Alyssa is on her knees between my legs, nuzzling her face into my balls like a cat that found the one warm spot in the house and has decided to die there.
I’m sitting on the couch. Pantsless. She cleaned up her mess from last night first, which took about two hours, moving through the apartment with focused, methodical energy, picking up every shard of plate and restacking every book with the quiet diligence of someone working off a debt. When she finished she stood in the center of the living room, surveyed her work, and then turned to me and demanded a reward.
So now here we are.
She’s been at it for a while. Just... devoted to the whole thing in a way that I genuinely don’t have the vocabulary for. Sniffing. Pressing her face against me like she’s trying to memorize the geography of balls. Her hands rest on my thighs, loose and content, and she makes these small, pleased sounds every so often that are completely unprompted.
Alyssa is a very strange girl.
“So you love me?”
The question comes out muffled, half-absorbed by my thigh. She doesn’t even lift her face when she asks it. Just tilts her head slightly, cheek still pressed against me, and then immediately presses her nose in and takes this enormous, dedicated sniff.
“Yes,” I say.
She pulls back just enough to look up at me. Her green eyes seem slightly offended.
“Say it properly.”
I hold her gaze for a second. The afternoon light catches the messy roots of her hair, the dark brown bleeding into blonde.
“I love you, Alyssa.”
She hums, and then she takes one of my balls into her mouth gently. Like she’s handling something she’s decided is precious. The suction is soft. Exploratory.
My head tips back against the couch.
She makes another small sound. Still pleased. Still completely absorbed.
After a while, she pulls back just enough to speak against my thigh.
“So that means you don’t want to kill yourself anymore, right? Since you love me.”
I look down at her. Her chin rests on my leg, green eyes tilted up, waiting.
“I’ve been depressed for a long time, Alyssa.” I keep my voice level. “Long enough that I can barely remember what it felt like before.”
“But I make you happy.” It comes out less like a question than something she needs confirmed.
“Yes,” I say. And I mean it. “But it’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because my brain is still broken.” I hold her gaze when I say it, because she deserves the honesty more than she deserves the comfortable version. “That doesn’t just stop. It’s probably going to be broken for a while.”
She stares at me.
The pleasant, consumed expression she had going drains out of her face completely, replaced by something flat and dangerous. Her eyes go cold in that specific way they do right before something in her crosses a line.
“If you kill yourself,” she says, very quietly, “I will kill Josh. I swear to God, Caleb.”
“I believe you.”
The flatness in my voice seems to both satisfy and infuriate her simultaneously.
“I’ll kill myself too.”
“Alyssa.” I exhale slowly through my nose. “Please. No suicide pacts.”
Her eyes narrow into something that could strip paint.
“It’s not a pact.” Her hands come up and cup me, both palms cradling my balls with this gentle, almost reverent care that is completely at odds with the murderous expression still sitting on her face. Her thumbs move in small, soothing circles. “It’s a threat.”
A laugh moves through my chest before I can catch it. Small and low, but real.
“Okay.”
She holds my gaze for one more second, making sure the point has been properly received and logged. Then, apparently satisfied, she lowers her face back down to my balls. The pleased sounds start up again almost immediately.
After a while she lifts her face from my lap again.
“Why don’t you ever fuck me while I’m sleeping?”
“I’ve never woken up before you.”
Her eyes narrow. “That’s a lie.”
“It’s not.”
“Caleb.” Her chin presses harder into my thigh. “I’ve felt you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.”
“Okay,” I say. “Yeah, but that’s different.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
She takes a sniff. Not the soft, devoted kind from before. This one is sharp and deliberate, like she’s inhaling something medicinal. Like she needs it to get through the next thirty seconds without doing something regrettable. Her hands tighten slightly on my thighs.
“Then why didn’t you fuck me when you came back to bed?”
I look down at her. “Because you were sleeping.”
“So?”
“Well.” I pause. “There’s also the issue of consent.”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot.
“I consent,” she says.
“You consent right now. Awake. In advance.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not really how it works, Alyssa.”
“I honestly feel like,” she starts, her voice coming out carefully, the way someone talks when they’re constructing something they want to land correctly, “if you actually loved me as much as you keep saying you do...” She trails off, tilts her head slightly. “You’d be willing to fuck me while I’m asleep.”
I hold her gaze for a moment.
“Those two things aren’t related.”
“They are to me.”
Her face shifts in about a quarter second.
“BUT I’M YOUR WIFE, CALEB!” The scream fills the apartment. She’s still on her knees between my legs, which makes the whole thing slightly surreal.
“I know,” I say.
“Then…”
I cut her off. “I don’t feel comfortable raping my wife.”
She stares at me with her mouth gaping wide.
“That’s not…” She stops and rolls her eyes. “Caleb. That’s not what it is.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not.” She sits back slightly on her heels, still cradling me in her palms with that same unconscious reverence. Like her hands have a separate, more devoted agenda than the rest of her. “If the situation were reversed, and you were the girl, and I was the guy, my cock would literally live inside you, Caleb. I’d never take it out. It would just live there.”
“My dick basically does live inside you.”
She tries very hard not to smile. I watch her fight it. Her mouth presses flat, the corners pulling inward, jaw working slightly.
“And another thing,” she says, pivoting sharply, the almost-smile vanishing under a fresh wave of grievance. She nuzzles back against me as she talks, face pressing in, completely automatic. “Why do you keep getting up to go to the bathroom at night?”
“I pee more because I drink more. I have to stay hydrated.”
“What?”
“Since you came into my life,” I say, keeping my voice level, “we fuck so much I figured out pretty quickly that I needed more water.”
“Oh,” she says. “That’s funny.”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she says, very reasonably, “if you’re getting up in the middle of the night anyway.” She pauses. “You should just piss in my mouth.”
I groan. The sound comes from somewhere deep and involuntary.
“Alyssa. No.”
“It would save you a trip to the bathroom,” she continues, like she’s pitching a home renovation. Very efficient, actually.”
“We’re not those kind of people.”
She gets that look. The one that means she’s about to build a case out of materials I didn’t realize were lying around.
“I just think…”
“Right now,” I say, cutting her off before she can get any momentum going, “you are actively pitching me a scenario where I wake up in the middle of the night, walk over to you, and piss in your mouth. And then also fuck you. All while you’re asleep.”
She looks up at me with complete, unironic pride.
“Yeah,” she says.
“This is my new line,” I say. “I want you to know that. I have a new line and it lives exactly here, at pissing in your mouth, and I am never crossing it.”
“Caleb…”
“I’m never going to piss in your mouth, Alyssa.”
She shifts on her knees. Her bottom lip comes out. Her green eyes go wide and liquid, and she gives me a genuinely wounded look.
“I just feel like,” she says softly, snuggling me, “every part of you deserves to be cherished, Caleb.”
I hate that she means it. She’s not performing. She actually believes, somewhere in that broken architecture of her mind, that this is an act of devotion. That taking every part of me into herself, even the parts that are categorically waste, is just love expressed at its most complete.
The worst part is that she’s convincing me.
“Do you even like piss?” I ask.
She pulls back slightly and looks up at me. Her nose wrinkles. Full-body revulsion, immediate and genuine.
“No,” she says. “Piss grosses me out.”
“Then of course not.”
“WAIT.” Her eyes go wide with panic. “But yours is special.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s yours.”
I can’t help but laugh at how stupid this all is.
“It’s not funny,” she says.
“It’s a little funny.”
“It is not.” Her eyes go flat. “It’s true love, Caleb.”
“I’m not pissing in your mouth, Alyssa.”
“Fine.” The word comes out clipped. “What about fucking me while I sleep.”
“We’ve been over this.”
“But I want it!”
“Is it something you’re actually into?” I ask her.
“Yes,” she breathes as she presses her cheek back against me. “God, yes, Caleb.”
“Like, genuinely into it.”
“Yes. It would make me feel wanted. Like even when you’re half asleep you still need me.”
I sit with that for a second.
The logic of it is actually sound in a very Alyssa way…
“What if you have a meeting in the morning,” I say.
“Then I’ll be lucky enough to sit in a meeting full of your seed.”
“You work with classified materials, Alyssa.”
“I know.” She hums against me. “Imagine.”
I close my eyes.
“Alright,” I say finally.
She goes very still.
“I’ll try to work on that.” I add.
“It’ll be great baby.”