two body problem (cuddlesmut)

Ko-op Stef Dunlap

Trigger warning: this is soft smut, body parts and feelings are mentioned and explored, but there is no explicit sex.

BeeEEEeeeoooOOOOoooop. Kat’s custom doorbell rang while a small LCD screen turned white, then black, and then snowcrash. Then through the static, Kat’s face slowly faded in.

“Hello, who’s there? Is that Sid?” her voice hazily emerged while she squinted into her screen, and then moved her head closer until mostly only her forehead was visible on my screen.

“Guilty,” I said, giving a half smile.

“Oh, dear, it’s so dark out there! I can’t see you at all.” Her head ducked out of frame for a second, and then the porch lights illuminated. Then she sat back hunched in her chair and looked back at me. “That’s better. Ok, I’ll be right down!” and she exited stage right. I listened as she stomped barefoot down the carpet stairs, across the fourier, and up to the front door.

Click. Turn. Whomf.

“Hi~~” she chirped, and crossed the threshold to me a quick peck on the cheeks. Her lips were chapped. Both ours were. The second half of the winter had been harsh. We were all ready for spring to emerge out of slowly lengthening days, but we still had at least a month to go. “Don’t just stand out there! It’s freezing!” She was dressed in soft red leggings and a double XL t-shirt from a job she hadn’t worked at in a year-and-a-half. Her large semitranslucent pink glasses hid the fact that her eye-shadow had smeared on both sides in identical circular patters—a clear sign that she had rubbed both of her eyes, sometime after the sunset. She was cute, in the truest sense of the word. Everytime I saw her, my heart skipped a quick beat. I loved her, but I wasn’t ready to say that out loud yet.

She was already halfway up the stairs, looking down impatiently.

“I’m coming,” I offered, and she turned around finishing the light jog to her room. I took my boots off, and ran up the stairs after her using my hands on the steps for stability. I turned into her room, and she was already turning on her laptop connected to her twenty inch TV.

“Which episode were we on?” she asked without turning away from her task.

“uh… last week we just watched the one where Captain Malcom Reynolds gets surprise married to the con artist?” I tentatively offered.

“Ah, we’re on episode seven.” Then she gasped, “Janestown! Eeee!”

“You love a good irredeemable character redemption arch.”

“Guilty!” she sang as she jumped into the bed.

My heart skipped another beat. I was about to get into the bed with her. I was almost certain we wouldn’t have sex, because I had six nights of weekly Firefly screening with no such outcome, but still, I was excited to hold her in my arms as we fell into each other.

The country-western opening theme droned, and we both sang along, “take my love, take my land. Take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care, I’m still free. You can’t take the sky from me!"

I propped a third pillow up and slammed my head down into it so that I could see the TV around Kat. Then I put my right arm under her neck, and grabbed her left breast (we had passed second base last week.)

She immediately turned her head back and strained her neck so that she could just catch my eyes, and said, “whoa, whoa, where’s the fire?” in a low teasing voice. Then she turned back towards the TV and sang a bit of Shakira, “lucky that my breasts are small and humble, so you don’t confuse them with mountains.”

I put my left arm around her hips, and wriggled my hands under her oversized t-shirt up to her navel, and I poked her the star charm on her naval piercing. “perfect, just checking it’s still there,” I said in a matter-of-fact voice with a small crack to betray my racing heart.

“Mmmm,” she let out in a high, barely audible moan. She scooched her bum into the crevice created by the right angle of my thighs and my stomach. As she made contact, she pressed against the stiffness that I hadn’t realized grew between my thighs.

“Oh, oops, sorry!” I let out quickly, but without saying anything, she continued to move back into me, until my unobedient member rested in the cleavage off her bottom. I gave her a tight squeeze. Another small, almost imperceptible moan. We settled in to watch the show.

We got to a scene where a father gave his coming-of-age son to the care of one of the main characters, Inara, a “companion,” to “make a man out of him.” Kat’s body cringed and then tensed up. I didn’t say anything, and I wondered if her response was linked to some trauma that she hadn’t shared yet. Her body remained tense, so I moved my left hand down her left side and hugged her tight. This time she didn’t moan.

When Irara comforts the young man that there’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, Kat’s grip on herself loosens. A few scenes later, the boy, confused and questioning why he didn’t feel different after losing his virginity, listens to Irara confidently explain in a gentle voice that being a man means the ability to ask these kinds of questions instead of mindlessly seeking sex. Kat relaxed fully.

My arm was falling asleep. I could feel the pins and needles creeping up the fingers in my left hand and up to my biceps wedged between her side ribs and the bed. I didn’t move. We watched until the end, when the lovable, irredeemable character, Jane, rejects his redemption by tearing down a statue erected in his honour, the episode ending with his line, “don’t make no sense.”

Normally during the credits, Kat would turn around and put her forehead against mine, and we’d talk until the early morning hours until one of us was falling asleep. But this time, she didn’t move.

“Are you asleep?” I whispered.

“No,” she whispered in return, “I just like this. I feel safe. You make me feel safe.”

Another skipped heartbeat. My arm was totally numb at this point, but I didn’t dare move and break the spell.

“I know we’ve only known each other for eight weeks,” she started, “but it feels like our souls fit together just like our bodies.”

I gave her a small peck on her neck, and I was surprised to feel a kiss on my neck at the same time. I didn’t turn around. I knew what was happening. I was melting into her… we were melting into each other. As she pushed back into me, the resistance of my skin melted as the line separating her back and my abdomen blurred.

“I feel like we’ve known each other our whole lives.” The words left my mouth before I could audit them.

“And we still have our whole lives to get to know each other,” she responded softly. The words, both vibrating my eardrums, but also emerging as an idea in my mind, as if I was the one to have said it.

And then we both drifted off to sleep. Our souls mixed together for the night. Tomorrow we would make breakfast for each other, depositing a bit of our souls in each other upon our separation. We would venture back out into a harsh world, heartened that we would take refuge in each other again for many weeks to come.