In Which Mackenzie Warms Up To Ian
Amaranth still had my coat and she could have been anywhere in the building, doing anything with anyone. My costume included a cape, though, and the faux fur trim made a good focus for insulation and heating enhancements. It would have made a poor substitute for a coat on a long-term basis, but it and my meager enchantment skills were enough for a quick trip across campus.
“How about we go to my place?” Ian said. “It’s closer, and we don’t have to worry about your roommate.”
“What about yours?” I asked.
“He’s never around,” Ian said. “I mean, literally. He’s moved most of his shit out. I think he’s going to officially change rooms at some point, but he must have somewhere to crash that it doesn’t matter that much.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is it because… do you think it’s got something to do with me?”
“Honestly?” Ian said. “Probably. He seemed cool enough, and then all of a sudden…” He shrugged. “It’s not like we were friends. And I’m basically getting a single for free because of it. At least for now. They’ll probably stick someone else in there if he ever officially moves out, though. Rooms are always short in Weyland.”
There was still a large number of people hanging around outside… not just because it was cold as strangely dispassionate fuck, but because it was well after dark. True, the people were mostly in crowds clumped around the tower or the plaza in front of the union, but a lot of them seemed to be unarmed and there were people hanging out in twos and threes on the side paths, or even off of the paths.
“Seems like people are asking for trouble,” I said.
“Yeah, according to a campus security thing in the paper, Veil is one of the deadliest nights of the year,” Ian said. “Not because of anything about it in particular… people just get stupid and careless. Last year, eleven students died over the weekend. The year before that it was seventeen.”
“Shit,” I said. “Do that many people actually go off the paths?”
“I don’t know,” Ian said. “I think some of it’s people messing around with stuff they shouldn’t… raising undead, summoning stuff. The article glossed over those, except to say that they weren’t smart things to do… I guess they didn’t want a bunch of copy cats.”
“So why do people keep going out and doing stupid stuff if they know it’s dangerous?” I asked.
“It’s a dangerous world,” Ian said. “And we’re an adventurous people. If we let the danger scare us, we’d never get anything done… even the places that are ‘safe’ are only safe because somebody was brave enough to settle them.”
“Okay, go pioneer spirit and all, but getting drunk and stumbling around in the dark on Veil Eve doesn’t actually make the world better or safer,” I said.
“I’m not saying it does,” Ian said. “I’m just saying, whatever it is in people that makes us cross deserts and mountains and oceans doesn’t go away when we settle down.”
“There’s got to be healthier ways of indulging it, though,” I said. “I mean, there are all kinds of boundaries that you can cross. Like, the graduate programs here do all kinds of cutting-edge stuff… if you survive your undergrad years, you can be a trailblazer and actually accomplish something.”
“Hey, I’m not saying I think they’re a bunch of geniuses,” Ian said. “But I can kind of understand the impulse.”
“I guess I’ve done some stupid, dangerous things, too,” I said. “I could say that they’re for better reasons than ‘whoooo, Veil’, but… well… I mean, they’re reasons, but I don’t know if they’re good or not.”
“They’re yours,” Ian said. “I think you get points for realizing that doesn’t automatically make them good, but they’re still yours. Anyway, you’ve got to live your life, and if that means doing something stupid…” He shrugged. “You’re going back to a guy’s dorm room. I’m going to have sex with a half-demon. Young and stupid has its high points.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t want to argue with that, for many reasons… not the least of which being that I was getting cold even with my cape all spelled up. I wanted to get indoors, and quickly.
The colder I got, the harder it was for me to maintain my spell, and by the time we got to Ian’s hall I was pressing my body up against his for warmth, the cape thrown over him as well. My hands had gone down his pants pretty much on instinct. I wasn’t feeling particularly titillated, but I could tell he was getting turned on by the closeness… that only made him warmer, which made me try harder to get close to him.
It was like a vicious cycle, only sexier. Once we got inside, I started to feel it, too. By the time we got up to his room, I was ready for us to tear each other’s clothes off… which wouldn’t have taken long. He disengaged himself to go and unlock his door, so I wouldn’t have to stand in front of the holy symbols on the facing door while he did it, and then we hurried inside.
I got the cape off right away and then reached for his furry pants. He caught my hands by the wrists and held them.
“Wait,” he said. “Before we get going… I kind of want to talk about a few things.”
“Now?” I said. We’d just done a ton of talking… I pretty much just wanted to throw myself at Ian, and he’d made it clear he had the same idea. What was there left to say?
“Well, yeah,” he said. “You don’t have somewhere else to be, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m all yours, but… well… I’m all yours. Don’t you want to, you know… take advantage a little?”
“Sure,” he said. “But I’ve got some stuff to work out… we spent all that time talking about your stuff, you know?”
“Okay, I guess that’s fair,” I said.
“The thing is, I think I’m starting to understand where my mom is coming from and it’s making me feel better about…”
“You want to talk about your mom… now?” I asked.
“Mackenzie… please just shut up and listen, okay?” he said. “I’m trying to talk about something important here, and it’s going to be hard enough to talk about my parents without you giving me shit.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. The “shut up” and his tone weren’t doing anything to cool me down, but I bit my lip.
“The thing is, both of my parents are emotional… my dad gives my mom shit about it all the time, about how she’s ‘weak’, but that’s only because when she gets emotional, she cries,” he said. “I don’t mean when she’s sad. If something’s really funny, she cries. She gets really happy, she cries. She gets pissed off… she cries. The few times I can remember her trying to call my dad on his shit, he just made fun of her because she was crying… or he turned it into her needing ‘comfort’.” He shuddered. “I used to agree with him. I thought she was weak and st… silly.”
“But now?” I prompted.
“Now I guess I can understand what it feels like to feel everything so strongly, it all starts to feel the same,” he said. “I get angry and I want to hit something. I get horny and I want to hit something. I get angry and I want to fuck. I feel things and they build up inside me to the point where they’ve just got to, like, explode out of me and they’re not picky about how. Does that make sense?”
I nodded… it sounded like he was coming to terms with some things. I had a suspicion that he was leading into the subject of violence being adjacent to sex, which meant he was either about to tell me that he’d come to terms with the fact that slapping his invulnerable girlfriend around was hot… which would be good… or that he’d decided he couldn’t do it anymore, which I supposed I’d get over.
“It’s bothered me that I get turned on by hitting girls,” Ian said. “Hitting girls in general bothers me. But Coach Callahan helped me realize…”
“Callahan?” I repeated. That was worse than bringing his mother into it.
“Mackenzie, seriously… shut your mouth,” he said. “If you knew what Callahan’s done for me, if you cared…”
“I care!” I said quickly. “If she’s helped you somehow…”
“She’s done more for my elemental control than you have,” he said. “I mean, you’re not a teacher, and maybe you’re too much of a natural to be a good tutor. I’m just saying, she’s not a dumb jock. Anyway, she helped me realize something: I like girls. I like violence. I don’t specifically like to hit girls, but I do like to hit people and the people that I like are girls… so…”
He shrugged uncomfortably.
“Ian… it’s okay,” I said. “I never judged you… you like it, I like it, and it’s not anyone else’s business.”
“I wasn’t sure that I did like it,” he said. “Or at least, that I liked liking it… I’m still not sure. But I think Amaranth had the right idea about it being okay as long as it’s not in anger, and now that I’ve got a better handle on my feelings and how they overlap… I think… I think it’s something I can do out of desire. I’d like to try.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
He blushed.
“That’s actually kind of… well, I mean, it was partly because the stuff was available, but that was kind of why I latched onto the barbarian costume idea,” he said. “Please don’t launch into a kneejerk speech about cultural stuff… I’m sure there are northmen who buy their girlfriends flowers and pull chairs out for them and stuff. I just… I want to do something primal. Watching you dance… even with that cape on, you’re practically in your underwear, and no matter what you think of your body… well, you’re a woman, Mackenzie.”
“Oh, high praise,” I said.
“Don’t wreck this,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That awful Marla or whatever her name is basically said I have a fat ass, and considering the source…”
“She is awful,” Ian said. He put his hands on my back and slid them down, his fingers cupping my cheeks just beneath the top of the fuzzy panties. “And you do kind of have a fat ass.” He gave it a squeeze. “And I kind of like it.”
“You can have it,” I said.
“Um… on that subject, sort of,” he said, “we didn’t bring any of your non-elemental protection rings.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“I’ve got some of the regular type, but… I really don’t think it’s a good idea to mess around with them,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Well, we can still do stuff, right?”
“That’s… that’s kind of what I meant when I said ‘on that subject, sort of’,” Ian said. “I’d have to go to the healing center to make sure I don’t get an infection, but you can’t get pregnant if I… if we… you did let Steff do you, you know, the other way, right?”
“Oh, spit it out,” I said. “‘Can I fuck your ass’ was practically the first thing you said to me, before you even knew me.”
He kind of blushed and glowered at the same time.
“Yeah, well… before I knew you,” he said. “It’s one thing to be shooting your mouth off to one of those Harlot chicks that everyone knows is easy, and another thing… can’t I get points for personal growth here?”
“The kind of points you can redeem for anal sex?” I asked.
“If you’re just going to piss me off, I’m not going to feel comfortable with the slap-and-tickle-minus-tickle,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Look… I know you want this. Let’s just have a night where we both get what we want, okay? I know what you want, and I’m okay with it, and what I want is for you to do what you want with me. Let’s just make it easy as we can: you’re in charge, you’re the boss, you’re the conquering warrior hero… I have no rights, no desires that matter, and no purpose except for your pleasure.”
“That’s… that’s not easy for me,” he said.
“No?” I said. I put my hand on the front of his pants, which were tented like never before. “I guess it does seem pretty hard. Look, Ian… we had the talk and we’ve got personal progress, but let’s just forget all our baggage and just… indulge. You can enjoy this for one night. I know you’ve got it in you to.”
“If you ask me, in an abstract and general sense, if I would enjoy having someone put an engorged penis in my butt, I would say hell no,” I said. “But you’re my boyfriend, and you’re hot and you’re strong and you’re… occasionally… commanding, and the idea of you using my body for your pleasure is… that’s what I want. That’s what I’m looking for from you. If that means you put your dick in my mouth, that’s fine. If it means you stick it in my ass, that’s fine. Just… try to keep it in that order, if you want some variety.”
“Does it really matter?” Ian asked. “I mean, you don’t actually… digest, right?”
“Look, it’s really going to kill the ‘I have no rights’ mood if you make me break out the safe word,” I said. “Which I’m going to do if you try to make me suck on something you just pulled out of my butt.”
“Okay, when you put it like that, it sounds gross,” Ian said. “But… heat of the moment, it’s kind of a strong image, I mean, in terms of having control and completely subjugating…”
“Ian, you don’t need to do something like that to subjugate me,” I said. “You’re better than that.”
“Okay… well, any other notes you want to give me?” he asked.
“Don’t be like that,” I said. “It just popped into my head to mention because I’d rather say it’s off limits now before we begin than…”
“No, that’s fine,” he said. “It’s the same thing for me. If there’s anything else you want to specifically put out of bounds, I’d like to hear about it now, because once we begin… well, I don’t want to hear a lot of talking. You know?”
I nodded. It really was kind of a mood kill to sit there and talk about it… the more we did it, the harder it would be to pretend that me being there purely for his pleasure wasn’t just a mutually agreeable pretense… but it really would be better than any of the alternatives.
“So, any other restrictions?”
“Absolutely no, you know… baby-making activity,” I said. “I hate to rule out a whole big category of sex, but there’s already at least one pregnancy on my floor, and I just… there’s no way I could bring another demonblood into the world, and I’d rather not have to deal with the alternative.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing I can think of,” I said. “If something comes up… I guess I’ll call a timeout? And Amaranth told you my safeword, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “But if it’s just clarification or whatever, just say ‘timeout’, because then I’ll know you want to pause and not necessarily stop. I mean, I’ll stop either way, but that way I’ll have some idea what’s going through your head. And other than that, no talking unless I tell you to talk. Okay?”
I nodded.
“But you tell me to go,” he said. “That’ll be when the no talking starts.”
“Okay,” I said. That put a little bit of a crimp in it for me… I would have rather he initiated everything. I’d been the one who put the whole thing out on the table in the first place; that seemed like enough to prove my enthusiastic consent. If it made the difference in terms of him feeling comfortable, though, it was a small sacrifice. “But once we begin… you don’t hold back, okay? You… I’m yours. You do what you want with me, you do what you want to me. That’s what I want. Brutal, unrestrained, degrading… okay?”
He nodded.
“Okay, then,” I said. I closed my eyes. “Let’s go. Start.”
first guy says “I don’t know. none of the girls I want to have a relationship with are into the bondage & discipline scene. And none of the girls who are willing to do B&D want to have a committed relationship with me.”
second guy replies: “Well, make up your fucking mind. Do you want to be tied up or tied down?”
I think
A: My girlfriend told you my safeword, right?
B: Yes.
should include what it actually is, just in case. I mean, I’m sure even if there was a miscommunication somewhere and Mack started yelling “Basement”, Ian would get that something was wrong, but I expected this to be a problem in the next scene 🙂
I know that it’s all in Mack’s head, but why does it matter if he puts his penis in her butt and then in her mouth? She doesn’t poop out of there.
If I use hospital grade cleaner to wash the toilet seat and bowl, would you be willing to lick the seat and drink the water?
Its completely clean right?
Same thing. 😀
“I know it’s all in Mack’s head […]”
You do realise that completely, 100% answers your question, right? 😛 Not everything is rational.
Also, most toilets are cleaner than most cellphones and keyboards. Just sayin’.
Isn’t it about time that you two kids invested in some contraceptive devices to keep, y’know, in your dorms? Where you tend to have sex?
I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that they’ve only really had sex in Mack’s room, which is where she keeps the supply of non-elemental rings. Forgetting to bring them is an understandable mistake.
I think one of the reasons I dislike Ian so much is my absolute hatred of a man striking a woman consensual or not. It infuriates me and I can’t get past that.
but youre fine with women striking women, or women striking men consensually?
oh well, at least your hypocritical ignorant opinion has no effect on other peoples consensual relationships…..
JerK didn’t say he hats men striking women. I said he hats Ian’s hatred of it. So in a way he is saying he is ok with it as long as its consensual. Maybe even other times? I don’t know I cant talk for him.
It really is one of my main problems with Ian as well. Its like he is trying to stop from being a misogynistic asshole but in the process he is undermining himself. I mean, if you are in an arena and you refuse to fight women what message are you really sending? Other than that women are below you and don’t deserve to be treated as your equal as a warrior?
If you actually read his comment, he says he hates men striking women, consensu or not. That’s his hang-up, not something to judge Ian on.
Don’t be That Guy. Nobody likes That Guy. That Guy never gets invited to parties.