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Jade doesn’t know how to broach the topic of sex.
It’s not like anybody exactly taught her how, considering the way she grew up and the way that went for her and the everything else. She was so little when her grandfather died, and it would have been so embarrassing to get that lecture from her dead friend’s dead grandmother, and it would have been even more embarrassing to try to ask her friends.
She’s been thinking about it a lot lately, though. She thinks about Dave crawling into her bed in the middle of the night and kissing his way down her belly and burying his face between her thighs until her back arches off the bed. She feels her human ears turning a little bit red and her dog ears twitching and decides to shove those thoughts away for now. However you’re supposed to bring it up, she’s pretty sure this isn’t the place for it.
She doesn’t know the name of the little café he’s brought her to. It seems like Dave knows a million tiny cafés all over the place, and she’s happy to let him show them off.
The menu is pretty standard: Breakfast foods. Coffee. Tea. Ice cream. She spends an extra long time staring at the ice cream. Despite the kinds of technology she grew up with, Jade has never actually had ice cream. She didn’t have space for empty calories with her lifestyle.
“You can get ice cream if you want. I’m not gonna be offended if you don’t shovel down a dozen crepes or something first,” Dave says, without looking up from his menu. He knows her so well. She grins and slides one foot to rub against his shin under the table.
Dave gets sunny side up eggs, which means that Jade gets to learn what sunny side up eggs are. She’s heard the term before, being that she had unfettered access to the whole entire internet, but it never really seemed worth looking up. She orders an ice cream sundae and an espresso, which means that she gets to learn what an ice cream sundae is, too. She knows about espresso.
“Do you just not like breakfast food?” he asks, and she can’t entirely stop herself from tilting her head like a confused puppy, but he’s told her he finds it cute. “This is like, the sixth café we’ve been to—”
“The eighth!”
“—the eighth café we’ve been to, and you’ve never ordered breakfast food.”
Jade thinks about this for a second. “I’ve been getting coffee.”
“Coffee isn’t food.”
Well, that’s right. She thinks for another second, her eyebrows knitting together a little bit as she does. “I guess I didn’t really realize! I didn’t grow up having organized meals like that, so I always just eat whatever sounds good at the time.”
“And breakfast food never sounds good? I can take you to other types of restaurants if you want, you know, it doesn’t have to be cafés.”
“I like cafés! I like coffee,” she defends, even though she’s not really the one that he’s criticizing. Well, she doesn’t think he’s criticizing anybody, really. “But yes, you should definitely take me to other types of restaurants,” she adds after a second.
He smiles, and she melts a little bit. He’s been doing that a lot more since the game ended, and even more since they started dating. “Okay. I’ll start looking out for places.”
“Oh, you don’t have to look out for places! I’m happy to go just anywhere that you like.”
“Jade, this world is like, brand new. There aren’t that many places that I already like.” She realizes that this means that he’s been looking out for the cafés, and she melts a little more into the booth.
They keep up with small talk until their food gets dropped off. Jade peers curiously at Dave’s plate, where two big, shiny, wet eggs jiggle a little bit when they’re set on the table in a way that is distinctly mammary. She only manages to stop staring when her sundae and coffee are set in front of her.
It turns out that an ice cream sundae is not just ice cream. The glass bowl in front of her has two scoops of ice cream, a small mountain of whipped cream, a drizzle of chocolate sauce, a handful of crushed peanuts, and a cherry. She’s handed a spoon that looks like it’s arching its back and okay, Jade, time to get your head out of the gutter, this is getting ridiculous. She just compared eggs to boobs and spoons to arched backs back to back (too many backs). She doesn’t need sex this bad, get a grip.
“Are you gonna be able to eat that?”
She stares at him for a few seconds, blinking as she tries to put together if there was something that she missed that would make him think so. “Yeah! John’s the one who’s allergic to peanuts, I’ll be okay,” she says, taking her best guess when she doesn’t find any immediately obvious hazard.
“I know that Egbert is the one with a peanut allergy, Jade,” he says, rolling his eyes, but he doesn’t really sound annoyed. “But the chocolate?”
She looks at the chocolate again. There’s not really that much of it, forming a thin chocolate river twisting and turning through the valleys in the whipped cream. She mentally congratulates herself for moving on to more appropriate imagery. It’s maybe a little darker than the chocolate in chocolate bars? “Is there something wrong with it?”
“Aren’t dogs allergic to chocolate?”
She blinks again, pursing her lips as she considers this. “Well, yes,” she starts, “but I’m only part dog, and Bec was a special magic dog, and it’s really only a teeny tiny bit…”
He chuckles as she trails off, picking up the piece of ugly brown whole grain toast they served with his eggs that looks to Jade like wet sand and spreading butter over it. “I’m not gonna take it from you, dude. Have at. I guess if you go into anaphylactic shock I’ll just have to do my super brave Knight of Time thing.” He pauses and looks around for a second, and then continues as he dips the corner of his toast into his eggs, breaking the yolk, “Not seeing any dead Daves around here, so I think you’re pretty much all clear.”
“You are so silly!” she laughs, picking up her spoon.
When she takes the first bite, she moans low in her throat, fluttering her eyes shut to focus on the flavor. The ice cream is sweet and not especially complex by itself, and really, the whipped cream isn’t adding all that much either, but that little flash of the chocolate adds a richness that sends a pleased shiver up her spine.
When she opens her eyes again, Dave is staring at her and his cheeks are a little bit flushed, which makes her cheeks flush. She swallows her bite to ask, “Did I do something wrong?”
“Huh?” he says dumbly. Then, after a moment, he shakes his head a little and adds, “Uh, no. The ice cream is good?”
“It’s really good! You know, I’ve never had it before.”
“What, ever?”
“Nope!” She takes another bite and gives another pleased hum, letting it melt a little bit on her tongue before she continues, “I probably could have made some myself, but I was always chasing Bec around the island, so I always kept a pretty balanced diet.”
“And that’s why you’re all big and strong now.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes. She’s noticed Dave likes to comment on her muscles, which she doesn’t think are that impressive, it’s not like she’s Arquius or anything. Still, it always makes her stomach twist up in pleasant little knots when he compliments her like that. She tilts her head to look curiously at his plate again so she doesn’t have to make eye contact.
His toast is gone now, and there are orange-y yellow streaks all over his plate from where he was dipping it into one of his eggs. He picks up his fork to poke the other one, but before he actually cuts into it, he says, “Do you want to try some?”
Her eyes snap back up to his face a little guiltily. “Nope!”
“You’re just kinda staring is all.”
“I’ve just never seen sunny side up eggs is all,” she answers with a shrug, taking another bite of sundae. Her whipped cream is all gone now, but she doesn’t mourn its loss too much. Other than the texture, it wasn’t that different from the ice cream.
“Never had ice cream and never seen sunny side up eggs,” he says, sounding a little incredulous. “What did you even eat on that island?”
“Lots of fruits and vegetables! Steak. Fish, sometimes, but they usually didn’t get that close to the island and it wasn’t that easy to get to the coast anyway.”
“It’s an island. Wasn’t the whole thing one big coast?”
Jade laughs. “Dave, how big do you think my island was?”
“I dunno. Like, the size of Rhode Island?”
She pauses for a moment to consider this, holding the spoon against her lips while she does, even though it makes the skin around her mouth feel a little sticky. “I don’t know how big Rhode Island was, so I guess I can’t comment either way.”
“Yeah, I don’t really know either,” he admits with a shrug, and he finally cuts into the egg, the yolk spilling out the side. “You should drink your coffee before it gets cold,” he adds, and she straightens up a little in alarm.
She thinks that espresso cups are adorable, but they’re ridiculously small for a drink. She might as well do shots. Well, she thinks. She’s never had shots. Actually, now that she thinks about it, it is called a shot of espresso… She picks the cup up and gulps its contents down before she can get too caught up with pondering.
Dave is done with his food before she’s even halfway done with her sundae. He always eats so fast, like he thinks someone is going to take it away from him. It makes her a little sad when she thinks too hard about it, but in this particular instance she isn’t really given the opportunity to think too hard about it, because he slides around the circular booth to sit next to her instead of across from her, draping an arm over her shoulder.
Sitting down removes the two inch height difference between them when they’re standing up, which is great, because it means that she can kiss his jaw however much she wants. When she kisses his jaw, she’s very conscious of how sticky her mouth is. “Sorry.”
“‘Sokay,” he says immediately, dropping his hand from her shoulder to one of her thighs to give it a reassuring squeeze. Her cheeks heat up.
“Do you want this?” she asks, to redirect, offering him the cherry from her sundae, which is a little bit coated in melty vanilla ice cream.
“You don’t like cherries?”
“I like cherries,” she corrects. “I don’t like this kind of cherry. The kind that they soak in… I dunno, cough syrup and sugar.”
He laughs and takes it from her, popping it into his mouth but not immediately chewing. “Did you ever hear about knots in cherry stems, back when the internet was still a thing?”
She tilts her head at him. “No, I don’t think so.”
He hums and pauses for a second. She can see his jaw working and furrows her brows. Then he opens his mouth, holding the cherry between his teeth with the stem tied into a little knot.
“Oh, that’s so cool!” she gasps, leaning a little closer to look at it. “Wow, you did that so fast. Was this one of those online challenges I missed out on?”
“No, not exactly,” he laughs, taking the cherry back into his mouth but still not biting it yet. “There was just this old… joke? Saying? Idea? Anyway, a lot of people thought that if you could tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue, it meant you were a good kisser.”
She freezes, and she realizes a few things in rapid succession: His hand is still on her thigh. She’s leaning so close to his face. She’s staring at his mouth. She drags her eyes up to his and he smirks at her, and her cheeks flush a little darker. They’ve kissed before, obviously. Lots of times. But somehow it feels like it has so much more implication when he’s touching her like that. She can’t help but think about what else he could do with his tongue.
“Well, you’re a very good kisser,” she eventually mumbles, still not breaking eye contact. She’s close enough that she can see the outline of his eyes through his shades.
“You think so?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad.” He crushes the cherry in his molars and it sends a shiver up her spine just like the ice cream did, especially because he gives her thigh another squeeze as he does it. When she doesn’t immediately say anything, breath too caught in her chest and mind too scrambled, he adds, “Does that count as popping your cherry?”
“Huh?”
“Your cherry,” he says again, which doesn’t make any sense the second time, either. “Unless it’s already popped?”
He sounds a little nervous, so even though she has no idea what he’s talking about, she says, “No! It’s, um. Unpopped.” That feels so lame.
“Good, good,” he says, and a little bit of that confident, domineering facade he had affected has ebbed away, replaced with obvious nerves. “Do you… want to? With me?”
She blinks a few times, the gears in her mind turning furiously as she tries to figure out what he could possibly be talking about. This is the sort of thing he clearly expects her to know. It’s probably the sort of thing it would be really silly and naive not to know about. No one ever seems to understand what Jade does and doesn’t know about, least of all Jade, but there are some things everybody just expects her to get, they’re so ubiquitous.
She’s not coming up with any answers, but she also can’t think of anything that she doesn’t want to do with Dave, so she finally tears her eyes away from him to take another melty bite of ice cream and say, “Yes. Yeah. I do.”
She thinks she hears him let out a sigh of relief, and she definitely feels him relax against her a little bit. “Okay. Cool. Great. I do, too.” So yes was the right answer. Great. She loves it when she finds the right answer.
Her ice cream drips onto her thigh as she brings the next bite up to her mouth, and before she can think to do anything about it, Dave inches his hand up a little bit to swipe his thumb over it, clearing the little white droplet away. She swallows her bite of ice cream a little harder than she probably needs to.
He leans a tiny bit closer, so his mouth is practically pressed against one of her human ears, and murmurs, voice low, “Is this okay?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t know what this is, but it’s definitely okay.
Whatever this is, yes was definitely the right answer, because he nods again and inches hand a little further up her skirt. Her eyes widen when his hand reaches her underwear, and he sort of hooks his fingertips on one of the leg holes, but doesn’t do anything else with them. “Are you sure?” he asks again, voice even lower and, she thinks, a little breathless.
“Yes. Please.” Her cheeks feel like they’re on fire, and when her eyes flit over to look at him, his are bright red, too. He nods, presses a kiss against the shell of her ear, and then tugs her underwear to the side.
He doesn’t immediately push his fingers inside of her, which is most of what Jade knows sex is, so she doesn’t totally understand what’s happening. He rubs his middle finger along her slit instead, and her lower lip catches between her teeth as she makes a tiny noise in her chest, something she thinks (hopes) is only audible to her because of her dog ears. “Let me know if you want me to stop.” She gives a jerky nod.
He still doesn’t push his fingers inside of her, and she clenches her teeth to keep herself from complaining about it. She’s rewarded for this when, instead, he slides his middle finger along her slit again and then applies pressure in a place that she’s pretty sure makes her knees buckle even though she’s sitting down. Because her jaw is clenched, she manages to muscle down the cry she almost lets out to a high-pitched keen, and she sees Dave’s eyes widen a little bit behind his shades, but she can’t totally tell why.
He pauses for a second, and he’s still applying pressure, but he’s not moving or anything, and it feels a lot less overwhelmingly incredible that way. “You can keep eating your ice cream,” he says, but it sounds less like permission and more like a suggestion.
She stares at him for a second. He wants her to eat right now? During this? She doesn’t really want to argue in case that puts a stop to the whole thing, though, so she picks up her spoon with a trembling hand.
He waits until she’s got a spoonful of ice cream, which is mostly soup at this point, in her mouth before he starts to move his finger again, rubbing it in a slow circle, and she feels all of the muscles in her abdomen clench as her breath hitches. She doesn’t make any noise, though, because even just the breath threatens to make her choke on ice cream. Oh. That’s why.
He keeps moving in small, slow circles for a while, and she eats her ice cream very slowly to make sure that she doesn’t choke on it. She’s pretty sure that would not be sexy. Eventually, she doesn’t even have to try that hard to keep herself from making noises, although her nostrils flare with every breath. Then he starts moving a little faster.
Her heart is jackhammering against her ribcage, which doesn’t make it any easier to eat her ice cream, which doesn’t make it any easier to stay quiet.
She feels a moan bubbling up in her chest and moves her spoon-free hand, which thus far has been gripping the edge of the table with white knuckles, to fly over her mouth, muffling it into the heel of her palm. “That’s a good girl, Jade,” he practically breathes into her ear, and she squirms a tiny bit in her seat.
“Dave,” she breathes, high-pitched and as quiet as she can manage.
“I know,” he says, which she finds unlikely, because she doesn’t even know.
He slows his finger down a little bit, which pulls a whine from her chest, but then he starts sliding it along her slit again and she swallows hard. “You should have another bite of ice cream,” he suggests, at a relatively normal volume compared to all of the whispering they’ve been doing so far.
She has another bite of ice cream, and he finally pushes his middle finger into her, which doesn’t feel as immediately amazing as whatever he was doing before, but that just gives her an opportunity to catch her breath.
When he starts thrusting his finger in and out of her, it’s still not as good as whatever he was doing before, but it does make her breath catch in her chest, and she realizes as a little bit of ice cream dribbles out of the side of her mouth and down her chin that she forgot to swallow.
Eventually he adds a second finger, which is kind of uncomfortable and tight at first. He goes a little slower after that until she adjusts. She doesn’t know how he knows that she adjusts, maybe she feels tight to him, too, or something, but he doesn’t start speeding up again until it isn’t uncomfortable anymore. After a little bit of that, he crooks his fingers, and her back arches away from the booth as one of her knees bumps up against the table, rattling all of the silverware. She can’t swallow down a moan, and the only other people in the café—a human couple she thinks are probably twice their age, insofar as anyone in this world can be twice their age—stare at them for a second. Dave stops moving his fingers and uses his free hand to give them a little wave until they stop looking at them.
“Fuck, Jade, that’s really hot, but you can’t be doin’ that in the café,” he mutters in her ear, more than a little breathless.
“Sorry,” she mumbles back, but she can’t find it in herself to feel all that sorry about it. “I’ve never really had to be quiet before.”
Dave makes a noise that sounds a little bit strangled at that and sinks his head down to press his forehead against her shoulder, pressing a kiss against it as he goes.
When he starts moving his fingers again, still angling them to hit whatever point inside of her made all of that happen, her breathing picks up a little, but she brings the spoon up to her mouth and keeps it there to keep herself from making any noise, clenching her teeth around the metal so hard it almost hurts.
“That’s good, you’re so smart, Jade,” he breathes, and she squirms a little bit. He slows his fingers down to really drag them against that spot, and she can’t help a roll of her hips against his hand. “Oh fuck yeah,” he groans with equal parts pride and enthusiasm.
He keeps his slow pace, and she keeps rolling her hips against his hand—as much as she can, at least, without hitting the table or otherwise making it obvious what they’re doing. It’s not enough. It’s too much. She feels like she’s going to explode.
The second time her back arches and her knee jumps up, she manages to keep it from bumping the table. He didn’t even do anything different. “You gettin’ close?”
She pops the spoon out of her mouth to answer, “I think so.” It’s embarrassing not to know for sure, but she’s only started doing any of this in the few months since the game ended and she’s not sure she even knows what being close actually feels like or if she’s ever actually managed to do it. She always had too much going on before that.
Dave doesn’t make fun of her for saying she thinks so. He presses another kiss against her shoulder, and then slides his face down a little more to press a kiss against her bicep and murmurs, “You’re doin’ so good. If it was me getting a handjob under the table we’d have been caught forever ago.”
She laughs, a breathless sound that still manages to be a little louder than she intended, but no one glares at them this time. “I love you,” she says. It’s not the first time she’s said it, even since they were dating, but it’s close enough to the first time that Dave always reacts so nicely when she says it. He does it this time, too, pulling his face away from her arm to look up at her with his whole face gone totally soft.
He doesn’t say anything to her out loud, but he leans up to kiss her, and she hums against his mouth. He starts moving his fingers a little faster, and she’s not sure if it’s the change of pace or the fact that he’s kissing her or something else, but her back arches off the booth for a third time and something hits her all at once. It feels like being struck by lightning, which she knows because she had kind of a thing with electricity for a while there, and Dave wraps his free arm around her back and swallows down her moan before it can bother anybody else.
He keeps holding her and kissing her long past the point when she finally melts back into his arm and the booth, fingers still buried in her but no longer moving or bending or anything.
She breaks the kiss first, to breathe, which doesn’t stop him from pressing several smaller kisses against her lips anyway, until she’s laughing and moving a hand to push his face away.
“That was… wow,” she says, still breathless.
“Yeah?” She nods. “Thank fuck. I really wanted it to be good. I figured it’d probably be in my apartment and with a little more planning, but…”
“It was perfect,” she dismisses, pressing a sticky kiss against his nose. “I love you.”
“I love you too. A lot, BTW.”
“You know, BTW is actually more syllables when you say it out loud than by the—” He cuts her off with another kiss, and she laughs against his mouth, moving her hand to push him away again.
“Um.” They both freeze and look over at their server, some young troll who looks extremely embarrassed. “Would you like the check?”
