says as she wanders toward the kitchen. Time for more Gatorade. That's when the doorbell rings for a third time, reminding her why she even stood up.

"If it's about the AC, just fix it already, you can go around to the porch," she yells toward the door. It's a small apartment, and the walls are thin. Maintenance should hear her.

"Oh, I don't know anything about that," calls a lilting voice from outside the apartment, stopping Valentina dead in her tracks.

Pretty girl voice? Girl outside apartment while sweaty and unwashed and losing time to unsnarl the If/Else tangle she's tied herself up into with this fucking button she has to finish coding and she is probably pretty, the girl?

Valentina's brain blue screens. She's not prepared to handle this right now.

"I'm your new neighbor, actually? I stopped by to gift you something?"

"Uh, wuh, wait a sec while I, uh, hold on!" Valentina says to the stranger. She rushes back to her cramped bedroom to throw a robe on over her bra and boxer shorts and, at the very least, splash some water on her hair to flatten it down. That doesn't do much, so she yanks it back into a ponytail. Good enough!

A few seconds later, she pulls the door open and blinks into the sunny summer day, temporarily blinded by the light of a cloudless afternoon.

Her eyes have to adjust before she sees her worst fears are realized. The girl is pretty. Moreover, she's looking at her. Not the embarrassed glance of a stranger who wants to move on from this terrible encounter, but like someone with genuine interest.

"Oh, hi there," the strange woman says, and Valentina swallows at the way she makes a few words sound like she's some sort of posh leading lady. It doesn't help that her black hair is perfectly straight and frames her face with sharp lines that emphasize her high cheekbones.

"Uh, yeah, hey, sorry, AC's out, so, like, sweaty." Valentina feels the disconnected words rush out of her like a dam has burst, and they don't stop yet. "You said you had something? Oh, and I'm Valentina, Val's fine, and you're...?"

"I'm Mell," she says, offering her hand.

Valentina blinks at it, unsure of what to do, before remembering that handshakes are a normal part of the social contract. Mell's fingers are long and delicate, and they feel almost bony as they grip at her palm. They match her tall and thin frame. Valentina's own hand feels terribly weak and overwarm in comparison.

Still, she's a little disappointed when they part.

"So, Val, it's lovely to meet you. Like I said, I just moved in," Mell says, gesturing with a sweep of her arm at the apartment next to Valentina's. "I heard from the landlord that you also work from home, and I thought I'd bring you something to ensure neighborly peace."

She holds out a box with a bright blue bow on top of it, though the box itself is not wrapped. Valentina takes it and turns it around to read the instructions on the back.

"A white noise generator?" she asks after parsing the explanation there.

"Well, you know what they say about good neighbors and good fences, right? Not that there's a fence between our back yards, but--just a metaphor." Mell's tinkling laugh sounds like it could be sincere, or it could be that of a mean girl laughing at an in-joke with her friends.

"I'm really not noisy," Valentina says slowly, the hint of nastiness in Mell's laugh triggering unpleasant high school memories. "If I play music, I wear headphones."

"That's good to hear!" Mell puts her hand to her collarbone. "Sadly, I make some noise for my job. This should help, plus I have one in my apartment. Between the two of them, I hope I won't disturb you much."

"Oh, okay, thanks?" Valentina considers asking what kind of job she has, but that would extend her time here in the sun, painfully aware of how greasy and squinty and chipmunk-cheeked she must look before Mell's severe beauty.

"If you have any trouble setting it up, just let me know! It has batteries, or you can use a USB cord."

"Cool. Happy move in day."

"Thank you, Val! It was so nice meeting you. Just knock if you ever need anything."

"Sure? Same, I guess."

Valentina closes the door with a final nod, then immediately goes to take a shower.

* * *

Later, she's lying naked on her unmade bed, her damp hair soaking into the layer of towels protecting her pillow, when she realizes the AC is finally working again. The cool air blows pleasantly over her hard nipples, and she pinches at them absently, enjoying the sharp jolt the action sends through her.

Big boobs are a pain, but at least these feel good, she thinks.

The next thing she realizes is that someone is fucking her.

It does seem like a strange thing to notice second. Despite that, her movements remain unconcerned as she pinches her nipples again. This time, the jolt of pleasure travels to her stomach and mingles with the feeling of a cock moving in and out of her. Not something she's often been impressed by, but this one is good. Enough that she can't believe she could miss it.

Fucked, getting fucked, fucking me, she thinks through a haze that reminds her of an approaching summer storm, acrid and heavy. It should concern her, but she's certain she's safe inside, will be protected even when the clouds burst.

Distant lightning, then, must be what shoots up her spine. The man, and there is a man to go along with the cock, as there usually but not always is, has found a sensitive spot inside her. She coos in a weak voice, like a dove inside a birdcage, hoping for an open door.

As she looks at the man, she realizes a third thing: he's one of the apartment complex's maintenance workers. It's that rush of recognition that lifts her up on a wave and bears her back to the memory of how this started.

She came out of the shower, naked underneath her robe this time, and saw a familiar face at the sliding glass door at the back of her apartment. She didn't know his name off the top of her head, but they'd exchanged a few word in Spanish to each other now and then. It got her problems solved faster, to be nice to service workers, and they had the language in common.

She'd always thought, passively, that he was a handsome guy; a little short, yeah, but his face was nice, and his widow's peak made his bangs do this romantic flip that she was into. Not that she had time for men or women, most days. But that didn't seem right today. When she saw him through the glass, fixing her AC at last, her hero, she felt the compulsion to open her robe and beckon him inside.

The rest of the memory trickles over her like warm water. She watches it play out in her mind's eye like someone else's amateur porn.

The air dripped like syrup as she gave him a blowjob in the cluttered living room, the air conditioner still not back to full power yet. She had to move a box and the coffee table so she could kneel while he sat on the couch, but she did it. It was urgent. Neither of them spoke. His dick tasted like... Tasted like? Like she had wanted it for a long time. Tasted like getting what she wanted.

Not that she let him cum in her mouth--that'd miss the point. It had been a stressful day, a stressful week. A long time since she'd had any relief. When she was satisfied with the taste of him, she led him to her dark bedroom and spread herself out on the bed. They still didn't speak more than a few words, quiet whispers of requests and encouragement. They didn't need more. Her legs were open and his cock was urgent too. It was a good fit.

Strange, that she forgot it. Valentina arches her back when her unnamed paramour gets the movement of his cock just right again, and the worry behind that strangeness seems to dissipate. It's more funny than anything else.

I really needed to get laid, she thinks, though it takes a while for the words to come together. What is it that's making her so listless? Is it the pleasure? Surely, that can't be right.

She turns her head to the side and sees the box Mell had given her lays on her bedside where she left it, unopened. Taking a shower seemed more important than setting up the noise machine. She blinks at the instructions on the back of the box, but the words dance away from her. With a sigh of acceptance, she tips her head back to study her own body's movements. It's like there's an actress in her bed, getting fucked, not her.

The thought makes her hornier, and she drops one hand down to play with her clit. She imagines the narrative with increasing ferocity as her fingers work in time to the thrusting of the cock inside her.

Frizzy haired nerd girl reveals her fat tits and slutty side to charming repair man, gets out of the maintenance fee by blowing him and taking his dick, as hard and rough as he wants, lets him cum in her and everything, absolutely no limits...

Would she really let him do that? Well. He's already fucking her, putting his back into it, and it sounds like such a great idea when she thinks about it.

Their eyes meet, and she smiles with relief when he seems to know what she wants. Her legs are just wrapping around him, holding him in place, when he explodes inside her.

"Oh, thank god," she groans.

Though her respite only lasts a few seconds, before his release, or hers, or something else entirely, tosses her back into the wine-dark ocean of unconsciousness.

* * *

"Eurgh, who turned the goddamn lights out?" Valentina asks a few minutes later when she wakes up.

She wipes at her eyes, noticing she took her glasses off at some point, and though she doesn't need them that badly, her face feels naked without them. With a swipe of her hand, she locates them by the bed and replaces them. Now her face is fine but the rest of her remains nude--and the guy is still there, fidgeting with his shirt collar.

How she hates to deal with the awkwardness after a nothing hookup like this. Then again, the shine of the encounter hasn't entirely worn off. Mr. Maintenance Guy, who she at last remembers is named Gabriel, is still handsome as he apologizes for overdoing it, his curved smile almost as perfect as his dreamy bangs.

No, actually, she hates that too. Gabriel seems like a nice guy, but she's aware that her room is a mess and there's at least four weeks of musty pussy smell on her sheets, so she helps him get his pants back on and practically pushes him out the back door as fast as possible.

It's only once he's gone that she discovers she didn't even mark herself away on Slack when she left to answer the door. With a scream of frustration, she throws herself back into her chair and starts answering the messages that have piled up in her hour of absence.

The more she dives back into work, the more surreality of the encounter fades into the back of her mind. The only hint of it that remains is a niggling sense that she should probably check that she took her birth control that morning.

* * *

"Urgh, what a day," she says with a loud crack of her neck as she logs off her desktop.

Technically, she's supposed to use a laptop that her job sent her, but that sounded like a waste of a high-spec gaming PC to her. Who cares if her play time and her work time blend together some days? It's not like the company she works for actually encourages work-life balance. If they did, they wouldn't message her at 2 AM for bug fixes so damn often.

When she unpeels herself from her chair, it's around 7 PM. She notices with a snort that she didn't bother to put on anything but her robe after her fling. Did she eat lunch today? Getting Gabriel to fuck her had seemed more fulfilling than a sandwich, but she's hungry now that she thinks about it.

She'll need the energy to clean up this place. It really is a pigsty.

* * *

She's in the middle of hauling laundry off of her floor in armfuls, shoving some of it into her in-unit washer and the rest of it into her hamper, when she thinks of the white noise generator box again.

If she's going to start doing laundry at, what, 9:30 PM, she should probably use it.

"Or maybe she can go fuck herself?" Valentina says as she slams the door of her washing machine with extra gusto. Mell had a lot of nerve, implying she was loud and demanding that she stay quiet through her preferred methods.

She probably always gets what she wants because she's tall, skinny, and gorgeous.

Boobs weren't as good as mine, though, Valentina thinks with a smug squeeze of her own chest.

The oversized gray shirt she'd thrown on as pajamas hides her least favorite features, her doughy stomach and hips, but does nothing to de-emphasize her chest. It's hard to de-emphasize H cups. She tries, sometimes, if she's going to a conference where guys who smell worse than she ever could might leer at them, but the rest of the time, she's happy to dress tit-forward so no one notices how spotty and sloppy the rest of her is. When she actually bothers to go out, which isn't that often. Working from home has enabled a hermit lifestyle.

She moans.

She moans?

Belatedly, she looks down at her hands and sees she's playing with her nipples through her shirt. The large points that crown her breasts are straining at the fabric, and when she jiggles them, the friction makes her moan again.

She sure is fired up today. What was she doing before this?

The noise generator. Right. Using her left hand, she pulls it out of its box and places it on top of her washing machine. It's a simple device, squat and oval, with one button on top and two volume buttons on the side. It's a color of bright pink she would not choose for herself. Mell had been wearing black, hadn't she? Why pink?

There's no instructions inside the box, but the ones on the back of the box were clear enough. Her right hand continues playing with one of her nipples as she holds down on the big button on top. She's gotta clean her vibrator off after this.

The sound that wells out of the device is surprisingly rich. It starts out as mere static, but soon there's other things swelling underneath it: the cry of low whale song, crickets, rushing water, the light chatter of a dark and intimate café, and lightning so far away it can hardly be a threat. She remembers that pressing the button on the top for three seconds will switch between mixes, but this one's pretty nice, and it drowns out the washer. She leaves it.

It's only when she's lying in bed a few minutes later, her Hitachi buzzing away at her clit while the warm sound of the noise generator covers it, that it occurs to her Mell must've heard her having sex earlier. Even if she and Gabriel were both quiet, the walls here are thin, and their bodies and her old mattress made plenty of commotion.

That may embarrass her the next time she runs into Mell, but for now, a vision of the black-haired beauty fingering herself to the sound of her getting railed fills her mind. Though the hum of the washer, the white noise, and the vibrator all blend together, she pretends she can hear Mell above it--almost as if she's next to her in bed, her long fingers working at her clit and then inside her slick hole.

Valentina closes her eyes and lets that specter sweep her away to another shivery, overwhelming orgasm.