help yourself
Note: Still a first draft. But you should read this by yourself. In private. Slow and steady…
———————-
She let him into her place right when she was stepping out on her night shift. “There’s some pan leftover that you can eat. Will you be here when I get back?” she asked casually. He shrugged his shoulders. His brow was furrowed. He seemed tired. It was dusk, rather just a little past. The door opened, then closed with a practiced soft click. Silence in the room; the hush of inanimate things breathing. Gentle whirs and motor hums. He trudged over to her futon, piled high with unmade thick blankets, and lowered himself atop them all. There was a whoosh of air as the space between insulated down compressed. He closed his eyes.
One long shift later, her place was still quietly humming away with a gentle womb-like lull. And as if sensing her return, like certain cats, dogs, and other small domestics, he found himself suddenly awake. Face down in all her winter quilts, shirt and jacket off to the side in a heap, otherwise no different than when he first lay down. His muscles were sore – his chest and shoulders, and the often forgotten muscles across his hips. Was he getting sick? The door’s latch released. There was a warm rush, a vacuum, and then the door moved silently inward, furls of chill winter air preceding the cloak of frost around her silhouette. He caught a glimpse of the flickering street lamps outside. The door locked. Her hand left the doorknob. He could almost see the pads of her fingertips pulling effortlessly away. He could sense her swift movements, light footsteps. Keys laid down and boots pulled off.
He rolled over onto his back, unsure of what to do. Get up to pee? Get a drink of water? Wait for her. She turned no lights on. It would be pitch black if not for the ambient glow cast by the operating lights of her main interface, but that was in the other room. She was in this room now, looking at him in her bed. He heard the slick sound of lips drawing back to say something. Instead they only smiled and wet themselves. He rolled back onto his stomach, achy, still sleepy, listening to straps and zippers undoing, clothing being folded and set on the floor. Suddenly he realized the footsteps were near, very near. And just like that, she eased down next to him, her warm body and muscle, and the smell of her skin … Covers shifting and rearranging around him — all of it creeping into his drowsy consciousness.
“I hope I don’t stink. I’m exhausted,” she offered, sighing. Suddenly, her cold hands were on his skin. He jumped, not at the chill, but at the fresh sensation of her palms, her fingertips, sweeping firmly up and down against the wrought up muscles in his back. She laughed to herself at his long exhales, pressing down harder into the knotted muscles.
“Are you going to leave?” she asked casually, dragging both thumbs down along his spine. He said nothing. “You look like you need rest … Stay. I can make us breakfast in the morning.”
“I don’t have work tomorrow,” he mumbled to her against the sheets.
“Well then it all works out,” she said cheerfully.
He knew she was naked, or could only guess that she was. I’m exhausted, she’d said; maybe from the long shift, the outside world, the cold and all the heavy boots and gear she had to wear. But anyway, here she was crawling on top of him, setting both hands down to grip solid handfulls of thick shoulder and neck, kneading and twisting out all those things that had been bothering him before he got here. He felt the insides of her thighs on the outsides of his, the rest of her hovering somewhere in the darkness. When she bent down to kiss the nape of his neck, suddenly there were her forearms and elbows, and the soft sweep of her breasts, nipples just hard enough to sense their difference from the rest of her. I’m exhausted, she’d said. And so was he.
The kneading of her hands gradually stopped. She used her lips now to sooth all those tired places. The heat of her body was woefully disrupted by the reinforced dungarees still slouched around his waist. But she raised herself some and pulled his ass up in the air just enough, as if to say I know what you’re thinking. She unstraddled him, tugging down the waistband of both his underwear and workpants with two swift movements. Soon, like his shirt and other gear, they were in a heap by the bed. She hesitated returning to her kisses, and he felt the chill of her body’s absence as the seconds passed. Still sleepy, less achy. The darkness was lush. He turned to look back at her. He saw the glint of her eyes as they moved up to meet his. She grinned.
“Mmm … Sorry, I couldn’t decide,” she said softly, her voice low.
“On what?”
(Continue reading…)
