C 3 M 3 N T 0 M 0 R 1

There always came a night where time narrowed and warmth settled in heavy behind the eyes.

The hour had passed for the lanterns to be put out. They sat scattered around the room casting a gentle glow on the patchwork of rugs and the yawning ceiling. The dim light gave way to a hood of shadow draped across the recessed bed, a heavy pelt that beckoned a heedless fall into the respite of sleep.

But Cherry, sitting on the shadow’s feathered border, felt the darkness as tendrils winding through his mind, forcing it into a state of dwelling under the claw of its grip. He had smoked the last of his herb down to ash, and all that remained was the same stew of thoughts lapping at the foot of his defenses.

To get past Elinor’s senses, he could only steal glances– never stare. Whether she could discern the intent by premonition or something as small as a shift in breathing was uncertain. But whatever the case, an extended evening smoke could only last so long before it could no longer serve its purpose as an excuse to badly sate Cherry’s unmet urge.

Elinor’s dress rustled next to him. “It’s past time for bed. Put the lanterns out of their misery, would you?” She unfolded her legs and rose from the bed to arrange herself for the night. And a backstabbing impulse, fast as a snakebite, caused Cherry’s hand to dart out, his fingers grasping her skirt.

Elinor turned to look down at Cherry, or at least point her unseeing eyes in his direction. A meager tangle of excuses skittered around in his throat, and they were all useless before they’d been uttered. He managed a half-grunt half-sigh. 

“What?” Elinor said.

Cherry said nothing. He wasn’t obligated.

But Elinor loved to fill in blanks.

“Fine. Keep it to yourself. But do you mind if I guess what you’re thinking?”

“Do what you like,” Cherry muttered, interlocking his arms around his knees.

Elinor tiptoed down the step in front of the bed and alighted on the spread of rugs that composed the main floor. Cherry heard the smile curling around the very first syllable. “We both know I don’t need to be spoon-fed at mealtime. Why do you insist on doing it sometimes and not others?”

“Because you spill,” Cherry said. “Because you’re messy when you eat soup.”

Elinor toed off her slippers and shuffled them over to the edge of the textured floor. “I don’t believe soup is the issue. You’re not aware of what you’re doing when you feed me.”

Cherry scoffed, took a drag from his pipe, and inhaled a lungful of nothing. Habit. He choked back another scoff. Elinor approached and ran fingers through her thick fringe, her moonbeam eyes two ghostly pinpricks flickering through the strands.

“You twist the spoon around in my mouth, and then I can’t help but spill. Then you hold it too far away and tell me to lick before more goes to waste. Is ogling my unfurled tongue your idea of efficiency?”

Cherry looked past her and fixed his gaze on a lantern across the way. He pressed the neck of his pipe between his fingers as he felt Elinor’s knee brush against him.

“You think about my mouth.”

She couldn’t work with silence forever. Cherry clenched his jaw.

“You think about me putting my mouth on you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” The venom sprang out like a pop of hot oil.

“I’ve got holes in my teeth and a nose that gets in the way,” Elinor said. “But aside from that, I think I understand.” She stood leaning over the bed like the curved trunk of a shade tree. “The idea of my mouth, which lives way up here–” She pointed to her mouth.

“--coming way down here.” She descended to her knees in front of Cherry, who locked up in his seat. Her silhouette replaced the lantern across the room. “It excites you.”

Cherry’s breath was a blade in his throat. He realized his legs were no longer shielding him. They had somehow melted apart as Elinor had made her advance. Now each knee was clutched in her hands, and the slate-gray spade of her face drew closer to what lay between. 

That motion replayed in his mind. It looked like the sinking of a great tower, a mighty sentinel drifting regally down against all sense of order to join him in the base depths of wishes he didn’t have the stomach to verbalize. Slender fingers crept over the waistband of the black material of his trousers, but they might as well have constricted his heart at the lightest stroke. The fingers breached the cleft of clothing and skin, cool against burning hot. There was a tugging in his groin where her fingers traced the buttery, sensitive crevices of his nether region, but it was uncoupled from his growing arousal. He noticed the tendons of his thighs straining to their limit. No, had he spread his legs as wide as they could go?

He was sure it was over when Elinor’s fringe tickled his bare midriff, but then she halted. Her dress rustled. She drew back and revealed her face, lifting something to it. Cherry watched her tuck the long stem of a sweet-stalk between her teeth, and then those slender fingers were splayed across his chest.

With a push, Cherry was on his back, anguish already searing his vessels. He felt pressure on his organ and an infuriating laugh from Elinor, and his brow crumpled into itself. 

“Why do I bother listening to you?” he growled. When he opened his eye to glare at her, all he was met with was that smug face chewing away on the plant as if it weren’t attached to the same body and the same hand that was plunged into his clothing, gripping his hard prick easily. The hand began to stroke once, twice, and then mercilessly fast and rough.

“Because I tell the truth,” came Elinor’s unwanted answer. Her hand was vicious in its work, but suited to the task. Her flat palm slotted in so nice and tight around Cherry’s stout little cock, and the ridge of her thumb was rolling over the ridge of his round tip, catching each time. He might drool if he let his jaw go slack– would she notice? His thoughts dared to try and inhabit hers. How did his prick feel in her hand? Did she think of squeezing it in place to test his limits? Did she think of twisting it or pinching the tip like a foul pustule, determined to milk the premature fluid from him before his body had the chance to issue the command? Cherry gasped raggedly, wishing he could silence each breath and everything else. No, now she was leaning into him. Her sickly breath mixed with his, dancing across his nose instead of down where he wished he were feeling it.

“For instance,” she continued, velvety and rich, “my stalk simply tastes better than what’s about to explode all over my hand.”

“Fuck,” Cherry snapped. Just envisioning it wrenched him all the way to that inescapable apex, and some shred of his consciousness was flung sky-high where it stretched fluttering like a dying insect, the other end of it planted squarely in the seething molten pit below his waist. Beat after beat of palm against shaft thumped between them. The sounds of Elinor’s endeavor grew wetter, wetter, and it was all him. He was to fulfill her words, and the fulfillment was swelling inside him with a force that he couldn’t hold back.

The explosion did occur, and with his damned hips bucking for it, worst of all. She finished him off with a series of tugs that would have been appropriate for freeing the stubborn corner of a sheet from under a mattress. When he was spent, Elinor withdrew her hand from Cherry’s heaving, sweaty form. His ears rang as the aura of lust faded and swapped places with a begrudging awareness of his own body. Namely, the mess on the front of his pants. A hand darted back towards him as he sat up. Elinor wiped the offending palm on the strip of clothing that covered his belly.

“Best clean up before you join me in bed,” she chirped.

Cherry stared through one squinting eye, his face still pulsing. Whether it was tepid scorn or the surly aftertaste of subverted desire, the furrow of his expression digressed into obscurity once fatigue began plodding circles in his head. He passively parted with his soiled clothes and placed a wall in front of anything that might incur reflection on what had happened.

I'm not sure I can exactly explain my design choices with these... How exactly they correlate to their characters. There is something, but I went for it fully intuitively. If anyone has ideas what how and why - please let me know!

And also thanks to @nightly-headache for helping out and assistance!