(no subject)

[aeneia]

title:
characters: lakshmi bai & rustin cohle
summary: two college idiots fuck (literally) and get fucked (metaphorically)
warnings: sex talk I guess
music: Happy Little Pill, Numbers

It hadn't hurt. 

It might have been easier to look at him if it had. To know what to say as he was pressing his face into her neck, breathing into her skin with deep heavy gasps. If it had hurt, she might not have found that so reassuring, when she - for once in her life - didn't have a single idea what she was doing. It had looked easier when Aishwarya Rai would fall into the man's arms, sing about belonging there. She'd be reassured that it wasn't all a mistake and that all the love would make the next steps easier. A simple, easy, naive trust in herself. She had planned, oh, this far very perfectly. The getting kissed, the kissing back, the biting, the getting undressed. The most important part: it would be together. Felt a curling anticipation for how he would look, how he would reach for her. His hands at her hips, pulling her under him. Her chest pressing into his. His arms that boxed her in either side. It'd settle like a love scene, a warm hazed glow of a fade to black. 

But as she opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, it wasn't that easy. The slow turning fan that was strung up with the left over decorations from Holi he never took down offered no solutions for what happened otherwise. She didn't have the faintest clue where she was supposed to go next with this. The heavy feeling was in her skin, still. She was so full, full of him and that was physical too. That steady pressure where her knees were either side of his hips and his hand was on her thigh and when he moved, that desperate little twitch of his hips into her was - so much. Rocking them both like a boat against a tide. Back and forth, a steady rhythm that she couldn't say she hated. It was a deep and even pressure, that whether she wanted it or not, drew a sound out from her lungs. Unbidden, like the rest of her body was there with her mind, doing no more than reacting to it without being completely able to follow along with it. 

That was the problem, it was so much. He was so much. The physical, all too physical, pressure of him where he'd slide into her was too different this first time to feel good or bad. It hadn't let her do much else but hold onto him. Feel him tense and buck and sway, to gasp when he moved the roll of their hips together because he certainly knew what he was doing, or more than she did. She hadn't asked if or who he'd slept with, she never did. Because what did it matter to right at this second? That - there was only closing her eyes when he drew in close, one hand sliding into his hair and the other to his shoulder. To grip him tightly, mindlessly holding. Her body curling around his, her breath stolen out of her lungs that when she did breathe in, it was his skin. That sheen of sweat on his brow, the hollow of his throat that became everything she knew. How his hair tickled her chest when his head dropped low, his mouth closing over her breast, his blunt nails on soft skin when he dug in to lift her up. The salt on his neck as she tried numbly to kiss him and return something, anything of the feeling back. She didn't know if it was good or bad - it was too much, too much. She hoped it was too much for him too, figured - maybe, maybe, maybe- as she felt him buckle against her. The building drive that became insistent, pulled the sound from deep and heady to needy, quick, high. The pulse that was each movement, beating behind her eyes, loud inside her own head. Felt rather than heard as buried himself into her, all of her, that was what she wanted. Too have him as close as she wanted and to be as close as he wanted. In the echo of herself saying his name mindlessly, she could feel the vibration of his voice rumble through his chest. His fingers curling up against the sheet, her heel digging, kicking underneath them as she felt him pitch and there was something there, just in the back of her throat where she couldn't breathe deeply enough, that was all him. All him inside of her, all her inside of him and she keened so loudly with it.

The early fumbling that they had practised, over and done like there hadn't been so many months before it that lead to these few minutes. Crammed together in a single bed on a Saturday night, when they could have been drinking and hanging out in bars, hell, even studying. They'd kissed too many times to count, they'd fooled around more a half dozen times in a way that was - was all laughter. The study books tossed over the floor as they rolled back and forth, the easy exploration of how he could arch up under her teeth and how many names of Shiva she could remember when he was kissing the length of her body. Surprising him with warmth until he looked pleasantly perplexed, him finding new ways to make her laugh with clever fingers and a clever mouth like he was surprised he could and eager to perfect the skill.

But this was more than that, he'd looked at her - like something so far beyond him and maybe that terrified her too. Her head rolled up and away, to not look at it, and it was only half faked, easy to stretch out against the feeling of the quick movements that seemed to be getting the better of him, feeling him shift to accommodate it. The sharper push of his hips, quick and needy and she whined, unsure what it was building too, the heat on her own skin prickling through each limb as she felt him press into her, hip to hip, chest to chest. 

Decided weeks ago - she wanted this. She did. Perhaps this wasn't strictly what her father had meant when he said giving what is precious to her, to the person she loved. She knew he wanted someone who she cared for and cared for her in return, more than anything. She felt it, as he held her like he would never have otherwise. His hands suddenly gripping against the backs of her thighs as he hitched them up high, she felt him jerk roughly, not even or smooth and the harsh pant of breath on her shoulder, the teeth on her skin. She squeezed him back as encouragingly as she could, guessing it must have gotten to him too, and she welcomed it. Holding him tightly with arms and legs against her.

Then it was over and - she couldn't look at it. Her eyes shut, shaking all over, her legs uncurled to let him move free of her. He did so, pulling himself up, but not off of her yet. Supporting his weight on his arms. Tense muscles she'd felt bunched so tightly when she sunk her fingers into his back.

She'd chosen it, and she didn't regret it. How could she, truly? Not perhaps, what her father meant or what tradition dictated but - she loved him and this was nothing more than an act of it and she refused to feel guilty over. Like Radha and Krishna and childhood stories she held so dearly onto. Romeo and Juliet. Bajirao and Mastani. It'd be like - if only so far as she never spoke of it to him before she had decided any of this - 

"Manu?"

But choosing didn't mean understanding it, coming to terms with it. To loving someone and being so close to them, it had such an irreparable nature. Not of a shattered mirror, but of a freshly laid floor. The build of infrastructure. Unmistakably there, now, new and messy and to pull it down would leave - 

An emptiness she didn't think all the way through when he shifted, finally, off of her. Rolling onto the bed beside her, crammed together dormitories that suddenly felt like chasms. His loose arm around her waist was to be savoured, he'd be reaching for a cigarette soon. But right now, for once, she didn't have to push and shove for him to settle himself on her skin. Her eyes fluttered open, her head settling back. 

"... Lakshmi?"

She still couldn't look at him. Pushing herself out of the obligation of doing so. To hide herself away from his expression, still cooling in the heat of it. Her hair was sticking to her, clammy to the touch. She felt raw, opened, heated. That, too, would be overwhelming. Not for her, but for him. To say this, to say what any of it meant. 

Looking down was easier - and a mistake. Because he followed her gaze down too. She was a mess, she knew that going in how at least this bit would end. Dorm room talking, chattering about after and clean up and advice on how to deal with it. The heat that still felt a trickle between her legs. 

But there was a smear of blood with the rest of it. Not much, a spot on his white sheets - it hadn't even hurt. Oh, fuck, it wasn't her period was it? No. Just a receipt, and she had to shove a hand over her mouth because that wasn't funny but it was definitely easier to find it funny right then. Bet it didn't hurt at all, huh, for you - all that horse riding you do. Understood both halves of that now. It had felt like that, the steady pressure of something moving up and against. Balancing herself in her core. That wasn't the problem, though, if this was a worst of it, a spot of blood and familiar ache in her legs of dressage riding were calculated long before. 

He just didn't know - and he pushed up suddenly beside her, and he was concerned, so instantly and quickly as he looked at her. "Fuck - are you good? Did I - ?" 

She still wasn't looking at him. Did he have to - have to be so careful with her?

"Lakshmi." Rust's hands slide to push her face out of her hair - the way she liked, his fingers were long and quick, and they always felt good against her scalp. "Talk to me."

"It is nothing, Rust. Honestly. It happens." She mumbled it out, without removing him or prying the space. This had to be the worst part, the part that was different to the girls talking about what it was to fuck a guy then get up and leave. Like that was all there too it. She didn't want to leave, she didn't want to stop touching him. Her teeth sunk into her lip as she gnawed at the sensation rather than act on it.

"It shouldn't."

Was it too much, just the once, for him to be an idiot about something? To not have read everything under the sun about a topic? To just take something she said for granted. 

"It doesn't matter." Her head shook, tugging out of his hands. Letting them settle on her shoulders instead.

"It does if you're hurt and I did it, Christ." 

She shook her head, mouth forming around the words, slow and thick. "It didn't hurt. I knew you would not hurt me." 

Hung onto that notion, when she didn't tell him to stop or direct him in a way that said they shouldn't take this any further. He was careful with her, in a way she never quite expected from him. He always had been, and she knew he would be with this too. 

"Nah, Lakshmi, there something you ain't telling me. Sure hope you're not sparing my feelings. Cause it's not like we're fumbling around the first time or anything -"

She swallowed hard. Eyes still down, glad then, that she hadn't looked up. 

Didn't matter, though, did it. 

He dropped his hold of her, pulling back instantly. "You're not serious." 

"Leave it, for once, or is that too much to ask?" She pushed away then, shoving towards the side of the bed. Reaching for the last items of discarded clothes. Her underwear, bunched up. She wanted a shower, and maybe that had been a plan. To get up and get clean, use his. Just not - 

His hand took her wrist, fingers curled around it easy. A little while ago, he had felt so narrow tucked in against her thighs, with her leg hooked around him. They had fit to each other - some perfect way - he'd call it something else. Without disparity. 

"Lakshmi, is it too much to tell me the truth about what the hell this was?" He sounded... she didn't know. Hurt, hunted. Suspicious of what, she couldn't quite pick. Nothing she wanted to follow after. 

Her head tilted, but her eyes didn't rise, watching instead the sheet that was pooled in his lap, the knee that was stuck up. That was another thing, a man. A man that was all her own. Bare in front of her. Hers to touch, hers to play with. Hers to adore. That was the worst part. She still wanted him, love like a malaise. Since she realised it months ago. Steady as walking, one foot in front of the other. She hadn't expect it to change, but it was beating against the front of her head like a drum, loud, and louder again as she opened her mouth to say something, anything, that would smooth this out. They had been so wrapped up in each other and this - this thing that didn't matter when they started, now did. That was cutting a line she wasn't ready to work out when it was strew like lights back and forth across her mind. Taste and smells and touches, filled up all her thoughts to a muddle. She had to swallow it out of her mouth, keep out of her face, or he'd look, and he'd know. 

If she didn't know what came after he'd bore her backwards into bed, she definitely didn't know what came after that. 

Her jaw set, working hard against it. Swallowing again. "Stop. Leave it. It doesn't matter." She tugged her hand back, turning her back on him. Putting space between them. If she couldn't do it mentally, she could do it physically. Reaching to hook the - the especially picked out underwear for just today. Black and lacey, little crystals on the side. Did he like them? She didn't ask. Letting her long hair fall over her shoulder and side to hide her. 

"What doesn't matter? That's kind of what I am wanting to know here, Lakshmi?" The hand reached for her, she felt it when it settled on her shoulder, a tug, trying to turn her back - but stubbornness was always an easier course. To dig herself in instead of give any ground. If he had figured it out, couldn't he just hold her then, for awhile. For just awhile? Did he have to, have to make it a big deal? "Talk to me."

"There isn't anything to talk about, at least there shouldn't be. You enjoyed it, didn't you? I did too."

"Did you? Because either I hurt you and you aren't telling me." He was working something unhappy in his mouth, she didn't need to look at him to know. The tone that sat in his throat she knew, knew better than most. "Or it's something else. I could come with a lot of theories, but most of them aren't great - about why you'd sleep with me, and not tell me that I was your first." 

She went quiet, the underwear working up over her hips in a wriggle to get them on. Covering up something - not shame, she refused to let it be shame. She just wanted to sink back into him, into it - to just let him understand and know and - then what?

Oh, how she loathed not having a better plan than - than you weren't supposed to notice. 

"It wasn't about ... about what ever you're thinking. It wasn't something I wanted to bring up." 

"'Cause it sure as hell is starting to look like you're just using me for whatever it is going on in your head. What's next, run off to find a better offer? I thought this was meant to big some kind of big deal to you. Guess not. "

Half on the money, half not. But she was already half livid for how he started then to hear the rest of it. Her dress was in her hand as the words came out of his mouth, and she shot up, gripping it tightly in her fist, and the snap second he got what he wanted, looking at him in the sudden boiled over rage. "You think that?"

"What else am I supposed to think? You didn't bring it up, you just laid there the whole time, you didn't look at me, speak to me." He rolled then, away, reaching for his boxers, his own pants. Pulling them up over his hips and her eyes flicked on the sunken little bump between his ribs where he was warm in her hands. 

"That maybe you should listen when I said I didn't want to talk about it, that maybe it didn't need to be said, I made a choice and that wasn't any of your business." 

"Yeah, well, I didn't get a choice about it, did I, not properly and whatever you planned for this." 

The bed was between them. Her dress was yanked over her head and fell down over her, blue and loose cotton to above her knees. A thin covering that hardly felt it. She could feel him on her, still, feel his breath, his hands. The gritty details on the bed like a damning reminder. The used condom, the crumbled sheets, the damp stains. The faint red splotch of blood. 

Her teeth worked hard against themselves. Her fingers curling up hard against her palm. Working the words that would make this all easier up her throat, until at long last: "You're an idiot." 

"That's how it's going to be then, huh? You don't need to stay. Door's that way." His belt through the loops, around his hips, holding secure. One layer after another after another. Wrapped around tight to put something between them. His chin jerked, indicating behind her. 

"That isn't what I meant, this isn't what any of it meant." The shake in her hands was, hurting, maybe, like a shock wound. Too much, she thinks again, forming the words slowly and ugly in her mouth. Don't say it like this, you can't take it back if you do. She marched to the door, turning on her heel as she opening it. Too much. 

Too late. Even if that floor was freshly laid.

"You're not exactly giving me a lot to go on. How many times I've got to ask before I'm just talking to myself?" His arms hung loose, his shoulders jutted up against his skin. 

"You might be a knife, but you cannot cut, when you need to." It's bitten out, ugly laughter - the joke there, maybe is that it was always easy to laugh, especially when it was bitterness. She snatched for the rest of her things. Shoving a bag over her shoulder. Forgotten her bra - but what did it matter. Definitely wasn't taking time to look for it now as she headed for the door. Leave, he'd said. Well, leave, she would. 

He blinked, slowly, unsure. A question in his face but was unsure on the words, for once. Stumped him. Good. Good. She hoped - hoped he choked on it for hours. The things he didn't know. 

"I am in love with you, is the answer. Happy now? But I would hardly ask for you to love me back, so you can sleep easy." 

It was petty to slam the door behind her, but pettiness was the last resort of the desperate and - more than anything, that she at least, knew how to do.

--

She hadn't intended to even deal with it all until the week was over, when she saw the first message appear. The blip on her phone on the Tuesday night afterwards. The neat little messages in a blue bubble, then the one below it. Almost as long as her thumb as it rested on the side of the screen, using it to scroll down with. Flicking as message after message appeared. 

He'd have to prepared this. He probably drafted it. In that torn up way of his. Sentence after sentence of perfected misery. 

'I found this and ... '  

He had such an ability to talk about something and not talk about it at all. To talk about how she smelled and tasted and be remaking on the sky and trees and stars, all at the same time. He had poetry in his mouth and he wasted it so often on some stark cold surface that didn't deserve him. 

But, if she didn't like it, she wouldn't be here, right now, would she? With a detailed memory of all that was between them to be tripped over like a low punch to the stomach. 

But this, right now, was something else entirely. 

Taking Keats and nightingales and how she liked to sing mantras from childhood lessons and the colour of her hair and ending it all with: 

'...we have a project we should be concentrating on, I'll need your notes on Thursday.'

That was it? 

The phone was dropped out of her hand, discarded flatly as she sat back. Arms crossed on her chest, her finger tapping on opposite posed arm, the hard work of something in her jaw. Was she supposed to wake up and read this all, her day's worth of warning on the contact that they had stubbornly ignored. The opposite sides of the lecture hall. The refused glances. The deflected questions. 

This wasn't in her oh so glorious plan either. To be staring down a wall of text with the man who couldn't seem to get a word out right and that she didn't know where to start to tell him properly. Couldn't he have decided this all at the time? Didn't draw it out into a confession that came down to - a reminder they had a meeting on Thursday. 

It was too much. 

She never was very good at keeping still - but there was nothing to force herself against, no fight to be had, no competition to win, no paper to write, to work through to make any of this better. Her finger tapped, her phone lay black screened with no further messages. Her colour coded, meticulous notes below it that offered nothing useful either. 

Well done, Lakshmi Tambe. 

The unhappy thing needed to get out of her throat, out of her mouth, out where it filled up her tongue with a thousand equally as stupid words as the ones he'd just sent her. But it went no where, became no forward action. Just the ugly, turned over feeling in her stomach. 

He couldn't just say it, could he?

--

She felt bad for the third member of their research team. 

But she was glad that Rust might be the slowest walker known to man kind, as they made their way out of their shared Philosophy 306 class. Lakshmi knew she could out pace him easily in the duck and weave of ambling students. An agreed upon meeting place, the folder of papers she had ordered like she always did. Colour codded tabs, headers and labelled to what she had written. Neatly set in her hands, they at least weren't a mess, unlike everything else from her sleep to her thoughts, but it was a better use of her time than worrying. 

Worrying about things like the slow cough of a voice that she head behind and above her by that half a foot that let her fit under his chin. 

Shit.

Even if she couldn't mentally ignore him, she could do it physically as the wide eyed other Philosophy student didn't understand half the clues that were going backwards and forwards. "I've got to run. It's all there, but I've got to see to a meeting with the dressage team, sorry about running off like this." 

She wasn't sorry, Rust probably wasn't sorry either. Which was an unfair mean thought, but it was satisfying. She'd take satisfying right now when she didn't have anything else to go on. 

He didn't get to do this. She wasn't letting him. 

"You don't have dressage on Thursdays." Said the pointed voice behind her that she didn't turn back for, but the confused frown on the other guys was enough to respond too. 

So she carried on like he hadn't spoken, lifting her voice cheerfully. "It came up. Sorry about that. It might happen for a couple of weeks. We're having some problems with a show - " She was an awful liar, he knew, she knew it, but she was taking it and if he wanted to address it, he could talk to her when he had something sensible to say. 

"Well, we can move it, if you need too, it doesn't have to be-" the other student started, pushing on, trying to be helpful. 

The cough was pointed enough to cut him off. "Nah, if she's written all her notes, then what does it matter?" 

Unfairly again, something sits in her throat. Fuck you, you aren't even trying. But following that thought meant working out something else, like - what she even wanted him to be trying for. "I did. You know I always get my work done early." Talking and not talking. If she hated it, she refused to let it show, and her hand gripped hard before she finally had the thought it was to drag out the folder of notes for them. Setting it down on the table, flicking it open to go over everything. "If there is anything you need me to follow up on, let me know. But everything is there for the final write up, when we get to it."

That gave her at least, a month? Had to be enough time to get over this. 

She set it down and he wouldn't call it anything as undignified as fleeing, but it might have been just that when she turned on her heel and walked out of the open air tables as quickly as she could. 

--

She missed home, a lot. That wasn't anything new. Missed Kashi sneaking her an extra rhoti from where she was working. Missed her little brother shoving his way into her lap to get attention. That her father, she was sure, would tell her something comforting, to soothe an ache that settled deeply into her lungs. That prickled in the inhales and stung on a sore throat.

Worse, when she felt miserable, a longing that was almost palatable, and something she went to satiate in the simple things that she could. Not that a Midwest university had a lot to offer when it came to reminders of home.

(Except the ones that Rust let her throw in his room. He'd looked handsome in the candles of Diwali flickering the light in his hair, asking her about this word and that word.)

But it did have the one or two cultural tokens for its international students that... tasted like rubbish. Nothing like home - but as close as she was going to get in between classes on a Friday afternoon. Stacked on the sandwiches and slice of pie from the cafeteria before she snatched for the last lassi that was on end tray. Nondescript little plastic cups with straws, all brightly coloured like that some how would make up for the lacking taste.

It would do, for the time being.

Except where it was someone else's idea to get there first apparently. The hand reaching for it over hers. Longer, thin fingers, a smooth grip. That familiar print on his forearm, that laced up under a rolled back shirtsleeve.

Oh, for fucks sake.

"Sorry." was the murmur above her head. "Here, you -"

"-you have it. It doesn't have a good taste."

"I know. Not enough rose water."

The silence stretched. "Why did you want it then?"

"It's Friday."

Loathing him might be easier. Loathing him might mistake the notion that he was doing it on purpose because this was what they always did on a Friday. That he still paid attention to those things, was still doing them out of an echo, led to other questions. Like if he could feel her hands, like she could feel his -

It was petty. It was more than petty. She snatched it up only to throw it down. Pink stained yoghurt all over the ground like a crime scene he had to study in his classes. Splattering all over their shoes, a utter mess and someone nearby yelped on surprised at the sudden mess on the floor and the crash of sound it made. Made Rust jump back. Now neither of them could have it. Now no one could have it. She didn't take satisfaction in it. But she did in looking up at him, for the first time properly for days. Fixed and hard and unforgiving.

She left her food, it and her next class. She had a perfect attendance to date, it wasnt as if she would be begrudged missing one for once.

--

"It's just once Kashi. I haven't skipped class once since we were in grade two."

"So you could throw rocks at the boys chasing monkeys, you never do something like this for no reason."

The Skype call crackled over the phone connection, the half second off beat responses in transmission. Kashi had her face turned away for a moment, half way through the motion of pulling her hair out of her face as they talked in quick mutters of Hindi.

"He's being an idiot Kashi. He's hot and cold. Constantly."

"You knew that." it was faintly admonishing, directing. Like only old friends could. Asking without asking about what this was meant to mean.

"I thew a cup at him."

The silence went on, mercifully free of judgement but still - there was the down side of those that knew you well. There was nothing like the reproach in her sigh. "Manu..."

"I did not mean too. I just wanted to say he can't go back now. I was willing to let it be nothing, but he pushed. He isn't allowed to just..."

Her teeth sunk into her lip, latching into skin for a sharp flicker of pain to clear her head with it.

"He sent me these messages talking about me. Not talking about me. Talking about me like poetry and I was so sure when I got to the end -"

"He'd...?"

Lakshmi bit sharp quick. "He'd give me something to go on, but he just said we should focus on class."

"He does have a point."

The whine was nothing less then petulant: "Kashi!"

"... But that wasn't the way to say it."

Her fingers twitch flickering back and forth against themselves in an absent need to move. Sharp and needling. Then, heavy, deep: "It hurt. He did not say anything at all."

"I'm sorry, Manu."

"There is a party tonight. I am going to get ready."

"Are you sure?"

"It's that or run out of cups to throw. It will keep me busy and he never comes if I don't bring him so I will not have to think about it."

"If you must. I don't care if you're over there I am not covering for you if the police call."

"I know." she flickered, watching the screen. "Kashi?"

"Mm?"

Her fingers hovered over the end call button. To say it was to give this hurt something else. "I should have told him, shouldn't I?"

"Yeah, Lakshmi, you should have."

There wasn't much else to say to it, really.

--

The first cup wasn't an issue, the second reasonable and the third on someone else, forgiveable.

But the fifth? On her? A utter disaster.

Her words slurred, felt the heat in the front of her cheeks, and her laughter was too loud to her own ears, which was mostly a problrm because she couldn't stop.

This was the part, she knew, where Rust would fish the cup out of her hand. She knew that routine too. Maybe it was like a pumpkin she remembered from the story. Or maybe the was the dress? At a certain time, everything would go back to normal.

Did that make him the mice or the duck?

Which was a perfectly hilarious thought if she'd ever heard it, honestly. It sent her into another peal of laughter as she sat on the edge of the couch, sipping drink number six half listening, forgetting her English, to the conversations passing by her. Gladly ignoring the looks she was otherwise receiving.

A good thing too, that she was oblivious it made the stumble up to the bathroom to throw up fairly shameless.

The hands in her hair pulling it back though, those she could ignore as being nothing more than a fairytale. A nice one at least, because she didn't have much of a plan to let up tomorrow night either.

--

When Monday rolled around, she didn't have an interest in reminenscing on her poor choice of the last two days. Her sunglasses crammed to cover her eyes. The dark cup of coffee to clear her head after the water she had thrown back.

Some how, despite all of it - she had still managed to get out of bed to go for ther morning run.