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one.
The first time it happens, he’s pretty sure it was an accident - their fault even because of course they’re going to forget where the bunk ends and of course Rose has left the Thorns of Oglogoth at an awkward angle on the floor.
It’s John’s turn to host their rotating meets, and Dave and Rose have been shown to the newly constructed bunk beds in the spare room.
“They’re called Ingrid,” John informs them. “Isn’t it cool how Ikea names all its stuff? My desk’s called Boris. I didn’t need a new one but he was in the remaindered section and I thought he looked lonely.”
Dave elbows Rose in the ribs before she can start on the tricky world of transference, and tells John he’ll be good to Ingrid. Dinner and a movie before he tries anything, keep strictly top bunk until Ingrid’s ready for any bottom bunk shenanigans.
Problem is, the other feature of Ikea furniture is that it relies on the competence of the purchasing party for it to actually become functional furniture. That John may in fact not be the undisputed king of flat-pack town becomes evident when the ladder falls off before they try and climb it. Dave gives Rose a leg up, taking the opportunity to grab a handful of ass on the way. He displays his physical prowess, pulling himself up through a combination of the curtains, a shelf, and her ankle. She is in fits of laughter by the time he sprawls out next to her on the single mattress, wheezing and shades askew.
“Ain’t many southern gentlemen this suave, I’ll have you know,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “I’m 8.0 across the board in Romantic Gymnastics. Even Russia’s hard-ass coach is nodding approvingly. American boy has skill. I’m my own Lifetime movie right there.”
She slides his shades up so they push the hair off his forehead like a headband. “Indeed, your raw talent has left me momentarily removed from my faculties.”
He rolls onto his side, letting one hand cup her breast, before sliding it down her stomach.
“Got some other talents’ll remove your faculties.” He moves his hand, and she draws in a sharp breath. “They’ll have to kick you out of MENSA when I’m done with you.”
He’s doing a pretty good job of proving his point when the dubious structural integrity of kit furniture intervenes. He’s got one of her legs hooked over his shoulder, and her nails in the small of his back; then she rolls them over. The wooden slats that make a barrier around the edge of the bunk only provide momentary resistance before the piece-of-shit screws pop out and he’s treading air. He observes the first look of shock he’s ever seen involuntarily cross Rose Lalonde’s face, then it is a short, sharp drop to the floor of the Egbert spare room. The first thing he registers is that, somehow, he’s still inside her. The second is that there’s a couple of pointy somethings scratching the soft skin below his ear. An inch different, and he’d have been serving up the rare delicacy, brains kebab. Meat tenderised endorphins, skewered on the finest grimdark wands.
“Jesus fuckity fuck balls.”
The pain is fading in along his spine; skull and coccyx making the loudest protests. Rose, cushioned in her fall by his bruised ass, is rocking her hips impatiently, and winds her fingers in his hair.
“Get on with it,” she grumbles.
Still light-headed with adrenaline, he obeys.
two.
The second time it happens, he’s happy to place the blame fair and square on her head.
“Dave, if you insist on such puns, I will be forced to revoke your right to chose the movie on pornography night.”
He looks at her, where they’ve pulled into a motel parking lot, expression all injured honour and ‘gracious, ma’am, I’m not sure I rightly understand what you’re insinuating’. She is perched on a concrete bollard, picking lint from under her nails while he kisses the tarmac.
“I think it was A grade material, given the circumstances.”
Circumstances are: they’re driving back from picking her up at the airport. She’s got her suitcase in the trunk and a heap of comments about his choice of vehicle. He’ll admit the Stridermobile might have more duct tape than original seat covering, but he’s been pretty proud of his retort that he didn’t have anything to compensate for. In retrospect, he sidled into that one like a drunk negotiating a urinal. She reaches straight over and unbuckles his belt with one hand.
“Nothing to compensate for? Are you completely sure?” She unzips his fly as they pull onto the freeway. “I can’t quite remember, let me check.”
“Whoa, shit, hang on there Grabby McGrabberson.” He tries to bat her hand away, but she’s leaning over the parking break to take his cock into her mouth.
He suddenly decides that two hands on the wheel at all times oh god two hands on the wheel let me live is a great plan, and fixes his eyes on the car in front, trying to keep his foot steady on the gas. Now he gets why rich shits pay to have cars with cruise control. He’s pretty sure he should think that if he’s going to go, this is the way he should want to go - but with an SUV packed full of screaming toddlers on one side and an pick-up piled high with rusting scrap metal on the other, he thinks he could do better. Like old and hooked up to life-support surrounded by hot nurses in tiny uniforms giving him a sponge bath and paying particular attention to his crotch with the hot, wet, sucking sponges -
He’s half in the next lane, angry soccer mom pounding her horn as he swerves back. Using the last scraps of his concentration, he takes the next exit and park up outside a Motel 6. His hands are still plastered to the wheel while she finishes, knuckles like white pebbles. He pulls the door catch and pours himself out onto the ground, pressing his face to the tarmac.
“Beautiful ground, why did I ever betray you and try to transport myself on anything other than my legs.”
Rose pats his upturned ass as she passes, before hopping up onto the bollard. She looks like some art student’s take on Greek statuary, a goddess in denim shorts and flip-flops.
He launches a tirade that is honed with the precision of u-boats and Swiss watches. A passing trucker is watching them dubiously. She slips one foot out of her flip-flops to scratch the opposite shin with her toenail. It’s filthy hot, and a sheen of sweat is already sticking her singlet to her stomach. Of course, she slices through his dazzling cornucopia of insults to select and destroy his double entendre.
“No. Puns are never forgivable. I hereby forbid you from the selection of pornographic material viewed in my company.”
“Not like it’s actually your company.” Porn night is their answer to long distance separation: synch watching and phone sex. “But girl, you’d be lost without my guiding hand. Like a blind nun in De Wallen,” he says, leaning back on his hands. “All ‘gee, A Midsummer Night’s Cream sounds educational!’”
“I distinctly remember your last selection was ‘Big Trouble in Little Vagina’. For which I should ban you in any case.”
The traffic on the freeway is thundering behind them, 18-wheelers ploughing down the straight road and making the door of the payphone rattle.
“Ok, then I gotta ban you from the passenger seat. Don’t wanna end up being scraped off the windshield by some underpaid cop.”
She smiles sweetly.
“Oh Dave, what makes you think I can’t reach your cock from the back seat?”
three.
Third time, he’s starting to think maybe he’s just Not Very Good at sex. Okay, so he doesn’t phrase it like that, cause he’s Dave Strider: Sexual Athlete. But - right - thing is, maybe his natural abilities need a little … technique? He’s pretty sure he needs some operational diagrams when he’s trying to hoist Rose up in the shower and keeps catching her ass on the soap rack. They’ve spent her week’s visit in a tense and steely romance-off. She puts her hand in his back pocket when they walk to the store for soda and jerky (the only food Dave is willing to prepare). He picks her wildflowers in the park. She tucks one blossom in his hair. He composes a spontaneous rap on the shape of her nose. He can see see a smile breaking across her face, and she hides it in a hay fever attack.
When the failing light drives them out of the park, they go back to Dave’s place and spoon on the sofa watching sitcoms. She pretends to fall asleep with her head on his chest, but he can see her opening her eyes to check on him in the reflection in the TV. His arm is going to sleep and he has to pee, but he perseveres. Eventually he does fall asleep, and when he wakes up she’s gone. From the trail of clothes left at artistic points between the couch and the bathroom door, he deduces that she is in the shower. Her bra hangs off the door knob in coy invitation. The shower’s on, clouding steam into the narrow room. Although glass door is fogged up, he can make out the curve of her breast and the darker shade of her nipple. He yanks his shirt off over his head and wriggles out of his jeans in a manner that is fast, but also humiliatingly like a third-rate hula dancer. Just as he’s about to open the cubicle door, he remembers his socks. He over-balances while trying to peel them off and his face slams into the glass. He can hear Rose laughing over the water.
It is still hot, like a meat tenderiser on the skin of his shoulders, so she can’t have been in long. Her short hair is stuck in licks and whirls around her face; her lashes are beaded with water drops. One droplet is cutting a straight line over the rise of her cheekbone; he leans down to lick it off her skin. She rises up to meet his mouth, guiding it to hers with hands placed on either cheek. Forgetting for a moment that this is a ploy in their game of romance mahjong, he slides his arms around her waist, pulling her body flush against his as they kiss. Water is running down his face, slipping into his mouth and colouring the flavour of it. He’s hard already against the soft curve of her stomach. Her nipples too are hard against his chest and he slides a hand up between them to roll one between his fingers. She shudders and bites down on his lip.
In the small square of the shower cubicle, he tries to manoeuvre her against the wall, but the shower hose gets in the way. He settles for wedging her in a corner, and slides his hand down one thigh to pull it up and around his hip. She’s panting into his neck, rocking her hips against his. The angle’s still not quite right, so he tries crouching down slightly, but his leg starts cramping so he straightens back out. She hisses with impatience, and wrapping her arms around his neck, tries to pull herself up so she has both thighs around his hips. He’s not expecting the sudden weight; he lurches to one side and drops her against the tiles.
“Jesus, Rose,” he pants, breath mingling with the steam, “give me some warning before you start pulling snatchrobatic stunts.”
She pushes her sopping hair out of her eyes, cheeks flushed. “It’s wall sex, Dave, it’s not supposed to be a fucking Olympic event.”
She’s got to be close, he realises, if she’s this snappy. That’s one thing he’s learned: deny Rose Lalonde her orgasms and all the elaborately veiled insults go out the window.
“You’re not the one doing the lifting,” he mumbles as he repositions himself.
This time is no better. They try for momentum to get her up, and it does work, for a moment, then she’s scrabbling for the shower rail to keep herself up, and he’s gone for it as well to steady his balance. He misses the rail and grabs the hose instead, which snaps out of its socket.
He goes down, hard, hose in one hand, angry blonde in the other, ending up crumpled into the three foot square space. The shower head is squirting water up his nose, and one of Rose’s breasts is pillowed on his forehead. He can see the water pooled around the drain turn pink, as his head begins to throb from it’s collision with the metal faucet.
“Hold still,” says Rose from somewhere above him. “I’m trying to stem the bleeding with a washcloth.”
Bleeding, he thinks. Bleeding’s sexy, right? It’s always sexy on TV. He nods and his head feels like a bag of yoghurt filled with nails.
“Rose my head’s Canada,” he tells her.
“How reassuring.”
“No because they have milk in bags, right. And my head’s a bag of yoghurt.”
Her face slides briefly into view, and she’s smiling at him almost fondly, before she goes back to her ministrations.
She’s shifting about, sitting back on her haunches then leaning forward again, sliding up and down against his cock. He’s halfway through formulating what he thinks is a pretty witty comment on the situation when he embarrasses himself on her thigh. He groans into her armpit. Glancing down, she wipes the ejaculate from her skin, letting it swirl around the drain with his blood. He tells her she’s making taffy out of him, and she orders him to stop trying to move. She concedes him his underwear, and has him wrapped in a towel on the couch when the ambulance arrives.
four.
Number four has him considering the existence of curses. He’s had his stitches out, and is proudly claiming his scar is from a bullet wound.
“Though, injured during hot shower sex isn’t so bad an origin,” he says, licking his old fashioned butter pecan ice cream as it melts over the edge of the spoon.
“Perhaps you should consider replacing something as dangerous as a shower with a bath with a door in the side.” She has finished her lime sorbet and is slowly sucking her sticky fingers. “I hate to think of your risking your life trying not to slip in the shower.”
They are sitting in his apartment with the aircon set to arctic, making their way through the contents of the Strider freezer compartment. Rose has commandeered a pack of frozen peas to put on her feet. Dave is wearing a stylish bag of oven fries as a hat. Once the ice cream is done, they pass an ice cube tray between them, taking turns to pop out a cube and crunch it slowly.
“After all, what would I do without Mr. Sausage?”
His drops his ice cube onto his lap. “Mr. Sausage?”
“Yes, I have taken the liberty of naming your penis, so as to foster a sense of playful levity within this pseudo-relationship.”
“Pedowhat - okay be kind, rewind there a minute. Of all the fucking magnificent words the English language has to offer, you looked at my goods, and thought ‘cheap meat product’?”
“Naturally.”
“What about my balls? Let’s see. I’m guessing, Cuddles and Bouncy.”
“Alfred and Trevor. I felt it was more conducive to sexual activities.”
He watches her run the ice cube over her bottom lip, before popping it in her mouth to suck it.
“Sexy times with Trevor, Alfred and Mr Sausage. I can see it,” he nods, leaning back on his elbows. “Do I get to name your boobs?”
“Steady now, Cyrano de Striderac. I believe it is traditional to refer to my bosom as ‘the girls’ or the ‘Ms. Juggs’”. She crunches through the ice and swallows.
“Mr. Sausage would like to suggest the Ms. Juggs might be feeling the heat, and prefer to slip into something more comfortable.”
The drone of the aircon is smothering most of the traffic noise from outside, but he can still hear every crunch of her teeth on the ice.
“The Ms. Juggs suspected Mr. Sausage might be about to make just such a suggestion.”
“Mr. Sausage thinks only of their welfare.”
He mimes doffing a hat in her direction and she flutters her lashes.
“Of course.”
“Mr. Sausage hopes the Ms. Juggs can forgive any importunity suggested by his previous statement.”
Rose peers down her top, then looks back at him. “They have reported to me that they are willing to turn the other cheek on this occasion.”
“The only thing you turn,” he says, waggling his eyebrows, “is Mr. Sausage into a Redwood forest.”
Rose is biting her lip to stop herself laughing. “You have a thousand-year-old boner for me, how charming.”
“Been hard for you since dinosaurs roamed the earth, eating each other’s faces and shitting fossils.”
She schools her expression into a concerned frown. “Oh dear, that does sound painful. And potentially medically dangerous.”
“Probably. The things I suffer for you, baby.”
“I suggest we begin treatment as soon as possible,” she stays, steepling her fingers and regarding him over them.
“I agree with the congresswoman for South Dave’s Dick. Come save me, baby, I’m a trembling flower waiting for your healing touch.”
“Truly, you are a poet.”
“Twenty-first century Wordsworth all up in your lady garden, talking daffodils and clouds like a slicked up gardener with a vibrating rake shaft.”
“Dave.”
“Yeah?”
“I am officially hiring you as my lady gardener.”
They end up pressed against the wall, his pants around his ankles and her skirt hitched up around her waist. He thinks this is probably the safest sex they’ve ever managed to practice. Then he takes a stumbling step sideways, hobbled by the jeans wrapped around his ankles. The living room window of his fifteenth floor apartment, which has been jammed shut since the day he moved in, clicks open when he leans against it like it’s been oiled with fucking unicorn tears or some shit - and now he’s desperately scrabbling with his free hand for a hold on the window frame. He tries to take his hand out from between her legs, but she clamps her thighs around it.
“Don’t stop - I’m nearly there,” she gasps into the damp skin of his neck.
Her hand is wrapped around his dick, and she twists, and he thinks, sure, okay, he can hold onto the shitty plastic frame for a bit longer. It’s not like he’s got his back to fresh air and his ass inching over the sill. His fingers are slipping, hand cramping as she shudders against him with her orgasm. He pulls his hand away slick, and steadies himself against the wall, heart hammering. She peers of his shoulder to the fifteen story drop as he comes into her hand. She quirks an eyebrow at him.
“Elementary thrill-seeking can often point to feeling of dissatisfaction in other areas of one’s life,” she says, wiping her hand on a tissue. “Is there anything you would like to talk about?”
He groans, and buries his face in her shoulder.
five.
Fifth time, he’s visiting her late in the summer. She sits perched on a stool by the breakfast bar, sipping white wine and watching him as he pokes her wizard statuary and avant-garde furniture.
“This is exactly like I always imagined it would be,” he says, leaning against what could be interpreted as a chair with a roof. “Fucking incomprehensible and intimidating.”
“Do I intimidate you, Dave?”
“Nah, I’m apathetic to the taunts of bearded acid trip creepers.” He shifts, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just meant the unsuspecting tradesmen who fall into this Escher-fucking-Gandalf hell dimension must wet themselves. Bet you got decades-old mailmen and plumbers with mile long toenails scrabbling around the attic counting Rice Krispies with a hammer for their freedom.”
She crosses her legs, wine glass held delicately by the stem. “I’m glad you noticed them. Now you won’t be alarmed by the screaming at night.” She takes a sip of her wine then sets it down. “Though you’ll be pleased to know your time in the house will be limited, as I have planned a trip.’
He regards her suspiciously. “A trip.”
“Yes, a camping trip. To repay all your kind hospitality.”
He looks at her over his shades. “Baby, if you want to have nature sex, I can create it right here for you, in a place with climate control and locking doors. I can rock up to the dump, find us a nice, juicy mattress. Sprinkle it with leaves and the finest organic compost. Get a couple of possums to roll their all-natural fumes around the place. It’ll be straight out of National Geographic, I swear.”
“The outdoors is good for you, Dave. Fresh air.”
“The outdoors is full of shit that will eat you in your sleep.”
She smirks at him as she recorks the wine bottle. “Well then, you needn’t worry. I don’t imagine we’ll be getting too much sleep.”
*
Dave slinks behind her all the way to their campsite, muttering under his breath about, ‘being eaten by cougars while trapped in a sleeping bag, having survived a world-annihilating game’ is one level of irony he was willing to skip. A short way into the park, he picks up two sticks and clacks them together as they walk, until Rose threatens to make his ironic death local paper headline into ‘Beaten Around Head With Stick By Clone Sibling’.
“Have it your way, but when the mountain lions come, I’m letting them eat you first.”
Rose sends him to fetch firewood and water while she sets up the tent. They burn bacon and mushrooms in a frying pan over the fire and eat them on slices of blackened toast. Rose invents a s’mores cocktail with gin, Bailey’s and handful of marshmallows on top. They decide it the worst thing ever created, and drink five each. By the fourth s’mores-in-a-tin-mug Dave has almost stopped caring that the scent of cooking meat is sure to attract passing wildlife and is enjoying their game of dirty Pictionary. Rose wins with a twig sculpture displaying alarming anatomical accuracy, and they retire into their tent sticky with Bailey’s and carting a lot of leaf mulch in with them. It’s incompetent, and scrambled. She cuts her lip trying to work down his fly; he’s pretty sure he chips a tooth trying to pop open the catch on her bra. He bites each one of her toes and tells her she smells like lighter fuel and lard and she kisses his open mouth and orders him to make an ecto-sandwich immediately; he tells her that they’re a person short for a sandwich and she points out that it’s an open sandwich but also exclusive if he wants ouch ouch watch your nails.
He stares at her face from an inch away and tries to focus on her nose.
“Exclusive?”
She shrugs.
“If you were interested. It doesn’t matter.”
“I do matter! It is interesting. You’re interesting. Can I interest you in me? Because you matter. I like your toes even if they smell of lard. Did you put it in your shoes or something, was that some sort of ploy to get me eaten by lions.”
She wets her lips, and they’re close enough that her tongue ghosts along his lips too.
“… If I was trying to get you eaten by mountain lions then surely I would have put the lard in your shoes?”
He is trying to think of a way in which she’s wrong when he hears a rustle and the snap-catch of twigs breaking outside the tent. He freezes, sprawled between her open legs and looking up her left nostril.
“What was that, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
There is another rustle, and he swears he can sense something moving beyond the thin polyester sheet.
“Hear the goddamn wild animal prowling around outside ready to eat every single one of your toes and my toes too.”
She snorts in laughter, and he gets a gust of hot air on his face.
“Yeah and other bits too, but it’ll totally start on your toes so that you can’t run away.”
“Mountain lions are indeed known for their strategic planning.”
He pokes her in the breast. “Okay, we have to have sex as slowly and as quietly as possible so we don’t get killed.”
“Dave, you are physically incapable of being quiet while having sex. I would go so far as to label you a ‘screamer’.”
He has started moving his hips again, but freezes when the rustling comes closer.
“I’m not a screamer, I emit manly grunts of passion, like Casanova and Elvis and James Blunt.”
“… I’m not sure I want to have sex with you any more. You made me think about James Blunt while attempting to achieve orgasm.”
“Rose, look, shut up okay I really want to live to enjoy making the sex with you, alright? I mean, I am the greatest lover to have ever graced this earth but I’m not sure I can keep going if my cock is being dissolved by mountain lion stomach acid.”
She digs her nails into his ass, trying to get him to move.
“It is more likely that you are trying to make the sex while being spied on by one of the less salubrious members of society, usually clad in a soiled rain coat.”
“OK, then you go check and if it’s the littlest hobo jacking off to my erotic grunts, then we’re good.”
“Oh for god’s sake -”
She wriggles out from under him a little way and reaches up to the tent flap zip. He flinches as she yanks it down noisily. Pulling the flap aside, she pokes her head out.
“Oh shit,” she whispers. “You were right. It’s a cougar - a huge one. Don’t move.”
“Fuck. Really?”
She pulls her head back inside. “No, of course not. It is a squirrel eating trail mix. I think we might survive its savage mauling.”
“I forgot how hilarious you are.” He scowls at her in the glow of the flashlight. “I’m a lucky guy.”
She bites his shoulder, leaving a perfect half-moon of teeth marks.
“Very lucky. Now earn your keep.”
Packing up camp the next morning, he finds some impressions in the damp earth that he thinks would be fit perfectly by a large paw. He throws things as quickly as possible into his backpack, and frog-marches her back to the car. She takes his hand off her arm as they walk along the track, and clasps it in her own. The car is oven-like inside, and they sit with the doors open to air it out before they start the drive back.
“So.” She looks at him over the cup holder, chin propped on her palm. “Did you decide what kind of sandwich you’d like us to be?”
He pushes his shades up his nose, scratching where sweat has formed on the bridge. “Baby, you know you’ve always been my exclusive sandwich.”
She doesn’t reply, but her mouth curls up slightly as she watches him, then spreads into a soft smile.
coda.
and one time he didn’t
He takes his time this time. Bubble wraps all the furniture, removes all loose objects, cleans everything off the floor he could trip over. He secures the windows and locks the cupboard door. When Rose arrives back from the post office, she finds him on the bed, slathered in mayonnaise that is well within its use-by date and has been properly refrigerated, and decorated with slices of ham and bread with the crusts cut off. She is unbuttoning her blouse when the fire alarm goes off.
He slinks outside with his neighbours as she wipes the mayonnaise off his chest with the bread. Dark smoke is pouring out of the window of the apartment above Dave’s. Rose makes up a couple of rounds of ham sandwiches, and they eat them sitting together in the bus-stop on the opposite street corner.
“So I guess we’re doomed to end up a tragic by-line in some local paper,” he says around a mouthful of ham. “Young couple drown while attempting underwater sixty-nine in local swimming pool.”
“Oh, I intend it to be something far more ambitious,” she says, licking mayonnaise off her lip. “Tragic lovers perish in attempt to sleep together on top of every great Parisian monument. I shouldn’t imagine the Arc de Triomphe would prove too challenging, but I understand the steps of Montmartre are deceptively steep.”
“Girl, I’d break my ankle on any flight of steps you want.”
She holds out her sandwich and he takes a bite. They watch the firefighters douse Dave’s building and play tic-tac-toe on his knees as the rush hour traffic begins to fill the road. Together, they share the sandwiches, and don’t leave a single crumb.