The Space Between
"This isn't real," Min points out breathlessly, in the sticky hiatus. Wesley turns his head and bites her soft hip a little too hard.
"Reality is highly over-rated," he says. She smiles.
They are lying in an inelegant pose, curled limbs intersecting here and there, half-on and half-off one another. His head is pillowed in her lap. Her finger tips are drawing lazy patterns on his forearm, nails scoring gentle lines into the skin. The sheets have come untucked from the bed and one corner of the mattress is exposed to the warm air. It is afternoon, and dust motes waltz drunkenly in shafts of California sunlight somewhere far from the Hyperion, and further from Min's life. She doesn't remember the name of the motel.
Afterglow. Every square inch of her skin is tingling; she feels enervated and jazzed and tenderised and tender. And still nearly ready to go again, because this is the one and only chance she gets, and she's damned if she'll waste any precious instant of illicit intimacy. In a minute (just a minute; maybe two; maybe ten) she'll muster her languid muscles into moving once again. This is the little rip in the space-time continuum where virtue is relative, relativity virtual, fiction and fact wrapped around one another in a torrid embrace. In a minute or five she will turn and shift and bump, and his breath will catch in that scar-torn laugh that has been heard so rarely since his brave new world lost its sheen. She will ease down over his torso again, breasts dragging over the taut skin of his chest until their bodies are aligned and she can kiss the raised line severing his throat and hear him gasp; and if she cannot erase the memory of pain, at least in this cheap and dusty space there are no thoughts of anyone else. She will lick the salt from his skin and think wistfully about limes and tequila. And then forget about limes and tequila, or handcuffs, or leather, or any other trappings of fantasy fucking. He tastes surprisingly good straight.
His penis is not extraordinarily large, nor is it capable of reviving within seconds of orgasm; their climaxes were not and will not be simultaneous. She did, however, come like an express train. Repeatedly. And will do again. And later, as he explores her body at a more leisurely pace, they will talk about Russian novels and vampires and Boiler Makers. He will be disarmingly astounded by the notion of her cross dressing, and cup her ample breasts in defence of his point. (His hands are more calloused than she thought they would be, and she likes this. She likes him.) She will tease him about being a master of many tongues, until breathing becomes difficult. (He didn't see the Bond film with the Cunning Linguist joke; he prefers Connery to Brosnan anyway.) That will all come later.
Now they simply lie here, tangled inelegantly, while Min experiences a little stab of regret that none of it is real.
His hair tickles her thighs and her belly. It was mussed but clean and dry when they stumbled into the room; now it is damp with their sweat. (They could both use a shower. The room stinks of sex. They don't mind.)
Min remembers the wood hard and warm against her ass and her shoulders as they kissed up against the door, with hands in new places and places in new hands. He didn't taste of bourbon or beer after all, nor tea (with or without milk) nor blueberry scones. He tasted of coffee and hummus, with a tiny trace of artificial mint, and his mouth was good at things other than wordplay. Very good.
They grew so engrossed in the kissing, in fact, that for a while the business of door-opening was forgotten altogether; and then an old couple passed them on the way to the check out desk, and they both remembered that the means to more horizontal comfort were immediately to hand. She slid her hand down the back of his pants while he opened the door. She wondered giddily whether they were trousers, since they encased the ass of an Englishman. Arse of an Englishman. He did not carry her over the threshold and she was not wearing white.
One of the nice things about intangible tangling of limbs is the fact that protection is guaranteed; no nasty diseases, no unexpected pregnancy for her. Or him. (No mpreg in this unreal reality. Nothing epic. Nothing earnest. Nothing sentimental. Nothing real.)
Not real. So there is no little pause to do the decent thing and say "Do you have any?" "Fuck. No. I wasn't expecting - have you got - ?" "In my wallet. Over there." No need to arrange herself in provocative poses on the covers and watch the biteable English arse flexing as he hunkers down and scrabbles through piles of hastily-shed clothes in search of a little foil packet, muttering curses in languages that have no vowels.
No strings. No stings. No Lilah or Gunn or issues of any kind. No qualms about fidelity. No big angst or terrible morning after. Just this little pocket of insulated lust and affection and unreality.
She could learn to love this.