19 Big Dumb Sex
Adam showed up at the training seminar in Pewter. Delilah didn't know if he was looking for an opening, if he had been waiting, or if it just happened so, but he approached her nonchalantly after the crowds thinned. The only people left were putting away chairs and he asked her for a match.
She sighed.
She didn't answer him for a minute, just because she wanted to annoy him.
"I don't know, Adam," she said. "I have to take a bus and then a train and then another bus."
"I do have a car, you know," he said.
"You might not be so generous if I beat you," she said.
It was going to happen. She knew it. Maybe he planned it, maybe she instigated it, maybe they took advantage of happenstance. It seemed inevitable now. She knew that he knew, too, and she knew that he knew that she knew and that she knew that he knew that she knew that he knew. The certainty unsettled her and he snapped at her for something stupid, and said that Alexander McQueen's death was "enough" for the month without her "behaviour".
"So why couldn't you battle during the actual seminar?" she asked testily when they found a court in an empty room. "Does it embarrass you to battle me?"
He looked down his nose condescendingly and said, "Only if I lose."
"I don't think it's a conditional statement if you lose every time," she said, letting the cattiness in her voice go undisguised.
For half a second he looked blazingly angry. It was thin ice, but she had an idea of what was under it and she didn't care. "We'll see," he said. "I have gotten better."
"Maybe you have," she said, "but I haven't been waiting in stagnant water for you to catch up." She felt like her legs would give out or her vision would leave her, like she would fall into a swoon if he got too close to her.
She knew how mad he was. He had been the one to kiss her first and they were both aware that that put her in a position of dominance.
Delilah knew that pride goeth before the fall but this trash talk test run turned out to be a free trial: although Adam's battling only improved, in some cases exponentially, there was no nasty shock for her. After all, she got better with every match too. Should she, she wondered, feel guilt, pity? After all of these matches she had won against Adam, his continued arrogance was almost touching.
The match seemed to be progressing naturally: she took out his pokémon systematically, though not entirely escaping conflict; still, the outlook was generally positive: he was on his last pokémon, his alakazam, which she could tell wouldn't last much longer, and she still had half her team left.
She ordered a Quick Attack, confident that this would be the end, and indeed the alakazam retreated to Adam's side, signaling that he no longer wished to battle.
But Adam didn't recall him. He patted his side with an encouraging word, attempting to will him back into battle.
Delilah watched for a minute, unsure at first what he was doing.
Then, out of nowhere, she got mad. In fact, she wasn't just mad, she was offended. She was more insulted by this than she had ever been by anything he had ever said to her.
"What are you doing, Adam?"
"I'm battling," he sneered.
"Recall him!" she said, angrier than she had ever been in her life. "He obviously doesn't want to fight!"
"Would you mind your own business!"
"This match is as much my business as yours!"
"Then don't interrupt me!"
"You know what? I don't have to play with you!"
She recalled Snoops.
Adam looked scandalized.
"What are you doing!"
"I'm not going to keep battling."
"You can't do that!"
"Then I forfeit!"
"You can't forfeit!" he shouted. "You have three pokémon left!"
"Well, you don't have any!" she shouted back. "I refuse to battle with you unless you can acknowledge that!"
He looked like he wanted to scream. "I don't get it! It doesn't make sense!"
"Just because you don't understand doesn't mean it doesn't make sense!"
He glowered at her and didn't say anything. She felt like it was time for her to make a speech of some sort but she didn't have anything she wanted to say so she didn't.
They were both so mad that the air virtually whistled with electricity as they walked to his car. It was a convertible but he didn't ask if she was cold or offer to put up the top.
After he had sat down he sighed. "All right," he said as she put her bag on the floor. "You won. I thought my pokémon were stronger than they were." He looked at her levelly. "You won," he repeated.
She didn't know what to say. So she didn't say anything.
"Listen, Delilah," he said. "One day I will beat you, I'll have the strength."
She swallowed. "Strength...isn't the same as anger," she said timidly.
He stared at her with frightening intensity; she didn't want to look away, but it was making her feel like she was going to cry. She wasn't sure what he was trying to accomplish, but he didn't stop looking at her, his eyes smoldering like cigarettes, straight through her. She wanted to kiss him.
"Or power," she added.
"And what does that mean?" he sneered.
Her face flushed. "A good trainer's highest priority is to understand when his pokémon do and don't want to battle," she said. It would be so easy. "A good trainer puts his pokémon's well-being before anything else." It could be so straightforward, so artless, and so, so easy.
"Shut up." She could do it.
"Is that the best you can do? It's not about you, Adam. Pokémon don't exist to win for you." It would be rough and nasty and unburdening and so easy. "They're not Gaston, or Marie, or Smithers, or Bailey, or whatever other slaves you have working for you, serving you."
He kept staring at her, making her face hotter and hotter. If she could only do it.
"How selfish can you get?" she continued, becoming afraid that she would lose control of her voice. "Why are YOU so important?" Why couldn't she do something that was so common and unsophisticated?
"Who do you think you are, Delilah?" His tone was even, low, and very threatening.
"I don't know!" she said, almost hysterically. "I kind of thought I was the World fucking Champion. I guess that was a fluke, because I've been training my pokémon all wrong this whole time." It was such a simple, basic desire, to be on him, under him, against him, and she didn't trust herself to do it right.
He scowled. "And just what are you, then, the Champion, doing wasting time in my car?"
She looked up at him defiantly. "Waiting for something more interesting to happen."
He looked at her for a minute longer. Then he very slowly leaned toward her; her eyelids fluttered and she inhaled audibly, her lips parting. She waited, but he didn't kiss her; he just hovered in front of her with his eyes half-closed, breathing against her burning lips.
He thought she wouldn't kiss him.
He thought she would let him tease her.
She thought the same thing, until she grabbed his face and kissed him with unprecedented zeal. He reciprocated it admirably, but made no further advances; she kissed him as deeply and urgently as she knew how, but he didn't try to get any closer to her or touch her at all.
What was he doing? Testing her? Playing indifference? The car was open but the street was deserted, it was okay. She kissed his mouth and jaw and throat, her hand sliding down his neck and chest as she moved closer to him; she felt his fingers on her leg and it was so encouraging that she climbed on top of him, running her hands over the bristly sides of his head and kissing him voraciously.
Was she going too fast? Not fast enough? She didn't know; she didn't really know what to do or how. She understood the mechanics of sex, but how did it get to that point? Delilah had never been in this sort of commanding position with Adam before; she didn't know if she liked it, but she was pretty sure that he didn't, regardless of his hands up her skirt.
She anchored herself with an arm around the headrest, undulating experimentally against him. In his basilisk stare was hatred like she had never known and it was absolutely the most thrilling thing she had ever seen. All she wanted was to touch him and she wanted to touch him more than she could ever remember wanting anything in her life.
She pressed her breasts to his chest; he closed his eyes, his lips curling back and his eyebrows slanting up weakly, the helpless response to a physical sensation. She kissed him and he overpowered her, and she ended up trapped beneath him in a frenzied mess of groping limbs and grunting breath. Was she really going to lose her virginity in a car? No matter how expensive it was, how tacky, how cliché, how high school, but she didn't care. She could hardly believe it was actually happening anyway—she wanted to touch him and be touched by him and that was what was happening, she wanted it so much and she was getting it.
He was clawing frantically at his belt while she was wondering if she should ask if he had a condom when there was a tapping noise on the driver-side door and a voice said, "Arise, young lovers..."
Adam sat up quickly and Delilah scrabbled upright when she saw a policeman standing outside the car. Tacky, cliché, high school.
"Are you addressing me, Officer?" asked Adam, crimsoned but quite calm.
"Unless you were taking a nap?" said the policeman, eyeing skeptically the suspicious trail of lipstick down Adam's neck.
"Would I be in trouble if I was?"
"Was the young lady napping, as well?"
"How would I know, if I was asleep?"
The policeman pointed his collapsed baton at him. "Don't get smart," he said.
"It doesn't suit you," agreed Delilah, adjusting her bra.
"Shut up, Delilah," spat Adam.
She put up her hands innocently.
"However intriguing this relationship may be," said the cop, "it need not crescendo in public. Right?" He was looking pointedly at Adam.
"Well, it wasn't my idea," said Adam, sounding vaguely offended. "She started it."
"Oh, one of these intelligent conversations, eh?" asked the cop, and looked at Delilah. "Well, go ahead and deny that you started it."
"Oh, no, I did start it," she said. "I guess I just didn't pick up on the fact that he wasn't interested."
The policeman snorted and Adam snapped, "Delilah, shut the fuck up."
"Uhh...what?" she laughed warningly. "I am not doing a thing wrong."
"You're being completely fucking stupid, is what you're doing," he said. "Stop acting so much like yourself."
She hit him. The intensity of the sound was shocking, singing sharply through the still night.
"I hate you!"
She stepped out of the car and slammed the door.
"I'll take the bus home!"
"Home is a good place to be this time of night, miss," said the cop. "See that you get there."
"Uh, okay," she said unnaturally, unsure if she should address him as "sir".
"And I don't want to see you again," she heard him say to Adam as she walked away. "Or I'll have you brought in for impersonating a human being..."
She turned the corner and got to the bus stop. She felt like she could barely walk. She couldn't believe she had actually slapped him, and she couldn't believe how hard. She had never hit anybody before; she had done it in her dreams a couple of times, but it was always anti-climactic, as if there were some unseen force preventing her from hitting with her full strength.
She stood at the bus stop, and sighed, and reached up to fix her hair. So she had done it now, she had hit Adam in the face. It had been with an open palm, but hard enough that it stung her hand. She was surprised that the cop hadn't at least warned her about assault charges.
She felt a presence behind her and a hand on her shoulder; for the briefest of seconds she thought it might be Adam in an unlikely fit of sexually-charged penitence, but she realized this was spectacularly improbable even before the presence slurred something unintelligible to her.
"Uhh," she replied.
"Now you've dumped the punk, I can tell..." His words turned again into meaningless gibberish while his hand strayed lower and she wondered where that policeman had gone.
"Uhh," she said again.
He started muttering something messed up in her ear and she was so nervous that she just stood there frozen because he was really messed up and she wasn't sure what he would do next so she started preparing herself for a brutal rape scene in the bus stop which conveniently had no working lights.
She was reaching for a poké ball for defense when somebody shouted: "Hey!"
It was Adam, holding Delilah's handbag, which he threw on the ground. He ran over and shoved the guy, who fell down.
"Get the fuck away!" Adam yelled.
The man got to his feet and ran away, all spastic and mumbly.
Delilah immediately felt stupid. She shouldn't have needed someone to save her. Maybe she should have been grateful; instead, she was just embarrassed.
"Thanks," she said quietly.
Adam sneered contemptuously, and walked away.
It was the first time she had ever hated somebody who actually deserved it. As she got on the bus she could only think about her underwear because she knew that when she took them off there would be a big wet spot. It was probably good that they hadn't had sex because Adam's toxic semen would have probably left horrible slime stains. And what about horrible diseases. There was herpes and pubic lice and smallpox and pregnancy to worry about. Maybe he was full of so many potent chemicals that they balanced out all the lethal infections.
She wasn't sure how she could be so profoundly attracted to somebody so revolting.
A man on the bus surprised her by asking if she was all right, and she said she was. She could tell he didn't believe her but he just smiled.