Chapter Text
Natasha fucked Bob after knowing him for about a week.
He had read her brief cover to cover, of course, in the fat packet he got handed after being accepted to the mission— flight strikes, tour of Afghanistan, NATO, all of it, as decorated as the rest of them, lethal as shit. Houston born, a mother and father there. Her father had served, Iraq, early aughts. She had a sister, too.
Bob latched on to that. He had, like, a million of those back in Iowa. He was an uncle four or five times over. His sisters sent him texts regularly, even at North Island, which they weren’t really supposed to. They’d visited him back in Pensacola when he was just a cadet, too, bunches of babies under their arms and in strollers, cruising around the base, exclaiming at everything.
Sisters were one of the first things Bob made small talk to her about, at the Hard Deck, while they felt each other out.
He’d lost his game against her, horrendously, everyone else still measuring their dicks on the pool table. Their typical move. He went back to the peripheral— which was his. Retreating again to not being there, in this room where everyone already knew each other, except him.
To his surprise, she followed.
He propped himself against a wooden side runner, and carefully didn’t look at her when she landed next to him, but noticed things about her, anyways. She had a beer and he had a coke. She was about half a head shorter than him. They sipped their drinks for a minute as they quietly watched— what was his call sign? Rooster— Rooster and Hangman, whose name did not need repeating for Bob, prepare to crack skulls over a scratch ball, and she made a face when Hangman started throwing taunts. She didn’t hassle Bob to start a conversation, which he appreciated, though he was still generally nervous.
Talking to people did that to him, let alone beautiful people who he was going to be flying backseat for.
They watched the pool situation escalate. Rooster was yelling. Hangman took a long pull of his drink and dropped the pool triangle over his head, letting it dangle around his neck like a bull in a yoke, giving Rooster the finger to the mixed delight and umbrage of the crowd.
“I think,” murmured Bob, “I don’t fully understand the rules of pool.”
She huffed a laugh.
When he glanced over, she was looking at him. Studying him, smiling a little. She seemed serious, but like there was only a certain depth to that seriousness, and curiosity beneath. Her nose was small and straight, in profile. “You like it over here, don’t you?” she asked, suddenly.
Bob’s heart moved decisively into his throat. “In S-San Diego?”
“No, in the corner.”
“Oh—oh yeah. I guess.” The way she was looking at him made him feel like he should say more. Like she was paying a pure quality of attention to him, even through the general mayhem of her friends, loud, cocksure chit-chat and waving pool cues. “Just more my vibe.”
“Mm,” she nodded, though it wasn’t apparent to Bob if she was agreeing with him, or just acknowledging this. “And thoughts on San Diego?”
“San Diego’s alright.” It was easier to look somewhere over her shoulder than at her face. “If you surf, I guess. You’re from…. Houston, right?”
She lit right up at that. She talked to him about being from Texas (humid), and her sister (singular). Turned out her sister was a vet.
“As in, a literal veterinarian,” she explained. “It gets confusing.”
Bob smiled.
“Where are you from?”
He stammered about being from Iowa (flat), and his sisters (multiple). He showed her pictures of his nephews on his phone, which she thought were cute, or at least seemed to. Most of them were only toddlers.
“And Bob’s your uncle, l-literally,” he joked. The bar was getting louder, more crowded, and their teammates were wandering towards the piano. He could feel the remnants of the peanuts in his teeth. He’d noticed that her ears kind of stuck out in this endearing way, halfway through talking to her, as she leaned over to look at his phone, and he couldn’t stop thinking about that.
It sounded genuine, when she laughed.
—
Bob was the kind of guy that just liked things the way he liked them.
A neat fastidiousness about him that was embraced by the Navy, even though the shyness wasn’t. He found that Natasha– Nat– was similar. Both of them a little cagey, a little wary, nudging their sharpened pencils into point-perfect alignment on their desks in training. Taken down a peg a few too many times not to look over their shoulders twice. It was something he appreciated deeply about her. Maybe that was something the admiralty had recognized, too, and how they got paired up.
They complimented each other. Or maybe, he thought, Nat just made up for his faults, made them better. She was sharp as a whip where Bob was slower to react, knee-deep in his details and readouts. Crispy-perfect vision where his was allowed to be worse, blurry at a distance without his glasses, by regulation. Bold, where he recoiled. Reflexes like mad. All pilots were demons, in Bob’s experience, because that’s had to be, else they’d get rooted out. Nat was just the same. She had a focus like Sauron’s diabolical blazing eyeball that he prickled to see when he could catch it from his spot in the cockpit, her reflection smeared across the curved inside of the canopy. That pure focus scared and also thrilled him.
He was, of course, immediately, miserably in love with her— but that was so expected that it practically wasn’t even worth mentioning. Bob was like that, accepted that about himself, as soon as she hooked him into the billiard game.
Doomed to be obsessed with Natasha Trace from drop.
The rest of the team seemed to figure the same, and razzed them. Bob was stuck to Phoenix like glue, front-seat back-seat, Baby on Board sucking at Mommy Natasha’s tit, etcetera. Nat didn’t seem to mind it, shrugging it off like the usual flack, so he didn’t mind it, either.
He trailed her around campus after briefings and followed her onto the tarmac and clambered after her into the double cockpit of their plane, then into blue infinity. Orderly; aching.
It wasn’t like Bob was going to do anything about it.
—
She was ambidextrous, he noticed, but left-dominant on the stick, which was unusual, though she wrote with her right. Her mixed-handed fingers were thin and strong. It felt good, knowing his life was in those hands between taking off and touching down, completely. His head was cleared by it. They worked well together. Very well, even.
—
He got a text message from his youngest sister two nights after the first briefing, while he was off duty. He’d been flying with Nat all day, and had another flight scheduled for the next one. Their flight against Maverick, winging Hangman. His pulse felt high from being in the cockpit with her, in a way that felt like it could be a problem, or maybe should be, but just made him feel warm all over. He’d just finished jacking off over it, that feeling, whole upper body tense in anticipation of being destroyed the next day via push-up, making his strokes jerky and harsh, until he came and all the tension had bled out of him like a snapped rubber band.
His phone suddenly shone brightly on his nightstand in his dark room. It had been two years since he graduated, and back then, he’d been in a bunk. It was nice, having his own apartment. Cushy, in fact.
He stared blearily at the screen, trying to make out the message bubbles. There was still a fresh wad of tissues on his nightstand, needing to be thrown away.
heyy robby
hows the super duper top secret world saving mission?????
He wrote, and re-wrote, his text at least three times, one handed, before he finally just said:
Good!
—
Bob became adept at reading her. She seemed to really like it when he called Hangman ‘Bagman.’
Huh.
He marveled at that little, approving laugh, the texture of it as it pushed through the comm, while they were repping out their punishment, side by side. His arms had fine tremors in them, already, sweat dripping from the bridge of his nose onto the blacktop, which was hot, under his palms. His glasses were fogged beyond use.
“Help— a guy— out— next time— huh?” Hangman said, squeezing out a word at the peak of every push-up. Nat powered through silently between them.
“Down. Eighty five. If you can talk, you can do more reps, Seresin,” said Hondo, above them. “Up.”
“Yessir.”
Yeah, freaking Bagman was right.
They showered and dragged themselves home. The next day, she cleared a place for him next to her on the couch in the lounge while they listened to the comm chatter on the radio.
“Is that seat taken?” he asked, standing there. He was not the kind of person people saved seats for.
Nat glanced up at him. “Nope.”
Bob sat down in it, quickly, his leg glancing off of hers. Her arm settled behind him, along the back of the couch.
Payback and Fanboy were getting destroyed up there, more push-ups issued by the hundreds, more swearing as Maverick toyed with them— allegedly.
Bob didn’t catch a single word of it.
—
Hangman strode over to Bob in the lunch mess, that Friday. Most of the team was just sitting around and shoveling their food like animals, still sore from Maverick metaphorically whipping their asses, trying to figure out how the hell they weren’t about to go get themselves killed, pronto. It was the end of the first week, and personally, Bob had no solution forthcoming. The captain was absolutely loony. No way around it. It really just seemed like they were going to die— but that also sort of didn’t matter, Bob realized. It was kind of fun, in a weird way. Thrilling, not being alone in it, for once. Jockeying coffins side by side, similarly effed over, together.
Hangman’s eyes glittered as he approached, looking like he had the motherfucker of all punchlines stored in his mouth and was excited to blurt it. The pilots were trickling in from their pre-lunch training block to sit with the WSOs, siloed schedules for today, so Nat wasn’t there to make a snappy comment, yet. Bob had saved a seat for her beside him with his bag. He was attempting to eat a plate full of iffy-looking salad because she’d suggested he should eat more vegetables.
“Hey, Bob-the-Builder,” Hangman said. It startled Bob to be addressed by Hangman directly.
“What?” he asked, reflexively.
“Oh, great,” groaned Fanboy, on Bob’s other side. “Spit it out, Bagman. Whatever you’ve got.”
Hangman smacked down his tray on the table, grinning, making Bob’s cup of Coke jump. “Get this: Phoenix says she‘s gonna take your virginity.”
There wasn’t silence so much as a big inhale. Hangman seemed miles tall, over Bob. Cutlery clinked at other tables. Coyote was the first to laugh, a disbelieving sputter, and then Fanboy let out an elongated ohh, shit, and the spell was broken enough for everyone else to laugh, too.
“I’m—I’m not a virgin,” Bob gasped, once he stopped choking on the bite of broccoli he’d been working on, helped by a back-whack from Fanboy. “Also, s-screw you.”
Bob was twenty seven, and, to his credit, had slept with at least a few people. A handful of fumbled encounters, watery-weak flings—if they could actually be called that, which he doubted— that didn’t particularly matter, especially in the face of service. He’d had a high school girlfriend he’d gone all the way with and was promptly dumped by once he went into the ROTC.
He wasn’t a virgin. Somehow, saying that out loud made you seem more like you were, though, he’d learned.
“Hah, sure you’re not, sweetie,” said Hangman, accordingly, squeezing his shoulder, then dropping down in his own seat. “Don’t forget, your hand doesn’t count.” Bob wasn’t really listening; his heart was pinging around in all sorts of antsy jumps at the possibility of it being true. What if Nat had really said that. What if Hangman wasn’t bluffing.
“Don’t sweat it, Bob. Hangman makes up the damndest shit,” Coyote said, shaking his head. “Gotta get him writing for movies, or something. Make actual use of that cracked brain.”
Hangman just laughed, pointing at Bob with a fry. “Dude. Dude. You are so screwed. Phoenix is gonna wreck you,” he crowed. His face— it was a stupid, pretty face.
Bob abruptly stood. Grabbed his plate, shrugged his bag over his shoulder, and ambled across to the tray-dump. He passed Rooster, who was headed for their table, on the way over. He gave a little nod, but kept going.
Hangman crooned after him. “Awww, hey, baby, c’mon—“
“I don’t know what you did, but for the love of God, shut the fuck up,” Bob heard Rooster say, behind him.
He didn’t run into Nat once, all the way back to his bunk.
—
It only took Bob a few hours to lose it. It was inevitable; he was helpless. Confused, mostly, but wildly curious. A little horny. He’d laid restlessly in bed for the rest of lunch, then gone back and jacked off once, precisely, carefully, between afternoon mission programming. Thinking about Nat and virginity– his supposed virginity– made him come quickly. He could’ve texted her, or something, but realorized he didn’t even have her phone number. He definitely didn’t have the balls to do it if he did, anyways. In the end, Rooster was the one who messaged him with the tip, along with an invite to meet him and everyone else at the Hard Deck, later. Bob had realized that Rooster was friends with Nat, and by proximity, friends with him. Sort of. He didn’t have many of those.
hangmans a real bitch but he said he feels kinda bad
i think
u should come if u want
There was more than one bar in this town, Bob thought, but didn’t say it. He didn’t feel much like seeing Hangman, either. He thanked Rooster, instead, tucked his phone away, and headed towards the women’s barracks, because the only thing he could do was to throw himself off a cliff, or directly into the volcano.
The volcano made him feel like less of a weird incel, at least.
She was on the couch in the little common area between the bedrooms in her apartment, a standard issue laptop in her lap, headphones on, when he found her. She loved Billboard Hot 100’s Pop. Bob had started to check and see what she put on all their group Spotify workout playlists, and listen to them on his own. Maybe that was creepy. She took off the headphones when he knocked at her open door, and he heard Dua Lipa or whatever come out, secondhand and soft.
Her hair was out of the dress coded bun, loosely bound over her shoulder. The sight made him balk. The tight bun practically seemed to be a part of her head, as far as any one of the mission crew was concerned, and seeing her in something akin to civvies was strangely intimate.
“Hey, Phoenix?” he asked.
She tipped her chin at him. Unbothered as anything.“‘Sup. Missed you at lunch,” she said.
Bob’s heart literally beat faster. “Sorry, hope I’m not bugging you.”
“Besides interrupting my incredibly packed Friday night social schedule? Not at all.” She was still half-typing, brow furrowed at something.
“Should I–”
“Nope, nope, you’re not bothering me, Bob. I’m kidding. I’m being a dick.” Her eyes were soft. “Come on in.”
Stepping into Nat’s room somehow felt like a trespass, though there was hardly much more than a singular folded piece of khaki clothing out on a footlocker and an Astros poster on the wall opposite the couch. Not so much as a hairbrush lay about. For a moment, Bob damned regulation; he would have died just to see a single dirty towel hanging in the ensuite bathroom.
“What’re you l-lookin’ at, there?” he asked, as not to stand there like a slack jawed idiot.
“Python. I’ve been taking it every week, this class. Skillshare stuff.”
“Oh, cool.” It was genuinely very cool. Nat was, in Bob’s all around opinion, extremely cool.
“Yeah, it’s fun. Hard, sometimes, but fun.”
“Why, uh, coding?” It was getting more difficult to put off explaining himself. It was close to dinner, and a Friday night. The place was a ghost town. Looked like Halo was long gone.
“Gonna get too crusty to fly one day. So it’s something to do, ‘til then.”
He leaned awkwardly against the wall, a part of him despairing at the idea of a bored Nat, considering all the time he’d spent sitting around in his own room, equally without something to do. He quieted it. It was a stupid thing to be sad about. “You don’t want to go be an instructor? You’ve definitely got the talent. Or commercial?”
She shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I could get sick of planes, some people do.”
“Huh,” Bob murmured. The fact that Nat could have sat through their briefings this week and still have enough optimism to even consider aging out of the Navy felt pretty badass. It calmed him, a bit. He felt, for a moment, like they might actually be alright.
She cut him a glance from the side of her eye. “So, what’s up with you? You’re acting shifty.”
Bob reflexively took his back and his shoulders to rigid attention, to look less—shifty. He liked that she noticed small things about him so quickly, but was also afraid of it.
“Hangman said some stuff,” he started. Nobody else around to jeer, he reasoned. It was just them. But that was also what made it intimidating.
She exhaled. Kind of a snort. “Woah, Hangman, talking? I can’t believe it.” She kept clicking around.
“You want to take my, uh, virginity.” He swallowed, face hot, popping his chest out more. “That’s what he said.”
She looked up at him, at that. The laser beam. Bob flinched. It looked, for a moment, like she was struggling to figure out what to say.
“Well, no, not in those words,” she said, finally, looking back down to her laptop.
“What?” Bob’s heart stopped.
“I just…implied I’d be game, with you, I guess.”
Oh God, did she just say what he thought she said, oh God, thought Bob. The angle of her lithe neck was crooked at him under the lighting, and he watched it flex as she talked. She was probably the most beautiful person he had ever met.
“—but really, he makes it sound worse than it is,” she was saying.
He felt hot, embarrassed from all angles. “I’m not a virgin,” he said again, quietly.
“Right.” She was looking at him with the unerring directness, again. “That’s not what I said, though.” She didn’t even quip at him; like she cared more about being misrepresented than the actual, you know, embarrassment of it. She uncrossed her legs on the bed.
“I never said you were a virgin. Hangman— he was bitching about how you have a crush— on me,” she added, like he needed that clarified, “— and I said that’s fine, I have a handle on it. Screwing out crushes always worked for me. Nips it in the bud. And then it was some stupid shouting match, where he was all like, ‘oh shit, girl, you wouldn’t,’ and I was like, ‘oh yeah, I totally would. I’ve totally fucked it out of people, and— guess what— it’s saved our asses.’”
She was staring at him. She didn’t look like anything she’d just said was batshit crazy, physically. She looked stunning, like she always did. Bob felt kind of like he was having a stroke. “What do you mean?” He croaked. And then: “You’ve been planning on screwing me?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You’ve been thinking about screwing me, right?”
“I mean— well, I guess—“ Bob felt his face go even hotter— “I have, but—“
“Even in the cockpit.”
Bob had to look at the ceiling, wheeling, hunted-feeling. “I’m not thinking about, um, that stuff with you when we’re flying, or anything—“
“Yeah, sure,” she said, sarcastically, shaking her head. “Bob. You like me, and it’ll just get worse. If I fuck you now, it’ll get us over it. Out of the system.”
He paused. “You don’t want me to like you?”
“You know what I mean. I want you to at least tolerate me, definitely. And I’d like it if you were good and did your job for me. Of course.”
Bob was strangely stung, and also aroused. Be good and do his job for her. He liked the easy directive that implied. It stabbed, in a pleasurable way.
“Do you… not like me?” His voice sounded small, even to himself.
“Oh, no. I like you very much, Bob. You’re great.” She was suddenly smiling at him.
He was very perplexed. Someone in the apartment above turned on their hot water, maybe the shower, and it rattled the wall pleasantly. “Do you lay all your Wizzos?” he asked. “Isn’t that against regulation?”
Of course it was against regulation. They both knew all of it was wildly against regulation.
She shrugged. “Just the ones who get crushes. Gotta clear the cockpit, you know. Get it over with. Nothing personal.”
Bob had read that her last WSO was another woman out of Fort Collins, and was admittedly interested, but didn’t say anything.
She propped her chin on one hand. “It’ll be worse if we don’t do anything about it. Trust me.”
“Okay,” he said, blinking. He did, ultimately, trust her. He trusted her more than he should. With his whole measly little life, in fact.
Nat closed her laptop.
—
She fucked him like it was a tactical strike, and left him in rubble like it, too. Very in character.
“Okay,” he said, again. “Um.”
He was standing at the doorway of her small bedroom, practically kneading a cap nervously between his hands, or sweating big cartoon sweat bullets. She was in a t-shirt and running shorts. He was still in his khakis, sheer anxiety the only thing keeping him from popping a tent in the front of his pants. Despite chafing his dick about it for the past week he had no real expectation, or understanding, of how this would go, in reality; he hadn’t been laid in ages let alone— whatever this was.
“What are we supposed to do?” he asked.
“Doesn’t really matter,” she said, stowing her laptop in a bookshelf. Her room was similarly bare to the previous one. “The key is just to do it once. And get off pretty hard while you’re doing it. Or, alternatively, have such a terrible time that neither of us can even think about the other naked again without wanting to throw up.”
“B-bury the body method,” said Bob.
“Exactly. You’re clean, right?” She asked in the same clinical way she ran pre-flight.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Good. Me, too.”
His thoughts were going about a million miles an hour. His brain had a way of getting tangled, sometimes, when there was a lot getting thrown at him at once. One of the traits they had to train out of him. Were they going to have a terrible time? Should he take her shirt off? Should he take his off? Would she be disgusted with him? Should they kiss? Would that defeat the point? He was pretty sure that he could get off hard just from that, if it came down to it.
He didn’t know the next move. He needed her to guide him, at least a little; throw him a bone. Steer, because she knew how to do that, expertly.
She was taking off her shorts.
He licked his lips. “How— how do you want me?”
She looked at him considerately, warmly. Seemed like he’d asked the right question, somehow. That was good. “Wanna get down next to the bed?” she asked, throwing the shorts into a laundry hamper in the corner.
“Like, lay down?”
“No, like, on your knees.” Her voice wasn’t mean, just firm. “So you can get me ready, first.”
Alright. No kissing, then. Bob, blushing, went awkwardly to kneeling beside the twin bed, like he was in a fever dream. He was still wearing his boots, fully laced.
“Like this?” he asked. His hands rested gently where the material of his pants stretched across his thighs.
“Uh huh.” She came over while Bob knelt there and lifted off his glasses, deliberately setting them somewhere, probably the bedside table. He blinked to adjust to the blurriness. He thought he could see her face looking down at him, thoughtful, before she clambered onto the bed, scooting to the edge. It was clear by her bent-up knees what was going to happen. He wasn’t that stupid.
“This alright?” she asked, peering down at him.
Bob wet his lips, again. “Yeah. Yes. Definitely.”
He squirmed as she let him push his head gently between her legs. It was happening. He trembled in the specific darkness, there, until he had the courage to sling an arm over one of her thighs, and, in a lurch, start to kiss at her over her underwear. It was very boring, white underwear, and she smelled musky and warm as he nosed in close. It was perfect.
Phoenix is gonna wreck you.
His dick was getting hard. She was right there, right freaking there, where he could almost taste her.
“Can… can I?” He asked, after a few shaking passes of his tongue, which stuck to the underside of the cotton gusset of her panties, dragged it up and down. Mumbled, more like. He didn’t really know what he was asking for, or have the backbone to look up at her when he said it.
“Yeah. See, you’re getting it,” she said, hooking her thumb into her waistband to shimmy them down.
He ate her out, haltingly, at first, and then more eagerly, both of them completely sober with the fluorescent light on overhead that made everyone look just terrible. Bob didn’t care. He was completely sprung. He would do anything she asked. He wasn’t particularly good at any of this, but so excited that he was actually more worried about accidentally rubbing against his pants too hard and ruining himself than anything else. He pressed down on his crotch with the heel of his hand, to get some control of things.
He was pretty sure he would never have to stop doing this, was the thing. He had to back off, one point, leaning his cheek against her muscular inner thigh, panting a little, because he was going to come. His pants were still on.
She brushed the hair off his forehead. “How you doin’ down there?”
Bob just nodded. Her pubes tickled his nose.
“Just wanted to check in.”
“Is it good?” he asked. He needed to know.
“Yeah, don’t worry about that,” she assured him. She was flushed, high on her cheeks, and her hair was getting wild. It was an obscene look, even without his glasses on.
“And you said this…. works?”
“Uh huh. Works great.” She sounded confident. “Just don’t think about it.”
Bob put his mouth back on her, letting the spit pool on the curl of his tongue, then lapping out.
“That’s it,” she muttered.
He tried not to think about it, but he was pretty sure that this was, in fact, not going to work. His obsession with her was getting worse; he could feel it building inside him, one shudder of the legs over his shoulders at a time.
She came once on his face, and then again, when he didn’t stop, both arms hooked around her hips to pull her close, because she made just the craziest little noises when he did.
“Alright,” she said, finally, lightly patting him on the shoulder. It was intense to hear her breathless in real time, unafflicted by Gs. No mask, no static. He wanted to keep hearing it, up close, and desperately wished he had his glasses on to see her face clearly.
She unlatched herself from his shoulders, turned on her side, curling up, raising a leg to expose herself. She still had her t-shirt on. Her pussy looked a pink, puffy mess— a mess he made. He couldn’t have looked away from it for anything. He was pretty sure there was a wet spot at the crisp apex of the bulge he was making in his pants, but he didn’t care.
He felt woozy, already falling forward, back into her, mumbling something into the slick muscle of her groin.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “What?” she asked.
“I don’t have to stop,” he said, a little louder.
The hand pulled at his hair, yanking his chin gently up and back, which, oh, felt kind of amazing, and he gasped, involuntarily.
“You wanna fuck me, right, Bob?”
“Uh. Y-yes.” There was nothing else he wanted more, except– “But I can keep g-getting you off, if you want.”
She seemed impatient, suddenly. “I want you to fuck me.”
“It’s just.” He sucked his fat, salty lip into his mouth. “I’m not gonna last long enough to help you finish again.”
She made a sound half between an exhale and a laugh. “Come here, Bob.”
That sent a shiver up his back. “Alright,” he breathed, sinking back on his heels to fumble at his belt.
He was good and did his job for her, in something like thirty seconds, flat. Too much, so fast. Hot and and tight and wet. Bob clenched his jaw, pressing his forehead into the back of her neck where all her hair spilled out, freely, in a way that was probably too intimate, considering he was trying to nuke his attraction to her. She smelled like clean shampoo, washed-out gel.
“Nat,” he panted, “I’m gonna, sorry—“
“Do it inside,” she said, into the pillow of her folded arms. He couldn’t see her face or read her tone, from this angle. He was also busy coming so hard he couldn’t see much of anything at all, so it might have been that.
He flopped down next to her, afterwards, sweaty and winded, ears ringing like they’d taken a turn too hard in the Hornet and he’d whacked his helmet on the acrylic windshield. It felt even better than he’d realized it could have, stomach-weakening, partially blinding.
He had to take a minute before he was ready to move. He felt the bed dip. When he rolled over, Nat was already up, wiping between her legs with another t-shirt from the basket, blurryish shapes of her moving around. “All better?” she asked. Easy as if she’d just beaten him in one-on-one in the rec hall, or something.
“Oh,” Bob said, watching her, chest still heaving with effort. “Yeah. Yeah— I think so.”