Technical Difficulties Episode 09

Zach and Rosemary hadn't intended to finish off the entire bottle of peach schnapps, but it went down like candy. They sprawled side by side on the institutional grey carpet of his dorm room. Zach rolled onto his side and propped his head up to watch Rosemary lick the last few drops from the mouth of the bottle, using her tongue in lewd ways.

Zach touched one of the springy pink curls that fanned out around Rosemary's head. "Why are we on the floor? The bed is softer."

"It's like ending up in the gutter, but we didn't have to go out."

"Huh. That ever happened to you? I mean, actually waking up in a gutter? I always wondered if really this was something that happened."

"Not exactly, but after the senior prom, me and my friends wandered around drunk because the limo driver supposedly didn't show to take us home. I mean, he didn't show. Supposedly he got sick." Rosemary licked the bottle once more and dropped it on the floor. "We decided to sleep in the gutter just to say we did it, but there were a lot of ants, so we got a taxi. I ruined my dress lying in ketchup, though. Maybe that's what the ants were because of. Ketchup."

Zach giggled. "Ketchup. Heh. My date ruined her dress with orange punch. Well, I mean, it might have washed out. I don't know. She dumped me and I never saw her again."

"Oh yeah? Why?"

"It's kind of embarrassing."

"Yeah? Good thing we're totally smashed, eh?" Rosemary nudged his leg with her foot and grinned.

Zach flopped onto his back and hid behind his hands. "I don't know if I've had enough to drink." He wanted to tell the story, though, because he was curious about how she would react.

"I'll make you a deal." Rosemary got up on her knees and pried Zach's hands away from his face so she could kiss him. "Tell me, and I'll tell you my deepest, darkest secret that I've never told anyone, and probably never should, but I kind of feel like it right now."

"I don't know if that's fair, 'cause this one isn't exactly a secret, but okay..." Zach told the story of prom night, from badgering Melissa to handcuff him to the clothes bar, to her throwing the handcuffs off the balcony and Ryan retrieving them. He left out a couple of the more obnoxious things he'd said, though, and the part about lusting after Ryan.

Rosemary climbed on top of Zach and straddled him, grinding her hips suggestively. "So do you want me to play dominatrix?"

Zach winced. The hip grinding wasn't exactly comfortable, since they were lying on a cheaply carpeted concrete slab. "You would do that?"

Rosemary pulled the zipper on Zach's hoodie partway down. "Why not? Where'd you put the handcuffs?"

"I left them at the hotel."

"Awww. Bet you wish you didn't."

"Yeah, but they're not hard to find, if you keep being so... if um... you know, after you sober up, if you're still... offering."

"I will."

"Just to be nice? Or because it does something for you?"

"Being nice does something for me, Zach."

That had a ring of truth to it. He pulled her the rest of the way down on top of him so he could hug her. "I like that about you." Zach nuzzled Rosemary's cheek. "So what's your deep dark secret, hmm?"

"Get ready to bite your tongue, 'cause if you laugh at me, I'm going to be mad." Rosemary whispered in his ear.

"I'm not going to laugh at you. Promise." Zach stuck his tongue between his teeth anyway, though, and held his breath just in case. One of the fun things about her was that he never knew quite what to expect.

In the softest of whispers, Rosemary said, "I fantasize about having anal sex with my brother."

Zach bit his tongue hard. "Oh yeah? How does that go?" he asked when he trusted himself to speak.

"You know how my family used to live on a boat? It was hard to meet other kids and make friends, or date."

"Sounds frustrating." He petted her and wondered what a normal reaction would be, then decided it didn't really matter.

"Yeah. We were all really close, because, you know. Boat. And I got the birds and the bees talk from my mom, except she was all embarrassed, and didn't make a lot of sense. I got confused and thought anal was, you know, standard."

Since Rosemary seemed to be waiting for him to say something, he commented,"I don't think my mom would've done a good job either, but maybe not quite that bad."

"Well, lucky you had the public school system, then. Anyway, I started thinking my brother John must be lonely too, because he didn't have a wife, and imagined him coming into my room and crawling into bed with me and, you know, doing it. Just never got rid of the idea, even when I got my facts straightened out, and we moved back into a boyfriend, I mean a house, and I finally had a boyfriend."

"You want me to pretend to be John? 'Cause I will." If she was going to put him in handcuffs later, it seemed like the least he could do.

"Does it bother you?"

Zach thought about it carefully for a moment. He was pretty sure it was supposed to bother him, but it didn't. "No."

"Then yes please?" she said in a squeaky, happy voice.

"Let's do it right now while I'm still too drunk to be shy."

"Yay!" Rosemary bounced, squishing Zach's pelvis against the concrete.

"Ow. Tell me about him. What do I need to know?"

"Sorry." Rosemary climbed off of Zach and hauled herself into Zach's bed. "He calls me Jellybean."

"Jellybean," Zach repeated. He followed her onto the bed. The room held still a little better than it had been doing before they ended up on the floor, but he was still miles from sober. "It suits you. Delicious and bright colors."

Rosemary rolled toward the wall to make room for Zach. "I don't actually know why he calls me that." She wriggled out of her jeans and tossed them onto Zach's desk chair. "Lucky for you, John isn't usually too chatty. Unless you get him going on one of his pet subjects of course. So it's mostly just like relax, be quiet so we don't wake up Mom and Dad, and that kind of thing. Mostly he's quiet if you don't say anything to him first."

Zach fished a condom and lube out of the coffee can on the bookshelf by the bed, and stuck them in his jeans pocket. "Have you had anal sex before?"

"No." She reached under her t-shirt and unhooked her bra.

"Okay. Me either. I'll be extra careful." Zach suddenly had a desperate need to pee. "Take a couple minutes to get settled, and I'll be back." He got up and paused with his hand on the door handle for a moment, while he checked to make sure he was all the way dressed. Pants: check. Shirt: check. His face was probably covered in Rosemary's glitter, but there wasn't anything he could do about that, so he left his room and walked down the hall to the bathroom, trailing his hand along the wall that didn't have a lot of doors.

He made it to the bathroom without meeting anyone, but on the way out, he stumbled into the hairy guy from a couple doors down whose name he forgot. Zach bounced off the guy and staggered sideways. "Oops, sorry there."

The hairy guy sniggered. "Busy night?"

"Yeah, Tinkerbell's been sitting on my face, and she's insatiable." Whoa. Did he really just say that? Zach moved to make a hasty retreat.

The hairy guy caught his arm and pointed to the floor.

Zach looked down. The lube. Right. "Oh, THAT." He crouched and scooped it up. "Thanks. Bye!" This time he did make a quick escape, and ran back to his room, only bouncing off the wall once. When he reached the door, he composed himself, and turned the handle slowly, making as little noise as possible. He slipped back into the room.

Rosemary had turned out the light and hooked her iPod up to his computer to play soft, floaty music at low volume. She lay curled up in bed with her back to the door and the covers pulled up over her head.

He tried to close the door silently, but was too clumsy. The door thumped shut. Oh well. Zach locked it and climbed into bed with Rosemary. He got under the covers and spooned up with her. "Hey Jellybean," he whispered.

"What are you doing?"

"Um... playing house." He kept his voice to a whisper, on the theory that people sound more alike that way.

Rosemary started to roll over. "Aren't we a little too old for that?"

Zach nudged her back to her original position. He knew he looked nothing like her brother, so it would probably be better if she didn't see him. "Not this version. Just close your eyes and relax. I want to pretend you're my wife."

"I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to do that."

"We're not, but if we're quiet, nobody will know." He kissed the back of her neck and slid a hand up under her shirt. "I know you're not a goody two shoes, Jellybean."

Rosemary squirmed and clamped her arm down across her stomach to keep him from touching her breasts. "Hey! Knock it off, John."

"Shhh. Don't get us in trouble." Zach squeezed his hand under her arm and pinched one of her nipples. She gasped and shuddered as she relaxed her arm to allow him easy access. It was fun, being able to get a response out of her that easily, even though he didn't share her kink. He flicked her nipple and nibbled at her neck.

She pressed back against him with her hips. "Okay. But if you get me pregnant, I'm going to kick you where it hurts."

Zach bit his tongue and snuggled her. "I've got that covered in at least a couple different ways, Jellybean." He took the condom out of his pocket and ran the edge of the wrapper over the curve of her breast under her shirt.

Rosemary giggled and shoved Zach's hand away. "Hey! That tickles."

"Sorry. But keep it down." he whispered. "What if you roll over on your stomach and let me take your underwear off?"

She started to move, then hesitated. "Promise not to look?"

Zach scooted back and sat up to give her room to move. "No. You're too pretty not to look at."

Rosemary rolled onto her stomach, but held onto the waistband of her underwear with one hand. "I don't want you to look, though."

"I promise I'll only think about how pretty you are, and how nice this is going to feel." He left the condom on the pillow in front of her face, and petted her bottom until he felt her relax, then moved her hand away. When he started to pull her underwear off, she lifted her hips to cooperate.

He peeled the covers back, too, leaving her bottom and her legs bare in the soft white glow of the computer monitor. Technically, it wasn't anything Zach hadn't seen before, but the way she made an issue of it this time made him want to look at her that much more. "Take your shirt off too."

She followed the order and dropped her shirt over the side of the bed, without looking at Zach. He caught a glimpse of her face from the side, though - enough to see that she'd closed her eyes like he'd suggested. It was surprisingly adorable, when he thought about all the imagination at work behind those glitter dusted eyelids. He'd be quiet and just let her feel.

If Zach had learned one thing from reading websites about anal sex (and daydreaming about Ryan having his wicked way with him), it was that rushing was bad. He rubbed her back and legs until she wiggled and strained toward him impatiently, trying to get him to touch her butt. She closed her hands into fists and spread her legs a couple inches. He frustrated her for a minute, just for the fun of watching her beg for it in body language, before he put his hands there.

Rosemary's hands uncurled, and she made a soft, encouraging sound. Zach imagined that he would be just as eager if he were in her position, waiting for Ryan to fuck him. It occurred to him that he didn't need to feel guilty anymore for thinking about Ryan during sex, since she was obviously thinking about somebody else too. He spread her ass cheeks and looked at her hole, imagining that he was Ryan and she was Zach. Suddenly he needed to be out of his pants. He scooped up her hands and put them where his had just been, so that she held herself exposed for him. She got the idea and kept her hands there while he shucked his clothes. (That was one thing that he could rush.)

Zach took the lube out of his pants pocket and squeezed a little onto his finger. Good - his body heat had warmed it up pretty well. He applied the finger to her ass and rubbed it in tiny little circles. She whimpered and raised her hips toward him. "Please," she whispered.

He let her have the tip of his finger inside her, and she let out a sigh that would probably have been a moan if she were not making an effort to be quiet.

The tip of his finger didn't satisfy her for long, though. She lost patience and grabbed his hand, pushing his finger deeper inside her. Zach drew his hand back, because he imagined that's what Ryan would do if he got too pushy. (And he didn't have the faintest idea what John would do in Rosemary's fantasy, so channeling Ryan seemed as good an idea as any.) She tugged on his wrist, but he refused to move. Finally, she put her hand back on her ass cheek, and spread herself open for him again. He rewarded her with two slippery fingers. She groaned as he eased them into her, and he almost forgot to shush her.

Zach fucked Rosemary with his fingers, gradually abandoning the extreme caution he'd started with. She breathed hard, and occasionally a little squeak escaped from her throat.

"You ready, Jellybean?" he asked.

She answered yes several times.

"Then open the condom and give it to me."

Her hands darted for the condom, as quick as a snake strike. The words were hardly out of his mouth before she was handing it back to him. (That was exactly how he'd have done it, too, if Ryan had asked.) He leaned down to kiss her hand as he accepted it. Thinking about handing Ryan a condom made him extra hard, which made it easy to apply the condom and lube one-handed. When he was ready, he pulled his fingers out and lift her hips.

She took the hint and got up on her hands and knees for him. "You have no idea how much I've needed you."

"I might have some idea." He pushed into her with a series of careful nudges, and tried to force himself to stop thinking about Ryan, because he was afraid this wouldn't last very long if he didn't. Instead, he conjured up a mental image of ducks. They quacked and milled around, ruffling their feathers. It helped a little, but she felt so good and tight that the ducks kept disappearing.

She moved with him, pressing against him to get his cock as deep in her ass as possible with every slow thrust. "Need this..."

Her enthusiasm tempted him to take her hard. It would feel so good and her reaction would be pretty, but he was afraid it'd only last about 5 seconds. He held off and thought about the ducks, sliding in and out of her slowly. Rosemary's whole body rolled with it; he'd never seen her so lost in the moment. Zach gave her lots of what she needed, but when he got close to the edge and accidentally thought about Ryan enjoying him like this, he couldn't help coming.

They collapsed clumsily to a horizontal position. Zach lay there dazed while Rosemary got herself off by rubbing her crotch against his hip. (The only thing that worked and didn't involve a shower sprayer, according to her.) He stroked her hair, and whispered, "Jellybean" one more time. That seemed to be the magic word; she squeezed him and shivered.

Zach drifted off to sleep with Rosemary draped over him, and when he woke, he could tell from her slow breathing that she'd fallen asleep too. He tried to extract himself and get rid of the condom without waking her, but she stirred and opened her eyes as he stood up.

"So do you think you're going to respect me in the morning?" she asked, and held her hand up to stop him before he could give her an automatic yes. "I mean, seriously. Real answer. Think about it."

"I don't have to think about it. But...just a sec." He dropped the condom in the wastebasket and cleaned up a little with a tissue from the box on his desk. "Sorry. That was a little distracting. Better." Zach came back to bed.

Rosemary gave him a worried look. "I'm sobering up fast and you're making me nervous."

Zach draped an arm over her shoulder. "Yeah, I'm going to respect you in the morning. But I have to confess, I didn't tell you the whole truth last night, and I kinda feel like I owe it to you." He saw the worry lines on her face deepen, so he hurried up and got to the point. "You're not the only one obsessed with someone else. I've got a very specific idea of who I want to tie me up."

She laughed.

Zach pretended to pout. "Hey. Why do you get to laugh when I wasn't allowed to."

"'Cause I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at us. Major difference." Rosemary pulled the covers up "Who is it?"

"Ryan. Which nobody else knows, by the way." He got under the covers with her.

Rosemary giggled. "You're gay?"

"No, I like women and Ryan. And stop laughing."

She took a deep breath and got the giggles under control."He's pretty masculine looking."

"Yep."

"Want me to pretend to be Ryan for you?"

"I don't know how well that would work. You're very female. There would be some technical difficulties."

"Okay, so I don't come with the right equipment, but that can be fixed. Any sex shop in the city will sell us a strap-on. You can close your eyes as well as I can."

"Nah. Too much of a stretch, even with the lights off. And besides..." He trailed off because he was afraid the next thing he was about to say would make her start giggling again.

"What?"

"Maybe it's sort of silly, but I haven't totally given up hope that it could happen with me and him someday. And if it does... there are certain things I want him to be the first one to do, okay?" It occurred to him as he said it that wasn't normally a good sort of thing to say to a girlfriend.

"Awww, that's kind of sweet." She stroked his cheek and smiled. "But you know, Zach, since we're fixated on other people, we're not much of a couple, are we?"

Zach gripped her shoulder."We may be fixated on other people, but that was the best sex I've ever had, and we get along so well. I don't want to break up."

"Same here. I'm not saying we should change a thing right now, and I'll always be your friend."

He relaxed his grip. "So we're continuing with the benefits?"

"I can't think of a single reason why not." She turned her head and kissed his arm. "And thank you for tonight, and not just for good sex. It means a lot to me to just have someone who knows my quirk and still likes me. It takes a huge weight off."

"I know exactly what you mean."

Rosemary went back to her own room, because she couldn't sleep very well in a single bed with Zach. Ordinarily, he found it more comfortable to sleep alone anyway, but when she walked out the door that night, the room felt too empty. Alone in the dark, he lay awake and watched the hours go by on his digital alarm clock.

Around three in the morning, his computer went "Bing!" - the sound of e-mail arriving. The only person in the habit of sending him e-mail at this hour was Ryan. Zach's heart did an extra little skip, and he couldn't resist getting up to check.

Sure enough, he had a message from Ryan. The title was, "Aaarrrrgh!"