Diamond Likes it Rough.

Diamond Tiara's hair fell about her face, running down her shoulders in amethyst and ice-white rivers. The cold water was helping her mind clear itself—it was helping her think. Think about how bloody cold it was! Despite her need for a cold shower to keep her thoughts away from the three crusaders, her hand turned the knob for the hot water, and she sighed in relief as the frigid cold gave way to pleasant warmth. Now she could enjoy the shower. She sighed under the warm spray and craned her neck upwards, resting her hands against the tiled walls. Now she had to sort her feelings out.

There was no denying her attraction for the three boys she used to bully. She couldn't just sweep what happened in her room earlier under a rug in her mind and hope for the best. She was a big girl now, she had to face her problems. Unfortunately, untangling the web of feelings in her brain promised to be more of a teaser than her father's morning Sudoku puzzles.

Attraction wasn't the only thing she felt either. Something about seeing the three of them smile that made her stomach do more kickflips than Scoots could pull off on his skateboard. They were each smart, funny, talented boys, who were far too kind to a bully like her. How was she supposed to reconcile years upon years of guilt? There was no short answer, and the feelings of shame and conflicting desires all welled about, pierced every now and then by images of them standing in the nude.

Diamond shook her head and grabbed the soap. She was in the shower for a reason, and it wouldn't do well to waste all the hot water in the house just because she couldn't stop introspecting. She worked the soap into a lather and began rubbing it in. Showers always helped her to clear her head, perhaps that's why she couldn't stop thinking things through.

There was always the possibility that the Crusaders thought of Tiara the same way she thought of them. She hadn't exactly been shy around them as of late, in fact, she felt more comfortable with them than many of her so called 'gal-pals', with the exception of Silver Spoon. A heavy blush coloured her cheeks a dark crimson, as she remembered how brazenly she had been walking around her house when they came to visit last. In just a tank top and boy shorts, with the heating all the way up. Dead of winter, the three boys had come in with heavy winter coats, and had quickly shed them in favour of their much looser shirts and jeans. They had spent the day in good company, Silver Spoon had shown up, bearing pizza and junk food, and they had an impromptu slumber party. The blush quickly fell away, and a happy smile replaced it at the fond memories. She had to admit, so far she was enjoying the whole 'friendship' thing.

Her smile disappeared, however, as she remembered the very next day at school. Applebuck had been taken aside in the school cafeteria by three other seniors. Former lackeys of Tiara, who still hadn't got it through their thick skull that they were supposed to be friendly. They promptly spilled sticky, sugary drinks on him, and while the sight of a sticky orange shirt clinging to his muscles wasn't unwelcome, she had laughed. She had laughed, and he had seen. The look of hurt on his face as she looked at her haunted her for the rest of the day, and almost scared her out of apologising. Despite everything, he had brushed it off with his damned smile and a chortle, saying that it was pretty funny in hindsight.

She couldn't exactly forgive herself as easily as he did. What was she expecting, though? Did she want him to scream at her? Reprimand her? Spank her? Bend her over the nearest picnic table, pull down her jeans and—

Her lips parted in a slow exhale. When did her hands get so close to her core? One hand was sliding over the generous mounds of her breasts, spreading soap and lather all over their glistening forms. The other one had worked its way down again, as though drawn by a magnet.

"Whoa!" She ripped her hands away from her body and set them on the taps, giving herself a blast of winter-cold water as a reward. She couldn't... she wouldn't! Not again. She was still basking in the contrails of afterglow! She wasn't some insatiable tart that couldn't go five minutes without some stimulation, for Christ's sake! She could control herself. She would control herself.

She ran the water over her soapy body and ignored the way the pulsing head made her shiver. Wash your hair, she told herself. Just wash your hair and get out, before you get all pruney! Nothing could possibly ever came from washing her hair, how could it? It was on the complete opposite end of her body.

She squirted some two-in-one shampoo and conditioner into her hand, running it through her hair slowly. She didn't dwell on the sensations of her fingers raking her scalp, as she usually did. Usually she would pamper herself a little, give herself a scalp massage using techniques she had gathered, from subscriptions to beauty magazines, and her mother's discarded copies of Cosmo.

Was that what she really wanted? She turned off the taps for a while, letting her hair stay bundled up in shampoo and soaps. Was she so desperate to pay reparations in some way, that it was slowly turning into a perverse lust? Had her love for the boys as friends somehow transformed, and become corrupted by the guilt she still felt for her past actions? Was all of this stemming from some deep-seated desire to be punished?

Punished, you say? a little voice began gathering steam in her head.

Nope! She quickly turned the water to its coldest setting and stuck her head under the spray, drowning the fresh heat the only way she could think of at that moment. She raked her fingernails over her scalp harshly to remove all the shampoo and conditioner combo. Dandruff was unsightly, after all.

One thing was certain, Diamond couldn't simply resolve this by herself. One way or another, she had to get this whole thing sorted out sooner or later. She would prefer sooner, just so she didn't get distracted in class, or somehow blurt it out during a game of truth-or-dare. God, she was imagining a game of spin the bottle, where she would like nothing more than for the bottle to land on three of those present.

Diamond turned off the water and stepped out of her shower, picking up a fluffy pink towel from its perch on the door, wrapping it around her lithe form, and stepping back into her adjacent room. Tomorrow was a Friday, and if she didn't at least talk with one of them about this, then she would either have to visit them at their homes—something she was not courageous enough to do—or wait until the following Monday. Given how her day was going so far, Diamond doubted her ability to survive that long with just her thoughts, imagination, and burgeoning lust for the trio.

She rested herself on the bed, allowing the towel to keep her sheets dry. She tapped her foot for a while, her thoughts flitting from subject to subject restlessly. A thousand different ways to talk with all three Crusaders, a thousand different ways the situations could play out. A thousand different images of her laying spread-eagled underneath one of them, two of them, or all three. She dove for her bedside unit and grabbed a remote control. If she could't live with her brain, then she'd just have to kill a few hundred cells with good old-fashioned television. She did have homework to do, as usual, but she could always copy off of someone at morning homeroom, as usual.

Flicking through the channels got her nowhere, but it succeeded in dulling her mind for a few moments. The movie channels were still riding the coat-tails of Hearts and Hooves day, and there were a lot of romance movies on. From light-hearted Rom-Coms, to the very stereotypical star-crossed lovers stories. She settled on a trashy rom-com and stood up, letting the movie fade into the background while she dried off. It didn't take too long. She left her hair slightly damp so it would dry on its own, and soon she was laying back on the bed, stifling a yawn as the shower caught up to her. She always felt sleepy after a shower.

After a while her eyelids began to droop, and she welcomed the veil of sleep with open-arms, and a happy sigh. Her last view before her eyes closed, was a tall man leaning in for a kiss on-screen, while happy music played through the speakers.