A/N: your responses are life for us! Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy this one :)
The kiss isn't remarkable.
He's a little clumsy and overbearing. He's leaning on her, trapping her shirt under sweaty hands, and isn't exuberating confidence or boyish cockiness like he was before. Riza wonders if it was just talk, if he knows what he's doing; is he nervous or overly-eager? She's been accused of being intimidating before, but she was keen to the way he looked at her across the room earlier that night and was egged on to approach.
It's not the worst kiss she's experienced, truth be told. That disastrous honour goes to Robert what's-his-face in secondary school whose snake-like tongue damn near choked her, implying that was the way the French did it. It was not and Riza can't expect frat-boy Chad to know either. But there is someone who-
Nonetheless, this one is softer, but sloppy from intoxication. His breath is rich in beer and cheap coconut rum; a combination that makes Riza feel a little woozy when her head tilts against his own. There's a bit too much saliva around her mouth for her liking and the clammy hands around waist slip and pinches a patch of skin against a countertop where she inhales sharply. The air she takes in is not a certain natural musk mingling with the smell of books, but of a drunken student at a house party with too much vomit and not enough weed; fragrant with cooling pizza and the ripeness of sweat.
Chad, if that's even his name, stammers out a string of apologies and she shifts him closer to shut him up. His tongue pleasantly slide along her lips. She sighs as she allows her mouth to open and shivers when his hands shift from her waist to run along the underside of her chest. Buzzed from her high, he's warm against her; everything is a bit warm and hazy, and every touch is pleasantly amplified.
Riza follows the length of his hardly-defined arms and links her fingers behind his neck. She feels him smile onto her mouth. She is weightless as his hands dig into her thighs and sets her down on the island in the middle of the kitchen. Faintly, she hears the sound of empty solo cups clattering to the floor and the leering whoops and cheers of her peers around her as she leans back, enjoying how his teeth occasionally scrape against the skin of her neck. Her fingers try to rake through his hair, but its too short, and she can't pinpoint why she's disappointed.
The bass of the music resonates through her blood and Riza allows herself to exist within this moment, with warm, wet tongues and hands that almost let her pretend.
She goes very still as her companion shifts his attention to the buttons of her shirt, murmuring something that she's sure is meant to sound sexy but the cadence is all wrong. His lips are the wrong pressure on her own. The taste in her mouth is no longer nice; it's bitter in a rotten way. Frustratingly, she realises she can't just sweep last night under the rug and never think about again. The phantom sensations haunts her like some libidinous specter, teasing her about what she really wants and what she currently has.
He's still fumbling with the buttons on her shirt and goes to once more claim her mouth, but the moment is gone. It's like she's been doused with a bucket of ice water - nothing about the party is appealing anymore, and the stickiness that his hands leave on her make Riza want to shed her skin in its entirety. She shoves his face away from her and quickly slides out of his grip, ignoring the spluttering and jeering behind her. Angry tears prickle the corners of her eyes as they begin to form. She damns the day she walked into Chem Lit.
She slips into the bathroom, locking the door behind her, and leans against the door. She looks a mess in the mirror above the sink: her makeup is smeared from his lips and her hair has lost the slight curls that Rebecca had spent her afternoon working on. She is tired, more than anything. She's quiet as she finds a facecloth from under the sink and runs it under the water, carefully wiping away any trace of smeared lipstick or foundation. It's cool against her skin and Riza holds it to her neck, glaring at the faint bruises that the boy had given her. They flare in color against her pale skin.
She wishes that Rebecca hadn't managed to convince her that she needed to 'let loose'. If anything, she was probably the worse out of the two of them now - Riza was fairly certain that Rebecca had never managed to make out with any of her professors, and enjoy it, and fucking think about it for every waking moment.
"Fuck," she mutters under her breath, tossing the facecloth into the bathtub next to her, it hits the porcelain with a wet slap, and she runs a hand through her fringe roughly. Tomorrow she can sit down and think about what all this means; right now she has the edges of a headache and a sudden urge to be curled underneath her duvet.
She straightens and rebuttons her shirt where what had been clumsily undone in front of the mirror. In need of a reality check, she smacks her cheeks lightly. She looks good but...enough to risk his job - hell, his entire career over? Riza knows she is no great beauty in the effortless way Olivier manages to be, and she doesn't have the confidence that makes Rebecca glitter like a star wherever she goes.
And what about her? He can switch school or even find something in his field, but she'd be marred from the scandal. Whether it's the high or the sexual frustration, that information doesn't do enough to deter her. Not completely. Hovering over the sink, she chants in her head that it should - it definitely should. It's why she let herself be convinced to be dolled up and find the nearest opportunity showing some promise of a decent romp.
Her hand stills over her mouth, hovering above her cupid's bow. "A mistake, a stupid mistake," she murmurs, watching herself, unblinking and unswaying. A little part of her erupts in denial; he noticed you in class, he noticed you in the hall, he noticed your name, he noticed your exhaustion, he noticed you and you and only you.
But she's the one who ran.
The bathroom door slams behind her. The party has quieted down as she carefully walks over half-conscious bodies crowding the hallway, keeping an eye out for a riotous mess of curls. The "Chad" she left behind is now off in the corner macking on some other girl and Riza is not devastated, but quietly relieved.
She spies Rebecca not-quite-dozing on another student's chest and decides that now is probably the best time to leave. Riza bends down to poke her best friend in the cheek. Rebecca grumbles incoherently, her face scrunching up like a toddler. Her smokey eyes have smeared to resemble a panda, and judging by the lack of lipstick on her face compared to the boy she's resting on, Riza knows that now is the best time to extract them both.
"Let's go now 'Becca," she says softly, pulling on her friend's wrist. Barely anybody is stirring in the room. Some top 20's song is playing in the background and from her peripheral, there's a couple on the two-seater who are doing their best impression of how drunk people don't manage to have sex.
"I don' wann' go.." Rebecca slurs as she stretches out her arms. Riza grasps her hands firmly and pulls her up in one clean movement. It's a maneuver she's well-used to doing, generally at these sorts of parties.
"We'll get Macca's on the way back," she promises, slinging an arm protectively around her friend's shoulders, and Riza doesn't want any trouble in trying to leave. She was lucky enough to remove herself when she did from her own little almost-hookup, and Rebecca's chosen victim was a lot bigger than either of them.
"Yo quiero Taco Bell," a random girl slurs from the floor, leaning against the side of the sofa and trying (but failing) to stare the two of them down. She would look a lot more intimidating if there wasn't the familiar stain of beer on her shirt and the glassy, unfocused look in her eyes as she struggles to raise her head to look at them properly.
"Me no hablo español, señorita," Rebecca manages, stumbling over her feet as they try to avoid another passed-out reveler on the floor. "Hey Ri," she tugs at the front of Riza's shirt, "I want a churro."
"I got tacos for you. VAMONOS!" Riza doesn't know what that means or implicates so she ignores her.
"EVERYBODY LET'S GO," another drunk student suddenly shouts, and it takes Riza a moment to realise why the phrasing and cadence to those words are so familiar, and why is it suddenly very important to leave now before-
"C'MON LET'S GET TO IT-" Already more students have been roused from their daze, blinking and groping at the ground for purchase. Riza pulls more insistently on her friend's torso pleading with whatever was listening to her to have some pity.
"I KNOW THAT WE CAN DO IT-" The room choruses back, almost shrieking on the last syllable.
"WHERE ARE WE GOING?" Rebecca crows triumphantly to the shambling crowd, and there's a beat of silence before the room erupts in a cacophony of names being shouted. Riza all but wrenches them out the front door swearing like a sailor as Rebecca cackles like a madwoman all the way to her Big Mac.
The house is still when she and Rebecca stumble in at two in the morning. The only reminder that Olivier had remembered the two of them were gone was the not-so-surreptitiously-placed packet of painkillers and glasses of water. Rebecca immediately beelines for the medication, messily gulping down the water and laughing in that childlike way that all drunk people seem to do when they think they're doing a great job of pretending to be sober.
"Thank you for coming with me," Rebecca stage whispers, swaying next to the counter as she struggles to undo her ponytail. "Did you have a good time?"
Riza nods distractedly, moving around her flatmate to put the rest of their fast food in the fridge. She's under no illusion that all of it will mysteriously vanish by the time lunch comes around later on today, but Riza is content to let herself imagine that maybe Rebecca will learn not to steal her fries.
Riza kicks off her wedges and bumps her shoulder into her friend's. "G'night," she says, smiling as Rebecca slumps inelegantly over the counter, talking softly to the cool marble about how wonderful and cold it is on her face.
She ducks into the bathroom to grab her makeup wipes before she enters her room; it's still a mess from the impromptu fashion show Rebecca made her do before they left for the night. Riza quickly puts away the illicit drugs into the unmarked bag that lives at the bottom of her stationery drawer. The wipes are refreshing on her face as she quickly scrubs at her eyes and eyebrows, shimmying as best she can out of her jeans one-handed. It's slow work, but eventually Riza manages to kick them off, digging around for the old shirt that has become her pyjamas. It's a ratty old thing, the logo of Eastern U long faded but Riza can't take it upon herself to throw it away. It was the last physical reminder she had that she had earned the scholarship that had paved her way out of the sticks that was her hometown; that she had found a better path for herself than what her father would have her believe.
She throws her top and bra in the direction of her laundry hamper, but isn't too concerned when she hears them hit what suspiciously sounds like the vodka ice bottles that Rebecca sculled during her "pregame". Riza crawls onto her bed and fumbles around for the latch on her top window, just pushing it open enough to let the air in.
Riza stretches out luxuriously on her bed, enjoying the cool air of her room slowly filtering in - the party had been too warm, too many bodies pressed together. She can still feel the stickiness that always seems to linger on her skin whenever she makes out with someone, but she can already hear Rebecca shuffling down towards the bathroom, singing tunelessly. Tomorrow she can have a steaming hot bath and deep condition her hair, but all Riza wants to do right now is lie still and let her mind enjoy the effects of her haze.
Her thoughts eventually crowd in her head once more: she had never been very good at just enjoying a high for what it was, and she's always been an overthinker to a fault. She can still feel the sensation of the student's lips on her own, warm and soft but not in the way that makes her toes curl, but more in the way that makes her think of something remarkably more flaccid-
Riza groans, shifting suddenly and trying to ignore what she didn't want to acknowledge before - the blessed haze certainly helped her ignore the elephant in the room, but now in the quiet of her room, with only the muted sound of the shower across the hallway, Riza knows she can't lie to herself in this state.
What happened between them is wrong - on many levels. He is her professor. Her employer, unofficially. A disciplinary committee waiting to happen. The end of her scholarship as she knew it. A really fucking good kisser.
She rolls over on her bed once more, hugging a pillow close to her chest. She feels like a teenager all over again and not an adult capable of critical thinking. Part of her knows that she should just talk to him but even that thought is enough to make her blush crimson as she imagines just how that particular meeting would go.
There's nothing wrong with imagining though, she tells herself, running a hand roughly through her bangs. Nothing wrong with imagining how his hands rest on her hips, and how his fingers draw lazy circles over her skin. It's not as if she's doing anything wrong - it's a free country and she's free to think about whatever she likes -
Not really though, she thinks, dragging a finger over her lips; her eyes close involuntarily at the sensation. No, this is different, this isn't poor judgment.
He wouldn't be like this with anyone else, she wisheshopespleads.
The thought terrifies her as much as it excites. Riza knows already what his lips taste like, full and breathtakingly so just by remembering it. She knows his hands, large and roughened slightly, and how it feels on her hips. His hair is messy in a way that makes her want to smooth it out of his face. His eyes are the dark places where she wants to become lost.
Later, she'll blame the boy from before, the one with clumsy hands and a warm tongue that could only sate her momentarily. It wasn't his fault - he couldn't compare with a man that seemed to set her whole body aflame with the scarcest of touches.
As her fingers dip into her folds she's shocked at how wet she already is; normally it takes a bit more coaxing from her to slip into herself as easily as she does this time but it feels wrong in a way.
There's too much of her and not enough at the same time, and she gasps as her fingers slide into her with barely any resistance. Her thumb rubs quickly over her clit and her other hand pulls roughly at her nipples through the shirt, the fabric pulling roughly against the raised buds in ways that makes her sigh. She becomes hungrier for more, for something she can't give herself.
She imagines his lips at her throat and hands that know what to do with her against her thighs, pushing her legs open and she imagines his mouth tasting her there, devouring her whole. She imagines him whispering to her in that strange lilt she sometimes hears coming out in the early morning lectures, a voice that hints at something deeper, something she wants to uncover and keep for herself.
She can't imagine him inside her though, because her fingers are too slight, and she cannot unlearn the pressure she felt when he backed her into the bookcase.
It's already too late for her as she realises that she's been gasping his name, her fingers slick with arousal as she feels the mouth-opening surge of pleasure bloom over her body.
The room is breezeless as she comes down from her high, chest heaving and shivering. Her head rolls to the side, catching her reflection in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. She's a pretty picture, with flushed skin and pink lips that she can imagine all too well wrapped around his cock.
"I'm fucked," she laments, roughly wiping her slicked hand against her shirt.