Story: What I Need

I posted this on the SSS newsgroup probably four or five years ago. It's another of the Janey and Michelle stories, and I figured it would do some of the work of lightening up the mood on here, since it's not depressing at all.

“What I Need”
F/F, consensual
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I had been in a rotten mood for weeks, and I had no idea why. I would force myself through necessary interactions, controlling my temper with sheer force of will, and then hole up in my study trying to make myself work in between times.

I felt guilty for neglecting Janey, but that was better than sniping at her, which is what I did when we spent time together. But Liza invited her over for our house’s “family night,” when we would each clean one room, and then play games afterward. I’d volunteered to clean the bathroom, and I’d tried to take out my irritation on the mildew in the grout. I was sweaty, but just as irritable as I’d been before I started.

I washed up, and joined the rest of my house, plus Janey, for pizza and Scrabble. The first game was fine, because I started out with a word that used all seven letters, and continued kicking butt for the rest of the game. It was easier to be nice when I was winning. But I didn’t do as well during the second game, and I found myself wanting to snap at people.

Everyone teased me in a friendly way, trying to cheer me up. They could tell that something was wrong, but they’d all given up on figuring out what it was by that point. So they tried to be nice.

Finally, I managed to get a word worth a measly six points on the board, and then discovered there were no more letters in the bag. “AAARRRGGHH!! I HATE this game!! I’m no good at it! I’m TIRED of being so STUPID!” Everyone looked at me curiously.

“You kicked our collective butt in the last game,” Liza pointed out.

“You’re not stupid,” Gwen reassured me.

I glared at both of them, trying to keep myself from flinging the board across the room.

“Do we need to have a talk upstairs?” Janey joked, hoping that the spanko reference would cheer me up.

I was stunned by the surge of relief I felt when she said it. I looked at her thoughtfully. “Actually, maybe we do.”

Janey looked at me; Liza and Gwen glanced from me to her. Finally, Janey broke the silence. “Will you two excuse us for a moment?” Liza and Gwen nodded, half smirking. Janey led me out of the living room and upstairs to my bedroom.

She sat at the edge of my bed, and patted the spot next to her. I sat down in the chair instead. “What’s going on, Michelle?”

I stared at the floor. Finally, I said, “I don’t really know. It’s not PMS, since I’ve been edgy and irritable for almost a month now. And I’ve had my period. I… I just want to snap at people. I seem to need to get into an argument and shout and throw a fit, and that’s not okay. Nothing is helping, and I just keep getting more and more and more tense.”

“We’ve noticed,” she said wryly. I felt a surge of irritation. What right did they have to notice?! I swallowed it, and didn’t say anything.

“So why are we up here?”

I examined my fingers, and the end of the bed, and the grain of the wood on the floor. Finally, I whispered, “Um, well… Okay, when you asked if we needed to come upstairs, I felt so… relieved. I had this image of you giving me a spanking, and… I think it would make things better.”

Janey looked at me consideringly. “Fine. Let me go down and tell Gwen and Liza to play without us.” She stood up.

“Wait! If you go down there, they’ll know exactly what’s going to happen up here!”

“Michelle, whether or not I go down there, I think they’ll have a pretty good idea,” Janey laughed. “Even if you’re really quiet,” she added.

I sat on the chair waiting for Janey to return, half nervous and half relieved. I got up and rummaged through the toy box and found the stingy little hairbrush. I put it in the middle of the bed, and then sat back in the chair as though I hadn’t moved.

Janey was laughing as she came up. She composed herself at the doorway, and then closed the door quietly behind her. She raised her eyebrow when she noticed the hairbrush, but she didn’t say anything to me about it. She sat on the bed with her back against the wall. She patted her thighs. “You may as well take off your pants and underpants right now,” she said. I complied, and then got into position over her lap.

Janey rested her hand on my bottom. “I’ve wanted to get you in this position for a few weeks,” she mused, rubbing gently. “You’ve been a real pill lately.” SMACK! “You need to realize {SMACK!} that you don’t have to be perfect.” SMACK!! SMACK!!

“What?” I protested. The last thing I’d been for weeks was perfect. I had been more imperfect than ever, and I have never approached any kind of reasonable standards.

SMACK! “Michelle, we will {SMACK!!} still love {SMACK!} you, even if you’re crabby.” Janey stopped talking for a few moments while she smacked my bottom. “It’s okay to just let us know you need some comfort.” She delivered several stinging smacks to the tops of my thighs as she said this. “You don’t have to lock yourself up all alone just because you’re feeling hurt.” Janey punctuated each word with a sharp smack.

My bottom began to feel tingly and warm. Some of the tension started to ebb away. Janey stopped long enough to pick up the hairbrush. “Why, where on earth did *this* come from?” she joked. “Perhaps someone really needs a sore bottom tonight.”

CRACK!!! I yelped. That brush had never hurt like THAT before! “You need to learn to relax,” she said. She continued whacking my bottom and lecturing me. Instead of the usual sting, the hairbrush was setting my bottom well and truly on fire. My irritability and frustration seemed to radiate out of me along with the heat in my backside. Finally, Janey put the hairbrush down on the bed. She slowly rubbed my bottom and back.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” I sighed, and took a deep breath. “Thanks. That helped.”

“Shall we go back downstairs?”

I followed Janey downstairs, and I felt better enough that I didn’t even mind the teasing I got from Gwen and Liza about “learning to play nicely.”