Mrs. Spoon has plans for the evening. Whilst her husband is busy reading a bedtime story to Tina, she has engaged herself in folding a doily into some slinky lingerie. She admires her handiwork in the mirror, turning and posing to make sure it shows off her curves, and finds herself feeling optimistic.
It's time to make some effort again, she's decided. Over the last year or so their sex life has dwindled away to a functional itch-scratching exercise whenever chance lands them wide awake in bed at the same time, and although it's enough to stave off the frustration for a while, she often finds herself watching her husband pottering about and falling into a reverie; reflecting on the first years of their acquaintance, when they would spend whole afternoons exploring each other's proclivities and boundaries, and wondering if he'd ever give her a triple orgasm again. And sometimes he creeps up behind her, presses his spoon-hands to her hips and kisses her neck as if there might be something he'd rather be doing, but it never leads to anything anymore. There's always some kind of distraction now – housework, childcare, gardening, something on telly...
She clambers onto the bed, an orange crate stuffed with car washing sponges and a face flannel for a quilt, and practices a few poses. How to appear unmistakably seductive, whilst remaining sophisticated and grown-up? One spoon-arm extended along the headboard, perhaps, suggesting a space for a hypothetical partner. Legs? Well, there's not much you can do to make a pair of sink plungers look attractive. Throw the flannel-duvet over them. Clutch at it with the spare hand, as if about to cast it aside.
The light clicks off in the next room. The sound of a door softly closing. Showtime! Already she can feel a little tension building. She turns to the doorway, ready to fix him with her come-to-bed look as he passes on his way downstairs...
He walks straight past.
Ugh! How could he not have noticed the light on?
"Spoonie," she calls in a musical tone, "Spoonie, my love!"
"Hm?" He stops on the stairs, but does not come back up.
"Is she asleep?"
"Yup. Snoozling away. She was shattered."
"Spoonie, come here."
"Mmkay."
It feels to Mrs. Spoon that her husband takes an unreasonably long time to walk the ten paces or so back to the bedroom door; her pose is beginning to feel a little forced. She is already growing impatient.
Mr. Spoon stops at the door, eyes widening a little as he takes in the view. He puts his head on one side and makes an awkward little whinnying sound in his nose.
"Well?" she says.
"Um..."
"Do I look nice?"
"Yes! Beautiful. Do you... err..?"
"Do I what?"
"...Want... something?"
"Yes, I want my husband to make love to me."
"Aah. I thought maybe you did, I just, you know, I wanted to be sure."
"So is there a football match you want to watch instead or something?"
"No! No, nothing like that, no."
"Well, come on then."
He takes a couple of hesitant steps. She pats the empty space beside her, fixing him with a heavy-lidded, sultry gaze. He sprints the last few paces, and sits on the bed to take his boots off. She creeps up behind him, and flings his hat away like a frisbee, revealing a pile of spaghetti that represents his hair. Then, with all her strength and a little magic, she heaves him roughly across the bed. He rolls onto his back, spoon-arms flailing. She pounces, pinning him at the shoulders and kissing him very hard; that is, she touches the magic sensor in her lower face to his and they exchange a strong attractive force.
"You want it, don't you?" she says in a low purr.
"Heh – just let me get my wellies off!" he replies.
"Naah," she says with a wink, "leave 'em on."
"They still do it for you?"
"Oh, sometimes I watch you trotting about in them, you know, looking very very sexy, and remember what they used to do to me..."
He crosses his spoons over his face shyly, one eye peeking out at her.
"Come on, Spoonie. Let's have a squeeze of them for old times' sake."
She lifts his feet onto her lap and begins to caress the smooth white plastic of his boots; it was a very similar pair that she'd given him nearly a decade ago, thinking he'd look smart, but had found that something about the way he moved in them made her quite flustered. Although the effect had worn thin before the boots did, he'd replaced them with more white wellies as a flirty joke. She would occasionally play along if she felt like re-living their first walk out together; how she'd taken him by the spoon and led him through her parents' farm, through their toffee apple orchard, to a field where strawberry laces grew thick on the ground and she seduced him in a nest of deep red tendrils, his new white boots gleaming in the starlight as he lay quivering in her arms.
"Sorry they're a bit glittery," says Mr. Spoon, "I don't know what's been going on on Button Moon, there was glitter all over the place this afternoon."
"Have you been dropping glitter all over the house again?"
"Well I was going to put the vac round this evening, but..."
"You don't seem very into it." She pushes his feet away with an impatient snort.
"No, no, I – I want to, I do, I just – I thought, you know, glitter in the bed..."
"I just want to do something nice for you. Have a bit of fun. And you'd rather be cleaning!"
"I'll do whatever you want, I just need a minute to..."
"Whatever I want?!"
She heaves herself away to sit sulkily in a corner of the box-bed, eyes closed. He rolls onto his front, slithers closer to her, and presses his nose to the convex dome of her belly. Her bottle-torso indents a little, then snaps back to its original shape when released.
"Pop!" he whispers.
"Oh, my Spoonie!" she sighs, shaking her head. She doesn't have to look at him to know that he's giving her his 'lost puppy' look, or to be won over by it.
He clambers onto her lap and presses both spoons to her sides, and releases them both at the same time.
"Pop-pop!" he says, with a slightly unhinged giggle. Then he does it again.
"You're a little screwball, aren't you."
"I'm your ikkle scwooball." He pulls closer to her and gives her a long, meaningful gaze. The dewy glow in his eyes sharpens to an intense gleam. She can feel the siphon pump that she uses as a heart begin to squeeze a little faster again and the pop-sock that serves as her vagina and uterus pulses and flexes.
"Oh - what am I going to do with you, eh?"
"Whatever you want," he replies, "because I'm yours."
She lunges forward with a rough, fierce kiss that knocks him onto his back again and lands heavily on top of him, leaving him breathless. She kisses him again and again, down his neck and over his shoulders, and he flips his spoons up in a gesture of surrender to her onslaught of affection. She moves back up his neck, kissing his face and working her way up his nose to the very tip, where she pauses and falls into a very long, intense eye-to-eye gaze as he gets his breath back. He swings his spoons wide and closes them around her waist, pressing on her exoskeleton.
"Pop-pop again."
"Cheeky!" She slaps his spoons away, and he chuckles mischievously about it.
"You're so... poppable."
"Do I have to tie you up? Is that what I have to do?"
"Oh please no," he whimpers, holding out his spindly wooden arms and nodding with great enthusiasm, "don't tie me up!"
"I'm going to tie you up. Where's that ribbon?"
She rolls over and begins to rummage down the side of the sponge-mattress, looking for an orange satin ribbon that she keeps specifically for this purpose, but has lain unused for a year or so. She feels around for longer than she would have ideally liked before she manages to find one end. Dragging it up, she slowly winds the whole length around her hands and stares provocatively at him.
"Please don't..!" he says in a whimper, swimming across the bed towards her with his arms crossed in front of him.
"I'm going to."
"No!" He stretches his spoons out across her belly.
"I am." She now has the whole length of the ribbon wrapped into a coil.
"You can't, I'm too delicate."
"I can and I will. Watch me."
She begins by weaving the ribbon around his spoon handles in an artistic figure-of-eight as he makes a show of struggling weakly; but then, on second thoughts, she heaves herself up, shoves him onto his back, and sits astride his chest. His plastic bottle-shell bends under her weight. She catches his flailing spoons, crosses them over his face, and lashes them both to his nose. She's enjoying herself immensely.
"You look so sweet when you're all trussed up," she says, giving his cheek a pinch.
"Appearances can be deceptive. I'm actually a ferocious beast. Grr, grr."
"Hm! Terrifying."
"I'm not really."
"I know."
"I know you know."
"You know too much, Mr. Spoon. But, do you know what I'm going to do to you?"
"What are you going to do to me?"
"Well, my dear. First of all, I'm going to sit you in my lap and I'm going to touch you and kiss you all over your back and your neck and your shoulders. I'll take a good long time over it. Then I'll roll you over and make sure I get every bit. And I'm going to go heavy on your sweet spots, because I want you really gagging for it. I need a really good seeing-to, you hear me? Like you did when I bought you the spaceship. Remember that? Can you do that again for me?"
"Mm!" He tries to nod, but finds it very difficult with his nose tied to his arms.
"What's that? 'Your wish is my command, my Queen'? Is that what you said?"
"Mm-hm!"
"You're a good boy, aren't you?"
She dismounts, and he clunks back into shape. Sitting back against the headboard, she pulls his partially-immobilised form backwards to rest against her own body. It is whilst thus engaged that she spots a familiar and welcome sight; a cake decorator's piping bag, that has inflated and risen from the recess at the bottom of his shell, from whence his legs also emerge. The pop-sock in her own nether regions flexes in sympathy.
"You're having a good time, I see," she remarks.
"Oh, yes. Very much so."
"I'm going to touch it."
"Please be gentle with me..!"
"You'll get what's coming to you, and you'll like it."
"You know me so well – Aargh!" He squeals loudly and thrashes as the magical force field of her spoon contracts sharply around his piping bag.
"Shh," she whispers in his ear, "you'll wake Tina!"
"Sorry."
They both pause in silence for several seconds, listening hard for any indication that their daughter might have been disturbed, but nothing happens beyond a noticeable drop in the level of sexual frission.
"I think you got away with that," says Mrs. Spoon.
"Phew."
"Now. Where were we?"
"You were just in the middle of using and abusing me for your own pleasure, as I recall."
"Aah, yes. That's why your arms are tied to your nose."
"Mm, it doesn't happen by accident very often. Only very occasionally."
"Oh, my little Spoonie. You are a funny onion."
"Just a funny onion in love with you."
"A silly, soppy, funny onion."
"That's me."
Mrs. Spoon laughs like a sleepy hen as she sets about kissing his neck, cradling his body in her limbs. He relaxes into her hold and closes his eyes.
"This was a good idea of yours," he says softly, "I've been really needing a bit of this."
"Mm – it's been too long, hasn't it?"
"How long? Months? A year?"
"Shh, just enjoy it."
"Mmkay."
And so she revels in her husband's helplessness. He has many qualities that make her glad to have him as her own, but it was his particular level of vulnerability that turned her head ten years ago; that made him endearing and infuriating and fascinating, that made her want to protect him and strangle him and have his babies all at the same time. Although her timid stripling has blossomed into a much more confident and capable thirty-year-old, he still loves her with a pure devotion that transcends her superiority complex and tendency to take advantage of his gentle nature and need for approval. Sometimes she finds his clinginess an annoyance, and is quite pleased to see him pack himself off to the moon for a day and get himself out from under her sink plungers; but this is one of the other times, when she is deeply moved by his absolute trust. She is passionately in love with every atom in his body, and it is of utmost importance that she expresses this urgently. She knows well how to tease him, how to make him writhe and pant and gaze helplessly up at her and set her own internal hosiery stretching and twanging in anticipation; aah, this is going to be the best ride he's given her for a long long time. But she can wait just a little longer if it means she can see him beg again. Really beg.
Oh, come on, come on, why won't he beg?!
A scream. Very long and very shrill.
Another, a lower pitch but no less blood-curdling. A third, that diminishes into sobbing.
"Mum... Dad! Help, help, help!"
"No, no, not again..." Mr. Spoon groans.
Mrs. Spoon can feel the arousal draining out of her like water down a plughole as she struggles to untie her husband, and his cake icing equipment is withering and retracting almost as fast. Loosening the knot, she leaves him to untangle himself and pulls the face flannel over them both. It might just buy them a couple of seconds to look innocent before their daughter comes scurrying in; but she's here, she's in the room, and there's time to get the ribbon out of sight but not to remove her negligee. She swathes herself in the covers as her husband sits up to comfort the hysterical girl, for all the world as if he hadn't been drowning in sexual fervour a minute earlier.
"Shh, shh, it's OK," he says to her, "It's just another nightmare. You're awake now."
"There were..." Tina pauses, struggling to form words between sobs, "horrible mo...monsters... and... and... and one ate you!"
"Ooh, that sounds scary. I'm glad it was only a dream."
"And... and it spat out your head... and it... it... rolled away!"
"Ugh, that's nasty. My head's right here where it should be, look. Don't worry."
"Then... one caught Mum... and it... it bit her in half and... and all her balloons and hoses fell out..."
"I don't think I want to her any more of this!" says Mrs. Spoon.
"Shh, it's alright," says Mr. Spoon to Tina, "Why don't we wash your face and make you a nice cup of cocoa, and you can get back to bed. You need to be up for school in the morning."
"No! I'm scared."
"What if we leave the light on?"
"I want to stay in your bed with you and Mum."
Mr. Spoon turns to Mrs. Spoon and gives her an apologetic look. Their daughter is clinging to him for dear life and really trying very hard to cry a little more quietly.
"Well, that's how it is, isn't it?" she sighs, and lies back. She can't blame the poor kid. Children have nightmares, everyone knows that; you sign up for this sort of disturbance when you decide to have one, and parental instinct makes you more tolerant of such things.
If only she could have left it another hour, though. Just one more hour.
Mr. Spoon gets up to put the kettle on, and brings drinks and biscuits for all the family. Although Tina has calmed down and dried her tears, she still can't be persuaded back in her own room; and so bedtime is declared. Cosied up between her parents, the girl is soon soothed back to sleep. Mrs. Spoon, however, is wide awake and glaring at the ceiling, brooding over her crushing defeat. She could have been having a delicious post-coital snuggle round about now, luxuriating in her husband's attentions, but it was not to be.
It's not even ten o'clock yet. Maybe she ought to go downstairs and have a little read by herself for a while, or watch the news. Think about something else. Get his itchy lace thing off.
But there is movement beside her. Mr. Spoon is very gently lifting the sleeping girl into his arms. He hasn't had cause to pick her up for a year or two, and she's a lot heavier now, but he can just about manage to stand up. She wakes very briefly, murmuring and closing her spoons around his neck, but he sits down on the side of the bed with her leaning against him. She falls asleep again with her head on his shoulder.
Mrs. Spoon watches their white faces and Tina's white limbs, faintly visible, drifting through the darkness towards the door and then out to the other bedroom. She hears him lower her onto her own bed and pull up the covers.
What? Does he think there might be some way back from this? Although, now the possibility presents itself, maybe there is. The night is still fairly young, after all.
She becomes aware of her husband's presence in the room, feels him slip into the bed beside her and cuddle up close. She takes him in her spoon-arms and squeezes him.
"Well, that spoiled the mood a bit, didn't it?" he says when she relaxes her grip enough for him to breathe.
"Yes, it certainly did."
"I'm not a terrible parent, am I? For putting her back in her own bed when she wants to be in with us? I mean, I would usually just leave her to it, but it just felt all wrong, her being here... you know?"
"She's asleep, she won't notice. She probably won't even remember when she wakes up. Or she'll think it was part of the dream."
"Yeah, hopefully. Oh, squeeze me tight again, I love it when you hold me like that. Mm!"
She crushes him as hard as she can without breaking him. He makes appreciative noises into her neck.
"Well, Spoonie my love? How are you feeling? Do you want a bit more, now we're alone together?"
"Oh, I don't know – I don't think my Little Friend is going to be popping up again for a while."
"Your 'Little Friend'? Ha! Surely you mean 'Enormous Ravenous Beast' or something?"
"I'm afraid not. I mean, I have other appendages at your disposal, as you well know, but... I don't know, I'm sorry."
"You just want to cuddle, don't you?"
"I'm sorry, I - I'm tired, that's all. Tomorrow, I promise, as soon as I get back from taking Tina to school, I'm all yours. Or whenever you've got a minute. I'm sorry, I wish I could, but I've had a long day."
"OK. Tomorrow then. You save your energy."
They settle into their default pre-sleep snuggle position, her chin on top of his head, arms and legs entwined. There is some clonking and scraping as they organise themselves.
"Thanks for – you know, for this," says Mr. Spoon, "I can't remember when I last saw you burning up with lust like that. It's very... I don't know, it's... It makes me feel wanted."
"Of course I want you, you silly sausage! You're my hot hunk o' housewares, aren't you?"
"It's nice to be reminded sometimes."
"It's nice to remind you."
"And – and I love seeing you when we've had a really good time, and all day you've got a bit of a glow about you. Like you've got a spring in your step. It's lovely. Really lovely."
"Ha! And you just go all soft and cuddly."
"I am all soft and cuddly."
"More so. Twice as much."
"Hm. We should do it more often," he says sleepily, "definitely. Definitely more often."
"I was hoping you'd say that."