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It starts the way being human always starts: blind and grasping, listening to the instincts hard-wired into your genetic code.
Bill has been alive for a trillion years and human for almost six months, and already the body overcomes the mind; she knows this is degrading and humiliating and downright mammalian, and she doesn’t give a damn. She might even be into that whole aspect of it, which is a thought so terrifying she can’t contemplate it.
Not that she can think clearly about anything right now.
Bill takes her hand and snarls it into Ford’s hair, pulls herself so close that the elastic in the waistband of her devotee’s shorts grinds into her stomach. It’s a hungry, rough kiss, clumsy with their mutual lack of experience, and the tender pain of it sends a bolt of excitement through Bill. Ford gasps in the brief moment they first break apart, hands clutching the fabric of Bill’s shirt hard enough to pull the fibers out of shape, and remains the only thing keeping the two of them upright.
“Chemicals!” Bill gasps, head lolling back. “Wow!”
She makes a sound that lands somewhere south of a yelp as the author presses her lips to the side of Bill’s neck, just above the carotid artery. The kiss is gentle, but the faintest feeling of Ford’s teeth beneath it — not a bite, just a touch, so polite — makes Bill’s entire body taut. She digs her fingers into Ford’s hips, hard, and the author doesn’t flinch or react to the pressure at all. Maybe Ford’s pain threshold is high, or Ford refuses to show human weakness in front of her Muse, or Ford has a masochistic streak — all of these possibilities are, Bill hates to admit, wildly arousing.
Ford pulls her head back again between kisses, missing Bill’s canine teeth by a centimeter.
“Bill,” she says, breathless. “The bed. Do you want to… would you like to move to the bed?”
“What do you want me to do? Say pretty please?” Bill asks, with a little nonsensical laugh. “ Yes, IQ, I want to get on the bed. Sheesh!”
Her disciple needs no further provocation. Ford’s back is already to the bed, so she picks Bill up and draws both of them back until they fall onto the blankets with a thump. Bill’s sitting on Ford’s lap, now, chest-to-chest; Ford is flushed, her hair mussed, a sheen of light sweat on her brow. Bill readjusts her seat, presses forward with a wide, wicked grin.
“You’re beautiful,” Ford blurts, like a teenager on her first date.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Bill teases, settling lower in her devotee’s lap as her pulse pounds under her skin.
“I’ve been having dreams about kissing you every night for weeks,” Ford replies. “Months.”
Bill has to hand it to her: she did not, in fact, know this. Her voice is choked when she manages a reply, heavy with the pressurized blast of dumb hormones flooding her system.
“Just kissing, Fordsy?” she says, desperate to keep a handle on the situation.
“No,” Ford says, gaze drifting down to Bill’s lips. “I— Well, I mean…”
“No more talking,” Bill says, impatient. “Give us a scientific demonstration.”
Ford, ever the teacher’s pet, obliges. The next kiss is unyielding and firm, and it leaves no room for Bill to fight it; a six-fingered hand splays across her back to prevent her from moving away. Insolent. The other hand moves to her waist beneath her shirt, then pauses, fingers pulling away at the feeling of hot, bare skin. Bill growls, grabs Ford’s wrist, and — without thinking — presses the author’s hand to her chest.
Ford inhales and retracts, and Bill whines at the arrested motion; she gives Ford a piercing, accusatory look, one that has a visible effect on the author. Whatever nervousness or lingering propriety kept Ford from acting before, it’s fading, and the author looks down in trancelike wonder as her hand comes to cup Bill’s breast beneath her shirt. The author’s blunt, dry thumb works its way around the nipple with excruciating slowness, and Bill realizes exactly how innervated the spot is with another delirious giggle.
“I have to admit, this is not my area of expertise,” Ford says, voice shaking as she slips her other hand up Bill’s shirt, too.
“You think I don’t know that?” Bill snickers, keeping her breath steady. “I’ve been in your mind before, pal.”
“Right,” Ford says, pupils dilating, focus falling to Bill’s chest. “I’ll do my best. Just tell me what you need if I… if I’m not measuring up.”
Rip me apart from sternum to pelvis, Bill thinks, Let me bury my teeth in your throat until I taste your jugular.
“Alrighty!” Bill says, with a mock-salute. “You got it, pal!”
Ford gives Bill one last adoring look from beneath her brows, brown eyes black in the dim room, and pulls her muse’s shirt off. It’s a smooth, surprising motion from the author, one that disorients Bill as much as it arouses her; when Bill’s done following the arc of the shirt with her gaze, she turns back to find Ford wetting her own fingers in her mouth, one by one, spit thickening as her salivary glands activate. Bill remembers, with a shiver, the way she held those hands in front of the television after the party at the diner, how she examined each finger one at a time and toyed with them until whatever cocktail of drugs was in her system knocked her lights out. It’s hypnotic, obsession-worthy.
Ford traces the outline of the mark on Bill’s chest with ritual fervor. She avoids the eye, as though afraid she’ll poke it, which is endearing and adorable and oh look, Bill’s pressing into Ford’s pelvis with a stupid little whine, gross! Ford takes the hint; she moves her attention to the main event, and Bill’s breath goes ragged as Ford starts to experiment with her chest. Gentle at first, then insistent. Familiar.
“This is how you touch yourself, huh?” Bill hisses, gritting her teeth. “All tender? You being a tease?”
“I’m— I have sensitive—” Ford stutters, a flash of self-awareness widening her eyes.
Bill doesn’t wait for another word. She grins, relishes the little spark of human fear on Ford’s face, and spits on her hand. It’s graceless and tactical, like a baseball pitcher spitting into their glove before a fastball. She still has no idea what she’s doing, but whatever Ford is doing felt better when there was something lubricating the action. Stands to reason.
Touching Ford’s skin is electrifying; Bill marvels at just how hot humans run, how high their body temperature can get at the slightest provocation. Inhabiting one is like shoveling coal into a steam engine. Her nails scratch the author’s skin in the seconds it takes her to move up, but the gasp she gets from that is nothing compared to the gasp she gets from her devotee when she takes Ford’s breasts in her palms.
“Wh—!” Ford manages, as Bill’s thumb and forefinger press into either side of one of her nipples. “ God! ”
“Not used to the equipment, huh? Welcome to my last few months,” Bill snickers, biting her tongue in the pause between sentences. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Want me to quit it?”
“ No. ”
Bill laughs, and then Ford’s kissing her again.
They change positions on the bed; Bill doesn’t know how it happens, between the kissing and the groping and all that jazz, but she finds herself on her back on the bed, between Ford’s arms as the author holds herself up by the elbows. She claws Ford’s shirt off like it personally insulted her.
“If I may be so ineloquent,” Ford says, looking down at both of them, at their chests, “this is weird.”
“Less talking, more gross stuff,” Bill replies.
Ford’s getting bolder. Maybe she’s taking her cues from Bill’s handling of her own body, but she’s doing something right; Bill squirms when Ford’s lips chart a trail down the side of her neck, sucking hard, so close to biting down. Bill tries to lurch up, to guide Ford’s head with her hands again, then realizes with a flash of indignation that one of her wrists is pinned. She almost says something, almost demands that Ford move so she has control over this vessel again, but two things happen at once: Ford finds the courage to take Bill’s nipple in her mouth, and the author’s knee slides forward.
Bill, still in the shorts she came to bed with, feels the accidental, shifting pressure of Ford’s knee between her legs.
It’s like no other human sensation. It’s the cure to the gnawing fire that’s been in Bill’s gut since the kiss at the mansion — since way before that, really — and it shoots through her body like a bottle rocket. Whatever sound she makes, it’s loud enough to startle Ford; Bill looks down at her, wide-eyed, her freed hand clamped hard over her mouth.
“Muse?” she says. “Did I hurt you?”
Bill shakes her head, transfixed; she tests a hypothesis by pulling herself further down on the bed, closer to her devotee, so that Ford’s knee presses hard between her legs. She moves up, grinding against the author’s thigh with a reedy little moan, and Ford’s mouth opens as she registers what’s happening.
“Oh. Oh,” Ford murmurs, distracted, scatterbrained. “May I… do you want me to touch you? There? ”
“Figure it out, brainiac,” Bill snaps, sounding much less intimidating than she intends. Her voice trails off into something that had better not be a whimper, and she tilts her head back to avoid looking in Ford’s general direction while she moves her hips.
Ford takes another moment with Bill’s chest, shivering when Bill returns the favor with bruising enthusiasm, then braces herself on an elbow. She pins one of Bill’s arms again in the process, which has to be deliberate; she starts to spit into her hand as her muse runs clutching fingers over her collarbone, just shy of her throat. With a hunger older than anything in this town, Bill lurches up and grabs Ford’s wrist with her free hand.
Shaking, breathing hard, concentration shot by the absolute mortal sensation of it all, she brings two of her disciple’s fingers into her mouth.
Bill knows this gets a lot of human engines running, but she’s not doing this for Ford’s sake; she’s doing it because she wants to feel these hands. She’d bite down hard if she could get away with it. She tests them between her canine teeth as she coats them in spit, toys with the idea of taking off a layer of skin. For a moment, she wonders if this little exploratory detour is turning Ford off; one glance at the author, flushed and delirious at the sight, dissuades her of that notion.
She presses further. Just hard enough to hurt, just enough to leave the indent of a sharp molar near the knuckle. Ford pulls away, then, a hitch in her breath, but she’s not afraid or disgusted; she keeps eye contact with Bill as she moves her hand down, toward the shorts already halfway off Bill from the friction of her thrusting against the bedcovers.
“You’re absolutely sure?” Ford asks, a hint of desperation in her voice.
“Clearly,” Bill huffs, wrapping her leg around the author’s for emphasis.
“To be clear, I’ve never done this.” Ford makes her excuses while she works Bill’s shorts off, eyes widening for a second at the lack of panties.
“So? Me neither.”
“I know, just — forgive me. I’m working with an academic understanding of this anatomy,” Ford says, clearing her throat.
Bill feels a surge of ludicrous anger and amusement. Not only is she about to partake in the most base, pathetic human ritual imaginable, something she never thought she’d do in a trillion years — she’s about to do it with this nerd. She finds a sudden, animal strength in her body, enough to swivel her hips and roll the two of them over while Ford is in a daze. Seeing the human below her makes her lightheaded; Ford’s brown curls are splayed across the pillow, haloing her pink face.
“What am I, your professor?” Bill demands, teeth bared in a grin. “Conduct some fucking field research!”
Ford’s hand slips between her legs. For a moment, they miss the point at which every sensory nerve in this vessel converges; they press into the slick space below, then rock back up to press against Bill’s clit. Bill grits her teeth against a wild, keening cry, one that starts in the back of her throat and ends in Ford’s mouth. She lifts her own knee to press against Ford’s cunt, like it’s a prize for good behavior; at the same time, she takes Ford’s lip between her teeth and bites down. Hard.
The effect on the author is pronounced.
Ford makes a noise that could be mistaken for pain; it turns into something else at the end, a rasping sigh that makes Bill’s eyes widen. She can taste a drop of blood in her mouth, from her lip or Ford’s, and it’s incredible. All the while, despite everything, the author’s fingers don’t stop working, slick and hard and fast, making up for any lack of experience with precision and enthusiasm. The muscles in Bill’s thighs jerk, unprompted, and she stammers out a string of nonsense. She is not in control of this body, not in the slightest. She loves it.
“What was that?” Ford asks, slowing to hear her muse better.
“Keep going,” Bill says, with a delirious, breathless laugh. “Attagirl, right there, fuck—! ”
Ford is kissing her again, and grinding so hard her dumb green polyester shorts are about to come right off. The author keeps them locked together as she rolls them over again, so that Bill is under her completely. The inseam of Ford’s shorts is hot and wet with the weight of what she wants, what she’s slowly building toward with every thrust and movement of her fingers. Between the bursts of dopamine pulverizing Bill’s higher functions, she feels an inexplicable urge to get closer to that warmth.
She tries to articulate this, but can’t; instead, she pulls Ford’s head to the side by the hair and bites the side of her neck with a vengeance.
Her devotee cries out, goes stiff, and holds her thumb against Bill’s clit. In the middle of the pleasure, Bill wonders if she’s killed things here, if Ford is about to pull away and grab an ice pack for the bruise — the thought of that happening makes her kiss the spot in a false, smiling apology, praying her disciple stays.
Ford doesn’t move away. She does take a moment to dig the fingers of her free hand into Bill’s chest. Enough to bruise, enough to mark, enough to stake a claim. Impudent, insubordinate, cheeky.
Bill moans as one of the author’s fingers slips just past the entrance of her cunt, slick and seamless. She reaches for the waistband of the author’s shorts, too, mimicking, only to have her free hand pinned to the bed by the wrist. Bill’s eyes go wide, and her hips arch up as much as they can in the space Ford permits. She is physically weaker than Ford in this form, at the mercy of her puppet.
This should be a moment of humiliation. This should never have happened in any timeline, in any reality.
This is making something molten in Bill’s gut spread through her entire body, and whatever noise she makes next, it sounds like begging.
Ford looks down with a start, past their chests, past the places where Bill has left bruises and red marks in her flesh, to the finger inside her partner. All at once, it seems to register on Ford’s face that she’s doing this to a god, to a Muse, to a higher power; she flushes, and her half-lidded eyes go wide with shock at her own actions. She pulls her hand out again, goes back to Bill’s clit, motions more hesitant than they were a moment ago.
“Sorry. Sorry. That was too much,” she releases Bill’s wrist, uses her free hand to cup Bill’s cheek. “I don’t know what came over me—”
“Goddamn it, if you start acting all gentlemanly now, I will light myself on fire,” Bill hisses.
Ford starts to apologize, the first syllable of sorry forming behind her teeth, and Bill feels a wave of anger carry her up. She presses herself up on her elbows, hooks her arms under Ford’s knees, and yanks; the author yelps, back hitting the bed as Bill pushes forward to sit upright between her legs. Bill looks down in fascination, to the flesh, the taut muscles leading below the shorts. She presses the heel of a hand into the space between Ford’s legs, eyes flicking to the author’s face to measure her reaction.
“Oh, my God,” Ford says, scrambling to push herself onto her elbows as her chest rises and falls. “Oh my God. ”
Bill grins. She smothers the ache in her belly and starts to yank the shorts down, bit by bit, until them pass the hips and slide off the legs with a few helpful movements from Ford. The author already looks wrecked, hair tangled and mussed, pupils blown; her mouth opens in surprise and embarrassment as Bill scoots back and kisses her thighs, teeth nipping the soft skin in stronger and stronger strokes.
“It feels so strange,” Ford gasps, ever the observant one. “It’s— it’s pleasurable. But so different. I know this feeling, but not this feeling— ”
Her analysis stops with a gasp as Bill plunges her teeth into the flesh at the top of the thigh, just inches from the slit between Ford’s legs. She can feel it when she presses her teeth and tongue into the flesh, that clean, hot blood running just millimeters beneath a layer of tissue. It’s intoxicating. Their pulses are running a mile a minute, in perfect synchronization.
Bill, recently-omniscient being of knowledge and ego, does some quick math. Ford’s finger felt good down there — good being an incredible understatement, woof! — and kissing’s been a winner so far. She remembers something from years of observation of human habits, peering through sigils (inscribed in places they shouldn’t have been inscribed) to spy on this plane of existence: one popular, full-contact way humans experience pleasure behind closed doors.
With a grin, she pulls Ford closer again, until the author’s legs are hooked over her shoulders. She makes eye contact with her devotee — blushing, stammering, saying something Bill can’t make out through the animal haze of want, want, want — and brings her tongue to the clit.
Ford gasps, strains, tenses her back like she’s just grabbed a live wire. It’s incredible how close the human response to pain is to the human response to pleasure. Bill tastes something hot and acidic on her tongue, laps it up while she works; Ford’s thighs clench around her head so hard it hurts. She’s touching her own chest now, biting the back of her hand to keep the noise down.
That train left the station a while ago, Fordsy, Bill thinks, drawing the nub into her mouth with a feline smile.
“Muse,” Ford says, the word more a released breath than an actual articulation, “I can’t— I’m not— fuck!”
Bill is too busy to reply; she claws her way closer, runs her tongue into the hole between the author’s legs as far as it’ll go and returns to the clit again. Ford fists a hand in her hair, guides her back down, bucks against her face until Bill repeats the motion again and again. The author lets out a string of unprintable obscenities, punctuated by praise — she keeps calling Bill Muse, and Bill’s not sure whether it’s a deliberate attempt to turn Bill on or a reflexive response to the explosion of reward-system hormones in her human brain.
That heavy, needy sensation between Bill’s legs hasn’t gone away, either; she ruts into the mattress while she works on Ford, one hand creeping down to replicate what Ford was doing earlier. She growls when she can’t do it as well, sinks her teeth into Ford’s thigh again to break the frustration off. When she meets Ford’s eyes again, redoubling her efforts and sucking harder, the author’s whole body shudders and clenches. The pressure of her legs on either side of Bill’s head is starting to hurt, and goddamn it, it feels good.
Bill’s not sure what happens next. It’s a blur, of taste and sensation and movement; Ford lets out a choked, low cry, pulls her knees closer to her chest, detaches as much as she can from what Bill is doing. The reminder that she has this much control over her puppet, without her power, without anything but her words and mouth, makes her feel like a god again.
Ford puts both hands on either side of Bill’s head, vision unfocused. She pulls up, gentle despite everything, and Bill obliges. This kiss is pleading, worshipful, and Bill’s grinding on Ford’s knee and heavy gasping is probably totally unrelated to those things.
“You want a taste of yourself?” Bill teases. “Egomaniac.”
“You like it,” Ford retorts, “you like that about me, don’t you?”
“I—” Bill clears her throat. “Well, uh, if you’re asking me—”
Something strange happens, then, as Ford kisses her neck again. For a split second, Bill’s vision goes dark — not like she’s blind, but as though a few frames have been cut from a roll of film. Bill yelps as the feeling of Ford’s body changes, as they fall down a few inches and collide together.
Bill and Ford stare at each other. It takes a moment for both of them to register what’s happened; the spell is broken, just broken now, and their bodies look the way they usually do (well, in the last few months). Bill can still feel the boiling drive of desire in his gut, but now it’s lower, more concentrated; it is different, just like Ford said.
With a look like a man pulled out of a deep ritual trance, Ford looks down at his chest, in the gap formed by their bodies. He’s flushed again, aware for what looks like the first time of just how much he’s done with his Muse tonight; he closes his eyes, shudders, looks up at the ceiling to avoid a truth that is setting in for both of them.
“Is…” Bill looks down and grins, praying his devotee can’t feel just how high his pulse has gotten. “Is it just me, or are you feeling like another round?”
“ Fuck, ” Ford says, closing his eyes with a bashful laugh. “So there’s a foreshortened refractory period between transfigurations—”
“Woof. Do you think long words turn me on, smart guy?” Bill asks, raising his brows.
Ford swallows, lowers his fingers to his devotee’s collar. Six points of contact, all burning Bill up inside. He makes eye contact with Bill, pupils still wide and pitch-black, and the hesitation and hang-ups in his head melt away in a visible softening of his features. He pushes up, just high enough that their hips meet again, forcing Bill to swallow back a sound so weak and desperate it shocks both of them.
“Yes,” Ford replies, eyebrows raised as he glances down again. “Indisputably.”
“God damn it,” Bill groans, and kisses him.
There’s exploration, there’s familiarity, but above all else, there’s friction.
Neither of them know what they’re doing, but Bill’s worse off; Ford, at least, has had the advantage of having a body like this for his entire life and not just the last six months. He’s setting the pace, dragging his fingers through Bill’s hair as they grind into each other, kissing Bill’s neck and collar and chest between strokes. It’s maddening — there’s so much sensation, and still the body begs for more.
“Fuck,” Bill manages, as a six-fingered hand settles around his shaft. “Fuck, fuck, that’s it right there.”
Bill keeps pressing into Ford as the author strokes him, first gentle and then firm when it’s clear the demon isn’t satisfied. Ford is above him, heavy and satisfied, and Bill feels the muscles in the author’s triceps harden as he readjusts his grip. Things down there are still slick from earlier, enough to facilitate everything Ford is doing and more. Magically-assisted transformations during sex have a few perks — who knew!
“I get it now,” Bill says, voice muffled and hoarse.
“What?” Ford replies, shuddering as the grinding continues.
Bill chuckles. “This. Sex. Gettin’ it on. I just thought your species was just full of perverts. Boy, was I wrong!”
Ford laughs at that, sincerely laughs, and the sound makes Bill’s face warm. His breath picks up as they kiss again, as their movements quicken together; they’re falling into a rhythm, like they always do. It feels good, but some part of Bill’s mind knows it could feel even better; he wants to see Ford, really see him right now, eye-to-eyes.
Bill turns his head to look at the author, and finds that the angle is wrong for that; they’re too close, too entwined. He pulls back, inhaling hard as the author’s hand slides up to the head of his cock.
“Hold on. Time out,” Bill says, pushing himself back toward the headboard.
“Are you alright?”
Bill pants, regains his bearings, looks down at the author. Ford is on his stomach, now, propped up on only his hands; he’s dazed, as though he’s still shocked all of this is happening, and the look is so adorable on him that Bill could die happy there.
“...wanted to look at you,” Bill murmurs, bringing his hand to Ford’s forehead, his fingers through the man’s hair.
It’s a sentimental admission, one Bill wouldn’t make if he weren’t experiencing some strange human delirium. Ford, thank everything, doesn’t take it in a mushy way; his face flushes anew, and he looks up at Bill from beneath his brows, eyes wide and starving for something unnameable. He sinks lower, brings a hand to the place where Bill’s femur meets his hip.
“You…” Ford hesitates; his eyes dart to the side. “You’re attracted to me, Muse.”
“Gee, what do you think?” Bill mutters, pressing his knuckles to his mouth. “Make an assessment.”
“I’d like to hear why,” Ford says, with a shaking exhalation. “From you.”
Oh. Oh.
Bill remembers this. From a different form, a different time. He’s not in Ford’s head, but he knows what’s happening in there: there was a thrum that came with every compliment Bill gave, something that made the insula and amygdala and parts of the frontal lobe spark without cause. Ford loved being praised, having his ego stroked — insert coin, pull lever, and jackpot! you had a willing puppet.
Now, Bill realizes that Ford didn’t just like having his delusions of grandeur supported by any old sap; he specifically wanted Bill to praise him, to call him good, to say he was worthy.
Because it turned him on.
And it has always turned him on.
“You’re—” Bill grits his teeth and grins as the pressure on his cock makes him tense. “You’re brilliant, Sixer, is that what you want to hear?”
Ford’s grip tightens on Bill’s shaft, just on the verge of being too much for him to handle; Bill lets out a shuddering, weak breath, but he doesn’t stop smiling, and he doesn’t break eye contact.
“No one’s like you, and I’d sure as fuck — oh, fuck — know,” Bill continues. “Do you have any idea what you’d see, if you could read my mind? About you?”
Bill says a few more things as Ford works on him, as he digs his nails into his disciple’s arms. He tells his devotee that he was right during that stupid argument he had with that professor in college, that no one has ever appreciated him the way he did, that Ford will be the first man from this ungrateful, backwater dimension to set foot in another one. He’s worthy, he’s clever, he’s great.
Ford slows, for a moment, and the feeling of stalled pleasure is cruel. It takes everything in Bill not to whine about it, to beg Ford to start moving again. He glares down at his author, who seems to have frozen in a moment of critical importance; Bill’s about to say something sarcastic and snippy about mortals wasting what little time they have.
“You alright, IQ?” he asks, swallowing.
Ford wets his lips, makes loving eye contact, and takes Bill’s cock into his mouth.
“Oh, shit! ” Bill yells.
Ford’s hold on his hips keeps them down, but the man’s eyes widen at the shifting of the pleasure. He is looking at Bill constantly, waiting to be stopped or scolded or commanded. Bill only wants to do the third, and it’s proving difficult; Ford can’t take the whole thing into his mouth, not yet, but he’s making up for it by doing something with his tongue that makes Bill see stars.
“Fuck” Bill shakes, elbows pressed to the headboard. “ Keep going, fuck, keep doing that! ”
He tries to put his hand on Ford’s hair again, but the author intercepts him; Ford grabs his wrist, drags his thumb down the pounding pulse. For a moment, Ford pulls back from his work; he’s panting, eyes warm yet focused. He takes a moment to slick a finger again, then reaches forward; Bill’s eyes widen as he feels it against his entrance. His devotee looks up for approval, sees the shock on Bill’s face, and starts to stammer.
“I’ve heard this is pleasurable,” Ford says, glancing down. “But we don’t have to do anything you’re not sure about.”
“Oh, Fordsy, I’m not that kind of girl,” he teases, rolling his eyes. “What would Papa say?”
Ford flushes, suppresses a smile, clears his throat. “I’d like a firm yes before I—”
“ Gentleman, ” Bill mutters, then nods. “Go for it, tiger.”
The next thing out of his mouth is a string of loud, affectionate obscenities. Ford’s mouth is back, and something else is happening down there; there’s pressure, a little pain, and some new, additional pleasure that he wants more of, right now. Ford keeps working, keeps the tempo steady and the pressure going, and it’s all Bill can do to not cry out again while he does it.
Bill can feel something building as the seconds rush by, a cresting; it’s a slower build than he’d expect, but it feels like a tensing fire in his core. Deeper, faster, harder.
“More,” Bill hisses. “ More, more, more— ”
Ford tries to take more of Bill’s shaft in his mouth, winces, and pulls back. “I can’t—”
Bill lurches forward, removing himself from Ford’s touch, and yanks him up by the shoulders. With a growl, he straddles the man, feels the hard length of him grind against his hip; Ford lets out a sound an octave higher than his usual voice, grabs Bill’s ass, and shivers into his shoulder.
“I want to be closer,” Bill says, panting.
“Closer?” Ford asks, glasses askew. “Any closer and I’ll be…”
“Oh, for the love of…” Bill whimpers. “Don’t make me say it, please. ”
The author looks at him with some mix of shame and wonder and want, then reaches a hand up to cup Bill’s face.
“You’re sure, Bill?”
“Yes, yes, Bill nods, repositions himself, bites the inside of his cheek. “I feel like I’m— shit, I don’t know what I’m feeling! Fuck me! ”
Ford’s pupils dilate again. He pulls Bill into a kiss, a sweet and rough one, tongue hot in Bill’s mouth again. When he pulls apart, he brings a hand up, cupped — he needs spit, lubrication — and Bill grabs it and shoves the fingers in his mouth before the man can blink. He lets his tongue roll over them, tasting, flicking. Ford watches again, swallows hard; he waits for Bill to finish, eyes unfocused.
Bill spits into the man’s hand at the end, everything he can muster. He watches, quivering, as the man slicks his shaft and exhales into the hot air of the room at his own touch. This is Ford, pleasuring himself; Bill wonders why he ever averted his eye from this in another timeline. He may be human, all nerves and skin and neuroses, but fuck, he’s pretty like this.
It doesn’t last long. When he’s ready, he kisses Bill again, at the point where the throat meets the cheek, and presses the head of his member to the opening. They both press toward it at the same time, the profane glory of human sensation. Bill moans, the sound irrepressible, and Ford makes a muffled sound against Bill’s shoulder as he presses another kiss there.
“ Yes, ” Bill gasps. “Oh, yeah, oh, fuck! ”
“Muse,” Ford says, voice shallowing as he starts to move, pushing deeper. “Muse, tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know,” Bill says, with a strange, baffled laugh. “I don’t know.”
Ford takes that as a cue to try a few things; Bill responds best to hard pressure, fast movement, the absolute carnal reminder that he is right here, right now. His fingers claw up Ford’s back, and in between gasps and cries and bites pressed into Ford’s shoulders, he tells the author what he wants to hear.
“I never thought I’d do this in a trillion years,” Bill murmurs. “That make you feel special?”
“Yes, Muse, it — God, fuck — does.”
“I like talking to you. I like being near you. I like—” Bill’s breath hitches, hard. “Fuck, I like you. I missed—”
He catches himself, in a moment of weakness, in a moment of admission he’d never make except in this circumstance. Bill squeezes his eyes shut, against the pleasure and the self-sabotaging desire to let something vital slip. Some part of him, tiny and pathetic and stupid, wants to hold his author tight and tell him so many things he can never, ever say. He forces it down, grits his teeth and sends that live-wire urge back where it came from — to the little lightless core in his chest where every feeling like it lives.
He grins. He recovers himself. He moves his hips, helps set the pace again.
“You’re mine,” Bill says, a ragged edge to his voice.
Ford puts a hand on Bill’s shaft again, eyes glazed. “Tell me that. Tell me again, please.”
“I said you’re mine, Sixer,” Bill repeats, short of breath. “I chose you. You’re not like the other people you share this stupid dimension with, you’re better, you’re mine— ”
Ford leans forward, his restraint shattered to pieces, and — finally, finally! — puts his teeth to Bill’s throat. It gives Bill a feeling of déjà vu, one that sends a wave of pure bliss crashing through him. He’s not sure what’s happening, now, outside of that — he thinks he might be yelling something, but he’s too far gone to tell.
Bill feels that cresting again, hard and fast and inescapable. By the looks of it, Ford feels it, too; he’s gasping, increasing his speed, trembling with the sheer magnitude of what they’re doing. It’s so much, here and now, barreling through him like a shotgun blast.
“Ford,” Bill cries out, raspy, incoherent. “Ford, it’s too— fuck, I’m gonna scream— ”
With whatever logical faculties he has left, Ford lifts a hand and presses it over Bill’s mouth. Bill pulls back, and the hand follows, close and enticing; in the second before release, he takes the author’s wrist, moves the hand toward his mouth, and bites down into the yielding muscle between the thumb and forefinger. The release of it makes his back tense, makes him arch back so hard his head connects with the headboard.
It’s incredible. It’s the perfect flash-bang of chemicals and hormones and muscle contractions for which the word ecstasy was invented. This is the reason humans got up out of the primordial ooze: they needed to find better, cooler ways to do this, and by god, they did. No wonder it’s called a climax. It’s all downhill from here.
Ford cries out at the feeling of the teeth in his hand; he keeps pumping, faster, and just as it’s starting to make a gasping, spent Muse feel sore, he pulls himself out of Bill and comes into — son of a bitch, where did this nerd get a handkerchief?
“My God,” Ford says, glasses fogged. “My God. ”
Bill stays very still, breathing like he just ran a mile in a minute, blinking up at the ceiling. Speechless. Struck dumb, like a human seeing an angel. There’s something liberating in it, something he’s so close to defining; if he doesn’t move, maybe he can hold it and see what it is. It takes a moment for him to realize that his name is being spoken, that Ford is addressing him with a nervous look on his face.
“Bill?” Ford asks, one more time. “Are you alright?”
With a concerted effort, a commendable rallying of his higher functions, Bill focuses on Ford. He swallows before he speaks, throat dry, eyes still hazy; he brings one hand up, puts it to the author’s cheek.
“Fordsy,” he says, “I have no fucking clue.”
Once they’re cleaned up — well, cleaned up enough that they can sleep — they settle in bed together, re-clothed and red-faced. When he can’t bear looking in his devotee’s eyes anymore, Bill scoots toward him, slow and hesitant; Ford, without prompting, rolls on his back and stretches out his arm so that his muse can nestle against his shoulder.
“That was…” Ford pauses. “I don’t know how to describe it. Incredible feels cliché.”
“Why describe it?” Bill laughs, closing his eyes. “Buddy, I was there.”
Ford’s chuckle is a low thrum in his chest, a steady rhythm. Bill leans into it, burrows closer, wraps an arm around Ford’s midsection. The loose threads of his mind are starting to weave themselves back together, bit by bit, but that’s something he can face in the morning. He is tired, and he is drained, and he’s happy.
He’s actually happy.
“Thank you,” Ford murmurs, drawing Bill closer. “For choosing me, of all people.”
“Who else?” Bill asks, voice just above a whisper.
They lie there together. Tired, warm, safe. Their legs are entwined, their hands touching. It’s an unimaginable kind of embrace for Bill.
He likes me, Bill thinks, giddy.
Oh, God I like him, Bill thinks, terrified.