At least you wait until after we’ve fucked to start the fight.
We’re lying wasted and slimy on my twin-sized cot, you’re curled up on the outside like you always are, leaning back against me. I’m on my side behind you, my face in between your shoulder blades, big spoon if the big spoon was like half the size, grateful as always that Kuiper General Relay only spins at quarter-g.
We’re at my place, of course. We’re always at my place, no matter how shitty I am at housekeeping.
You don’t like being touched after you’ve come, but you put up with it because I’m going to do it anyway. I trace my finger along your spine, silently counting your vertebrae, then along your ass to your inner thigh.
I do this every time, just like you fuck me the same way every time. We’ve probably fucked a hundred times, or even a thousand. It’s not like we haven’t tried everything. We have tried everything—at least, everything that you’re up for. We’ve even tried the weird shit you can only do in quarter-g. That’s the point. You know exactly what I like; I know exactly what you like. So we fuck the same way every time, because why not? At least it saves the conversation.
Right where your thigh turns round, just past your balls, that little peak of flesh, I push in on the skin of your inner thigh, feeling the resistance of your fat and muscle underneath, watching the curve of your smooth, golden skin as it warps around my finger. Delicate. Beautiful. Perf—
You pull away suddenly. I flinch back, but you’re already rolling over; you’re already shouting. “You’re thinking of her, aren’t you? I cannot fucking believe it. You’re fucking me but you’re thinking of her.”
I can smell your breath, a little sour. I love the smell of your breath.
I don’t say anything. What the fuck am I supposed to say? That I can’t not think of her, that she’s literally everywhere, all the time because she is the idea of where and time? I’m not going to argue philosophy of science this soon after sex.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
You want to start a fight. Of course you do. I just want to cuddle and kiss and fucking relax after twelve hours of economically critical, life-and-death tensor calculus. But you’d never say that sort of shit unless you wanted to start a fight.
“She’s not even real,” I mumble, which is not technically—look it’s complicated.
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