Tales of MU

In Which Ian Gets Nowhere With His Wood

Ian and I did the awkward “Hi,” “Hi,” thing when I got to class. I’d waited until the last minute to actually show up, to cut down on the opportunities for small talk. What I had to say to him would be far better said outside of the classroom.

Throughout the class, there were periodic eruptions of flame as some students managed to bring forth the fire from their logs. When that happened, there was a brief disruption as everybody “oohed” and “aahed”… though less with each progressive success… and Professor Bohd rewarded the student with a set of smaller samples to try to replicate the effect with.

Ian was still sticking with the verbal approach, though he’d gone from “Here, fire, fire!” to scrunching his eyes up really tight and chanting “fire, fire, fire,” under his breath. He didn’t seem to be getting much farther with this method. Each time somebody else managed to bring the flame, his face visibly darkened and he redoubled his efforts, though without any effect.

If determination alone could do magic, he would have had it. As it was, I wondered why he didn’t try a different approach. I also wondered if he just didn’t have the knack for it… but he was an elemental major. Why would he choose a subject like that if he didn’t know he had an aptitude for it?

I realized how little I really knew about Ian. The dancing had been pretty intimate, but we had never really talked. Even my mental image of him had been kind of sketchy. He was filed away in my brain in the folder marked “Some Boy”.

I was starting to notice him as him now, though. Like his hair, his dark blond hair. Wait, is there such a thing as dark blond? Or is that oxymoronic? Somehow, “light brown” didn’t sound right, either. Tan hair? Can somebody have tan hair? No… just… no.

Okay, so he had light brown hair. I guess his eyes were hazel. Is that what you call it when somebody’s got brown eyes but they’re not just brown? It’s like one of those things that you see in writing all the time, but my mind never knows quite how to picture it. Well, I’ll say hazel. I’m just going to say light brown hair and hazel eyes. If that’s not right, fuck it.

I might have said his hair was a little unruly, if I didn’t have my own hair to contend with every day. Next to mine, his was merely high-spirited. It wasn’t long enough to call it “long”, but just long enough that I could picture some matronly aunt of his constantly asking him when he’d get a haircut.

He wasn’t going to be knocking down doors with his shoulders any time soon, but he was taller, broader, and generally more solid-built than I was, for all that was worth.

He was tall enough that his dick poked my stomach when we danced.

I wouldn’t have expected covertly watching Ian to help me in my own invocation attempts, but by the end of the class, my periodic attempts to raise water from within earth had actually visibly darkened the surface of the soil.

If Ian had made any progress with his wood, I couldn’t see it.

I fell in beside him as he left the classroom. He seemed more relieved than surprised.

“Do you… uh… would you like to get a bite to eat?” he asked.

I giggled and thought about answering, “I do not would like to get a bite.”, but of course he wouldn’t have got it. The thought of having an in-joke with Two made me giggle harder… then I wondered if I was more laughing with her, or at her. That killed the giggles.

Ian, of course, was mystified by my giggle-fit. He chose to ignore it. Or… maybe he thought I was laughing at him? If so, he deserved major points for soldiering on.

“Or, were you going to eat with your friends?” he asked. “Because… that’s cool… too.”

“Actually, I thought I’d skip lunch today,” I said.

“You’re not hungry?”

“Not exactly,” I said, blushing madly… which must have confused the hell out of him.

“Oh, that’s right!” he said. “Dummy me. I keep forgetting, you look so hu… um. Sorry.”

It was his turn to look embarrassed. I felt sorry for him. What the hell was a guy supposed to say to a girl like me? I would have loved to actually be fully human, but humanocentric chauvinism pissed me off.

“Let’s just go over there and sit,” I said, taking him by the hand and guiding him over towards the fountain.

I liked holding hands. With Amaranth or Two, it was comforting… a little bit of a known quantity to cling to in a big unknown world. Of course, there were other emotions at work there… with Amaranth, it was the tangible reminder that I was owned, that she was in control. With Two, it was knowing that my hand made her feel safe. In either case, there was a reciprocity of feelings.

It pleased me to please them… was that so different from what I was about to propose to Ian? It seemed like it should be.

On the subject of hand-holding, Ian was still unknown, but he was goofy enough and sort-of-nice enough to be mostly safe. Also, I’d lit him on fire. I hadn’t enjoyed it, and I was far from proud of the act, but it was hard to be intimidated by somebody after that.

For whatever reason, though, I did enjoy holding hands. I giggled again… I’d just imagined myself putting it on my white list: “Spanking. Biting. Licking. Hand-holding.”

Or better yet, “Hardcore hand-holding.”

“Hardcore, elven-style, uncensored amateur hand-holding.”

I had no idea what “elven-style” hand-holding would even be, but it was hilarious.

“Um, are you okay?” Ian asked.

“You had to be there,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the fountain and pulling myself together.

“I was there,” he said, taking a seat beside me. I swung my legs up and folded them in front of me, so I was facing him. “There was here. What’s up with you today?”

“Well,” I said, “there’s… kind of something I have to ask you. Or an offer to make you, I guess you might call it.”

“Uh, I did tell you I’m not a virgin, remember?” Ian asked.

“Yeah, the information managed to stick one of the eleven hundred times you said that,” I said. “Look, this isn’t about me feeding…” I blushed again, naturally “…exactly.”

“What is it about, then?” Ian asked. There was a note of curiosity in his voice… maybe even excitement. Was it the blush? Or something else in my manner?

“Um… you remember, the first class we had together… what you said to me?” I asked.

“That you had a pretty name?”

“After that,” I said. When he didn’t say anything, I prompted him further. “You know… when you found out I was in Harlowe?”

I saw from the guilty, nervous look on his face that he did remember, though he had the decency to look like he wished he didn’t. I gave him a pointed stare and gestured for him to spit it out.

“Um… that you… probably take it in the ass?” he ventured.

“Before that,” I said, giving him the glare that he deserved.

“I… think I said a couple of different things,” he said, cautiously.

Fuck. Was he going to make me say it? My whole plan had been to lead him around to bringing it up, so that I could sort of agree to it without having to actually say it myself.

“Do you remember asking me if I wanted to go somewhere?” I asked. “In case, as you put it, I wanted to… suck your… dick?”

“Uh… maybe,” he said. “Yeah, I think I did say something like that.”

“Well,” I said. “I… I want to go somewhere. Now.”

He gaped at me.

“I’m serious,” I said.

He gaped some more.

“You’re… serious?” he asked.

“Uh, generally, that’s what people mean when they say ‘I’m serious.’,” I said, rolling my eyes and affecting a superior attitude I didn’t even begin to feel.

“After you pitched a fit over the thought of touching the hand you believed I’d jerked off with?” Ian asked.

“One, I did not ‘pitch a fit’,” I said. “Two, I think even married women who’ve had sex with the same man for years might have a little ‘Eww!’ moment if they accidentally put their hand on some of his… stuff… when they weren’t expecting it.”

“That wasn’t a ‘little moment’,” Ian said. “That was an episode… hell, it was the season one boxed set with cast commentary, the unaired pilot, and the ‘making of’ featurette.”

“Well, we’re not a married couple and I’ve never had sex,” I said, irritated. “But… remember how I also freaked out the first time you went hard? And then the second time, at the dance, you were actually, you know, rubbing up against me with it and it didn’t bother me.” I blushed and looked away. I wanted to say, “I kind of liked it,” but I didn’t.

He went crimson.

“I… didn’t think you’d noticed,” he said.

“You’ve clearly never slow-danced with a highly aroused boy,” I said, and we both laughed nervously.

“Not highly aroused, no,” he joked.

“But see, it’s all about context… during what I had imagined would be a nice, innocent walk with my boyfr… boy from class who was taking me on a date, I, you know, objected to an intrusive element. But at the dance… at that time, in that place, with your hands on my… self, it was different.”

“So… what about here, and now?” he asked.

“Well,” I said. “Here and now, I’m offering… actually, I’m offering any time and any place, as long as it’s not public and doesn’t interfere with my classes. Though, now… if not exactly here… would be good. Just, not limited to now… it’s as often as you want it, actually.”

I know I tripped over some of the words, but he was staring at me as if I were speaking some wholly incomprehensible language.

Actually, he stared as if I were a small flowering cactus that was speaking some wholly incomprehensible language.

Or as if I were a small flowering cactus that he understood was offering no-strings-attached oral sex as often as he wanted despite the fact that it was speaking some wholly incomprehensible language.

Okay, that sounds painful… so the metaphor kind of falls apart there.

“This is a joke,” he said, finally. His mouth said “joke”… his eyes said “trap”, though. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” I said. “I will… you know, go down on you… on demand, as often as you like.”

“This isn’t some kind of de…”

“It’s got nothing to do with my heritage or my feeding habits,” I said, guessing where he was going. “I told you what I need to feed on, and it isn’t… that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess… I guess I can buy that you might have been willing to mess around a little at the dance, if I hadn’t fucked things up, but this… you started off being pissed off at the suggestion that non-human girls were all sl…ightly easier going than humans, and now you’re trying to tell me that you’ve decided to… well, pretty much do what you were so pissed off at me for suggesting you do in the first place.”

“It’s not something I just decided on,” I said. I’d hoped he wouldn’t actually need persuading, but it seemed like he’d at least require an explanation. “It’s… Amaranth, my… my owner. She thinks it’s a good idea. She… um… she ordered me to.”

“That’s… that’s kind of fucked up,” he said, now staring at me as if the flowering cactus was line dancing in place. “Actually, it’s really fucked up.”

“I notice your dick doesn’t share your moral objections,” I said sourly, gesturing very vaguely in the general direction of his crotch. Even a glance was enough to tell he was turned on.

“Well, it might be fucked up but it’s still hot,” he said. “You can’t come after me with a plot straight out of porn and not expect my body to respond to it.”

“So respond to it,” I said. “You want it, I want it… let’s go… um… do… something about it?”

I was aiming for sexy, but I didn’t just miss… I think I killed three innocent bystanders.

“You’re a nice girl, Mackenzie,” he said. “Uh, sort of occasionally, intermittently nice, anyway… and I kind of like you… but… the thing is, you don’t just have issues. You’ve got like, the special limited edition first issue with all four variant illusionary covers signed and bagged.”

I stared, dumbstruck.

“What?” he asked.

“You read comics?” I asked. “You actually read comics?”

He must have mistaken the enthusiasm in my response for some other vehement emotion, because he became defensive.

“I read graphic novels,” he said, snippily. “Or sequential art, if you will.”

“Do you read Sci-Force Five?” I asked.

“Ugh, why is it that every time somebody mentions that they read graphic novels, everybody always assumes they’re talking about kiddy stuff?” Ian asked. “There’s some serious work out there, being done by serious artists… it’s not all badly drawn characters rehashing the same six lame plots they’ve been using for the past thirty years.”

“I like Sci-Force,” I said icily.

“Yeah, well… issues,” he said, forcing a chuckle.

“Look, forget comics,” I said. “Do you want to go somewhere, or not?”

“I just trashed your favorite comic, and you still want to do this?”

“I still want to do it,” I said. I wasn’t going to comment on the “favorite comic” thing. The official Mecknights comics were reviled even by most fans of the show. I didn’t need to know what Ian thought of them.

“Because Amaranth said so,” he asked.

“Because Amaranth said so.”

“So… I could like, beat you up and take your lunch money, and you’d still want to suck my dick?” he asked.

“You couldn’t beat me up, I don’t have any lunch money… but in theory, yes, yes I would still do it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what you say or… how you treat me. I have been told to do this, by the woman I’ve chosen to give myself to, and so… I will.”

I’d expected to feel embarrassed saying that, but instead I felt a swell of unexpected pleasure and pride. I will… because Amaranth said so.

I bit back a gasp when I felt… well, I’d been physically aroused before, but never in jeans as tight as I was wearing.

Yeah. Bit of an interesting sensation. I’m pretty sure guys usually know about getting hard before it happens, but if you’re a girl nobody tells you to expect things like that. I mean, all that “flower opening” shit… nobody ever writes about what happens when skintight denim is holding the flower down and getting in its way. I couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like without my panties in between… well, maybe I could a little bit.

And what had so turned me on? The thought of going down on somebody who’d just hypothetically mugged me, to please the woman I called my owner. Yeah, “fucked up” about covered it.

I guess I couldn’t really argue with Ian… except for, you know… all the arguing I was doing… with him.

“You can barely bring yourself to say it,” he said bluntly. “But you’re telling me you’re willing to do it.”

I closed my eyes and nodded.

“Khersis, I feel like I’ve fallen into some bizarre chaos plane, where cute girls… cute, possibly lesbian girls are ordered by their naked sex goddess girlfriends to perform wanton carnal acts upon me, or whatever, but… maybe I belong in this plane, because here’s me saying no,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. I sounded a little desperate. Okay, I sounded a little whiny… but this was supposed to be the easy part. Me offering had been a little difficult… actually delivering would be next to impossible… but… guy… free blowjob… blowjobs, even. Plural! It seemed like it should have been automatic. “Isn’t this, like, every guy’s dream? I know I’m not the hottest person in the world…”

“It’s not that… it’s nothing like that,” Ian said. “And honestly, it is… if not every guy’s fantasy, then at least it’s one of mine… but… the thing is, I’m better than this. I can get girls without having somebody tell them to throw themselves at me. I know it. Even though there’s totally a voice in the back of my head going ‘Dude, no, you totally aren’t better! Take her! Take her!’, I’ve still got to say no, because not only am I better than this, but so are you,” he said. “I don’t understand a lot about what’s going on in your life… but I understand that this is wrong, and if you can’t manage to put a stop to it, then I will. No, Mackenzie. I’m not going to take advantage of you.”

He was so earnest.

I wanted to hit him.

“Well… fuck you,” I said instead, sliding sideways off the side of the fountain and getting to my feet.

Fact: it doesn’t matter how tenuous, how nebulous, how vaporous, how other-adjective-ous your beliefs are, nothing on Mama Khaele’s mostly bluish world will make them crystallize into adamantine hardness faster than having somebody looking down on you for them. If Steff had been there, I know she would have had some artful, articulate, well-thought-out… uh… word type thing to say… but she wasn’t there, and I hadn’t spent years thinking about my sexuality or what love was or what choice meant.

I didn’t honestly have much going on besides my anger.

There were some words I could manage, though, artful or not.

“Fuck you,” I repeated. “Fuck you, if you think I’m going to let you sit there and judge me.”

“What do you mean, judge…”

“You’re not going to ‘take advantage of me’?” I repeated. “If I had managed to offer at the dance, or I came up to your room to watch you fuck around with your lute, or got drunk at a party and came on to you, you’d let me do whatever I was willing without a second thought, and you know it.

“Yeah, maybe,” Ian said. “Probably… okay, definitely. But this isn’t ‘willing’.”

“Why not? Nobody’s holding a knife to my throat,” I said. “Nobody’s charmed my mind. The only difference is that I gave my consent to Amaranth instead of to you.”

“It isn’t supposed to work like that,” he said.

“How is it supposed to work?” I asked. “Am I supposed to be so damned overcome by your fucking gentlemanly nature and concern for my Khersis-forsaken virtue that I fall to my knees and blow you anyway in appreciation?”

“Well, no,” Ian said quickly, though there was something in his eyes that told me he had, on some level, been expecting to get some kind of bonus points for “doing the right thing.” Well, fuck that. “But, you know, if you did, at least you’d be doing it for the right reason.”

“Says who?” I demanded.

Up until this point, I’d kept my voice pretty level, pretty much under control. Now the volume was raising. Part of me realized I would be drawing attention… making a scene, even… but I didn’t let myself think about that. I forced the world to shrink until it was just Ian and me.

“Society!”

“Well, maybe I’ve chosen a different standard to apply,” I said.

“You didn’t pick your standard, you let somebody hand it to you,” he said.

“And you came up with yours all on your own, I suppose?” I asked. “Why isn’t it okay for me to do this to make somebody else happy? It’s a fucking blowjob! You wouldn’t have any objection to getting off on it yourself, I imagine, so what’s wrong with sharing the fun? What’s so wrong about me getting off a little on the thought that she’s getting off on you getting off, or whatever?”

“It’s weird,” Ian said. “It’s not supposed to work like that.”

“Who the fuck says?” I demanded. I was practically screaming at him now… the floodgates had been opened. There was the thought in the back of my head, I’m going to need major punishment after this. I didn’t exactly ignore it. I actually sort of clung to it, but in a way that kept it in the back. “Who is it that gets to decide which desires are okay to have and which ones aren’t?”

“You’re embarrassing yourself, Mackenzie,” Ian said.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “If I was embarrassed, I’d be turned on more.” That wasn’t the sort of thing I had an easy time admitting, of course, but anger made the words come easier. I said it to shock, and from the look on Ian’s face, it worked. “Yeah, humiliation does it for me, apparently… one of the many things I’ve learned since coming here. Isn’t university life so marvelously broadening?” I laughed. I’m sure I sounded batshit insane, but I was pretty sure I’d just inadvertently quoted Amaranth. “In fact, if I blew you right now, the fact that I was being forced to pleasure somebody I was so fucking pissed at would probably make me enjoy it even more. You want to tell me how messed up that sounds? Maybe that’ll do something for me, too.”

“You know how messed up it sounds.”

“I’d say ‘last chance’, except… it’s not,” I said. “Until Amaranth says otherwise, I’m available… my mouth is available… whenever you want it. Room 417, by the way, if you need to look me up. It’s on the top floor.”

I turned and started to walk away. I tried to put a little extra sway into my hips, to make what Steff called my “cute boy butt”–not that I really thought Ian would be interested in anything that could be described as a “boy butt”–wiggle a little. I suppose I probably really looked like I’d injured myself somehow.

I didn’t have to waddle far.

“Mackenzie, wait!” he said.

I turned around. Slowly. I didn’t bother trying to figure out how the hell one turns sexily. Slowly was good enough.

“Okay,” he said. “I mean… um… do you still want to do it, after all that?”

I gave him a dirty look. Hadn’t he been listening?

“Right,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Okay… let’s… let’s do this then.”

He’d agreed.

He had agreed.

Shit.

What the fuck was I supposed to do now?

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