It was an abrupt transition between states – one moment in near-agonised arousal, helpless and clutching after some…something…that I needed but didn’t understand, the next-
Well, cumming is cumming, isn’t it? Only it was super-intense and it was everywhere and I was penetrated and open and filled and Halley was chanting oh fuck, oh fuck – then a whole octave higher – ohfuckfuckfuck, then he was cumming too, and it was just, like, wow…I don’t see how it gets better than this…
Unfortunately the downside of having a moment that can’t be bettered is that it’s inevitably followed by a bunch of moments that are worse. Halley was pulling back, I was shrinking, going soft, I had cum and pre-cum all over myself and I felt vulnerable and vaguely…ashamed. What was I thinking? And even if I had been gonna…the first day, the first time he asked? There’s a word for that…
“Time for another ten washcloths, looks like,” Halley murmured, getting to his feet. He booped me on the nose. “You’re lucky I did laundry recently…”
As he exited the bedroom I curled up in the fetal position, trying – and failing – to process. It was like I, myself, had expanded through that experience, put out new shoots, and now it was over, all those beautiful tendrils were shrivelling, receding back into themselves, running for cover. I didn’t want it to be like that, but…nothing in my life to date, none of my study, not my wildest of wet dreams had provided me with a script for this situation, for what to do now, with these feelings…
Halley reappeared, naked, condom-less and utterly unselfconscious, his dick flopping about like a wet noodle.
“God you are amazing,” he breathed. “You really are, y’know. You come across like…all kinda sweet and shy and adorably dorky – but peel away a layer or two and you’re up for anything and hot as fire…”
He sat down on the mattress hard enough that I bounced slightly, and went to turn me so he could wipe, and he saw…where I was at. I watched as all the…everything…drained out of his face.
“You…did want that, yeah?” he whispered, eyes wide. “Please tell me I read it right? Because that is not the price of your accommodation, it’s not – I mean god, there was absolutely no obligation, no need-”
Now he was freaking out. It made me feel a tiny bit better. Hey, we were both new at this…
I took a shaky breath. “I wanted it.”
Saying it, the weirdness ebbed some more. It was true. I wanted it. And not only in the past tense. The lid wasn’t going back on that box…
“Well, thank god,” Halley hissed, crossing his hands on his chest in the universal gesture of extreme relief. “Because you look – it was just a bit intense, huh?”
I nodded. “Ah…yeah.”
His eyes danced. “Good-intense or bad-intense?”
Bitch. Gonna make me say it. But I didn’t feel embarrassed any more. “It was good.”
He stepped out of the room, switched off the one remaining light, found the bedcovers and pulled them up around us, and in the total dark he stretched out alongside me, licked up the side of my neck and whispered;
“It was good for me, too…”
– – – – –
He was awake before me in the morning, awake and dressed already and sitting cross-legged at the far corner of the bed watching me – I guess that’s how it is when all your shifts are early ones. He winked at me as I blearily opened my eyes.
“Morning, sugar…”
I struggled to a sitting position. “Seriously, though? You were watching me sleep?”
He started crawling toward me. “Yeah? You’re the most interesting thing in here…and the cutest.”
I shrank back a tiny bit as he approached. The idea of having been under observation while I slept was…kinda unnerving – plus there was the whole dynamic of him being clothed and me being very much only flimsily covered by a sheet. But all he did was stroke my neck with a finger, along that path he liked to lick, and murmur;
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna molest you right now – I’m gonna make you coffee and waffles while you shower.”
…which was definitely the nicest way anybody had ever told me to haul my ass out of bed so we could get on with things, so how could I protest?
The final half-day of the roadshow was less special-effects splashy, more behind-the-scenes technical – how we create storyboards, how we pull the entire production together, how cutting choices are made…In some ways, it was familiar territory to me – creative process informed and tempered by commercial reality, business decision-making. It was all new to Halley, and if you’d asked me to guess, I would’ve said he’d be kinda bored by it.
I’d have been wrong. He was so fascinated he actually sat still. Leaning forward, his whole attention on each speaker in turn, breathlessly intent – his hand gripped mine throughout, but it never wandered, his thoughts were mostly elsewhere. Which meant he didn’t notice that I was mostly focussed on him. I felt like I struck gold. I mean, he sparkled. He shone.
But finding gold and keeping gold aren’t the same thing. I had no roadmap for what was gonna happen when this weekend was done, no way of knowing whether all of this would get real weird real fast once when we were separated again. Had we upgraded our friendship? Or wrecked it? A little germ of worry started to fester, deep in my gut.
By the time the official program ended, the worry was tennis-ball sized and seated under my diaphragm – I felt a little bit breathless and a little bit…queasy. We snuck in a few last selfies, me with a pasted-on smile, and once we were outside, Halley said;
“You wanna grab some lunch?”
“Um, maybe not yet,” I panted. “That…that was quite the stack of waffles you fed me earlier…”
He looked me up and down, smirking. “Yeah, actually I’m not that kind of hungry at the moment either…”
God, it didn’t take much…not that the worry totally evaporated, but – let’s just say it didn’t drown out the want…
Same as before, he pawed at me for the whole ride back – only this time it was full daylight, and there were other cars, cyclists, pedestrians. People could see – people did see – but I didn’t put up a shred of resistance. I wanted what I could get, while I could still get it…
Back at Halley’s, I caught a glimpse of my gym bag propped against the sofa, gaping open with clothes messily spilling from it, and it hit me again that this was about to end. Sure, I didn’t need to leave right now. I could easily stay until dinner time. I could even take Halley’s ‘ah, what the hell’ approach to the fact that I had an early shift tomorrow, and not head out until midnight – but either way, I was gonna have to leave…
Halley sensed my deflation, if not its root cause. “Sucks that there can’t be something that awesome goin’ on every weekend, huh?”
There were a thousand things I could’ve said. Like…I couldn’t afford to do that every weekend on what I make. Like, there is something that awesome on every weekend if you have the money and time to chase it all over the place…but instead I just sighed.
“Awww,” said Halley sympathetically. He held his arms out wide and straight like Christ the Redeemer. “Cuddles?”