AN: This is in response to a tumblr prompt for a story in which Sybil and Tom's first time is not amazing and beautiful and filled with mind-blowing orgasms.
I ran with Yankee Countess's virgin!Tom idea, and since I couldn't come up with an in-character way for period Sybil to be more experienced than Tom, I did a modern AU. I don't know much about higher education in the UK and I wanted to pound this out quickly (no pun intended) so I've set it at an American university.
Well, Tom thought, slouching toward his flat - no, his apartment - on Hill Street. That was a complete disaster.
-ooo-
Three days previous
"Wait! Stop!"
Tom froze, startled into immobility by the sound of a British accent as much as the urgency in the voice. He stood poised midstep and looked around for the source of it.
"Don't step on the 'M'." The speaker strode toward him: early twenties, wild reddish-brown hair, big sunglasses, wearing a silk scarf with the aplomb of a Frenchwoman.
He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her. "Don't what on the what?"
"Don't. Step. On the 'M'." She spoke as to a child. "Didn't you go to orientation?"
"Ah, no."
She propped her sunglasses up on her head to examine him more closely. "You're not a first year, are you."
He couldn't help chuckling. "I'm a doctoral student." And twenty-eight years old. The girl might be pretty, but she was blind.
"Sorry, you looked a lot younger from far away." She gave Tom a brilliant smile and something inside him sat up. "Well, if you've already had your first blue book, then you're all right."
"My first... ah, yeah, I've written my share of essays."
"Cool. Anyway. The legend is, if you step on the 'M' before you take your first blue book, you'll fail it." She gestured toward his feet. Tom looked down to see that there was indeed a large bronze letter "M" inlaid in the concrete of the Diag, which was what they called the quad here. The University of Michigan had rather a lot of quirky lore, which Tom put down as an attempt to ape the Ivies. "'Course, I didn't step on it, and I still failed mine, but I managed to hang in."
Tom cocked his head, bemused. Not knowing what else to do, he stuck out his hand. "I'm Tom."
She laughed. "Oh, look at me! Sorry. Sybil." She took his hand and shook it.
"You're English?"
"Yeah, Yorkshire born and raised. Fourth year. International student. Couldn't get into Penn, so I came here." She laughed merrily. She had a nice laugh. "And you're Irish."
"Yep." Tom had been in Ann Arbor all of a month and was still surprised - and a little embarrassed - at the amount of feminine attention his accent brought him. Most of the women who flirted with him were American, though.
"You've been to Conor's, then?"
"The Irish pub?" He smirked. "Yeah, couple times." He preferred a townie bar around the corner from it, when he went out to drink at all. "I don't get out much," he admitted.
"I imagine you're kept quite busy with your program."
"Yeah. And I don't like to drink alone." He didn't know why he'd said that. "I haven't been in town long," he explained, as if that would make him look like less of a loser. He ran a hand through his hair.
"It sounds as though you need someone to show you around." She tilted her head and flashed her perfect teeth at him again.
Is she offering? Tom shifted his weight. "Or just someone to drink with," he quipped, covering his discomfiture with a smile.
Sybil narrowed her eyes; her fringe of lashes set off the blue quite nicely, he thought. Against the blazing autumnal trees and the undergrad library, she could've been an admissions brochure. "Would you like to go to a party on Thursday?" she asked.
He thought of the houses on Washtenaw Avenue he'd passed on some of his late-night runs, emblazoned with Greek letters and overflowing with noisy revelers. Keg-stands and date rapes. "I'm not really a party person."
"I'm not either. This is more of a get-together, really."
So he'd actually be expected to make conversation, then. More than likely everyone would be twenty-two and talking about their bloody internships in marketing. But...
She really is fit, he thought. It had been a long time since he'd felt such an immediate attraction to someone. "Sounds grand," he said.
She grinned. "Brilliant. I'll text you." She dug in her shoulder bag for her iPhone. "What's your number?"
He gave it to her, along with his surname, and felt his own mobile buzz in his back pocket as she texted him. "Now you've got mine too," she said.
They separated, going in opposite directions. As soon as she was out of sight Tom fished his mobile out to check his messages.
I'm Sybil C Crawley if you want to google me. I promise I'm not an ax murderer or a porn star :)
Another one came in as he held the phone. Want to have dinner before? Let's meet at Seva, on Liberty, 8pm. Looking forward to it! x
Looking forward to it, indeed, Tom thought as he texted her back.
-ooo-
He had Googled her, just because he could. "Well, feck me sideways," he'd muttered upon finding she was listed in Burke's. He wondered why she wasn't in London living it up with the rest of the Tatler set.
He ended up asking her that very question over dinner, though in a rather more diplomatic way.
"So you did Google me, then." She set down her fork and grinned.
"Well, I wanted to see if you had any mug shots online."
She laughed. "No, I managed to keep my underage drinking under the radar."
"So why did you come to school here? In the States, I mean."
She took a sip of wine and set her glass down before answering. "My family's part of the reason. Well, not my family as such; I love them to pieces. But being in a family like that, it comes with a lot of attention and a lot of expectations."
"I'd imagine so."
"And during my gap year I went backpacking with a couple of friends and it was lovely to get away from it all, and I realized I wasn't prepared to deal with any of that B.S. again right away. So I decided I'd go to uni somewhere that wasn't England, and then find work with an aid agency."
He raised an eyebrow. "That is getting away from it all."
"I know it sounds drastic. But I've applied for a few jobs already. Fingers crossed." She held hers up. Then she rolled her eyes. "Of course, my family thinks I'm mad. But I want my life to be more than charity balls and summers in Italy. When I'm on my deathbed, I'd like to be able to say I made someone's life better." She looked down, abashed. "I know that sounds terribly idealistic."
"I think that's a fine ambition," Tom said. "There's nothing wrong with being idealistic."
Her head snapped back up and she grinned at him, her eyes sparkling. "Exactly! I'm so glad you said that."
The party - or get-together, as Sybil had termed it - was a pleasant surprise. Sybil's friends were an eclectic group of artists and activists of various ages and persuasions: everything from the singer of a local lounge fusion band to a thirtysomething hippie who'd once almost won a city council seat on a marijuana legalization platform. Tom found no shortage of interesting conversations to join or eavesdrop on.
He was most interested in Sybil, though. She too had been a pleasant surprise: after he'd discovered her provenance he'd expected a callow woman-child, perhaps shipped overseas to escape from some scandal she'd been involved with. But she'd impressed him at dinner, and he regretted having prejudged her. As they talked more he found she could converse intelligently about any number of topics. Tom observed that she was effortless in drawing people out. She worked her magic on him quickly enough. By the time they'd gotten into their second drink he'd told her a large chunk of his personal history.
"You must have some stories, having driven a cab in Dublin."
Tom shrugged. "Not as many as you'd think. I never had anyone shag in the back of it or anything. Not quite, anyway."
"Worse luck." She laughed. "Weren't you terribly busy, though? Working and going to school at the same time?"
"Well, yeah, but student grants weren't exactly enough to pay the bills." Not everyone's father is in the House of Lords, he refrained from adding. "My ma couldn't spare much. I'm the first in my family to go to university," he told her with a touch of pride.
"That's impressive." She actually did look impressed, those wide blue eyes riveted on him. "So what does your mother think of you living in the States?"
He laughed. "Every time I talk to her the first question is when am I coming home."
"D'you think you'll ever go back?"
He shrugged. "Dunno how much demand there is in Ireland for a PhD in mass communications. But who knows what'll happen down the road?"
As the night progressed, the noise level around them rose to an exuberant buzz of laughter and lively, moderately drunken debate. At some point Tom and Sybil were sitting on the raised hearth and she leaned over, a bit tipsy, to murmur into his ear. "I've a confession to make." Intrigued, he nodded for her to continue. "I didn't really think you were a first-year when I saw you the other day. I just wanted to talk to you and that was the first thing that popped into my head." She stayed where she was for a long moment, her breath wafting against his neck, and that was when Tom became conscious of how much he wanted her. It had been a dull red thread running through the evening, woven in the rapport they were developing. The sudden knowledge that she wanted him too made it that much brighter.
And that made him nervous. He smiled weakly. "I wondered if there might be something wrong with your eyes."
"No, I don't think so." She still hadn't moved away, and her hand crept up to the back of his neck to stroke the hair at its nape. It tickled, but he sat frozen for fear she'd stop.
He could feel her eyes on him, expectant. What the hell do I do now? Did she want him to kiss her? Probably. He turned his head toward her and leaned in, but he was much too quick and she was leaning toward him as well. He bumped his face into hers, hard enough that his teeth made painful indentations on the insides of his closed lips.
"Ow!" his hand came up to his mouth involuntarily. "Shit. Sorry." Her hand was over her mouth as well. "Are you all right?" He leaned closer to make sure she wasn't bleeding or anything. She was laughing, though not in an unkind way, and he couldn't help smiling back.
"How about we try that again," she said, her voice even huskier than usual, and she grabbed the back of his head gently and moved toward him and when his lips touched hers he thought They are every bit as soft as they look. Warm, too, and tasting of wine, and it had been too long since he'd kissed anyone. It was more of an intoxicant than the few drinks he'd had; by the time they pulled apart his heart was pounding and he felt dizzy.
She smiled slightly, her face still inches away from his, and her eyes looked as dreamy as he felt. This time he was the one to close the distance between them. He found himself taking her cheeks in his hands, rubbing her cheekbones and into her hair. Her tongue slipped out to stroke the line between his top and bottom lip and he moaned, deep in his throat, and opened his mouth.
"Goddamn, you two, get a room!" Someone yelled cheerfully, and Tom remembered that they were still at a party. A relatively secluded corner of it, granted, but privacy was starting to seem like a good idea.
Sybil sat up with a sheepish grin, her cheeks two bright spots of color, and shouted at their interruptor to sod off. Then she stood up and held out her hands to Tom. "I think I'd like you to walk me home. Shall we?"
Tom needed a minute before he'd be fit to stand without embarrassing himself. He patted the bricks beside him. "Let's finish our drinks. Wouldn't want people thinking we're going off for a snog."
Sybil laughed. "You're shy! That's adorable." She plopped back down and bussed him on the cheek. Then she twisted around to speak into his ear again, low and seductive. "Only don't make me wait too long."
Bloody hell, he'd never be able to walk out of here.
-ooo-
It was not far to Sybil's place, a one-bedroom with its own entrance in the back of a comfortably shabby Craftsman bungalow. The entrance door gave on a lounge room with a small kitchen through a low archway. Sybil walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, and slouched to inspect its contents, a gesture that had the air of one performed automatically every time she came home. "You want anything? I might have some wine."
"Sounds good." Tom was feeling nervous again. They'd chatted easily on the walk over, hands wandering only a little. But he had no idea what Sybil was expecting: she'd brought him home, yeah, but did that mean...
The clinking of glass as she rummaged through a cabinet broke his train of thought. "Whiskey! I'd no idea I still had this." She brought out a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel's and went into another cabinet for glasses.
"Bourbon," Tom corrected her.
"Isn't bourbon a kind of whiskey?"
He made a face, which she couldn't see with her back turned. "I suppose it counts as one, if you never drink whiskey."
"I don't, not often." She set the glasses on the counter and opened the freezer to toss some ice into them. "On the rocks?"
"Sure."
They took their drinks to the sofa, where they sipped as the sudden tension spun out. Oh, what the hell, Tom thought finally, and set his glass down and leaned over to kiss her. She responded eagerly, twining her arms around his neck, drink still in hand. This kiss was as all-encompassing as the one at the party had been. Tom's world seemed to shrink to her full, pliant lips, the softness of her hair and skin. He could feel the chill of the condensation from her glass, a quarter inch away from the back of his neck. His hands had migrated to her waist and he began to fiddle with the hem of her shirt. He sent exploratory fingertips underneath, brushed them against the waistband of her jeans and then the skin above it.
Sybil seemed to take that as a prompt. She set her drink on the table and sat back up and pulled her shirt over her head in one fluid motion, shaking her head to settle her curls. Then she lay back on the sofa, pulling him on top of her, and joined her lips with his again. Before long Tom's shirt had gone the way of hers and she was running her palms over his chest, kissing his neck open-mouthed, sucking on his skin and letting out tiny moans. He had a raging hard-on.
Her hand drifted down his belly to squeeze the bulge in his jeans, her eyes on his. He sucked in his breath. "I don't normally do this on the first date," Sybil said. "I don't know what's got into me." She grinned, wolfish, and nipped at his chest. He collapsed down on her, making sure to keep holding up most of his weight, as much to slow the pace as to get closer. "This is all right, isn't it?" she asked, muffled in his shoulder. For the first time he heard an uncertain note in her voice.
He reared his head up to look at her. "Yeah. Yeah, of course it is." He smiled.
She smiled back and gave him a long slow kiss, pulling gently at his bottom lip with her teeth. "Do you want to move this into the bedroom?"
Feck me, this is happening, he thought, and for the first time he understood what people were talking about when they said he broke out in a cold sweat. "Yeah," he managed. Somehow his feet carried him into the other room, where she sat him down on the edge of her bed. She sidled up between his knees and placed her hands on his shoulders. Trying to keep himself from trembling, he kissed her bare stomach, put his arms around her.
"Do you have a condom?" She asked him. When she spoke he could feel the vibration through his lips. He shook his head. This had most certainly not been part of his plan for the evening. He watched her walk over to the bureau and get a Durex out of the top drawer. He watched her walk past him and set it on the nightstand. He watched her reach back to undo her bra clasps; her small high breasts revealed themselves, drawing his gaze irresistibly, and then she smiled and stepped forward.
The feel of her nipple going from soft to hard in his mouth might have been the most erotic thing he'd ever experienced. He tried circling his tongue around it and felt a thrill when she made a small sound, not quite a moan. He probed harder and she rewarded him with a drawn-out "Mmmm," digging her nails into his shoulders; finally, as gently as he could, he closed his teeth on it and nibbled it softly, continuing to flick at it with his tongue. She sucked in her breath hard and twisted so violently in his arms that he thought he must have hurt her, but she moaned again and thrust herself toward him and he saw that she liked it.
Gaining confidence, he drew her head down to his and they shared a long kiss that only ended for them to stretch out together on her bed. She moved his hand to her breast and his other hand massaged the silken skin of her back, dipping into her waistband and playing with the elastic of her knickers, and when he started fumbling with the top button of her jeans she undid them and shimmied them off without too much trouble. Her knickers were striped cotton bikinis, and even though she looked sexy as hell in them he thought distractedly that she must've been telling the truth about not doing this sort of thing on a first date.
She shifted to lie on top, and she was kissing him and giving little moans and he was thinking this was great, this was bloody wonderful, this was going to go off just fine, and then she started grinding against him and he began to feel a bit overwhelmed. She undid his jeans and pulled them off, along with his pants, and he really started to lose his grip on himself. But his hands moved seemingly of their own accord, tugging her knickers off, and oh God, she was rubbing her soft naked self against him. He was panting, and his heart hammered harder and harder in his chest. She sat up and her sure hands unwrapped the condom and began to unroll it onto him. Her touch, God damn it, it was - this was going too fast, he was going to -
"Fuck," he choked out, convulsing.
Sybil's eyes widened and she snatched her hands away as if she'd been burnt. "Oh!" She sat back, twisting her fingers together.
He'd have appreciated a bolt from the blue about now. If God wasn't inclined to strike him down in a literal sense, a heart attack would suffice. "I'm sorry," he said, once he'd got hold of himself.
"These things happen." She'd recovered her composure and she smiled at him, much too kindly. Great, he was a charity case now. Just what he needed. She climbed off him and settled onto the bed at his side. "Maybe we could try again in a bit."
Relief flooded through him, but he was canny enough not to let it show on his face. "OK," he said. He pulled off the condom (At least I didn't get come all over her, he thought) and wrapped it in a tissue and threw it in the bin. Then he joined her under the sheet. He had to lie almost flush with her in the narrow bed; the feel of her skin against his was aggravating enough that he figured it wouldn't take him long to be ready again.
If they could get past the awkwardness, that was. They didn't speak for a few minutes. Tom mentally cycled through possible topics of conversation, rejecting each one as too banal. Finally he just said what he thought he needed to. "I haven't... been with many women."
"Oh?" She sounded intrigued, but not surprised.
"Yeah. Actually..." He licked his lips. "I've not been with any." Why am I telling her this? But it came out almost as easily as the stories of his time at university had, earlier.
"Really?" Now she did sound surprised. "What, were you going to be a priest or something?"
"No. Why?"
"Well, I only... it's just... you don't seem like the type to not be able to..." she trailed off. "I mean, you're a good-looking bloke."
"Am I?"
She laughed. "Yeah! Do you not have a mirror?"
Now she was probably wondering what was wrong with him. "Well, I was a bit chubby in high school. And I was in debating club, so that should give you an idea of how the girls liked me then," Tom explained.
"Ah. Right."
"And then at uni I finally got a girlfriend, but she was... devout, you could say."
"Ohhh." Sybil nodded knowingly.
"Yeah. At least, I thought so, until I discovered she'd been shagging a mate of mine for over a year."
"Oooh." Her face screwed up in sympathy.
"Soooo... after that I was off women for a while, and then I got busy with my program and everyone around me was with someone, and... well, here we are."
"Here we are."
They were silent for a minute more. "So what about you? I've given you my entire romantic history, such as it is. Turnabout's fair play." He turned toward her, raising an expectant eyebrow.
She lowered her eyes, her lashes a demure screen for them. Fetching, that. "Er. Well, I don't believe in discussing numbers."
"I wouldn't expect you to. I assume it's more than zero?"
"You assume correctly."
"I just wondered if anyone... stuck out."
Sybil raised her eyes to a point somewhere over his shoulder. "Not really, no. I mean, I've had relationships, it's not all been one-night stands or anything. And I suppose each one taught me something." She shrugged. Then she shifted her gaze to his face, studying him, seeming to weigh something in her mind. "I don't think I've ever been in love, if that's what you're asking," she finally said.
"I should think you'd know if you had."
"You may be right." She rolled over onto her back and yawned. "Tom, you're going to be really upset with me."
Not likely. "Why's that?"
"I think I just want to go to sleep. I had an early day today and... well, it's starting to hit me."
Oh. "Right," he said. He sat up, threw his legs over the side of the bed, and began to rummage on the floor for his clothes.
She half-sat up as well. "You don't have to... you can stay, if you like. I didn't mean for you to walk home in the middle of the night."
He knew when he wasn't wanted. "It's all right," he told her, pulling his jeans up over his hips. "I could use a walk." He stood up awkwardly. What was the proper farewell in these situations? Not a kiss. Hug? Handshake? In the end he gave her a crooked smile. "Well, it was nice going out with you."
"I'll walk you to the door at least." She started to get up, but he held up his hand to stop her.
"I can find my way." It came out sounding more blunt than he'd intended, but what Tom needed right now was night air and solitude, not this girl standing over him while he felt around for his shirt on her living room floor.
"Hey."
He turned from the bedroom door. She was still sitting up with the sheet pulled up to her armpits.
"I'm really not trying to get rid of you. I'd like to see you again."
On impulse, he crossed the room back to the bed, bent down and hugged her. Her face went into his shoulder; her hair in his face smelled floral and expensive. He resisted the urge to kiss the top of her head.
He backed off before he could start thinking too much about how smooth the skin of her back was under his fingers. "Good night, Sybil," he said.
"Good night, Tom."
AN #2: Soooo... any interest in an account of their second time? If so, please review! :)