A/N – I came across a fun meme about the most adorable old-timey slang words for sex, and after the angst-filled and exhaustively researched In Flew Enza, my brain decided it wanted to rattle off something fun, fluffy, and quick. So I took my favorite terms from that meme (and some additional research) and spun 100-word drabbles around the following theme: nine ways Harold and Marian made love to each other.
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Give someone a green gown
circa 1351
One of the reasons Marian found Harold so wildly attractive was that he was a gentleman in speech and a scoundrel in deeds. While he did not hesitate to make love to her six ways from Sunday whenever they were at the faraway field – the inside of her thighs still tingled from the marks his mouth left there – he decorously pretended not to notice the grass stains along the backside of her skirt that inevitably resulted from such vigorous exertions. And when he thoughtfully bought her a pale green gown expressly for their next outing, she burst into delighted laughter.
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Play at couch quail
circa 1521
There were few places that Harold loved to seduce his wife better than their parlor sofa. While this piece of furniture wasn't practical for the more horizontal positions, it provided an excellent platform for fooling around with hands and mouths, as well as some of the more outlandish configurations he enjoyed engaging in with Marian. Whenever they had company and he was in a mischievous mood, all he had to do was meet his dear little librarian's eyes and then glance slyly at the couch – which never failed to elicit the most charmingly coy blush and longing look in return.
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Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie
circa 1593
As a teenager, Harold thought Shakespeare a long-winded bore – until he realized just how many dirty puns and innuendoes were tucked into the man's plays. After that, he perfected his delivery of some of the more ribald lines so well that he had all the girls in his class eating out of the palm of his hand… and a few other places. Several years later, when Marian asked him with a gleam in her eye what he thought made Shakespeare great, he told her the man certainly knew how to describe making love with the most cunning and poetical grace.
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Night physic
circa 1621
Even as an avid reader, Marian never stayed up all night finishing a book. She was far too sensible for such imprudence. But after she married Harold, he downright relished making love to her at the oddest hours, and such was the intensity of her own need that she openly encouraged his nocturnal advances. So there were several nights she didn't get a wink of sleep until the sun peeped up over the horizon. While she certainly paid dividends for this indulgence, the sheer delight of being so well-loved made every exhausted afternoon and mistyped catalog card worth the price.
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Make feet for children's stockings
circa 1785
Marian knew her mother was quietly but shrewdly watching her for signs of pregnancy from the day she and Harold married, but what she hadn't quite noticed was a similar wistful eagerness in her husband's eyes. She'd known from the start that Harold was a carnal man, and attributed his smoldering gaze entirely to that kind of wanting. But when the consequences of their passion were realized and she told him she was expecting, he looked at her with such tender elation that she burst into happy tears – he'd hoped for this outcome just as keenly as he desired her.
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Have one's corn ground
circa 1800
Before he fell in love with Marian, Harold saw cornfields as not a joke, exactly, but something of a tired Iowan stereotype. That is, until he found himself in a cornfield with Marian two weeks before their wedding, his hips pressed urgently against hers for the second time in their acquaintance. And this time she was responding, moving her hips in time with his as eagerly and adeptly as they ever danced together. So now whenever the music professor passed a cornfield, his breath caught in his throat and he imagined all the ways he could take Marian in one.
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Horizontal refreshment
circa 1863
Marian may have chosen the more refined phrases to refer to her and Harold's lovemaking, even in the privacy of her own mind, but she certainly did not see herself as prim… at least, not anymore. Whenever she glanced down at her hands, she sweetly recalled the things Harold had taught her to do with them, and whenever she caught sight of her mouth in the mirror, she remembered exactly where it had been. Admittedly, these memories made her blush a little, especially in the earliest days of their marriage, but her elation far outweighed any fleeting sense of embarrassment.
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Arrive at the end of the sentimental journey
circa 1896
Whenever Harold came home from a business trip, the first thing he did was demonstrate to Marian just how much he'd missed her. And it never failed to amaze him just how much his absence made her ache with the same desperate need. While he delighted in how wet she was for him and how loudly she screamed as they clung together in fierce reunion, this kind of payoff wasn't enough to make their separations palatable for any more than a week at most. So when their daughters were old enough, he started taking her with him on longer trips.
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Get one's ashes hauled
circa 1910
Marian normally abhorred popular slang, but when it was Harold's dulcet baritone crooning those words into her ear as their hips moved frantically together, they were as sweet as any sonnet. After she mustered up the gumption to gasp that provocative phrase back at him, he made love to her more passionately, which encouraged her to be even bolder… especially on days she came home with the dust of old books clinging to her hair and her face and her dress, because he remembered and looked at her as if he wanted to eat her up right then and there.