“Oh!” Date! Date! Date! “Right, yes.”

Nancy’s frown only deepens. “Yes . . . they were closed?”

“No,” Robin says. Technically, she realizes, she’s already gone on a date with Nancy, even if she didn’t realize it. She’s been on a date with Nancy Wheeler! She wants to laugh, but tamps it down. “Sorry, it’s been a weird morning. What were we talking about?”

Nancy narrows her eyes at Robin. “Are you OK?”

“Definitely not!” Robin admits cheerfully, earning her another shush from somewhere nearby. “But it’s fine, don’t even worry about it!”

Because the thing is, if she’s already been on a date with Nancy, then that really takes all the pressure off asking her out. She doesn’t have to wonder whether Nancy likes her back, or if she’ll deign to be seen with her in public, because she already knows the answer.

Somehow, her reassurances don’t seem to set Nancy at ease. “Is this about earlier?” Nancy asks warily. “Because I know I shouldn’t have snapped at you, it’s just midterms and everything, and—”

Robin waves a hand. “You don’t have to make excuses. I get it. Things are hectic, and here I am making a mess of everything while you’re just trying to finish up your papers.”

“You don’t—” Nancy begins to protest, and it’s sweet of her, really, to try and defend Robin, even if she was the one casting aspersions a little while ago.

“Oh, no, trust me. I’m definitely good at screwing things up. Like, the other day, this pretty girl asked me out and, like a complete and utter bonehead, I didn’t even realize it was a date, so I spent the entire night talking to someone else when I could have been hanging out with her.”

Nancy has gone very still. She’s looking at Robin with a cautious expression—almost, Robin thinks, hopeful.

“And you wanna know the crazy thing?” she goes on. “I’ve had a crush on this girl for ages. So, like, her asking me out was almost too good to be true, you know what I mean? I guess that’s why I didn’t realize what was happening. Like, never in a million years did I ever expect her to see me that way, so when she did, it just didn’t even occur to me I could be so lucky.”

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” Nancy says primly, a blush rising to her cheeks, “but I guess I could have been clearer.”

Nancy turns to face Robin now. “So you’re saying I should return it.”

Robin rolls her eyes. “That is not what I’m saying at all.”

“Because if it doesn’t matter what I wear, then I might as well not waste half my paycheck on a suit I probably won’t even work up the nerve to wear.”

“What I’m saying,” Robin says pointedly, “is that it makes you look smart and sexy and extremely in-charge. Which is to say, it makes you look like you.”

Nancy feels, of all things, a knot forming in her throat. Because that’s what she thought, too, standing there in the fitting room in her stocking feet. That was why she hadn’t been able to put it back on the rack and leave it behind—because wearing it made her feel something she’s been chasing ever since that internship at the Hawkins Post, maybe even longer than that. She feels powerful in this suit in a way she never really did in all her frilly pink blouses in college, or in the unobtrusive grey blazers she started wearing in college, just to blend in.

“Have I ever mentioned,” Robin says, reaching out to take Nancy’s hands and draw her closer, “the crush I had on Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday?”

“You think?” Nancy asks demurely, pleased by the comparison.

Robin nods, slow and serious. “We should get you a little hat.”

Nancy rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “I think I’m going to leave matching hats to Rosalind Russell.”

Robin gives an expressive shrug. “If you insist,” she says, and then in the same breath, she reaches up and yanks the price tag off the jacket, pulling it off with a snap of plastic.

“Robin!” Nancy gasps.

She tosses the price tag and the little paper envelope of spare buttons over her shoulder, unrepentant. “Now you have to keep it.”

“But—”

“You deserve it, Nance.” She takes Nancy’s hips this time, maneuvering her so she’s perched sideways on Robin’s lap. “Even if I hated it—which I very much do not, by the way—I’d still tell you to keep it, because it makes you so . . . I don’t even know what to call it. It just looks right on you. It looks like it feels right on you, like something you didn’t even maybe know was missing just fit into place. Am I right?”

Nancy nods, embarrassed to admit this, even to Robin.

Robin kisses her lightly, so gently it makes Nancy blush, just a little. “Then you should keep it.”

“I’ll think about it,” Nancy says, but she knows she’s going to keep it—and not just because Robin likes it. “But if I lose those spare buttons just because you wanted to make a point, there will be consequences.”

*

True to her word, about a week later, Nancy turns off the TV after dinner and presents her with a typed checklist. It’s ten pages long.

“Is it already time to renew our lease?” Robin jokes, and then her mouth goes dry when her eyes land on a word on the third page that is definitely not in any lease agreement she’s ever signed.

“I was thinking we could each fill this out, and then compare our answers,” Nancy says, and it’s cute how pleased she is with this idea, even if Robin doesn’t quite get it.

“Like a Cosmo quiz?” She suddenly has the mental image of the two of them lying on their stomachs, kicking their feet up in the air and picking mostly As or mostly Cs. “Do you wanna braid each other’s hair and talk about our crushes, too?”

Nancy deflates a little. “Or we can do something else, if you want,” Nancy says, only a little resentfully. “I just thought it would be a good idea for us each to have time to think about what we do and don’t want on our own, so there’s not as much pressure to decide in the moment.”

“That’s . . . a great idea,” Robin says, impressed. Of course it is, because this is Nancy, who does nothing by half measures.

Nancy ducks her head and smiles, preening just a little. “Good.”

Robin stares down at the sheaf of papers in her hands, which has clearly been typed up on Nancy’s clunky old electric typewriter. “Did you type this up yourself?”

Nancy flushes, just a little. “I couldn’t find a checklist that I like, so I made my own.”

Robin laughs, delighted, and sets aside the papers so she can tackle Nancy against the couch cushions. “I love you,” she says, climbing on top of her. She kisses Nancy once and then again, and then a third time for good measure. “This is going to be the sexiest questionnaire I’ve ever filled out. The people at Gallup are going to be so jealous.”

*

As it turns out, it is sort of sexy to fill out Nancy’s checklist. There are definitely plenty of things on the list that Robin marks as a hard no and resolves never to think about again, but there are a lot of things curious about, too.

There’s also a lot of stuff on this list that she’s never heard of before, and she’s not exactly inexperienced. True, she’s not the most adventurous lesbian in the world, but she’s got a lot of friends who do, and they all talk, so if she’s stumped, that means Nancy did some seriously in-depth research to put this list together. Most of the unfamiliar terms she can work out from context, and those she can’t, she takes great pleasure in springing on Nancy at the most unexpected moments.

“Hey, Nance?” she asks from the living room, while Nancy is making coffee one morning, like she’s asking about a crossword clue. “What is ‘dacryphillia’ a love of?”

To her great satisfaction, she hears a spoon clatter to the floor, and Nancy’s muttered curse.

But all teasing aside, Robin is trying to take the checklist seriously. Nancy went to all this trouble to do things right, and Robin wants to honor that commitment. She’s also genuinely curious to find out her ow answers to some of the questions Nancy’s thought up. She takes her time with the questions, concertedly trying to imagine a situation I which she might be turned on by doing some of the things on the list, or having them done to her. She’s always had an active imagination, and, perhps unsurprisingly, it’s not a terrible burden to imagine having sex with Nancy. There are more than a few sex acts she wouldn’t have guessed she was interested in in the slightest, but the moment she imagines Nancy in the place of some anonymous leather-clad dominatrix, she starts to see the appeal. More than once she works herself up just thinking about one of the activities on the list—so much so that when Nancy gets home from work early one afternoon, she’s wryly amused to find Robin masturbating with the checklist lying abandoned on the bed beside her.

“You know you don’t have to try them all out all by yourself,” Nancy says from the doorway to their bedroom.

“Oh? Does that mean you want to come join me?”

Once she’s stacked the fallen books back on the desk again—probably not in the right order, but at least they’re not sprawled on the floor—she takes a careful step back and says, “I’m gonna go get a cup of tea from that place we went yesterday. D’you want anything?”

“I’m fine,” Nancy huffs. Then, thinking better of it, “Coffee—”

“—black,” Robin finishes, “I know. Promise you won’t leave before I get back?”

Nancy rolls her eyes, which Robin figures is as much reassurance as she’s going to get.

It doesn’t take her long to make her way out of the library and get in line at the little café around the corner. It’s sort of a relief, actually, to be out in the fresh air, away from the anxious silence of the library and Nancy’s own inexplicable bad mood. If only Robin knew what she’d done wrong—before she caused a massive book avalanche, that is. Nancy’s mood has been sour ever since they left the party last night, and Robin can’t for the life of her figure out why.

She’s trying to decide whether she wants Mystic Mint or Calming Chamomile when someone taps her on the shoulder. She turns to find a fresh-faced girl standing behind her. Robin knows they were introduced at the party last night, but she can’t quite recall the girl's name. Rebecca or Regina or Ramona, something like that.

“Robin, right?” the girl says.

“At your service,” Robin says, and then, for some totally unknown reason, she gives a little dramatic twirl of her hand like a Victorian gentleman doffing his cap. No wonder Nancy's so sick of her.

The girl quirks a bemused, almost pitying smile. “How’s Nancy doing this morning?”

“Annoyed at me, mostly,” Robin says, trying to be sanguine about it. “What can I tell you? I’m just really good at getting on Nancy Wheeler’s nerves. It’s a talent, honestly. I should put it on my resume.”

The girl—Renata? Romilda?—laughs incredulously. “I mean, I’d be pissed, too, if my date spent the whole night talking to someone else.”

Everything around Robin goes silent. All she can hear is the ringing in her ears. “Uh—what?” she croaks.

Roberta-or-Roxanna says is saying something, but Robin isn’t listening. It feels like that single word has replaced the sound of her pulse in her ears—date date date. Is that what last night was? Is that why Nancy was so weird about asking if she wanted to go to the party, assuring Robin over and over that they didn’t have to go if she didn’t want to? Is that why she’d worn her dressy shoes, the black ones that pinch her toes?

Now that she thinks of it, the place they had dinner before-hand was a little nicer than she’d expected it to be. And their table had been kind of secluded in the back, with those fancy candles. Maybe that would explain why Nancy had been so irritated when Robin started toasting her breadstick over the open flame.

She thinks back to how Nancy had introduced her to her friends at the party. She hadn’t said, “This is Robin, my friend from home,” or, “Robin and I went to high school together.” She’d just said, “This is Robin,” and Robin remembers thinking how strange it was that all of Nancy’s friends had glanced at each other like they knew exactly what that meant. She’d thought at the time they must have heard some embarrassing stories about her from their time in Hawkins. Only maybe that hadn’t been it at all.

She realizes, absently, that she’s holding up the line. The barista is staring at her, waiting for her to order, and the other people behind her in line are starting to get impatient, and Roseanna-or-Rowena is looking at her like maybe she’s left the planet.

A moment later, the mattress sinks down beside her, and then Nancy is pressed against her back, so warm she’s almost a brand on Robin’s chilled skin.

“Like this?” Nancy murmurs into Robin’s hair.

“Mm-hmm.” The weight of Nancy’s whole body is delicious, pressing her hips against the mattress.

Nancy dips her head to nuzzle Robin’s neck and says, mock-saccharine, “Did you miss me?”

Robin whines again—pathetic in a different way, this time. “Uh-huh,” she says, and squirms a little for good measure.

Nancy laughs, and then slips one hand between, Robin’s body and the sheets, past her hip, finding the seam of her with unerring precision. “Is this what you want?” she breaths against Robin’s ear, her voice husky, not teasing anymore.

“Yeah,” Robin gasps, jumping under Nancy’s touch.

Nancy doesn’t hesitate after that, working Robin’s clit roughly in the tight space beneath her body. It’s unbelievable how fast Nancy can turn her on. Robin wasn’t even thinking about sex a minute ago, and now she’s aching for it, so eager for Nancy, and, fuck, it’s good, as she rocks her hips into Nancy’s touch, their combined weight bearing her down against the quick, sweet movement of Nancy’s fingers.

“Feeling warmer now?” Nancy asks, and all Robin can do is nod, sweating where Nancy’s breasts are pressed against her back, and slick between her clenched-together thighs. Her breath comes in shuddering gasps, flaring humid across the sheets. She feels wrapped up in Nancy, held, lit from the inside.

“I’ve been thinking about you all night,” Nancy breathes as she leans down to kiss Robin’s neck. “Kept telling myself that when I got to a stopping point, I’d come in here and wake you up so I could fuck you.”

Robin sobs, her cunt hot and tense under Nancy’s touch. Every inch of her skin tingles, and she feels sure if someone were watching, they’d see sparks crackling where she’s rubbing against the sheets.

“I can’t believe how good you looked, all sprawled out on the bed like that, waiting for me,” Nancy continues. “Almost makes me want to leave and come back, just so I can admire you some more.”

Robin fucks her hips back against Nancy’s hand, desperate for even more friction. “Nancy, please.”

“Please what?”

How can Nancy’s fingers move so quickly? Robin’s head is spinning, her hips trembling. “Please, please,” she gasps. She can’t remember what she was supposed to say.

Nancy’s breath is hot against her cheek. She’s hot, she’s so hot, she’s going to die of it, she’s sure. “Did you want to come?”

With a desperate shudder, that’s exactly what Robin does, a hot, slick clench against Nancy’s fingers, hips jerking helplessly. She feels Nancy buck on top of her, almost thrown off Robin’s back by the intensity of the tremor that shakes her.

“Oh, fuck,” Robin gasps, when she can breathe again. Nancy is still touching her, lazily now, with none of the wicked intent of a moment ago, just appreciating how luxuriously wet she is. “Fuck, Nance, you’re so good to me.”

Nancy kisses her hair, breathing in deep the scent of her sweat. “Not too heavy? Want me to get off of you?”

To their mutual surprise, they do actually have a good time. College Mall is doesn’t have quite the same selection as Starcourt did, but it’s also not backed by nefarious Russians. It shouldn’t be fun, shopping with someone who has objectively terrible taste, and who thinks Nancy has awful taste in turn, but it is.

“Seriously, Wheeler?” Robin asks, when Nancy picks up a perfectly nice set of sheets with pale pink roses on them.

“What? What’s wrong with these?”

Robin laughs. “Nothing, if you’re Laura Ashley!”

“Well," she says indignantly, "which ones would you pick?”

Robin gets a devilish look in her eye and leads Nancy across the bedding section, weaving between the displays. “Just look at these beauties!” she says, doing jazz hands in the direction of a set of sheets in an eye-searing geometric pattern, every angle somehow in startling disharmony with the next. Nancy actually feels a little dizzy looking at the fabric, something she hadn’t previously thought was even possible.

“They’re hideous,” Nancy says.

“I know,” Robin says, with barely-restrained glee. She holds the package up for Nancy to take a closer look, which only makes the design worse. “Isn’t it great?! It’s like someone vomited non-Euclidean geometry all over your bed. Imagine if a—if someone brought you back to their dorm and you start making out only to find that under their comforter. Instant hilarity.”

Nancy blinks at the mental image. “I guess it would be sort of a mood killer,” she admits, though her dating history’s been marred by some pretty lamentable bedroom décor, and that never stopped her.

Robin nods sagely. “Good for weeding out the faint of heart.”

“You should get them,” Nancy says firmly, though she doesn’t think the sheets are any less ugly now than she did a minute ago. But they make Robin laugh, and it's nice to see her toothy, sidelong grin.

Robin shrugs, setting the package of sheets back down on the shelf. “I’ll probably just bring some sheets from home,” she says, her voice carefully casual.

Nancy remembers too late Robin bemoaning the fact that her scholarship to IUB doesn’t cover room and board. It hasn’t escaped her notice that Robin’s got one shopping bag to Nancy’s three.

“D’you want to get some frozen custard?” Nancy asks abruptly. “My mom’s treat.”

“Yes, I absolutely do,” Robin says, with such seriousness that Nancy can’t help but laugh.

Nancy can’t help thinking about it, though, as they make their way to the food court and order their frozen custard, Robin shoving the remainder of the twenty dollars into the tip jar out of sympathy. She can’t help thinking how different their college experiences are going to be—Nancy almost a thousand miles away at Emerson, Robin here in Bloomington, not even an hour away from home. Nancy has a merit scholarship, too, but her parents are paying for everything it doesn’t cover without batting an eye, while Robin’s been talking about getting a part-time job on top of her work-study. Nancy’s not even sure when Robin will find time to take someone back to her dorm to make out.

That hasn’t escaped her notice, either, the little pronoun game Robin plays sometimes—when she talks about dating at all. Nancy’s never asked outright, because she’s afraid to shatter the tenuous friendship that’s developed between them since spring break. But between her vehement insistence that she and Steve are just friends and the way she looked at Susan Sarandon in The Hunger that one time they all tried to do movie night, Nancy’s reasonably certain that the someone Robin would be bringing home would be someone a little like Nancy herself. Probably not just like her. Someone cooler, with edgier taste in music. Someone who wouldn’t pick sheets with dainty little rosebuds on them. Someone with red hair, most likely, if Nancy’s not mistaken. But someone—at least in some particulars—not entirely unlike Nancy.

And Nancy doesn’t really know what to do with the way that knowledge sits inside her, the way she thinks about Robin leaning back on her elbows on her dorm room bed and feels a pang of jealousy for the girl who’ll get to push her down on the worn-soft sheets she brought from home. But it’s a moot point, because even if Robin’s interested in girls, it’s not like she’d attracted to girls like Nancy, and even if she were, in a few weeks they’ll be half a continent apart, and Nancy’s tried the long-distance thing and it didn’t work out great the last time, so what’s the point of even entertaining the possibility?

By the time Nancy climbs on top of her, Robin is already desperate. The slide of Nancy’s thighs as she sinks down onto Robin’s strap is smooth as silk, and her weight, slight though she is, adds a tantalizing pressure as the base of the toy pushes against her.

Robin lets go of the strap as Nancy settles herself, circling her hips experimentally with a gratified sigh. Before Robin can even roll her hips, Nancy is lifting up again and sliding back down, fucking herself on Robin’s cock.

There was a time, once, when Robin might have hesitated to call it that. She’s known her share of women who don’t think of things that way, who might, even, consider such a turn of phrase a sort of betrayal. She’s known plenty of women, too, who would be insecure if their girlfriend—especially a girlfriend who used to date men, who was maybe a little too eager to see Eyes Wide Shut because she still hasn’t gotten over her adolescent crush on Tom Cruise—liked getting fucked this way, but Robin loves it.

She loves looking up at Nancy above her, at her small, soft breasts bouncing as she rides Robin’s cock. She loves, too, the way she can put her hands on Nancy’s hips and feel her moving, see her muscles flex under her pale skin. The sight of Nancy slipping a slender hand through her dark thatch of pubic hair to touch her clit is one Robin thinks she could watch forever. She loves how she can feel it when Nancy is about to come, her thighs starting to tremble as she bears down on the pleasure pooling in her hips. Nancy’s curls fall wild around her when she throws her head back, and Robin would have to be an idiot to pass on such a luxury, to say nothing of the lean column of her neck, her wet and parting lips. And perhaps most of all, she loves feeling Nancy use her for her own gratification, the way she won’t stop until she’s satisfied and there’s nothing Robin can do but keep giving it to her.

Still shivering from her orgasm, breath hectic in her chest, Nancy leans down to capture Robin’s lips in a kiss. “You feel so good inside me,” she says. “If you fuck me just right, sweetheart, maybe I’ll let you come, too.”

A moan punches out of Robin, her cunt clenching hard between her legs. Nancy licks into Robin’s open mouth, a teasing flick of her tongue that makes Robin’s hips buck. Nancy is so wicked like this, all cruel mischief and selfish self-gratification—dangling what Robin wants right in front of her, always holding it just out of reach.

“Do you want to come tonight?” Nancy murmurs, lips still close enough that Robin can almost taste another kiss.

Robin groans and nods her head.

Nancy draws back enough so that Robin can see her smirk. “Do you think you can do it?” She circles her hips again to remind Robin of the pressure of the strap—close to her clit but not quite near enough to get her off. “Can you fuck me well enough to earn it?”

“Uh-huh,” Robin moans, so desperate for her—to make her happy, to make her come, to take whatever Nancy will give her.

“All right, then,” Nancy says. She leans in close, so that their bodies are almost flush, and presses Robin’s wrists to the mattress, which sends a hot flush of need through Robin from scalp to toes. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The rhythm Nancy sets this time is punishingly fast, fucking herself on Robin’s cock as quick as she can. Robin rises to meet her, snapping her hips hard enough to make Nancy cry out. Robin is drenched in sweat within moments, the muscles in her belly shaking with the effort of keeping up with Nancy’s pace. But, god, the sight of her when Robin fucks her is worth it. Even if Nancy decides she doesn’t deserve to come tonight, it’ll be everything Robin needs just to watch her like this. She’s so serious, chasing her orgasm like she pursues anything she wants—recklessly, relentlessly, without hesitation. And the stunned pleasure that breaks across her face as Robin grinds her cock into her just right is so gratifying. Robin did that to her. Robin can give her what she needs.

Robin wants to get her hands on Nancy, but Nancy’s grip is firm on Robin’s wrists. The moment she tries to lift an arm, Nancy redoubles the pressure against the mattress. “Don’t you want to be good for me?”

The question makes Robin groan, cunt clenching between her braced legs. She does want to be good for Nancy, always, always, but, god, she also wants to come.

“Tell me,” Nancy says, rocking herself rough and shallow to meet Robin’s thrusts. “Tell me what you want.”

Right now, it’s all Robin can do to breathe. Talking—let alone in full sentences—feels like asking too much. But it’s Nancy who’s asking, so she tries to focus. “Wanna fuck you till you can’t stop coming.” She’s not even sure that makes sense, but Nancy moans above her and kisses her encouragingly.

“What else?” she gasps.

Robin can tell from the breathless note in Nancy’s voice that she’s close again. She’s letting the close clench of their bodies help her along, rubbing herself off against Robin’s hips, and it makes Robin weak to feel Nancy using her like that. Robin likes to be of use.

“What else,” Nancy asks sharply, and, fuck, Robin was supposed to be talking.

“Wanna make you come,” she hurries to say, tongue-tied with lust. “Wanna give you what you want, all of it, till you can’t take it anymore. Wanna taste it on you, how good you feel, how well I made you come.”

Nancy comes with a shout, the way she used to be self-conscious about, and Robin loves it, loves her loud and unrestrained, loves the wild tremor that shakes her so hard she dislodges herself from the strap. She keeps rocking, though, pressing her hips against Robin’s leg, her belly until her orgasm finally recedes.

“Oh, fuck,” Nancy says, when she finally catches her breath. She lets up her grip on Robin’s wrists and immediately Robin wraps her arms around Nancy’s waist, holding her close. “That was so good,” she says, catching Robin’s lips for another kiss. “You were so good for me.”

Robin whines against her, and then gasps as Nancy’s thigh catches her dripping cunt.

“Is that what you want?” Nancy asks, pressing harder so that Robin quakes. It’s not going to take much to get her off. If Nancy just stays where she is, Robin’s pretty sure she can get enough friction to tip herself over the edge.

“Nance, please,” she begs. Nancy likes it when she does that.

“Is it?” Too late, Robin hears the mischief in Nancy’s voice. “Because I thought you said you wanted to taste me.”

Nancy slips her thigh from between Robin’s legs and Robin lets her head drop back on the pillow in despair.

“Well?” Nancy asks, impatiently, though she’s smiling down at Robin with that wicked smirk of hers.

“I do,” Robin croaks.

“Do you want it more than you want to come? You can only have one.”

The ultimatum makes Robin’s hips jerk, and she thrashes her head on the pillow for a moment, because it’s either that or come unraveled.

“Which do you want more?” Nancy asks, and as she speaks, she reaches down to take hold of the strap, which is still slick from inside her. She pumps her fist up and down, and this time the angle is just right so the base of the strap rubs against Robin’s clit.

Robin’s toes clench, and her thighs strain to lift her hips into the pressure. She could come like this, she can feel it, Nancy jerking her off with slow, steady pulls to her cock.

“Is all you care about getting off,” Nancy continues, in that deliciously judgmental tone of hers, “or do you want to do what you promised you would do and eat me out?”

Robin groans, pushing her hips up into the sweet pressure of the strap one last time before she says, “I wanna taste you.”

“Good girl,” Nancy says, and lets go of the strap. It bobs, forgotten, as Nancy climbs up Robin’s body to straddle her face.

Robin moans into the dark between Nancy’s thighs. She’s so wet against Robin’s tongue, the taste of her so rich and thick. It doesn’t matter if Robin never gets to come again, she thinks feverishly, not if she gets to do this for Nancy. She’d wait forever, it Nancy asked her to.

“Hands on my thighs,” Nancy says in a warning tone. “I don’t want you trying to touch yourself while I can’t see.”

Robin wouldn’t, but she puts her hands on Nancy’s thighs anyway. She loves the flex of Nancy’s muscles under her fingers, the way it lets her pull her in closer. Nancy rides her face fast, fingers working furiously on her overstimulated clit. Robin’s head spins, her hips rocking in time with Nancy’s, her forgotten cunt throbbing below her bouncing cock.

It doesn’t take long before Nancy’s coming on Robin’s tongue, her thighs shaking against Robin’s ears. Even once she’s come, Nancy keeps rubbing her clit, drawing her pleasure out a little longer. Robin revels in the knowledge that Nancy is as loathe to let this end as she is.

When at last she climbs off Robin’s face, Robin shivers at the sudden chill of the cool air meeting the spit and slick that’s smeared across her face and throat. It makes her feel filthy in the most delicious way, debauched for Nancy’s eyes only. She closes her eyes and breathes in Nancy’s heady scent, licks Nancy’s wetness from her lips. She loves being covered in her, loves the thought of waking up tomorrow and still being able to smell traces of Nancy on her skin.

“I love seeing you this way,” Nancy says from somewhere too far away. “And you love it, too, don’t you?”

Dazed with desire, too exhausted to give a coherent answer, Robin nods.

“Do you want to show me?”

Curious, Robin cracks her eyes open to find Nancy sitting down by her feet, watching her fondly. “Hm?” she manages to ask.

Nancy smiles, and runs a hand up Robin’s leg. Even just that light touch feels exquisite, in the state Robin’s in, makes her tremble with a much more intimate touch might. “Do you want to show me how good I make you feel?”

Of course Robin wants to, she wants to give Nancy everything she can, but she doesn’t really understand what Nancy is asking her to do. The trailing touch of Nancy’s fingers on her calf is so good, she almost wants to cry. When she tries to ask, all that comes out is a whine.

“Will you make yourself come for me, sweetheart?” Nancy asks, more pointedly. “Can you do that?”

Robin blinks, head spinning. “But . . . ?”

Nancy leans down and drops a delicate kiss on the side of Robin’s knee. “I changed my mind,” she says. “You were so good for me, I think you deserve it. But you’re going to have to do it yourself.”

Robin wants to sob. She wants to come, has been desperate for it all night, but she’s so tired now that all she can think about is curling up beside Nancy and falling asleep.

“Can you do that for me?” Nancy asks, almost wheedling.

Robin nods. With stiff fingers, she loosens the harness just enough that the strap slaps against her thigh. When she slips her hand between her legs, she can’t help but moans at how wet she is. Her vulva is sensitive from the pressure of the strap, but the ache is good.

“Legs open,” Nancy insists. “I want to see you.”

Her thighs burn as she draws her legs up and out, exposing the hot core of herself to the open air. She can feel Nancy looking at her, and that’s almost as good as a touch. She imagines it like a wave lapping against her as she rubs her clit.

“You’re so wet for me,” Nancy says admiringly. “I don’t think it’ll take you long to come, at all.”

Robin quickens her pace, wanting that to be true.

“You were so good for me tonight,” Nancy says, and Robin shakes. “Only thinking about what I needed, always putting me first. You fuck me so well, sweetheart, you’re so good to me.”

Robin feels herself flush all over, her legs shaking. “Nancy,” she gasps. “Please.”

“Are you going to come?”

Her hips are shaking, her breath frantic in her chest, but she can’t feel it, the closing of that circle inside her that means she’s close. She whines urgently, tossing her head against the pillow. She pressed harder against her clit, willing her aching arm to move faster, fuck herself better. Nancy wants her to come, she has to give it to her.

“What if I told you to stop?” Nancy asks abruptly.

It takes her a moment to understand what Nancy’s asking, but the moment she does, she takes her hands off herself and lies there trembling.

“You’d stop just like that?” Nancy asks. “Go to bed right now and not touch yourself again until I said you could?”

“Anything,” Robin breathes, not even knowing what she means. “Anything, anything, please, just make me.”

Nancy must take pity on her then, because the next moment, there’s a shifting weight on the mattress, and two fingers slip inside her. She cries out, writhing as Nancy fucks her. She tries to raise her hips to rock back into Nancy’s touch, but at this point it’s all she can do to brace herself for it, let it happen.

Nancy fucks her rough and insistent and Robin can feel herself unraveling, the circle inside her tightening at last. The shaking in her is beyond her control, and when Nancy crooks her fingers inside her, crooning to her, calling Robin her sweet girl and telling her how good she’s been, how of course she deserves this, Robin cries out and comes so hard her calf cramps.

“Sweetheart,” Nancy murmurs as she eases Robin down onto the sweat-damp mattress.

She’s crying, she realizes, in amidst her sobbing breaths. “Love you,” she gasps. It feels essential to say it right now. It’s maybe the only thing she knows in this moment, when her whole body is pushed to its limit. She wraps her trembling arms around Nancy’s neck.

Still, she can’t make herself open the can and take a drink. It wasn’t the first time she’d ever had a drink, that night at Steve’s house, but it was maybe the first time she’d been drunk, and it has never felt as good as that ever again. Not that she’s had all that many opportunities, but every other time she’s let herself get drunk, it’s turned on her somehow—at Tina’s awful Halloween party, finishing the last of Murray’s vodka with Jonathan the night before he left for California. It always manages to wend itself back to the first time, and she’s got enough memories flooding back around her as it is.

“It doesn’t even feel real,” she says quietly.

Robin nods solemnly. “Yeah, well, we’ve been here before, haven’t we? It’s a real Charlie Brown and Lucy situation, only in this case the football is saving the world I guess?” She mimes snatching away a football from an approaching kick. “Fool me once shame on you, fool me five times, shame on some evil psychic monster man, I guess.” She takes a deep swallow of her beer, and Nancy thinks that possibly this isn’t the first one she’s had. “But at least we know that if the end of the world does start all over again, we’ll probably be able to figure out a way to shut it down. Just, like, on average.”

On average, Nancy thinks, they’ve managed to forestall the end of the world four times, never actually to stop it. The jury’s still out on this round.

“Y’know,” Robin says in a small voice, “it’s all right if you’re not, y’know . . .”

Nancy shakes her head impatiently. “If I’m not what?”

“. . . feeling like celebrating,” Robin says. She hesitates, then adds, “If you’re not OK.”

“I know,” Nancy says, sharper than she means to. “I’m fine.”

Robin finishes her beer with a wince and says, “See, I just don’t think that’s true. And, I mean, it’s nothing personal. I don’t really think that could possibly true for any of us.”

“I’m fine,” Nancy hisses, hating the way Robin’s trying to push this touchy-feely bullshit on her. “Maybe you’re not dealing with things, but I’m handling it.”

Robin laughs. “Brava, Wheeler. Really convincing. A+. Where’d you study? The Lady Doth Protest Too Much School of Dramatic Denials?”

“Can you for once just give it a rest?” Nancy snaps. “For once in your life take a hint? No? Well, then, here, let me spell it out for you: I – don’t – want – to – talk – about – it. Not to you, not to anyone, got it? Is that OK with you? I came up here to enjoy a little peace and quiet and you insist on shoving in where you’re not wanted, just like you always do. Just leave me alone.”

She regrets it the moment she sees the look on Robin’s face—stung, eyes suddenly glossy with unshed tears. But Robin just smiles, this horrible thin twitch of her lips, and says, “Sure thing, Wheeler.”