"What do you mean you'd rather have a radish?" Jenn asked, the chuckle that was always present in her voice (especially when they were discussing Sarah's boyfriends past and present) bubbling out of the phone.
"I mean the sex is bad," Sarah said and tucked her legs up on the sofa. She stared into her mug of cocoa as she sighed. "Radish bad."
She held the mug close to her chest to absorb its warmth. The nights were drawing in and there was a marked chill now that made burrowing under blankets a beautiful thought. But even the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree she'd just finished decorating hadn't entirely lifted her spirits. She had yet to hang the wreath over her apartment door and the fairy lights around the living room. Half-opened boxes of decorations still littered the floor.
"That bad, huh?" Jenn tsked in commiseration, but Sarah could still hear the grin stretching her lips. "What's the problem? Stamina? Technique? Gi—"
"If you say 'girth' I'm putting the phone down," Sarah interrupted before leaning back against the sofa cushions in exasperation. "...but all of the above."
"Even girth?"
"Jenn, for fuck's sake," Sarah laughed.
"That's not a 'no'," Jenn laughed along with her and Sarah felt the unburdening of a shared problem halving itself.
"I don't know, it's a lot of things," she continued, not wanting to get into the really gruesome, uncomfortable details of why sex with Ethan was so bad. Robotic, sweaty, and rib-rattling were some of the descriptive terms she was mentally skirting around as she ran a thumb over the rim of her mug. "It feels like we're always out of sync," she added vaguely so Jenn wouldn't pry further.
"Dump him," said Jenn.
"That's your answer for everything," Sarah snickered into her cocoa as she took another sip.
"It's a good catch-all solution," Jenn replied flippantly. "Dump him, hun. We can go live in the forest together and grow radishes."
"A tempting proposition."
Jenn chuckled, a slight pause on the phone indicating she was taking a sip of her glass of mulled wine. "But you are getting some orgasms, right?"
"Not one," Sarah clipped out with a bitter huff. Four months of unfulfillment (plus the year-long dry spell previous to Ethan) had her emotional bassline as sour and irritable.
"Not one?! Sarah!" Jenn shrieked. "Aren't you at least…?" she left the question mercifully unfinished, knowing Sarah would read between the lines.
"No, it doesn't work for me," Sarah replied, hugging her knees and finishing her cocoa, but still holding the mug for comfort. "I get all in my head and then it just feels like a performance."
"Oh, honey," Jenn said sympathetically in a way that made another flare of bitterness ignite. Thankfully Jenn didn't suggest any self-pleasure tips that would have deepened the squirm wriggling in Sarah's stomach and instead stated clearly, "You gotta end it."
Sarah groaned. "I know… it's just break-ups are awful, and being single around the holidays is even worse," she said, her head slumping onto her knees.
It wasn't just the sex. Hand over heart, she'd overlooked worse in a romantic partner. But there was simply no spark burning in her heart. No flutter in her gut at his approach, or thrill at his touch. She didn't check her phone for messages from him when she got home from work, and she never thought to call him to tell him about her day. Conversation trundled along between them but felt passionless and sterile.
Four months of small talk.
How had she not ended it already?! Why had she let it roll on all the way to mid-December!? Christmas was only ten days away and still, she hadn't committed to buying him a gift.
Because you'd have to concede he'd still be around then, she scolded herself. She'd started to write him a Christmas card but all she'd gotten down so far was To Ethan.
Not 'Dear'.
To.
Even the silly festive penguin wearing a Victorian tophat on the front couldn't take the sting out of those two little letters, but Sarah didn't have the motivation to change them.
She definitely should break up with him. It was unusual for her to let it drag on like this—to be so wary of being alone as to torture herself with bad sex and worse company—but this year there had been a definitive sense that she needed to guard her affections. To fill her metaphorical dance card as though something, somewhere, was just waiting for her to let her guard down.
Maybe it was just getting older—Karen's frequent remarks about Sarah needing to find herself a someone had been getting under her skin much more than usual—but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something big waiting for her around the corner. Something momentous. And she just wasn't ready for it.
"But you gotta get a little pleasure somewhere," Jenn persisted with second-hand exasperation. "Why don't you go out, find a guy—"
"That would work even less for me," Sarah answered. She wasn't a prude, she was all for consenting adults having no-strings-attached fun (and the sun was definitely setting on her time with Ethan, she was sure he felt the same way) but a couple of attempts in her early twenties had been enough of an indication that whilst the flirting was fun, and the kissing was certainly a turn on, her heart—and other parts—clenched tightly before it went further.
"What about with a friend?" Jenn suggested.
Sarah smirked. "You're offering?"
"Sure am. You, me, and a radish for two," Jenn joked back, and Sarah laughed, wishing they were drinking mulled wine together rather than Jenn being miles away with her family until New Year's. "I'm serious though," Jenn continued over Sarah's exasperated sigh. "Surely you know someone that does it for you and wouldn't mind some extra-curricular activities?"
Sarah scoffed. "Yeah, someone tall and handsome and obsessed with getting me off? Of course I know someone like that personally," she grouched. And entirely without forethought added, "I wish."
Her skin turned icy as she froze.
She could have bitten clear through her tongue.
For so many years she'd avoided those words. Wouldn't even write them on greetings cards for her coworkers, or hold them in her head as she blew out birthday candles or a shooting star passed overhead.
"Oh, crap," she hissed, watching a fluffy white barn owl alight on the balcony of her apartment, staring in with determined eyes.
"What?" Jenn asked around another loud sip of mulled wine.
"Uh-"
The barn owl flapped its wings impressively, before settling back into its intense study of Sarah through the glass. A few errant snowflakes began to descend from the dark clouds above, creating an image that almost looked painted were it not for the intensity of the owl's stare.
"I've got to go," Sarah managed to blurt out as huge round eyes burned through her. "I–uh… forgot I have a guest coming—" This late at night?! Why did I say that?!
"Reeeally," Jenn's slightly tipsy voice drawled down the phone. "A radish-type guest?" she probed, losing her grasp entirely on the quote's original meaning.
"Bye, Jenn!" Sarah stammered out and hit the end-call button.
A beat.
She watched the owl.
It watched her back; brazenly, and very un-bird-like.
With no friendly voice on the other end of the phone to cushion the silence, Sarah felt suddenly very exposed as the owl's study through the glass slipped down the length of her.
Maybe it's just an owl, she swallowed as its gaze bounced back up to hers. Maybe it's just a normal, non-magic, totally harmless barn owl, she thought, trying to persuade herself that the penetrating eyes of the bird on the railing weren't mismatched. That the effect was just a trick of the Christmas lights reflecting strangely back at her from those bottomless depths.
She'd almost achieved the delusion when it full-body shivered—as if the snow Sarah was leaving it standing in was a cruelty too far—and for all the world looked like it was raising an eyebrow it didn't possess at her.
Damn you, Tongue, Sarah cursed herself as she set down her mug and the phone on the coffee table and went to unlatch the balcony doors.
Keeping her eyes firmly on the owl's unwavering gaze she slid the lock back, opening the door with cautious slowness. For a moment it seemed like the owl would, in fact, simply fly off. That she had entirely got her wires crossed.
Until it spread its wings with hypnotizing grandeur and surged forward on a wave of snowflakes and glitter. A tornado of snow swirled in from the window, blinding Sarah as she shielded her eyes from the stinging onslaught. She took a step back as the cold air bit her cheeks, her breath fogging in the suddenly frigid air, and as she wrangled the door closed again. She took a breath, briefly misting the glass.
Turned.
And there he was.
Festively adorned in numerous shades of red, he lounged with a ludicrously seductive air. One leg crossed over the other in trousers the color of blood and so tight Sarah could see the minute flex of muscle beneath the fabric.
His expansive cape draped over the back of her sofa in an extravagant wave of maroon velvet. Garnets embroidered his waistcoat, catching the twinkling lights of her tree and returning them tenfold.
A masquerade mask shaped like a cackling skull with horns wrapped in vines of spiked holly leaves dangled from the hand propped over her cushions—an overly welcoming position as though he expected Sarah to slip into the space beside him.
After what felt like a very brief forever, her gaze finally made it to his face. Perfectly mismatched eyes appraised her back, the corners of which were delicately painted in oxblood hues. The entire effect was overwhelming and breath-stealing.
A flared eyebrow arched slightly, and a smug smile curled his lips at having caught her staring open-mouthed like a guppy caught in a net.
"Hello Sarah," he purred in a voice that had her cheeks burning despite the drop in temperature. "Warmest wishes of the season."
AN:
"If it was good sex, I'd rather have sex. But if it was bad sex, I'd rather have a radish." – Miriam Margoyles.
Champions and Red Kings are both a type of radish - a fact I discovered after I'd finished the first chapter and was searching for a title for this fic (and I damn well lost my mind at the coincidence). And no, I've never watched Phantom of the Opera, I don't know what you're talking about, what's a Red Death?
Jenn has resurfaced out of my first Labyrinth piece "The Power You Have Over Me". I love her so much, and even though I made her up I wish her very happy holidays. Cheers, sweetie.
Beta'd by my endlessly supportive corvid, RavenLove12, and by foxfaceinthewindow (who I loathe, you talented monster).
