215: Seduction
So I was having this pretty good dream involving a previously-unknown Chopin nocturne when Angela woke me up with a drunken blowjob.
Now that I have your attention...
(Sex sells, or hadn't you heard?)
But yes. The intricacies of piano and violin got a little less smooth and poignant, a little more immediate, when had this turned into a sex dream, hands, mouth, oh hey, tongue, and then consciousness kicked in to provide me with the previously-unknown tableau of Angela's lips wrapping around my dick.
As far as new discoveries go, the Chopin was much easier to handle.
"Jesus CHRIST--" came out as more a squawk than anything else, as I managed a complex combination torso-twist-roll-upright-jerk-and-two-feet-away from Angela's mouth and fingers. There was half-light spilling in from the hallway's open door, and she blinked stupidly in it, looking down at her hands as if trying to figure out where I'd gone.
"What-- are you-- what the shit are you doing?"
"Wussit look like?" Her slur was a pretty good impression of Rocky after a few punches to the head. Drunk or concussed, then; the first hypothesis was confirmed when I took a deep breath and could smell the alcohol. Note to self: get around to putting a lock on that cupboard, and keep the key.
I grabbed at my boxers and got my dick back inside them, still staring at her. There must have been enough of a whiskey-tango-foxtrot expression on my face still for her to feel compelled to add, "Din't think you'd wake up... sorry..."
"I-- you're-- you were blowing me and hoping I wouldn't wake up, what? "
Angela laughed, shoulders swaying with the motion. I had the sneaking suspicion that if she wasn't already sprawled on my bed, propped up on her elbows, that she'd probably fall over. Really, definitely, absolutely time to get a lock. I couldn't stop her from going out and buying Jack Daniel's, but I could at least keep her from getting smashed at three a.m. on what we already had in the place.
"Wanted t'see if I could," she mumbled, and dropped bonelessly face-down into the mattress. "Seemed--" another muffled laugh, "--seemed like... good idea at th' time..."
"Testing your ninja fellatio skills?" This came out sharper and colder than it should have, but frankly it was fucking amazing that my voice was back down in its proper octaval range.
"Nuhh..." She lifted her head from the mattress and stared at me, her head tilted just enough from the door that her eyes were sockets of shadow, her cheekbones hard edges underscored by the weight she'd lost. Two weeks ago I'd come home to find her with the scissors in the bathroom, most of what had been two feet of hair on the floor; right now what was left of it was a tangle of wild unkempt tufts around her skull, black spikes against the light. Her hands were clenching and unclenching in the sheets, her mouth moving soundlessly. Seeing her like this was a constant kick to the balls, gut-punches of recrimination. "Paul..."
I swallowed, tried hard to sound kind. "What is it?"
"...I think m'gonna throw up..."
She did.
Thankfully, not until I'd gotten her to the bathroom and bent over the toilet. I got her cleaned up, got some water in her. She said "I'm sorry" a lot. Par for the course of many of the nights right about then, save that most of them had not started off with the aforementioned attempted blowjob.
"I'm sorry," she said for the fifteenth time, sitting on the commode while I wiped off the counter. It wasn't actually dirty; I needed something to do with my hands. "I... wanted to see if..."
"You could. Yes. So you said."
"Yes. No. I mean... God... Paul, I can't, I can't think about sex, without feeling like I'm, like there's bugs on my skin, and th' therapist says that's, that it's unnerstannable, but-- fuck, fucking shit. It's screwing with my acting, I can't kiss on-stage--" She smacked her head back hard against the wall; I winced in sympathy. "It's months now, how long'm I gonna be like this, I wanna fucking touch someone again, I want to go out dancing without a panic attack, I WANT-- MY FUCKING-- LIFE BACK!"
The last was a scream. Tomorrow morning... well, in a few hours, anyway... I'd probably have to listen to a complaint from the apartment next to ours. Fuck 'em.
Angela drew her knees up to her chest and put her cheek on them, closed her eyes, whispered, "I thought-- thought if I could-- with someone I trust..."
Speaking of punches to the fucking gut.
Since there was no other seat in the bathroom (hardly room for one) I slumped down against the wall, stretched my legs out on the floor, and rubbed at my forehead. "Angela... sweetheart... I am homosexual. Queer. Gay. Fairy. Faggot. Fruitcake. Fudgepacker. Other words starting with F. Remember? I suck the dick? And wear the dress in this relationship?"
She cracked half a smile, as I was hoping, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Yeah. Just. Just for like, one time, I thought that maybe-- if you weren't really awake... "
"And therefore unable to express my non-consent? Nice way to get a little revenge, I suppose." The second it hit the air I winced. Fuck's sake, there are times I should just not be allowed to fucking talk. Angela didn't flinch, but she did go pale, color draining from her face.
"You-- you think that's why I was trying to--"
"No, no, no, I don't, fuck, I shouldn't have fucking said that. I didn't mean it, Angela, Christ, I just-- said it-- without thinking. Asshole thing to say, and I am one. I'm sorry."
She looked away. After ten or so extraordinarily unpleasant seconds she stood up and said-- voice taut and brittle, like nothing so much as a strained violin string-- "I'm going to bed."
"I'm sorry," I repeated dully.
"So'm I."
She stepped over my legs and stumbled off to her own door, her own bed, still trailing a whiskey-stink behind her. I let my head drop back against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to recapture the Chopin.
So much for her grand seduction.
...except that it worked, one way or another, eased along with alternating helpings of guilt and awkward rationalization. I owed Angela, owed her for-- for forgiving me cracks like that one, for taking my shit on a consistent basis, when she had every damn right to have launched herself screaming at me the first time she saw me after David. My fault, that. And even if not my fault then my responsibility, something, something, it wouldn't have happened if not for me. Calculate blame how you like.
And anyhow, as I told myself for the next few days, men had been having sex with women for thousands and thousands of years, indeed did so as the default; surely it could not be That Bad? (This was in direct contradiction to the first-hand knowledge I had to date acquired of women.) Nor that complex? (The literature on the subject implied otherwise.) What the hell did women like, anyway? (I enlisted the advice of several females of my acquaintance, though I took the words of combat-boots-wearing bull-dyke-par-excellence Rachel with multiple grains of salt.)
Long story short: later that week I took a personal day from the precinct and spent part of it shopping and part of it cooking and all of it as nervous as I have ever been. I timed things well, though, lit the gods-be-damned candles at the same moment I heard her key in the door, and waited. Deep breath. Remember now to be nice. Ask how her day was. Be considerate. Be kind. Think first, talk second. And, above all, don't be a Fucking Asshole. Right. No problem.
Angela surveyed the works of my hands in a sort of stunned silence that I trusted was appreciative. Our hideous Formica table was hidden from view with a brand-new linen tablecloth, set with a four-course dinner and matching silverware. (Quite the coup.) The aforementioned candles. Soft background music (the one thing I hadn't had to go out and buy). Roses.
I'm not quite sure what I was expecting as a reward, but a slow, careful, "Okay... what crack did you roll off a junkie today?" wasn't quite it.
"I am reliably informed," I growled, "that this shit is what women like." Ah. So much for not being an asshole.
"This is for me." Said a little too blankly to be a question; she wasn't looking at me, but fingering the place settings.
"I don't see anybody else with tits in the room." Alright, I'd start being nice in a few.
Angela half-smiled and set a butterknife back down on the table. "Mmm. You're apologizing, aren't you?"
"Oh the-hell-I-am. No. What I'm doing is seducing you. See the flowers? The wine? Seduction. You want Shakespeare, we can do that too. My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun, because they're fucking bloodshot from chain-smoking--"
Angela held up her hands in surrender. "All right. You're seducing me, I get it. To what end, Romeo? Wherefore art thou?" (I've mentioned her background is theatre, yes?)
"Get you into bed. I believe that is customary, for seductions."
Angela arched a brow, and picked up one of the wineglasses for a slow, skepticism-laden sip. "Mm. And then what?"
"Then..? Oh, then I 'eat you out like an all-night buffet.'"
It's really rather satisfying to make Angela choke. I waited until she'd had a chance to wipe the wine off her chin, then said brightly, "That was Rachel's advice, anyway. At least, the only part of it clean enough to repeat. She said she'd be happy to help out if I found myself, ah, incapable of carrying through."
Angela flipped me off with one hand, using the other to dab more wine off her shirt. "You are such an asshole."
"To thine own self be true," I said with an angelic smile.
Angela made a show of checking under the tablecloth for trained attack lesbians, then dropped into one of the chairs and regarded me with her chin on one hand. "You're serious about this, aren't you," she murmured after a moment.
"Oh, 'serious' is such a distasteful--"
"Paul."
Cornered like a frickin' rat. I sighed and sat down in the other chair. Angela had put the butterknife down crookedly; I realigned it with the others, ran a hand through my hair, cleared my throat.
"Yes. Okay. I'm serious. If you need-- well, whatever you need, Angela. If that's sex, then, Jesus, I think I can bring myself to skitter one notch down the Kinsey scale. But I want things in return."
She was still with an animal's stillness, wary and waiting. "Things?"
I reached across the table to cover her hand with mine. "Stop drinking yourself to sleep. If you have to have either Jack or me in bed with you, I'd rather it was me. And cut back on the cigarettes. They're not helping you any more than the whiskey is."
Angela flinched, but muttered, "Pot, meet your fellow smoke-blackened kettle."
"There are degrees, angel. You're going through, what, three goddamn packs a day?"
Mumble mumble. Sounded like four. I sighed. "Four, then. That's damn well toxic. Cut it down. That's the deal. You want your life back? Needing eighty cigarettes and a fifth of JD to get through the day isn't a life.
"Work with me, Angela. I'm going to be contracting girl cooties here, you can at least halve your self-poisoning. What do you say?"
She smiled weakly. "Do I get to do you with a strap-on?"
"....we'll negotiate that. Eat your fucking dinner, you kinky little bitch."
She did.
And after, we danced; one thing I do know how to do with a woman. And Angela could make an elephant look graceful, if she was stuck with it as a partner. Zoot Sims played "Remember" and we pretty much turned in place in the gap between the couch and the kitchen, due to our apartment having roughly the free space of a shoebox (with the shoes still in it). We had danced several times; this was still familiar territory, still safe. Never quite so close, perhaps-- never with her face buried in my shoulder, silent tears soaking through my shirt; never with her leaning against me for support-- but we had danced.
By the time the record kicked over to "Blues for Two" she'd stopped crying, and switched shoulders to rest her cheek on a dry spot. "Sorry about the shirt."
"It's all right. You can do the laundry this week."
"Heh. Thanks. "
"Oh, anytime."
Hands around her waist; she was getting way the fuck too skinny. I made a mental note to cook more, if that was the only way to ensure she was eating.
"You're nervous," she said, and I could hear her smile.
"Oh?"
"Yup. I can hear your heartbeat. Kathud-THUD-thud. Don't have a coronary on me, Paul."
"Yes ma'am. I'll slow my heart rate for your peace of mind."
She chuckled. "Funny, though. You get shot at on a regular basis, but the prospect of ess-ee-ex with me is freaking you out."
"Oh yes, laugh it up, that'll get me in the mood. --and it is at best an occasional basis, for your information. I have an aversion to playing action hero."
"Mmm." She was silent a second, then added, arms tightening around me, "Don't get shot either, okay? I like you."
"Since you ask, I will do my best."
"Thank you."
...this would be a good place to stop, wouldn't it? Warm fuzzy feelings abounding, all the awkwardness of the following hour only vaguely alluded to? But no, I hooked you filthy perverts in with the promise of sex, and now you'll all bitch about false advertising if you don't get your voyeuristic kicks.
Degenerates, the lot of you.
Very well. It went slowly. Hesitantly. I'm not sure which of us spent more time reassuring the other.
("It's okay. We don't have to...")
("Yes but I want to so shut up.")
Careful fingers, careful removal of the layers of clothing, eyes for each others' reactions. I have never touched any man as tentatively as I did her. Hands trembling, breath hitching. The curve of her knee, the line of her calf. "All right?"
A nod, yes, her eyes closed as she kissed my temple, my cheek. Fingers tangling in each other's hair. All right? And this? Is this okay? Can I... may I... is this good?
Yes. This is good. Strange, like the world viewed from underwater, with our movements either too slow or too sudden, but good.
Softer than a man, flesh filling my hands where I would expect only flat planes of muscle and points of bone. Her skin smelled different. The noises she made were throaty, the arch of her spine feline. Her mouth and fingers smaller than I was accustomed to.
"I'm not going to break, Paul."
"I know. I know. Sorry. I--"
By unspoken agreement we both whispered. The room was half-lit like the night she'd drunkenly started this, the hall's light spilling in, giving some shelter of shadows, casting knobs of bone and skin in soft relief. So slender, the line of her neck, and the curve of her hips was fascinating to me, territory my palms returned to again and again. And her hands on me in turn, moving with strange grace and lightness; from a man I would have called it teasing. Fingernails tattooing down the nerves at the top of my spine. Much of time I sat still and let her explore, let her test what she was comfortable with.
I touched her cheeks and chest to register the utter smoothness; no stubble, no hair. Coarse curls at the juncture of her thighs were the same, but the territory beyond a mystery. A difference in smell. In taste. God, so soft, yielding; such a contrast from the hard line of a ready cock.
"Angela, I don't-- I don't know what to do here--"
"Insert Tab A in Slot B, it's not forensic science--"
"No. Show me."
Hands guiding hands. This is how I like it. Her teeth would flash in half-second glints in the darkness when she grinned. I liked making her moan, savored the sounds I could coax from her when I touched her in the ways she showed me. Yes. Yes, just like that. Gentle. Kiss me.
Slow....
I was used to fire, to hot sudden onslaughts of want like heat lightning, eager dicks straining denim, broad shoulders. This was sinking into warm water, into circles and curves, into the sweep of her neck and the swell of her breasts and the so-easy, so-smooth slide deep between her thighs. Wet heat claiming me, drowning me. Not a bad way to go, if you're going to.
I'm not actually sure I came. The sensation of drowning is what I recall, of languid pleasure diffusing, rather than breaking in a sharp wave. I remember her breath warm on my chest, after, and her hands combing through my hair.
"I thought you'd told me once you'd been with a woman before," she mumbled afterwards.
"I think my exact words were, I am not totally unfamiliar with the bitchier sex," I corrected her sleepily. "I've been in bed with women before. And gotten out again fairly quickly. Paul Jr. never seemed interested in playing ball, so to speak."
She snickered. "Well, what's he think now?"
"He thinks you're just such a damn sexy tart that he got involved against his better judgment."
"Oh, is that so?"
"It is."
"Mmmm. Think he'd be willing to try it again, sometime?"
"Anything's possible, if you get me drunk. But not too drunk. Then he really will be uninterested."
Angela laughed, and it sounded more genuine than anything I had heard from her since David. "I'll keep that bit of wisdom in mind. Paul?"
"Yesss?"
"Thank you."
"No. No. This wasn't kindness, this was business. You purchased this with a promise to cut down on the booze and tobacco, remember?"
"Oh, right. Business. Purchase. ...does that make you my rent-boy?"
"I suppose it does. Hm. I'm rather disappointed in myself, here I said I was never going to sink to hustling."
"Don't worry," Angela yawned. "I'll still respect you in the morning."
I snorted, and shifted a bit to get some blood flow back into the arm she was lying on top of. "You'd better, seeing as you seduced me."
"I did? I thought it was th' other way around..."
I didn't answer her sleepy mumble, busy as I was gazing at the ceiling, or the shadows that marked where it would be. Guesses in the dark. Fumbling for answers on how we ought to live our lives, how we ought to treat one another, the things we do to patch up the cracks the world leaves. Why we try to patch those cracks at all with our small inadequate human hands, whether we act out of guilt or compassion or some sorry half-baked mixture of them both.
The desire for absolution seduces more readily than any man or woman.
fandom: boondock saints
muse: paul smecker
word count: 3200
Now that I have your attention...
(Sex sells, or hadn't you heard?)
But yes. The intricacies of piano and violin got a little less smooth and poignant, a little more immediate, when had this turned into a sex dream, hands, mouth, oh hey, tongue, and then consciousness kicked in to provide me with the previously-unknown tableau of Angela's lips wrapping around my dick.
As far as new discoveries go, the Chopin was much easier to handle.
"Jesus CHRIST--" came out as more a squawk than anything else, as I managed a complex combination torso-twist-roll-upright-jerk-and-two-feet-away from Angela's mouth and fingers. There was half-light spilling in from the hallway's open door, and she blinked stupidly in it, looking down at her hands as if trying to figure out where I'd gone.
"What-- are you-- what the shit are you doing?"
"Wussit look like?" Her slur was a pretty good impression of Rocky after a few punches to the head. Drunk or concussed, then; the first hypothesis was confirmed when I took a deep breath and could smell the alcohol. Note to self: get around to putting a lock on that cupboard, and keep the key.
I grabbed at my boxers and got my dick back inside them, still staring at her. There must have been enough of a whiskey-tango-foxtrot expression on my face still for her to feel compelled to add, "Din't think you'd wake up... sorry..."
"I-- you're-- you were blowing me and hoping I wouldn't wake up, what? "
Angela laughed, shoulders swaying with the motion. I had the sneaking suspicion that if she wasn't already sprawled on my bed, propped up on her elbows, that she'd probably fall over. Really, definitely, absolutely time to get a lock. I couldn't stop her from going out and buying Jack Daniel's, but I could at least keep her from getting smashed at three a.m. on what we already had in the place.
"Wanted t'see if I could," she mumbled, and dropped bonelessly face-down into the mattress. "Seemed--" another muffled laugh, "--seemed like... good idea at th' time..."
"Testing your ninja fellatio skills?" This came out sharper and colder than it should have, but frankly it was fucking amazing that my voice was back down in its proper octaval range.
"Nuhh..." She lifted her head from the mattress and stared at me, her head tilted just enough from the door that her eyes were sockets of shadow, her cheekbones hard edges underscored by the weight she'd lost. Two weeks ago I'd come home to find her with the scissors in the bathroom, most of what had been two feet of hair on the floor; right now what was left of it was a tangle of wild unkempt tufts around her skull, black spikes against the light. Her hands were clenching and unclenching in the sheets, her mouth moving soundlessly. Seeing her like this was a constant kick to the balls, gut-punches of recrimination. "Paul..."
I swallowed, tried hard to sound kind. "What is it?"
"...I think m'gonna throw up..."
She did.
Thankfully, not until I'd gotten her to the bathroom and bent over the toilet. I got her cleaned up, got some water in her. She said "I'm sorry" a lot. Par for the course of many of the nights right about then, save that most of them had not started off with the aforementioned attempted blowjob.
"I'm sorry," she said for the fifteenth time, sitting on the commode while I wiped off the counter. It wasn't actually dirty; I needed something to do with my hands. "I... wanted to see if..."
"You could. Yes. So you said."
"Yes. No. I mean... God... Paul, I can't, I can't think about sex, without feeling like I'm, like there's bugs on my skin, and th' therapist says that's, that it's unnerstannable, but-- fuck, fucking shit. It's screwing with my acting, I can't kiss on-stage--" She smacked her head back hard against the wall; I winced in sympathy. "It's months now, how long'm I gonna be like this, I wanna fucking touch someone again, I want to go out dancing without a panic attack, I WANT-- MY FUCKING-- LIFE BACK!"
The last was a scream. Tomorrow morning... well, in a few hours, anyway... I'd probably have to listen to a complaint from the apartment next to ours. Fuck 'em.
Angela drew her knees up to her chest and put her cheek on them, closed her eyes, whispered, "I thought-- thought if I could-- with someone I trust..."
Speaking of punches to the fucking gut.
Since there was no other seat in the bathroom (hardly room for one) I slumped down against the wall, stretched my legs out on the floor, and rubbed at my forehead. "Angela... sweetheart... I am homosexual. Queer. Gay. Fairy. Faggot. Fruitcake. Fudgepacker. Other words starting with F. Remember? I suck the dick? And wear the dress in this relationship?"
She cracked half a smile, as I was hoping, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Yeah. Just. Just for like, one time, I thought that maybe-- if you weren't really awake... "
"And therefore unable to express my non-consent? Nice way to get a little revenge, I suppose." The second it hit the air I winced. Fuck's sake, there are times I should just not be allowed to fucking talk. Angela didn't flinch, but she did go pale, color draining from her face.
"You-- you think that's why I was trying to--"
"No, no, no, I don't, fuck, I shouldn't have fucking said that. I didn't mean it, Angela, Christ, I just-- said it-- without thinking. Asshole thing to say, and I am one. I'm sorry."
She looked away. After ten or so extraordinarily unpleasant seconds she stood up and said-- voice taut and brittle, like nothing so much as a strained violin string-- "I'm going to bed."
"I'm sorry," I repeated dully.
"So'm I."
She stepped over my legs and stumbled off to her own door, her own bed, still trailing a whiskey-stink behind her. I let my head drop back against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to recapture the Chopin.
So much for her grand seduction.
...except that it worked, one way or another, eased along with alternating helpings of guilt and awkward rationalization. I owed Angela, owed her for-- for forgiving me cracks like that one, for taking my shit on a consistent basis, when she had every damn right to have launched herself screaming at me the first time she saw me after David. My fault, that. And even if not my fault then my responsibility, something, something, it wouldn't have happened if not for me. Calculate blame how you like.
And anyhow, as I told myself for the next few days, men had been having sex with women for thousands and thousands of years, indeed did so as the default; surely it could not be That Bad? (This was in direct contradiction to the first-hand knowledge I had to date acquired of women.) Nor that complex? (The literature on the subject implied otherwise.) What the hell did women like, anyway? (I enlisted the advice of several females of my acquaintance, though I took the words of combat-boots-wearing bull-dyke-par-excellence Rachel with multiple grains of salt.)
Long story short: later that week I took a personal day from the precinct and spent part of it shopping and part of it cooking and all of it as nervous as I have ever been. I timed things well, though, lit the gods-be-damned candles at the same moment I heard her key in the door, and waited. Deep breath. Remember now to be nice. Ask how her day was. Be considerate. Be kind. Think first, talk second. And, above all, don't be a Fucking Asshole. Right. No problem.
Angela surveyed the works of my hands in a sort of stunned silence that I trusted was appreciative. Our hideous Formica table was hidden from view with a brand-new linen tablecloth, set with a four-course dinner and matching silverware. (Quite the coup.) The aforementioned candles. Soft background music (the one thing I hadn't had to go out and buy). Roses.
I'm not quite sure what I was expecting as a reward, but a slow, careful, "Okay... what crack did you roll off a junkie today?" wasn't quite it.
"I am reliably informed," I growled, "that this shit is what women like." Ah. So much for not being an asshole.
"This is for me." Said a little too blankly to be a question; she wasn't looking at me, but fingering the place settings.
"I don't see anybody else with tits in the room." Alright, I'd start being nice in a few.
Angela half-smiled and set a butterknife back down on the table. "Mmm. You're apologizing, aren't you?"
"Oh the-hell-I-am. No. What I'm doing is seducing you. See the flowers? The wine? Seduction. You want Shakespeare, we can do that too. My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun, because they're fucking bloodshot from chain-smoking--"
Angela held up her hands in surrender. "All right. You're seducing me, I get it. To what end, Romeo? Wherefore art thou?" (I've mentioned her background is theatre, yes?)
"Get you into bed. I believe that is customary, for seductions."
Angela arched a brow, and picked up one of the wineglasses for a slow, skepticism-laden sip. "Mm. And then what?"
"Then..? Oh, then I 'eat you out like an all-night buffet.'"
It's really rather satisfying to make Angela choke. I waited until she'd had a chance to wipe the wine off her chin, then said brightly, "That was Rachel's advice, anyway. At least, the only part of it clean enough to repeat. She said she'd be happy to help out if I found myself, ah, incapable of carrying through."
Angela flipped me off with one hand, using the other to dab more wine off her shirt. "You are such an asshole."
"To thine own self be true," I said with an angelic smile.
Angela made a show of checking under the tablecloth for trained attack lesbians, then dropped into one of the chairs and regarded me with her chin on one hand. "You're serious about this, aren't you," she murmured after a moment.
"Oh, 'serious' is such a distasteful--"
"Paul."
Cornered like a frickin' rat. I sighed and sat down in the other chair. Angela had put the butterknife down crookedly; I realigned it with the others, ran a hand through my hair, cleared my throat.
"Yes. Okay. I'm serious. If you need-- well, whatever you need, Angela. If that's sex, then, Jesus, I think I can bring myself to skitter one notch down the Kinsey scale. But I want things in return."
She was still with an animal's stillness, wary and waiting. "Things?"
I reached across the table to cover her hand with mine. "Stop drinking yourself to sleep. If you have to have either Jack or me in bed with you, I'd rather it was me. And cut back on the cigarettes. They're not helping you any more than the whiskey is."
Angela flinched, but muttered, "Pot, meet your fellow smoke-blackened kettle."
"There are degrees, angel. You're going through, what, three goddamn packs a day?"
Mumble mumble. Sounded like four. I sighed. "Four, then. That's damn well toxic. Cut it down. That's the deal. You want your life back? Needing eighty cigarettes and a fifth of JD to get through the day isn't a life.
"Work with me, Angela. I'm going to be contracting girl cooties here, you can at least halve your self-poisoning. What do you say?"
She smiled weakly. "Do I get to do you with a strap-on?"
"....we'll negotiate that. Eat your fucking dinner, you kinky little bitch."
She did.
And after, we danced; one thing I do know how to do with a woman. And Angela could make an elephant look graceful, if she was stuck with it as a partner. Zoot Sims played "Remember" and we pretty much turned in place in the gap between the couch and the kitchen, due to our apartment having roughly the free space of a shoebox (with the shoes still in it). We had danced several times; this was still familiar territory, still safe. Never quite so close, perhaps-- never with her face buried in my shoulder, silent tears soaking through my shirt; never with her leaning against me for support-- but we had danced.
By the time the record kicked over to "Blues for Two" she'd stopped crying, and switched shoulders to rest her cheek on a dry spot. "Sorry about the shirt."
"It's all right. You can do the laundry this week."
"Heh. Thanks. "
"Oh, anytime."
Hands around her waist; she was getting way the fuck too skinny. I made a mental note to cook more, if that was the only way to ensure she was eating.
"You're nervous," she said, and I could hear her smile.
"Oh?"
"Yup. I can hear your heartbeat. Kathud-THUD-thud. Don't have a coronary on me, Paul."
"Yes ma'am. I'll slow my heart rate for your peace of mind."
She chuckled. "Funny, though. You get shot at on a regular basis, but the prospect of ess-ee-ex with me is freaking you out."
"Oh yes, laugh it up, that'll get me in the mood. --and it is at best an occasional basis, for your information. I have an aversion to playing action hero."
"Mmm." She was silent a second, then added, arms tightening around me, "Don't get shot either, okay? I like you."
"Since you ask, I will do my best."
"Thank you."
...this would be a good place to stop, wouldn't it? Warm fuzzy feelings abounding, all the awkwardness of the following hour only vaguely alluded to? But no, I hooked you filthy perverts in with the promise of sex, and now you'll all bitch about false advertising if you don't get your voyeuristic kicks.
Degenerates, the lot of you.
Very well. It went slowly. Hesitantly. I'm not sure which of us spent more time reassuring the other.
("It's okay. We don't have to...")
("Yes but I want to so shut up.")
Careful fingers, careful removal of the layers of clothing, eyes for each others' reactions. I have never touched any man as tentatively as I did her. Hands trembling, breath hitching. The curve of her knee, the line of her calf. "All right?"
A nod, yes, her eyes closed as she kissed my temple, my cheek. Fingers tangling in each other's hair. All right? And this? Is this okay? Can I... may I... is this good?
Yes. This is good. Strange, like the world viewed from underwater, with our movements either too slow or too sudden, but good.
Softer than a man, flesh filling my hands where I would expect only flat planes of muscle and points of bone. Her skin smelled different. The noises she made were throaty, the arch of her spine feline. Her mouth and fingers smaller than I was accustomed to.
"I'm not going to break, Paul."
"I know. I know. Sorry. I--"
By unspoken agreement we both whispered. The room was half-lit like the night she'd drunkenly started this, the hall's light spilling in, giving some shelter of shadows, casting knobs of bone and skin in soft relief. So slender, the line of her neck, and the curve of her hips was fascinating to me, territory my palms returned to again and again. And her hands on me in turn, moving with strange grace and lightness; from a man I would have called it teasing. Fingernails tattooing down the nerves at the top of my spine. Much of time I sat still and let her explore, let her test what she was comfortable with.
I touched her cheeks and chest to register the utter smoothness; no stubble, no hair. Coarse curls at the juncture of her thighs were the same, but the territory beyond a mystery. A difference in smell. In taste. God, so soft, yielding; such a contrast from the hard line of a ready cock.
"Angela, I don't-- I don't know what to do here--"
"Insert Tab A in Slot B, it's not forensic science--"
"No. Show me."
Hands guiding hands. This is how I like it. Her teeth would flash in half-second glints in the darkness when she grinned. I liked making her moan, savored the sounds I could coax from her when I touched her in the ways she showed me. Yes. Yes, just like that. Gentle. Kiss me.
Slow....
I was used to fire, to hot sudden onslaughts of want like heat lightning, eager dicks straining denim, broad shoulders. This was sinking into warm water, into circles and curves, into the sweep of her neck and the swell of her breasts and the so-easy, so-smooth slide deep between her thighs. Wet heat claiming me, drowning me. Not a bad way to go, if you're going to.
I'm not actually sure I came. The sensation of drowning is what I recall, of languid pleasure diffusing, rather than breaking in a sharp wave. I remember her breath warm on my chest, after, and her hands combing through my hair.
"I thought you'd told me once you'd been with a woman before," she mumbled afterwards.
"I think my exact words were, I am not totally unfamiliar with the bitchier sex," I corrected her sleepily. "I've been in bed with women before. And gotten out again fairly quickly. Paul Jr. never seemed interested in playing ball, so to speak."
She snickered. "Well, what's he think now?"
"He thinks you're just such a damn sexy tart that he got involved against his better judgment."
"Oh, is that so?"
"It is."
"Mmmm. Think he'd be willing to try it again, sometime?"
"Anything's possible, if you get me drunk. But not too drunk. Then he really will be uninterested."
Angela laughed, and it sounded more genuine than anything I had heard from her since David. "I'll keep that bit of wisdom in mind. Paul?"
"Yesss?"
"Thank you."
"No. No. This wasn't kindness, this was business. You purchased this with a promise to cut down on the booze and tobacco, remember?"
"Oh, right. Business. Purchase. ...does that make you my rent-boy?"
"I suppose it does. Hm. I'm rather disappointed in myself, here I said I was never going to sink to hustling."
"Don't worry," Angela yawned. "I'll still respect you in the morning."
I snorted, and shifted a bit to get some blood flow back into the arm she was lying on top of. "You'd better, seeing as you seduced me."
"I did? I thought it was th' other way around..."
I didn't answer her sleepy mumble, busy as I was gazing at the ceiling, or the shadows that marked where it would be. Guesses in the dark. Fumbling for answers on how we ought to live our lives, how we ought to treat one another, the things we do to patch up the cracks the world leaves. Why we try to patch those cracks at all with our small inadequate human hands, whether we act out of guilt or compassion or some sorry half-baked mixture of them both.
The desire for absolution seduces more readily than any man or woman.
fandom: boondock saints
muse: paul smecker
word count: 3200