There it was again, a tiny shift, like something was struggling in a trap. Aya blearily sat up, peering around the room, though everything was still mostly shrouded in the darkness of night.
She stared at the rustling covers across from her for several long moments, blinking tiredly while her mind tried to rouse enough to make the connection between sight and thought.
Aki, her synapses finally fired helpfully. Aki's having a nightmare.
And her still half-asleep body obeyed the subconscious command in that sentence, crawling clumsily from her own blankets and shuddering in the embracing cold of the room. Reaching the futon, she swayed slightly on her knees, yawned, and reached out one hand to wake him.
A tiny shift, that was all it took for the sheet to slide away under her fingertips. It caught on the graceful swell of his hip as he turned over onto his back, falling away and tangling around him. But the way it drew tight across his thighs emphasized more than hid the length of his erection, straining against the loose cloth of his shorts.
Aya stared for several long moments, her hand paused limply in out-reach. Then her eyes widened, and she jerked that hand back as if burned.
Too swift. The shove from sleep to awake, her mind drowned in confusion at the shadows before her, trying to piece the image together in another way. In a way that wasn't showing her what she was seeing.
His hand had flung up over his eyes, and his teeth were visibly gritted through his jaw, but he was still asleep. On his back and his legs spread slightly as if on display, but completely asleep.
Am I asleep, too?
She couldn't seem to tear her eyes away. She could close them, she could imagine looking away, but she just couldn't seem to get her head to turn.
Biting her lip, she took a hard breath, her heart beating so fast it felt as if it was going to climb up into her throat and choke her. Actually, it felt as if it was growing, expanding outward, filling her body with a slow, insistent pulse.
A tiny voice was telling her to crawl back to the bed, to pull the covers over her head and pretend she was still asleep until it became real.
The bigger part of her was holding her rooted to the spot, in curiosity, and mortification, and...something.
That same something that wouldn't let her look away.
I want to see...
She wasn't naive. But she wasn't...experienced either. She had never seen a boy naked before, not outside of doujinshi anyway. From the way the cloth pulled tight across his thighs he looked large, long and slightly curved. She knew it fit, but she couldn't imagine having something like that inside her. She had enough problems with tampons, and they were nowhere near that long. Or wide.
I want to see...
Her eyes flicked up to his face.
She didn't want to see-see. She was just curious. And did she mention mortified? And trying to justify why she was edging closer, her eyes jumping constantly between his face and the object of her consideration.
Just say it, Aya. Call it what it is. Quit being so timid.
Cock. Penis. That part of him that made him different from her...She wanted to see it...
The room was dark, filled only with his slightly shallow breathing. She felt so strange, like this was all only just a dream. And she honestly wondered if it was, if she was still asleep.
It was a dangerous thought, a dangerous idea. Because dreams slipped between black and white, they cast off the costume of morality and propriety, and 'consequence' was just a bunch of letters heaped together without meaning.
Nothing within her told her 'no', nothing said 'stop'. Everything told her that she had to be still asleep, because something like this would not happen in the real world.
Hadn't she had a dream like this before?
Something brushed against the edges of her awareness, but it was too fleeting for her to catch. She didn't even try; she let it go, because she knew in dreams, the harder you concentrated on something, the harder it was to grasp.
Slowly she reached out that hand once more, letting it hover over the low-slung sheet. Each finger was curved, but she stretched out her middle finger, letting only the very tip touch.
He moaned audibly, the hard flesh under her fingertip twitching. Her stomach clenched, and she turned her head slowly to look at him, feeling strangely calm, slightly misplaced, as if she was actually standing next to her body, rather than inside it.
At the same time, there was a rope of liquid heat looping around her heart, her centre, tying her to the physical, and squeezing tighter and tighter.
Moisture rose to her skin, a small, visible spot. She curiously slid her finger across it, feeling how it was warm, how it was cooling and slightly sticky.
Another flick of eyes, slower this time, as if everything was moving through honey. Through the cover of her eyelashes, she traced the part of his lips, the peek of teeth clenched in flesh. The dim line of his throat, so graceful and exposed. The rise and fall of his chest, deep, but quicker than serenity.
Her finger moved again, scraping nail, and she watched almost distantly as his hands clenched in the tangled covers, as his hips lifted slightly, taking on the rhythm of her heartbeat, and bumping against her hand. Soft sighs, sweat beading on his temple. Her hand slid down on its own, cupping loosely around him.
And she just sat there for a long moment, holding him, feeling the blood pump beneathe her skin, before she realized what she was doing. Or semi-realized, as she didn't really understand. Her fingers inadvertently squeezed around him as her eyes widened, and his hips thrust up in reaction, his neck arcing as his head dug back into his pillow. His whole body was humming in tension. So was hers, though her mind remained strangely slow-moved and empty, as if she truly was in a dream.
She was beginning to believe it, especially at the distance of her own voice as she watched that shrouded length gently thrust against her hand again and again.
Then he found the right movement, or maybe it was the wrong movement, and she suddenly touched hot skin.
She jerked her hand back with a sharp breath, letting him go, but he didn't stop, and she couldn't make herself go back.
His own hand lifted, fumbling clumsily with the waistband of his shorts in some delicate struggle. Finally his fingers slipped under and in.
Her mouth seemed to go dry as she watched shadows move under cloth. Up and down. Up and down. That spot of wetness grew, the cloth shifting to a darker shade of blue.
The tip of her tongue rubbed over the back of her teeth, the breath escaping soft and slow between her lips. Almost as if in a trance, she reached and tugged, gently, but firmly at the edge of his shorts. Not much, but enough that the cloth pulled tighter across him. He helped her with an incoherent murmur, pushing at the thin elastic and shifting his hips in a strangely exotic move.
She shuddered when he did, her hand falling limp back to her knee as the damp cloth finally surrendered to the inevitable. It still stretched tight across his thighs, but it was framing him now, more than hindering, and the next breath that escaped his lips held a tiny lining of relief, stitching itself right into the heady sound of his desire.
She made some noise; she couldn't seem to help it. She wasn't sure what it meant, but she knew it hadn't been her choice.
He was so long and thick, his skin fair, but blushing with heat and blood in the shadowed darkness of the room.
Her eyes traced the curious curve of this newly unveiled part of him. This part that seemed strangely alive and separate from him, clearly both a source of pleasure and discomfort.
What is he seeing, she wondered, as he pushed gently up into his own hand again and again. Whatever it was, it was apparently very compelling, because he continued to quietly moan his approval and desire, needy sounds and incoherent half-words.
His fingers shook as they slid over his own swollen skin, the motion smooth and effortless from the sweat and clear liquid that continued to drip from the tiny slit in the head.
Her tongue tingled, some half-thoughts roused in her mind, but quickly shoved back down. Placing shaking hands on her thighs, she slowly, thoughtlessly, leaned forward, wanting nothing more than to be closer, to see details instead of shadows. To understand...What this was, and why it was happening.
And the strange sensations that were coiling tighter and tighter inside her, severing the connection between mind and body and leaving her to float somewhere in between.
Scent filled her, mingling oddly with the fragrance of her shampoo as her hair swung forward to fall around her eyes. It was Aki. And sweat. And a subtle odor that tasted like salt on the back of her tongue. Something strange, but...indescribable. Indescribable, how it seemed familiar to her, but she couldn't remember ever smelling it before.
It made her stomach clench oddly. Made her want to shift on her knees. And keep moving.
Her eyes lifted slowly to his once more, tracing over the furrow between his eyes, the tight line of his jaw. The way the muscles in his neck strained as his body convulsively tightened and relaxed.
Such a mixed expression. Of relief and strain, pleasure and pain, lethargy and urgency.
She had touched herself before, but didn't imagine it was ever quite this intense.
And...and there was a queer beauty to it. Even as half of her was repelled, another, deep part of her was drawn irrepressibly closer.
It was this part of her that held her still, held her captive to the unknown.
"Nnmh!"
His motions were speeding up, the breath panting from him, soft and fast. Her head tilted back to watch as his hand tightened, skin sliding across skin audibly now, a wet, gently slapping sound, as he repeatedly brought the cup of his hand down to the very base, then up again, stretching the flesh tight, making maps of veins.
"Hah! Hah!"
She bit her lip, her fingers clenching involuntarily as his spine began to bow slightly, the muscles in his stomach caving as his thighs shook. His balls seemed to have drawn up tight to his body, and there was a thin, glistening line of spittle that trailed from the corner of his mouth, as he licked at his lips and...something...some phantom-lover that she couldn't see.
Who, she thought distantly. Who...
Her eyes were wide and dark as she watched, and with a curious detachment, she wondered what it felt like...to be him. To feel so strongly. He was speeding up even further, struggling subconsciously for something that she still could not understand.
She just couldn't imagine it.
She couldn't imagine that long, wet piece of flesh inside her, pushing in and out with such force and speed. She couldn't imagine it ever feeling good. But it had to, or people wouldn't keep doing it.
No, she couldn't really imagine it, but the idea was...interesting.
Compelling.
Enough so that she knew she would try it. Especially since the harder she tried to imagine it, the hotter her temperature rose. And the more she became aware of an empty, waiting space, right at her centre. It kept squeezing and relaxing, seemingly clenching in the mounting rhythm of his hips.
"..."
A breath, he was saying something. Something between the grit of his teeth. Without thought, she leaned forward, tilting her head to try and catch it.
"Aya..."
Her name, she froze in place in surprise and confusion as he murmured her name. What...?
"Uhh!" And suddenly, he thrust up one last time on a choked cry, his body twitching as some milky, thick liquid splattered on his thighs and stomach, and across her face as she leaned slightly over him.
His heels dug into the tangled sheet, and the hard length of him convulsed again, shooting another hot stream across her chin and slightly open mouth.
She sat there in shock, feeling his cooling seed beginning to trickle like tears down her face. Almost reflexively her tongue darted out and licked up the tickling moisture on her lips. And her eyes widened further in incomprehension as she tasted salt...and that scent.
That scent that made her body throb in ways that she just could not ignore.
Her eyes turned mechanically at movement, and she stared blankly as his eyelashes fluttered slightly, his still wet hand fumbling slowly to rub shakily at his eyes.
He's waking up...
Her breath jarred again, and she scrambled up, practically diving for the bed and dragging the covers quickly over her head.
Holding her breath, she curled up into a ball and chanted: Sleep Sleep I'm Asleep.
The lingering taste of salt and sex on her tongue made it easier for her to believe it.
A rustle of sheets, the same rustle that woke her so long ago. And she heard sleep-heavy feet stumble across the floor, the subtle shift of slippers leaving carpet for tile, and the bathroom door quietly close. Water ran in the bath, the muffled rush almost as loud as the one in her ears.
She slowly opened her eyes, pushing up on her elbow to look at the door. Her eyes, on their own, flicked to the disheveled mess of his covers, catching and holding on a sparse pattern of darker spots.
Her skin was cooler where it was still wet, tight where it had already dried.
She laid back down, her cover pushed to her waist, and stared up at the ceiling, at the haphazard pattern of glow-in-the-dark stars she and Aki had put up their when they had first moved into the little one-room apartment. They had dimmed to darkness in the night, but that one short moment of light from the open door had awakened them. Their glow was faint, and quickly fading, but she could just barely trace the outline of Saturn.
She thought about the galaxy for a moment, and how she never quite understood its size, or how it all came together. Not understanding, however, did not keep her from appreciating its beauty. Or the irony of its beauty, as it was all fire and gases, and debris floating in the black.
And light. Light far off, or long gone, or simply reflecting off of other surfaces.
Astronomy really wasn't a hobby of hers. She just really liked all the pretty lights. They reminded her of fireflies-
It was me.
Her heart thumped reflexively, skipping a beat.
The one...the one he was touching. The one he was kissing. The one he was...
Her knees squeezed together , curling up under the cover as heat flushed through her middle.
The one he was inside...
Her hips twitched, her entrance contracting as if he really was.
Inside.
A trickle of wetness down between her legs. And her fingers itched to touch. Herself. Him. She wasn't sure which. And that's what scared her.
Because she could close her eyes and she could see it. She could see that long, curved part of him, she could see it disappearing into her own body, again and again. She could see his eyes as he stared up at her. The taste of his mouth. The feel of his hands learning the familiar paths of her body. Always familiar, because they were two sides of the same coin.
Her hands had been pressing against her closed eyes to try and drive out the image, but they inexplicably grew limp and fell. She curled on her side breathing slowly as she heard cloth hit tile, water displacing as the rush dwindled to a trickle, then a steady drip.
When she forced out the image of him inside her, there was still the memory of his voice, moaning her name as his seed painted her skin. The taste of his essence, the feel of it, like lines of hot oil branding her flesh.
Her name...
Her...
And the knowledge that something had happened. Something had shifted the moment she hadn't turned her head.
And the dizzying realization that it hadn't been that big of a shift at all. That she may have already had one foot across that line, and all that had been left was one small step.
A step that she had taken tonight.
TBC...