by Oblimo
Yves left the stick in neutral and engaged the emergency brake. "So what do we do now?"
The engine cut out and the driver's side door clicked open on its own accord. "We get the fuck out."
Yves hopped out and ambled down the sloping bank. He heard a metallic sigh behind him. He bent at the water's edge, hunting without success for a good skipping stone, hearing SB's swaggering walk rustle the grass behind him. When he stood up, a strong hand slipped around his shoulder, fingers firm and cool. A breeze carried the scent of wild strawberries and cotton candy. "How do you feel, Yves?"
Yves stretched. "Deliciously sleepy."
Those slim fingers patted him on the back. "C'mere, Yves."
SB wore her signature one-piece dress, sunlight painting her in fiery shades of red and gold. She knelt onto a wide tartan picnic blanket, patted the spot in front of her. "Come on down."
Yves tapped the blanket with a sneaker. "Is this you?" He hoped he sounded more curious than nervous.
"It's of me," SB explained, "but it's not me. I've locked it, it's just a thing." She smoothed out the blanket. "Well?"
Yves sat cross-legged before her, inspecting the tartan textile. "Soft. Feels familiar, somehow."
"You'd be surprised, the kinds of things you can spin from sugary carbohydrates. If you're working on the sub-molecular level, that is." SB read Yves' expression and added, "Okay, maybe you in particular wouldn't be surprised." She shifted, her cheeks darkening to a true crimson. "What're you looking at?"
"Your eyes," Yves answered. "It was recently pointed out to me that I do not pay close attention to a woman's eyes."
"Dude." SB gestured at her lap, where her manhood folded between her knees like a bendy third leg. "Do I look like a woman?"
"Do appearances matter?" Yves asked in return, still scrutinizing SB's face. "I thought they were rock candy or some other sugar crystal. Your eyes, I mean. But they're not, are they? They're real diamond."
"So?"
Yves nodded. "'So,' indeed. Diamond's just carbon, after all, less complicated than sugar in some ways." SB's wry smile set her eyes twinkling. Yves nodded again, downcast. "Yeah, I'm stalling. I don't even know what's going to happen, and I'm stalling. Wow, listen to me…"
SB tipped her head. "Yves?"
"…I'm talking as much as Ursula…"
SB coughed politely. "Hey, Yves?"
"…No worse: Dee."
SB plucked Yves' head up by the chin. "Yves. You really, really need to unwind." She held up the mason jar of strawberry colored jam in her other hand. "How's 'bout a rub down?"
Every bit of Yves ached, from his brain to his balls down through the soles of his feet. He wondered if any part of him, body or spirit, had escaped torture in the past twelve hours. He doubted it. "My arms are a little sore, yeah."
SB rolled her eyes, goosed Yves' cheek, and popped the jar open before setting it beside them on the picnic blanket. "Hold out your arm, then," she said.
Yves offered up his arm. SB gently rotated Yves' hand palm-upward. The improvised bandage on the pad of his thumb had frayed and curled up around the edges. SB picked off the tape and unwound the blood-spotted gauze, revealing a small but deep crescent-shaped puncture in Yves' flesh. "The cloister bell," SB murmured.
"Hm? Oh," Yves nodded, "the exploding doorbell, yeah. That sucker really took a bite out of me." SB gingerly inspected the wound. The sudden flare of pain took Yves' breath away. "Still stings a bit."
SB scooped a small dollop of jam onto one finger. "This will help." The jam's vibrant red contrasted the soft rose hues of her translucent flesh. "But you'll always bear the mark." Yves wanted to ask her what she was talking about but she smeared the stuff across the pad of his thumb without another word. He readied himself for another sharp stab of pain. It only tingled instead. A droplet of strawberry red nectar streaked down into the cup of his palm. Yves frowned.
"Your skin is warm enough to cook it into oil," SB said as more tingling syrup pooled in his hand. She held him by the wrist, and rubbed her thumb over the strawberry smear on his hand, tracing the flexor tendon anchoring his thumb and working the red salve into his skin. The puncture wound itched, felt tender when the skin around it flexed, but the pain had fled. Her gaze fixed on his hand, SB added, "You okay?"
Yves was not sure how to answer. I'm amazed. I'm relieved. I'm a little scared. "What do you mean?"
"The color." She gathered Yves' hand to her chest, soothing the stuff over his palm, then sliding her thumbs around and between his fingers. "Before it cooks into oil, it kinda looks like blood."
"You mean, do you remind me of Black Cherry?"
SB looked up from her ministrations, squeezing each of Yves' fingers in turn. "Well?"
"You're nothing like Black Cherry," Yves insisted. SB pressed the flat of his oiled hand against her cheek. Yves smiled, "You want details?"
SB dipped a finger into the jar and massaged more jam into Yves' wrist. "Just a couple."
"You'll have to give me a minute."
"Why?" SB slid her fingers up his forearm.
Yves sighed, eyes closed. "I just want to...feel this, for a while." The tingle stretched from Yves' fingertips down to his elbow. The muscles of his hand and forearm were as butter, all tension gone. SB found a potent pressure-point and a clarifying calm stole over Yves. "Black Cherry's dark currents give her that horrible, arterial red look," Yves heard himself say. "Yours is the red of rosé wine. Black Cherry felt like clay, wet cement, really. Raz and Eurydice felt like living, standing waves. You feel, well, real." He opened his eyes. SB paused, her hands encircling his upper arm. "With my eyes closed," Yves explained, "I can't tell that you’re meliae. Just someone who wears a summery cologne. Uh, I mean perfume."
SB stroked the length of Yves' oiled arm. Yves resisted the urge to purr. "I'm not built like other goo girls," SB said. "I'm organized."
Yves eyed the crowded crotch of her dress. "That's apparent." A breeze blew across the grass and rippled SB's dress, defining the angles of her lap. Good God, Yves thought, how big can that thing really get?
"Stop," SB breathed. She gave him a playful push, planting a strawberry-red stain over Yves' undershirt. "Or you really will start sounding like Dee. Anyway, that's not my only organ. I've got internal structures. Check this out." SB flexed her right arm. Her toned, oval muscles bulged. "This bicep ain't just for show. Striated pectin. Go on, check it out."
Yves reached out, prodding cautiously at first, but growing bold when his fingers only dimpled SB's upper arm. "Wow. Do you work out?" Oh, Jesus. Yves winced. What am I, twelve? What's gotten into me?
"My nanomek do it for me." SB rolled her shoulders and inhaled. Her round breasts jutted against her fiery dress, nipples erect and obvious and inches away from Yves' fondling fingers. "Wanna feel my pecs?"
I haven't been this close to second base with a girl since high school. Yves flustered and flushed. SB studied his face, winked, nabbed his other arm, and slathered it with a healthy gob of tingly jam. The delectable massage drove away memories of youthful, fruitless denial. "You're sure generous with that stuff," Yves said, sighing. "Thank you, thank you."
SB laughed. "I've come into possession of a dumpster full of it." She swallowed a bark of laughter and oiled Yves' arm. The creaking of pine branches and the gentle lapping of lake water against the bank filled the bashful silence until SB added, "Thanks to you."
Pain and stress vanished under SB's touch. Yves allowed himself to purr. "Mrr. Just what is it, anyway?"
"Have you ever heard of woad, Yves?" SB asked, swirling her thumbs around his elbow.
"Only as the past tense of the Keanu Reeves verb, 'to whoa'." SB smirked but said nothing. "It's a dye, blue, or something, right?"
"Or something, yeah," SB said. She leaned close to massage his upper arm. Her breath tickled Yves' his neck. "Anyway," SB began, "the ancient Britons painted themselves before every battle. They needed no other armor."
A memory of kilts and blue paint
clicked into place. "Like Braveheart," Yves said.
SB froze, then snorted, "Nothing like Braveheart." She went to work on his shoulder. "I'm talking aboriginal Albion, Yves. And it wasn't blue, either. Julius Caesar called it vitrum." She shook her head in reverie. "Julius. Now there's a guy who knew how to spend five denarii."
"Vitrum," Yves repeated. He knew his Latin roots from years of applied science. "Glass." He raised his free arm. The glaze of massage oil blazed in the sun. "Vitreous armor." His skin glittered as the oil dried, mellowing into a healthy glow. He twisted his arm one way and the other. Sunlight played over whipcord muscle, his wrist, his palm.
Yves stared. The puncture wound on his hand had healed. "Glass armor." Only a faded, comma-shaped scar remained, as if Yves had born it for years. From birth, Yves realized, like I've born it since birth. It's a mark, not a scar. That's what SB said. But now what?
SB's eyes danced, her voice edgy with urgency. "Take off your shirt, Yves."
Yves tugged his undershirt up over his head, his arms smooth and sure but his back panged hotly, forcing him into a hunch. SB had a big, three-finger scoop of jam ready and aimed for his chest. She hesitated, watching his spiky blonde hair droop over his eyes as his undershirt fell away. She flashed a crooked smile, brushed his hair back with her free hand, and splattered the scoop of goop atop Yves' head.
"Hey," Yves startled, laughing, but SB ignored him and combed the stuff through his hair with her fingers.
"The soldiers of Sparta and Macedon," SB said, knee-walking behind Yves' back, "would groom one another with it, with the vitrum."
Yves felt SB's knee nudge up against his butt. He suspected it was her knee, at least. "I thought that was just olive oil."
"No." SB's aquiline chin pressed into the hollow of Yves shoulder. The slinky material of her dress whisked against his back. Her lips scraped against his ear as she spoke, "They used olive oil to fuck." Yves swam in the scent of her summer cologne. SB reached up and scrubbed the jam into his scalp without mercy until Yves protested that his brain was marinating in strawberry marmalade.
"Better marinade than migraine," SB said, oiling Yves neck and knuckling the ridges of his shoulder blades. "Wouldn't you say?"
"Just keep doing what you're doing," Yves said. The twanging pain in his back evaporated under SB's care. "And I'd say any little thing you asked me to."
Rose crystal arms snaked around Yves' chest and slapped a big blob of jam onto his stomach. "Do you know what's going on, Yves?" The arms slithered up his chest, spreading the melting jam in two tingling swaths of oil from his abs to his pecs. Her firm breasts squashed against his back.
"You're," Yves shivered as SB's fingertip skated across his nipple, "you're seducing me."
"Mm," SB agreed, squeezing oil into Yves' ribs, "but do I have to?"
"No," Yves said, realizing it himself for the first time. He turned to smirk at her. Shining blonde blades of hair bowed to occlude his eyes. "You had me at, 'Ride me, Yves.'"
SB scooted around to Yves's side and kissed him. This time, Yves returned the kiss and took her in his arms. The giving flesh of her lips and toned expanse of her back felt as firm as any man or woman's, but her silken touch, her summery smell, her salty-sweet taste were beyond exotic, almost unearthly. SB broke their kiss and Yves, breathless, rested his forehead against hers. "I think I understand Dee a bit better now," he said.
"So," SB said, sitting up and daubing strawberry balm on the tip of Yves' nose. "If I'm not seducing you…" The balm melted into oil and she spread it across the bridge of his nose and around the orbits of his eyes. "Then what am I doing?" She swabbed his temples and forehead and Yves breathed easy; he had never felt more clear-headed in his life.
Yves thought about it as SB rouged his cheeks. "You're anointing me."
SB grinned and glanced aside, as if remembering some private joke. "I'm a-knighting you."
"I thought you knighted someone with a sword."
SB's introspective grin turned downright wicked. "That comes later." She finished her handiwork on his face and sat back to admire it.
The balm tingled as it dried. "Glass armor," Yves remembered. "You're armoring me. Outfitting me? No." He found the right word and it both thrilled and chilled him. "You're girding me."
SB leaped close, her third kiss hungrier than the last two combined. "Lie down, Yves," she said, voice low. "Lose the pants."
Yves settled into the picnic blanket, scrunching the wild grass beneath. His hair fanned over his face, shading his eyes from the cloudless sky and the sun high above the pines. He twirled a finger through a sheaf of his suddenly salon-perfect coiffure. "I've never been vain about my hair." He bunched his legs up. His knees still creaked and his thighs cramped but he ignored the pain as best he could and shucked off his slacks. The cuffs caught on his sneakers.
SB's arch smile hovered into view. "Silk boxers?"
"I'm vain about other things," Yves readily confessed. SB padded down to his feet, giving Yves a slow-pan eyeful of her copper-clad, powerhouse ass. "Uh." SB's rear swayed from the heavy counterweight tucked between her legs and hidden by her flowing dress. "Oh, boy," Yves swallowed. "Anyways, I always just let my hair do whatever it wanted." Yves propped himself up to watch SB undo his laces and a blonde tussock fell neatly across half of his face with an almost audible foop! noise. "I never expected a hairdo would take me literally."
Sneakers and socks sailed into the surrounding grass. SB administered the strawberry balm to Yves' feet. Yves yelped when she kneaded between his toes. "Quit squirming," SB said, smothering his heels and ankles in extra helpings of the stuff. "Achilles was ticklish, too, so I missed a spot and I bet you know the rest."
"Oh, ha, ha," Yves said. SB glanced up, her expression blank, and Yves added, "Um. Ha?" SB held his worried stare a moment longer, then thrust her tongue out between her teeth, dug her fingers into his calves and tickled him until Yves' howling laughter echoed across the placid reservoir. When Yves caught his breath, SB was smoothing salve over his knee. His lower legs wore greaves of glassy grease. "Okay, so you're girding me in vitrum—Ah!" A pressure point in Yves' knee popped and relief flooded through his leg. "God, that feels fucking fantastic. A minute ago I was nearly crippled. Now I want to run a marathon."
SB moved on to Yves' other knee but her eyes were fixed on the crotch of Yves' boxers. "Save your strength."
Yves heard the meaning behind the innuendo. "So vitrum is not going to make me strong like Dee."
"Nope," SB said. She popped another pressure point. Her hand crept up Yves' thigh.
"Good," Yves sighed, closing his eyes, letting the last of his pain and weariness wash away. "I'd be worse off with it. If I were suddenly Superman, I'd have to unlearn years of fighting with limited resources." SB oiled Yves' inner thighs, hands squeezing in a lazy rhythm. Blood rushed into Yves' face and his crotch. His slowly engorging dick slid against the silk of his boxers. "I guess virtum doesn't make me bullet-proof, either?"
"No," SB said, her oiled fingers working under the left leg of his boxers. "You'll never be bullet-proof, but fight well and you won't have to be." Her fingertips brushed against his pubic hair and she turned her attention to his other leg.
One of Dee's interminable comic book lectures rose unbidden in Yves mind. "Superman versus Batman," Yves heard himself say.
SB's sensual fingers froze. "Say what?"
"Superman's power comes from who he is. Batman's power comes from what he does." Yves had heard this bit from Dee so many times he could not help but plunge ahead. "Superman stands his ground and bullets bounce right off him. He doesn’t even have to think about it. Batman can dodge bullets because he's careful and brave, clever and quick." Yves sat bolt upright. "Plot armor. That's what Dee calls it. That's what vitrum is." Yves rubbed his stomach. The oil had soaked into his skin, but he could still feel the energizing tingle. "You're covering me in plot armor."
SB had not moved since Yves started blabbing. "Are you trying to turn
me off?"
"Hey, now. You, Tomoe, Nyx and Galatea are the gals running around empowering nerds." Yves lay back, hands behind his head. "What did you four expect?"
SB blinked at him, then whipped off his boxers. She dug deep with both hands into the mason jar, leaving nothing but dregs of jam at the bottom of the glass. "Really hot and freaky sex sprinkled with the occasional Monty Python reference," she said, fingers dripping.
"It's a fair cop," Yves admitted.
"Quiet, you," SB said, and brought her hands down.
Her left hand traced circles about his balls while her right slid straight down his scrotum. The jam melted immediately into oil. SB did not lose a single drop to the blanket beneath. She massaged rolls of oil into Yves' sensitive skin, running his taint between her ring and middle fingers.
SB's expert hands and the tingling oil electrified Yves and his pelvis pivoted up to meet them. SB wasted no time and dove her fingers into the crack of his ass. She teased the rim of his anus and he barked in surprised pleasure, bent his knees and pushed his butt off the blanket. "Perfect," she said, grabbing a cheek, "stay just like that." She cooed as she oiled him up, one hand squeezing his ass, the other curling around his balls and teasing the root of his cock. "Ooh, is this fun." Yves erection surged, the glistening red head of his dick peeking out from his foreskin. "Gotta get me some of that," SB said, bringing her right hand up and spiraling down his shaft, peeling his foreskin back with each pump, determined to paint every ridge and wrinkle of him in oil.
Yves groaned and collapsed onto the blanket, his twitching dick pointing skyward. SB's eyes unfocused, her lips puckered into a hazy smile. She coddled Yves' balls in her left hand, milked his cock in her right. "C'mon," she hummed. "Come on." Tension gathered in Yves' crotch and released in a full-body twitch, again and again. SB burst, "Oh! God," and "Oh! Yeah," with each shudder Yves gave her. She rocked up high on her knees and her own hardening prick flopped onto the blanket between Yves legs and pressed up against his inner thigh.
Yves felt some switch thrown deep within him and the maddening tension became a tide of building pressure. He moaned and muttered, inarticulate with encroaching orgasm.