And now my fur has turned to skin, and I've been quickly ushered in

Ella had decided that it would be better for everyone if she didn’t know what was going on, and just got to work quietly and obediently like she was tasked to do.

About five minutes into cleaning the Master’s Suite, that had become an intolerable proposition.

It wasn’t that anything bad was happening. But there was a tense pressure in the room, the sort of pressure Ella couldn’t stand. The kind that would normally have her snapping her rubber-band, if that wouldn’t clue Nick and Amelia into the fact that she was overwhelmed.

Because the two of them were being incredibly vigilant of her. Not that Ella knew what the word “vigilant” even meant. But what she did know was that every time she moved to dust a different part of the room, she could feel their eyes following her. Nick’s eyes, at least. Amelia was slightly more subtle, but she could still feel an immense pressure coming off the older woman.

It was like Ella had walked right into the middle of something. Having lived most of her life in a house where it was made very clear that she wasn’t welcome, she had extensive experience with feeling like she didn’t belong.

Ella felt a throbbing in her chest, like Cinder trying to take over. And that worried her even more. She had no idea how Cinder would respond to the uncomfortable atmosphere she was currently bathing in, and honestly- she didn’t know if she wanted to find out.

…No, she did know. She didn’t want to find out.

Which only left one option, unsavory as it was.

Ella’s voice cracked in her throat as she broke what had up until that point been five straight minutes of uninterrupted silence. “Uh-um…”

“Yes?” Amelia’s sharp, immediate response caused Ella to stiffen up like a statue. Her hands shot right to her sides as she fought the trained impulse to snap her rubber-band again. Trembling, she turned around to look at them both, and tried her best to look casual, like she wasn’t one wrong move away from melting into a puddle.

She didn’t do a very good job of it.

“I… I didn’t… interrupt anything, di-did I?” Ella knew a smile would be the best thing to put everyone at ease, including herself. But she couldn’t do it. A smile just didn’t feel right to her right now, and considering nobody else was smiling…

A flash of guilt crossed Nick’s face, answering her question for her. Amelia was much harder to read, unfortunately. Ella swallowed her nerves and quickly tried to change course. “I-I’m sorry if I did, I mean, I have to do my j-job, so-”

The door to the bathroom swung open, startling the flustered maid and drawing a loud shriek out of her mouth.

“Phew, that was what I needed…” Holly traipsed out of the bathroom, hair slightly dripping but otherwise totally dry, and naked as the day she was born- save for a very tight towel very expertly wrapped around her pixie-like figure, just barely coming down past her soft little bottom.

Her eyes sparkled with the refreshed gleam of a girl who’d just had a very well-deserved bath.

In total contrast with Ella, who couldn’t look more uncomfortable if she tried. She had no idea that someone had been in the bathroom, and now all the tension that had been building since she got here had evaporated.

That should have come as a relief to the awkward girl, but it didn’t. Because nothing had been resolved, meaning an awkward cloud still hung over all their heads. Holly had interrupted, but she hadn’t actually fixed anything.

Ella’s eyes met Nick’s from across the room, and she realized that he was feeling just as uncomfortable about this as she was. Seeing him fidgeting, trying not to look at her and his stepmother at the same time actually made her feel relieved. So she wasn’t the only one who was being crushed by this!

“Holly…” It was a rare occasion when a naked girl trying to tease him was actually the easiest person for Nick to look at. But Holly was a known quantity, he didn’t have to worry about accidentally upsetting her like with Ella or spoiling private confidences like with Amelia.

And of course, she ate up the attention with a big spoon.

“What? You don’t like it?” Holly batted her eyelashes and struck a pose, letting the edge of her towel unfurl slightly, slipping down her body just a hair to tease the possibility of it coming unraveled completely. Her face was glowing with joy at the awkward look on Nick’s face, and it was as if all of her frustration from today was completely gone.

Nick’s frustration, on the other hand, was just starting.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he told her with the best smile he could muster at the moment. “But could you put some clothes on, please?”

Holly blinked those long eyelashes of hers, her cherubic face displaying an innocence long lost, if it ever existed to begin with. “Is that an order, master?” She purred. Knowing just what that did to him and loving every second of it as his cheeks turned red.

Ella let out an uncomfortable squeak at the implication, and now it was Holly’s turn to jump, stiffening up in surprise.

She had completely missed the presence of the other girl, standing across from the room, and when her eyes leapt to spy Ella standing there frozen in shock, she felt her own face light up with crimson heat as embarrassment and the excitement that came with it surged through her breast.

…And as the cherry on top, her sudden jerkish movement caused her towel to drop to the floor and she was suddenly butt naked in the middle of the room.

Most girls probably would have reacted with shame and embarrassment, mortified at being seen naked in front of so many people. Even Mary, as far as she had come, would have run off to her sanctuary in the kitchen with a mortified feeling in her chest.

Holly was not most girls. It wasn’t the nakedness causing her feelings right now, it was the utter stupidity pounding in her skull at having missed Ella’s presence entirely, and the feeling of guilt and shame (and not the fun kind) that came from knowing how badly she’d messed up in Nick’s eyes.

She knew how protective Nick could be towards Ella, especially regarding anything sexual going down, since the sensitive girl wasn’t used to it yet the way most of his harem was. So Holly had tried to tone it down (“it” meaning most of her interests and natural inclinations) whenever Ella was present.

…And she’d just flashed the whole room.

…

Well… the only way out was through, wasn’t that what people always said?

“Whoops!” Holly loudly proclaimed, strutting over to the kitchen while doing her best not to let on that anything was wrong. She probably should have grabbed some clothes and gotten changed like Nick suggested, but that would prolong the awkwardness of the moment. Better to just make a quick exit while the shock was still wearing off. “Time to go help Mary in the kitchen!”

She walked right through the door and snapped it shut behind her.

Two seconds later, Mary’s disapproving shriek could be heard echoing through the whole room.

Nick let out an exasperated sigh and slapped his face. This had turned into a massive mess. And as much as he wished it would be the case, Holly’s presence and subsequent absence had not dispelled the previous awkwardness the way he hoped it would.

Nope, the uncomfortable atmosphere from before immediately reasserted itself, only now Ella was uncomfortable for multiple reasons.

“Um… a… a lot of stuff is happening tonight, h-huh…?” It was a terribly lame attempt on Ella’s part to try and make this all one big joke. It went over about as well as she expected it to. But there was one positive thing that did come from Holly’s flashy entrance and exit.

“Thwap! Thwap! THWAP!”

Ella had the perfect excuse to snap her rubber-band now. The feeling of the rubber against her skin brought that soothing, refreshing feeling of reprisal that eased the tension in her breast, and she immediately felt better. A few more snaps ought to do it!

“Thwap! Thwap!”

Nick felt relieved himself, seeing Ella relax before his eyes like that. She raised her head and gave him a guilty smile.

“Um, so… yeah,” the uncomfortable girl mumbled, drawing a little closer to him under the guise of dusting one of the tables, trying not to let Nick see how bothered she was. “A-again, sorry for the whole… interruption thing…”

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Amelia calmly declared.

Ella jumped at the sound of her voice and Amelia immediately felt bad about it. The poor girl was so jumpy…

And Amelia couldn’t really blame her. Given what Ella had gone through in her past, she had every reason to be nervous around a stepmother.

Amelia **** herself not to go and comfort Ella like she felt compelled to. After all, she knew how Ella was likely to respond. While she had no idea if Ella had suffered any physical **** at the hands of her stepmother, it was not a good position for Amelia to put herself in.

Which left her unable to console the girl physically or with words. And given Amelia’s burning need to always be the solution to any problem, that was a very difficult state to find herself in.

Her eyes shot to Nick immediately, urging him to say something to fix the situation. Nick felt the pressure coming from his stepmother’s gaze, but he was stuck. What was he supposed to do here? If he knew the secret to making Ella comfortable, he would have used it a long time ago.

No, this was just a bad situation for all parties.

“Um… Ella, you… you really weren’t interrupting anything,” he finally decided to say, hoping she’d accept that for the half-truth it was. “Amelia and I, we were just talking, that’s all.”

“O-okay…” Ella nodded obediently. What else could she really do to respond to that? It wasn’t like it was any of her business so all she could do was accept his words at face value.

Seeing that nothing had actually been fixed and that Ella was still as uncomfortable as before, Nick found himself saying more. It was a bad habit of his and he knew it. If Amelia’s problem was speaking too little and not properly conveying her feelings, Nick’s problem was definitely saying too much, and drowning his intended message in irrelevancies.

But he couldn’t control it any better than his stepmother could.

“W-we were just talking about how Amelia and my dad f-first met, and about how she became my stepmom, that’s all! S-so if things are a little awkward it’s because it was a very personal story, and we were both crying a lot… but it’s okay, we had just finished up by the time you arrived s-so it’s not like you interrupted us or anything…”

Nick hoped Ella would be able to find something reassuring to latch onto in that sea of utter nonsense. But he wasn’t holding his breath.

The awkward girl just stared silently at him, and he could tell she had absolutely no idea how to respond to all of that.

“…Okay…”

At this point, Nick just had to take the fact that she hadn’t already turned into Cinder at this point as a win, and just let the whole thing die.

Ella went back to work, and the uncomfortable silence became even more oppressive than it was before. For all three of them now.

Amelia was actually feeling it the worst out of the trio. As the oldest one here she felt responsible for resolving the tension in the air, but she knew she was woefully unequipped to actually do that. And as Nick had just demonstrated, he wasn’t much better in that regard.

The one actually handling things the best was Ella, who could at least focus on her work to try and take her mind off the awkward situation, even if she wasn’t doing very well in that regard.

Amelia cleared her throat. “Ella, have you… had a nice day?”

Nick felt like he wanted to die. They’d reached the “pointless small talk” part of the overwhelming awkwardness, and he didn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.

“Yeah.”

Ella’s blunt, one-word answer didn’t make things better.

Silence once again held lease over the Master’s Suite, swirling around the three of them like a **** smog.

And to make matters worse, Ella was fighting a war on two fronts. While trying to dedicate herself to cleaning and ignoring the pressure in the air, she was also assaulted by an entirely different pressure, this one coming from inside. She could feel Cinder “screaming” at her in the back of her mind, trying to reassert herself, and it took everything Ella had to keep her other side at bay.

It was growing so uncomfortable for her that she was starting to wonder if there was even a point to doing so.

But she couldn’t give into those feelings of defeat.

So she did the only thing she could do.

She took the situation out of everyone’s hands.

“Um-!” Her voice caught in her throat as she looked up to see Nick and Amelia trying very hard not to focus on her. But right now, she needed their attention.

“I… I don’t mean to pry…” Ella stammered out, her fingers ghosting towards her rubber-band. “I really… really don’t…”

“It’s alright,” Amelia said smoothly, trying not to fluster the poor girl any more than she already was. “What is it?”

Ella chewed nervously on her lip. “I… I really just…” She wanted to say it so badly, but it just felt so hard. But she couldn’t give in. “I… I wanted…”

How could she say what she wanted to say? It was so arrogant and presumptuous! Ella didn’t believe for a second that everything had been resolved as smoothly as Nick said it did, and not just because he’d been sweating like a bad criminal under interrogation when he said it. No, if everything was really that simple, where had the oppressive silence she’d walked in on come from?

“I wanted to make sure… is everything really okay? With you two?” She knew how arrogant that must have sounded. What right did she have to ask something like that? Sure, she and Nick were getting closer, but Amelia was still a total stranger to her! And their relationship was their own business, it wasn’t any of hers!

But with how socially inept she was, she couldn’t think of a better way to move the three of them past the tension that left them all paralyzed with indecision. So she’d made a choice.

“Of course it is,” Amelia swiftly rejected the idea that their relationship could be anything but okay. “Why would it not be?”

Ella bit her lip. She reached down and snapped her rubber-band with a “Thwap!” hoping it would give her a little bit of Cinder’s courage.

“Because… you guys seemed so awkward when I came in, so… I’m sorry if I misunderstood…” She did the best she could. But it was so hard.

Amelia pinched her lips together in a tight line and furrowed her brow. It was hard to respond to that, because she could feel the awkwardness herself right now.

Nick stepped forward, though, and found his voice.

“Yeah… I know, it’s really awkward between us all, isn’t it?” He said, putting to words what the three of them knew to be true but had been trying to avoid stating outright.

An involuntary sigh of relief escaped Ella’s lips and she visibly relaxed, slumping over tiredly. She raised her head and looked gratefully at Nick, glad he was taking charge of the discussion.

Much less pressure on her that way.

“To tell you the truth, Ella… we really were dealing with some powerful emotions,” he admitted, casting another look to Amelia. “You just showed up at the most awkward time, that’s all. So you don’t need to feel bad for interrupting… really, it’s not your fault.”

It did make Ella feel better, hearing that. Especially when Amelia nodded to confirm it.

“In fact, your presence here is most welcome,” Amelia said suddenly, startling the maid.

Ella peered curiously at Amelia past her bangs. “It… it is?” She asked, surprised to hear that. “Um… okay?”

Amelia nodded. “Because of my transformation I have been fighting the urge to pose seductively for some time. Another presence significantly reduces that inclination.”

Ella’s mouth fell open, completely at a loss about how to respond to that. Nick cringed, mortified that the most coherent statement his stepmother had made since the poor girl got here had to be THAT of all things.

He had no idea how to resolve this issue from here. Neither did Ella.

Amelia, in contrast, seemed quite pleased with herself, not fully understanding the impact of her statement for several moments.

At least, until she saw Ella’s cringing expression.

“I… I see…” Ella hastily looked away from her, her face ablaze. Her fingers fumbled at her rubber-band. “I-I’m glad I could help?!”

“Thwap! Thwap!”

Each snap of her rubber-band made Nick want to cry just a little bit more. Why did he have to be cursed by being stuck between two people who absolutely sucked at communicating with one another? They were both trying, and he was trying too, but…

“Perhaps this is a topic best left dropped,” Amelia said, and Ella couldn’t agree more.

But at the same time… she was afraid that the silence would rise again.

So she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“I-I don’t think-! You should be doing that sort of stuff!” Her eyes were wide and she shook her head swiftly from side to side. “Wouldn’t it be be-better if you and Nick w-were never alone, then? So you wouldn’t have those… impulses?”

Amelia blinked, surprised by the proposal. She was far more surprised by it than she was embarrassed, falling back on her old standard classics of rationality and respect. Nick, on the other hand, was just embarrassed.

And Ella felt the same way.

“It-it’s not like she’s not trying,” Nick said, pushing back against the uncomfortable feeling weighing down on him. “I mean, we’ve been alone together for most of the afternoon, a-and she hasn’t really… done any of that stuff.”

Ella blinked frantically. “O-oh, well, that’s good,” she said, smiling a little, while not feeling relieved in the slightest. “Yeah… that’s good…”

And Amelia just remained silent, knowing there was nothing she could say.