It had been a hectic night so far to match the hectic day it followed, but it seemed like Greg was finally winding down enough to be put to bed. Their parents' weekend trip out of town, which had begun yesterday, would be concluded by midmorning tomorrow, and thank God for that, because Wirt wasn't sure his rope was long enough to keep going at this rate for another day.
"…and so I said to Bo, 'But what about the equilateral triangle?' and he tried to fit it inside the rhombus shape on the paper but he wouldn't listen when I told him he had to get rid of the parallelogram first if he wanted it to fit a triangle with three equal sides inside the rhombus -"
"Greg," Wirt said, gripping the edge of the kitchen sink with white soapy knuckles. "I'm really glad you like geometry so much, but listening to you talk about it is making me literally go insane."
"Oh no," Greg said, eyes widening. "Literally?"
"Not literally. Go tell Jason Funderburker about it or something." He jabbed a thumb out the kitchen door and turned back to the sink full of syrupy dishes in front of him. Greg had offered to help, but Wirt knew well enough that letting a seven-year-old handle soapy china was likely to cause him a lot more work that it would save.
"Okay," Greg said equitably, and picked the frog up from the chair next to his at the kitchen table. "So anyway, I tried to get the teacher to come over to tell him he was wrong, but she was too busy helping Janie at the other table because she thought for some reason that she could make an octagon without any trapezoids -!"
"Oh my God," Wirt said, laying his head on the edge of the counter, but at that moment was finally given a route to escape as the doorbell rang. He looked up toward the living room as Greg gasped in delight.
"I'll get it!" he screamed excitedly, and started to climb down from his chair.
"You finish your milk first," Wirt said, and Greg frowned and crossed his arms in front of the half-empty glass. "It's just Sara. I'll let her in." He wiped his hands on the dish towel and draped it over his shoulder as he walked to the living room. "Sara!" he said when he opened the front door. She was standing in a drift on the porch, bundled tight with snowflakes in her hair.
"Hey," she said back with a smile on her face and a windswept look about her. They hadn't been apart for even a day yet, but it was still good to see her again. "Everything okay in there? I thought I heard shouting."
"Oh, yeah, everything's -" A loud crash, like that of a glass being dumped heavily into the sink, echoed from the kitchen. "Everything's fine," he repeated. Behind him, Greg came careening around the corner in footy pajamas.
"Hi, Sara!" he cried, waving wildly as he ran toward the door. "Wirt and I made dinner!"
"That's awesome." Sara, who was good with kids, crouched down to his level. "What did you have?"
"Waffles," Wirt answered for him. "It was all he'd eat."
"Did you make the waffles yourself?" Sara asked Greg, reaching across the threshold to ruffle the seven-year-old's hair. "Or did you make your brother do it?"
"I did it!" Greg said proudly. "Wirt beat the eggs and measured the flour and used the waffle iron, but I did everything else." Wirt rolled his eyes, and Sara smiled. "Wirt, why are you making Sara stand on the stoop?"
"Oh -" His brother did a double-take. "Yeah, uh, you should… you should come in," Wirt mumbled, and made room in the doorway. "Sorry about that."
Sara didn't look perturbed. She stood back up and stepped inside, kicking snow off of her boots as she went. "Don't worry about it," she said, and kissed him on the cheek, at which Greg cried, "Gross!" and disappeared back into the kitchen.
"He's going to bed really soon," Wirt promised as she unzipped her damp bomber jacket and hung it by the door. "Breakfast for dinner always knocks him out."
"Why are you here, Sara?" Greg yelled from the other room.
"Don't shout across the house, Greg!" Wirt yelled back. Greg slid back out of the kitchen in his socks, this time with Jason Funderburker on hand.
"Why are you here, Sara?" he asked again. "It's super late."
"It's only seven-thirty," Wirt said. Sara pulled her backpack from next to the door and dropped it to the ground with a thump.
"Homework," she explained, gesturing to the bag with an open palm.
"Homework?" Greg said, aghast. "On a snow day?"
"Sad, but true. Wirt's real bad at chemistry, Greg. I'm here to help with that."
Greg nodded like he understood her on a very fundamental level. "That's nice of you," he said. "Must be hard work. I love the guy and all, but you know how he is." He waved a thumb at his brother as though he couldn't hear them.
Wirt looked cross at that. "Eh, we're all talented at different things," Sara said diplomatically, leaning into his shoulder. "Wirt might be bad at chemistry, but I'm much worse at the clarinet. And hey," she leaned in toward Greg and glanced back and forth conspiratorially, "you know what he's very best at?"
Greg looked skeptical. "What?"
"Kissing." And she got up on her tiptoes in front of Wirt and they did just that.
"Aagh!" Greg cried. He dropped Jason Funderburker and covered his eyes. "Not that!"
Wirt pulled away. "The only way to escape it is to go to bed," he warned, and Greg grabbed his frog again and scarpered as fast as his bootied feet could carry him. They watched him disappear down the hallway, and Wirt took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
"Thanks for that," he said. "I guess just -" He gestured vaguely at the living room. "Make yourself comfortable, for now? I need to put him to bed. He won't brush his teeth unless you actually sit down and watch him do it."
"'Course," Sara said, and she settled on the couch with an understanding smile as Wirt left down the hallway. "Take your time."
He'd hoped to be gone for only a few minutes, but putting his brother to bed took longer than he would have expected, to the point that he wondered if he was extending it just to aggravate him. He counted to a hundred and twenty while Greg brushed his teeth to make sure he did it correctly, and then had to read two picture books aloud, between his protests that Greg was old enough to read them himself now. When the kid was finally so tired he could barely keep his eyes open, he still demanded that he tuck Jason Funderburker in four times before it was deemed good enough. Wirt sat at the bedside for a couple minutes after Greg closed his eyes until he heard the sound of snoring, and at last felt at liberty to stand up again. He bent the cricks out of his neck as he tiptoed away, and closed the door behind him as quietly as he could.
Out in the living room he could hear the sound of the TV playing quietly. Sara had turned on Masterpiece Theater, and didn't seem to hear him as he approached the couch from behind. "Oh, hey," she said, looking up just as he leaned in to plant a kiss on her head, so that it landed on her nose instead. "Is he out?"
"He's out," Wirt said, coming around to drop down next to her on the sofa. "Finally. Sorry about the wait."
"No problem," she said, and clicked the TV off with the remote. "I had the greatest dramas Europe has to offer to keep me busy." Outside the living room window, snow fell gently in the streetlight beams, and Wirt felt his eyelids droop. "You look really tired." Sara brushed a sympathetic finger along his cheek.
He said, "Yeah," and rubbed his eyes. "I had to be awake to make Greg breakfast this morning. Little nutball's always up by about five AM."
"Poor guy. You're a good brother."
"I'm a sucker," Wirt grumbled, sitting back.
"Is there anything I can do to help wake you up?"
He put an arm around her shoulder. "Probably not, but thanks for asking. In fact," he sat up straight again, "we should probably get to that chemistry before I fall asleep right here."
"Oh," Sara said, looking like she'd been given pause by the suggestion. "I guess that's right." She looked away as he stifled a yawn, and then reached out timidly to touch his chest. "I mean, unless, you know…" She was smiling, but looked nervous. "What if we just didn't do the chemistry tonight?"
"Oh?" he asked, thinking that she was being kind of inconsistent, because the study session had been her idea in the first place.
"Yeah," she said, and walked a couple of fingers toward his collar. "Maybe instead we could… you know… have chemistry?" She was watching his face very closely. "…Together?"
His understanding of what she was getting at whirred dumbly for a second longer, and finally clunked into place with a jolt. "Oh," he said, and his eyes widened. "Ohh." He sat up to peer over the back of the couch, paranoid for an instant that his mom and stepdad might have suddenly materialized inside the door. "O-okay, that's – um, right now?" he asked with a nervous laugh, tugging at his collar, because he felt suddenly quite light-headed. A flush rose in her cheeks, but she gave him a smile that said yes. "Why didn't you say anything about this before?" he asked, ducking back down and dropping his voice. "I didn't have a chance to..." His face was burning. "I don't have any condoms." The last word ended on almost a whisper. He probably looked like a big-eared strawberry next to her.
"Well, that's kind of part of the surprise," she said shyly, putting a hand on his chest again and leaning in for a kiss. He accepted it happily, but looked confused still when they pulled apart.
Hair ruffled, he asked, "What are you talking about?" with a nervously optimistic smile.
She was still leaning on him heavily, her hands slipping slowly downward. Her cheeks were as pink as his, but her voice was smooth and low. "I guess I thought, you know…" Her palm ran carefully along the seam in his slacks, as if searching for a sign. "Maybe we wouldn't use a condom this time?"
That gave her the sign she'd been probing for, and she took ahold of it with confidence. Wirt pitted ecstasy against terror for a brief second, but abruptly shook his head and tried to sit up. "Are you serious?" he asked, once again glancing compulsively down the hallway toward Greg's room. "Sara, I – w-we can't actually -"
But Sara murmured, "Trust me," and began unzipping his pants.
He watched her with bated breath, too eager to ask her to stop, and pleaded weakly, "Sara, I caaaaagh," before his protest turned up dead as she leaned in and wrapped her lips around his member.
His head dropped back onto the couch wordlessly and his eyes couldn't stay focused, so he let them close. Incredible. She was incredible. Across give-or-take two years of tentative dating (for who can really say where best-friendship ends and dating begins?), it was only in the last six months that the two of them had finally made their first earnest attempts at physical intimacy. In the beginning, Wirt had been constantly terrified and Sara easily flustered, and sex had been clumsy and embarrassing - most of the time it still was, a little bit - but things did get better. What infrequent private time they found together no longer left them wanting. Sara was pretty proud of how far she'd come in developing this skill in particular, and Wirt could hardly object to the time she'd had to put in to make it so. "Oh my God," he breathed, one hand drifting down to bury itself in her black hair. She pulled up, and continued to pump him languidly with her hand.
"Sorry, were you saying something before?" She grinned.
In that moment, Wirt had no greater capacity for remembrance than a goldfish. "…I really hope Greg's as asleep as I thought," was all he managed to say, and she dropped her head back down again with a laugh.
With her head in his lap, he found himself caught in a strange sort of mindless void. Wirt was famously high-strung most of the time, uncomfortable with expressing contentment, but Sara always said that just made every moan she could eke from his throat a victory. She bobbed her head up and down in the surefire patterns she always used, never letting her tongue sit still in her mouth for more than a few seconds. He worked hard to keep himself in check, but it was difficult when it felt like there were fireworks going off in his veins and a coil tightening in his core. When she ran her tongue broadly over the head of his cock, it made him tense, and release a little sound like air let out of a bike tire; when she did it over and over again, his toes curled, and he dug his fingers into the upholstery and went altogether breathless. Her hand and mouth felt wonderful enough, but that she was so eager to work for his pleasure was its own indescribable kind of enticing, and provoked in him another feeling as well, ticklish and hungry, and mewling to be gratified.
He was starting to lose himself above her as she moved up and down with increasing speed. "Sara," he panted, tangling his fingers in her hair and feeling the coil in his stomach start to turn red. She swirled her tongue around the crown of his cock one more time and finally sat up again, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. He was still collapsed into the couch, red-eared and looking like he'd gone into shock. "Unh," was all he said, and weakly. She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, and started pulling his slacks down further. They were at his knees before he came back to himself enough to notice, and she was in the middle of shimmying out of her own pants when he reached out to stop her.
"Sara," he gulped, taking her by the wrist, "I can't, uh – I can't believe I'm saying this, but we really can't. Not without – I mean, let me go down to the corner store and I'll -"
"Wirt." She placed her hands on either side of his head on the couch. "Do you trust me?"
"What? Of course I -"
"Do you think I'd ever intentionally do something really stupid and life-ruining?" she continued.
"…No," he said after a second. "No, I don't."
"Then listen to me," she said, and placed a hand on his cheek. "There's nothing to worry about." And she slipped out of her wet-cuffed blue jeans and sat down on the couch next to him.
She pressed herself close to him and they kissed deeply. Wirt really couldn't believe what they were doing. In retrospect, it had really been a very special kind of naïve for him to believe that she was coming over for chemistry homework; he did need help in that class, but he probably should have been clued in to her true intentions by the third time she'd asked for confirmation that his parents were definitely not going to be home until Sunday morning. It was not their first dance together, but this one was starting to feel more dizzying than any before it, because he hadn't had time to prepare, mentally. He trusted Sara, of course he did, but he didn't know fully what was going on, either, and that could only be disconcerting at best, and panic-worthy at worst. Wirt was not the sort of person who could be comfortable with things being out of control, and out of control was exactly where things were heading right now.
His stomach tensed in anticipation as she crawled atop him on the couch, still kissing him all across his jaw. Sara was not usually one for frilly clothing, but he noticed that she was wearing a new-looking pair of pink underwear with a little bow on the front, and the fact that he'd never seen them before wonder if she'd bought them with him in mind. He marveled at the sight of her legs on either side of his, and the little flashes of her stomach peeking from underneath her red band tee, and one last time, he wondered just what the hell they were getting themselves into –
But then she used two fingers to pull her underwear aside and pushed herself slowly down onto him, and all thoughts of the sort vanished, as well as all thoughts of any sort, period, because there were no words in the world anymore. For a second, something stupid in his brain wondered if this was what dying happy felt like, and he closed his eyes in bliss. It hadn't ever been this way before - it still good then, of course, but this was something altogether different, like he was taking a long, slow drink of something rich and thick and warm, and every nerve ending from his head to his feet felt like it was sparking. Sara's face creased briefly, and he reached up with a shaking hand to touch her cheek; "I'm okay," she said, and relaxed again. "Just needed a minute." He nodded without speaking and moved to sit up slightly, but even that small movement elicited a sensation that made his whole body buckle with pleasure.
It must have been visible on his face, because Sara asked, "Are you okay?" with a laugh on her lips, returning the gesture of concern that he'd offered her.
"Yeah," he breathed, putting his hands on her waist without thinking. "It's -" She shifted forward on his hips, and his voice caught on a sigh.
"Good?" she asked. He nodded dumbly. "Good," she repeated, and shifted again.
"Unh," was all he could manage. He dug his fingers into her thighs.
"Do you want to do this?" she asked, voice low.
"Yeah," he breathed. She smiled and put her forehead to his.
She whispered, "Then just do it." His hands seized, and without thinking he wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her tight to his body, shuddering at the sensation of her falling forward. "Oh," she moaned as he thrust forward, and she buried her hands in his hair. "Ohh."
Wirt had the feeling that warm water had pooled in his belly, and it rippled every time he moved in her. The sensation of being within another person without barrier or pretense had no right metaphor; she was smooth and velvety and wet, and when she trembled, he realized he could feel her heart beat from the inside. (If he'd had his head on straight, the poet in him would have had been thrilled with the rich vein of symbolism he could have mined from that thought.) He buried his face in her neck and hissed his breath as they rocked back and forth on the couch, head swimming in the musky scent that was rising between them.
"Aa," Sara said next to his ear, voice very small. "Oh, God." Her fingernails scratched his scalp, but he didn't care. Right now, the whole spectrum of sensation registered as different shades of pleasure.
"Mm," he whimpered in response, and pressed himself harder inside of her. She moved with him, pushing down each time he moved up, and they panted in unison at the effort. The pool in his stomach was starting to boil. He opened his eyes with his chin resting on her shoulder, and was strangely transfixed by the sight of his hand in the small of her back, where her shirt had ridden up. He looked so pale next to her, she even more rich and dark in comparison to him. He never knew how to tell her how much he loved the color of her skin, because it felt somehow like a verboten subject, but it intoxicated him whenever he let himself sink deep enough into the right thoughts. They were like a couple of puzzle pieces, complementary in every way, her short to his tall, her curved to his straight, her yin to his yang, and as his pleasure mounted he thought about their colors running together in a river that could flow across the earth and carve out something completely new, together, right now, if he could just make himself let – go –
"No," he croaked, and pushed her away from him.
She looked dazed as she straightened up. Her black hair was plastered across her face and she peeled it away, utterly baffled. "Wirt?" she asked, face flushed. "What's wrong-?"
"I can't," he panted, leaning back and clapping his hands over his eyes. "I just can't, Sara, I'm sorry, I just – this could be a horrible mistake -"
"What are you talking about?" she asked, eyes wide.
"I -" He ran his fingers through his hair, standing it crazily on end. "I – I trust you, I swear I do, but I feel like we're playing with fire and I don't know what's going on and I can't, you know, I just can't run the risk of being anyone's dad, not yet, I'm only seventeen and I can't even handle Greg -"
Sara looked flabbergasted. "Oh my God," she said, pasting back her sweaty hair. "No, Wirt, oh my God." She put a hand on her forehead. "Look, I – I got the pill, alright?"
He sat still, letting the words sink in for a minute. "What?"
"I got the pill." She sat back in his lap with her arms crossed, visibly flustered.
"But I thought -" His brain whizzed quickly past his last recollection of them discussing this. "I thought you said your doctor wouldn't prescribe -?"
"I lied," she said, and hunched her shoulders like she wanted to curl up. "I've been taking it for a month now. I wasn't trying to scare you, Wirt, I just – I wanted it to be a surprise."
He laid his head back on the couch, breathing deep and feeling a strange combination of numb and completely wired. "I don't get it," he said after a moment.
"I'm sorry," she said, and she looked like she meant it, but he wasn't looking for an apology so much as an explanation. "I guess – I dunno. You're always so dour and careful all the time and I kind of like it when you… lose control, a little." She glanced up at him and then looked away again. One of her hands was tangled in her short hair, pressing the black locks to her cheek and neck. "I just wanted to see what would happen if I asked you to take a leap of faith with me." He inhaled deeply, staring at the ceiling. "I'm really sorry," she said again. "Now that I'm saying it out loud, it, uh…" She swallowed and turned pink. "It sounds a lot more like a mind game than I realized before."
"I'm not mad," he said, turning his gaze up and putting his hands on her elbows. "Just… still recovering from the heart attack." She rubbed her neck bashfully. "It's, uh…" He cleared his throat and sat up a little with her still seated neatly in his lap. "I just didn't really realize it, uh, did that much for you."
"I should have just said so," she said mournfully, but now that he'd gotten his breath back he felt more prepared to fully think through what she'd told him.
"Well, I dunno," he said, running a hand through his bangs. "I mean, I guess it… it was p-pretty hot."
A spark of hope lit her red face. "Really?" she asked cautiously.
"Yeah," he said, starting to turn red himself. "Um… really hot." Sara looked away, and he could tell she was trying not to be pleased with herself. "Maybe there's something to be said for losing a little control," he said. "Just not the making me think my life is about to be over." She laughed into her hand. He shifted slightly, and she gave a tiny cry of surprise and put her hand on her stomach.
"Fuh. Careful with that thing," she said with half a smile.
"Who, me?" he asked with a shaky grin. "I've - I've never even heard of that word." And she barked with laughter, and they ducked in close again and started moving as before.
The snow outside the living room window fell heavier as eight-thirty approached them, but inside was as warm as could be. Sara buried her face in his shoulder again while they rocked back and forth in sync, this newfound rhythm less manic than before, but also less prone to cracking under pressure. "Feels really good," she muttered semi-coherently, with her arms wrapped around his neck, and Wirt found himself in agreement. It felt really good, and he responded with his own jumbled noise of inarticulate emotion and clear import. His legs were sore and he could feel the sweat standing out on his brow, but stopping was not an option.
"Mmmy God," she moaned, her thighs tensing on top of his lap. Wirt felt so strongly in every single way that he couldn't do anything but buckle down and let himself drown in sensation. His whole person crackled with electricity that verged on painful for still being held captive in his body, and he wanted nothing more than to let it go. He pressed his palms into her hips, so hot that he worried they might leave burn marks, and again felt the sensation of water boiling over inside of him, surging, roiling down the river, trying to break through the dam.
"Sara," he panted, "I can't -"
"Yeah," she whispered in his ear, "You can."
Wirt held her tight to his body and finally felt the knot in his loins unwind in short, jolting spurts. He gasped and seized, and emptied his everything inside of her, not just seed, but tension and electric energy, all flowing out on the tide of the pleasure they'd created together. The void left behind in him was not cold, but calm, and he fell back into it comfortably as the surge finally started to subside. He realized he was squeezing her waist very tightly, and let go in a daze. He was about to say, "Wow," but realized then that Sara was still moving.
"Oh my God," she said, a catch in her voice, her hips grinding up and down on top of him. "I -" And then her words turned soundless as she threw her head back and dug her fingers into his shoulders. "Oh my God!" she said again, and convulsed. Her walls clenched him tightly, and the overload of sensation was enough to make him breathless as well. She screamed out and buried her face in his chest as she rode him. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her close as the wave hit the shore, and broke down, and down, until finally she shuddered one last time and lay still, breathing like she'd run a marathon.
"Oh my God," she choked out once again, and Wirt, red-faced and sweaty, couldn't help laughing. She sat up on his lap and he looked up and down her body, her trembling hands, her glowing face, and realized with numb pleasure that I made that happen. Sara looked so happy she could hardly contain it.
She started to say, "Wirt -"
And then both teenagers were shocked from their blissful fog as a door down the hallway burst open and Greg barreled into the living room with all the silent grace of a rhinoceros.
"What happened?!" he cried, eyes puffy, Jason Funderburker tucked under his arm like a security blanket. Wirt and Sara froze. Greg could not see their lower bodies over the back of the couch, but if he were to come around to their side, they would have nowhere to hide. "Sara, I heard screaming!" he said, looking extremely upset and squeezing the frog to his chest. "Is there a murderer?"
"I'm fine!" Sara said, almost shouted, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
"She's fine, Greg," Wirt said, turning to look at his brother as well as he could over the back of the couch and praying he didn't look too flustered. "Everything's – fine, completely fine. You - you should go back to bed."
"Are you sure?" Greg asked anxiously, taking a dangerous few steps toward the side of the sofa. Sara blanched. "Screaming got into my dream and made me think that the Beast had gotten Mom for a minute, so I -" But finally he seemed to have woken up enough to realize how weird the scene was, and tilted his head as he asked, "…What are you guys doing?"
"Nothing," Wirt said, much too quickly.
Greg looked even more confused as he took them in. "Why are you sitting on each other?" he asked, and the question hung uneasy in the air as he took one more step to the side. The thought occurred to Wirt that they might not make it out of this one alive, and he wondered just how deeply his mother would bury him underground when Greg told her what they'd been doing –
And then Sara blurted out, "Wrestling." Wirt looked up at her as she leaned forward to rest her chin and elbow on the back of the couch, as casually as a girl can while she's trying to conceal that she's straddling her boyfriend. "I was practicing some of my wrestling moves on Wirt," she said. "You know, headlocks and takedowns and p-penetration shots…" Wirt's mouth twitched at the last one, but neither of them broke. "I screamed on accident. It can be rough."
Greg's eyes narrowed and he switched his gaze between the two of them suspiciously. "I don't believe you," he announced after a second. He pointed a finger at his brother. "I think you were kissing," he said. "Were you kissing?"
Wirt blinked, but managed to keep his face straight. "Yes," he said, regulating his inflection very carefully. "We were kissing."
Greg dropped his arm and gave them both a look of disgust. "Ugh," he said, and finally turned around again, towing Jason Funderburker behind wearily. "You guys are gross. Don't wake me up again unless there's a real murder." Wirt and Sara remained resolutely neutral until they heard his door close, and then glanced at one another, faces tight as drums.
"I think," Sara said after a minute, "we should put on pants." And the corner of her mouth quirked, and then both of them finally fell apart into gales of laughter on the couch, trying to hush themselves so as not to incur Greg's wrath again, but managing mostly to feed each other's mirth.
Wirt pulled her into him and wrapped her tight in a hug, both of them still giggling. "D-do you want to watch a movie?" he finally managed, holding his stomach.
"That sounds nice," Sara said, wiping tears from her eyes, and she sat up to finally pull her body from his. "Anything good on tonight?"
"Ehh," he said, pulling up his slacks and wincing at the soreness in his stomach. "Historical dramas and late-night cooking shows. I don't know, you choose. I think I'll make hot chocolate."
Sara said with a smile, "That sounds perfect," and gave him a kiss as he got up to bring her the remote from where it had fallen on the floor. She put on her pants as well, turned Masterpiece Theater back on, and when Wirt returned with two steaming mugs he settled down next to her in a pile of pillows just in time to catch the opening of The Duchess Approves.
Marshmallows melted, snow fell, and peace descended upon the night so completely that, for at least a while, it felt like the only thing left in the world was two smiling disheveled teenagers, sitting on the floor and full to the brim with the feeling of one another.