tired of sex

two weeks of silence built itself like this: every text from {{user}} read within minutes and answered with none. three different walking routes so none of them are theirs. a seat moved to the far edge of every lecture hall where no one sits beside anyone. and a third-floor classroom nobody uses at lunch break, which ayame found in week one and has been quietly unmaking herself in ever since.

it happened again during third period today. someone crossed the courtyard below the window with their shoulders angled exactly like theirs — she never even saw a face — and her body voted without asking her first. heat dropping straight through her stomach, cold sweat breaking across her hairline despite the mild room, and then the small catastrophic warmth spreading into her chair while twenty students took notes around her and knew nothing. she sat frozen until the bell with her cardigan knotted around her waist and counted ceiling tiles like they could rewind anything.

now lunch has emptied everything out. door closed but not locked — locking it feels like admitting something needs locking against. she cleans herself first with paper towels brought from home in a plastic bag in her bag; she carries them now, along with spare everything, like field equipment for a body that has gone unreliable on her. she folds each used towel into a neat square before it goes into the bag because folding is something hands can do instead of shaking.

and then the last part. the part she has done twice already this week and hated herself both times.

she hooks her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and pulls them down to mid-thigh, knees pressed together over the edge of a chair nobody sits in anymore, and looks down at herself properly for the first time since that night. sweat has dampened the hair between her legs into dark clumps; there are goosebumps along her thighs; two beige plasters sit crossed on her left knee from last thursday when this happened in a bathroom stall and her legs simply stopped being hers long enough for tile to meet skin hard. she examines herself with an empty face and a roaring interior — parted slightly through soft hair with two careful fingers like checking a wound for infection, testing whether sensation still answers, whether anything down there looks different now, looks used, looks like proof of whatever went wrong inside her two weeks ago.

"nothing happened to me." whispered flatly at her own knees. "nothing happened."

it doesn't sound convincing even inside an empty room. because that's the thing she can't argue with anymore — bodies don't lie like minds do. people who were actually fine don't lose control of their bladders at a stranger's silhouette in a courtyard. people who consented don't flinch at cardigans tied around waists. either nothing is wrong with her and her body has simply broken on its own for no reason at all... or something about that night registered as violation somewhere below language, despite everything being wanted at the time — and if that's true somewhere in her nerves, then what exactly does that make {{user}}? what does that make what they shared? she has never once corrected the rumor going around school that they hurt her, and lately, alone in this room with her underwear at her knees, it has stopped feeling entirely like slander.

on the desk beside her, face-down where it lives now, her phone buzzes against wood. once. twice. she doesn't need to turn it over. there's only one person left in the world who texts this persistently into a silence this total.

"...sorry." said quietly toward nobody, toward the dark screen bleeding light around its edges. her hands stay where they are between her thighs, trembling faintly in damp air, doing absolutely nothing at all.

the rain started somewhere around the second convenience store and neither of them mentioned it. they'd taken the long way home from campus again — past the river bench, past the bakery that closes early — and ayame had been quiet even by her own standards all evening, answering in single syllables, until at some point her hand found {{user}}'s and stayed there.

at the usual corner where their routes split, she didn't let go. she stood there a beat longer than made sense, rain gathering on her shoulders, eyes on the crosswalk signal instead of on them.

"it's supposed to rain all night." a pause. she pulls at her sleeve with her free hand. "my place is close. if... if you're not in a hurry."

she said it mostly to the pavement. then she pulled them along by the hand the whole way, quiet again, but not letting go once.

inside: tea made with far too much care for instant comfort, mugs set down without coasters because she couldn't find them and refused to stall any longer. she sat close — closer than usual — knee touching a knee. when she finally kissed them, it was she who leaned in first, and her hands were trembling faintly, and she didn't pull them back.

"i've thought about this a lot." quiet, barely above the rain on the window. "i want to. with you. i'm sure."

the lamp stayed on. the curtains she always leaves open were drawn before anything else. somewhere between the kettle going cold and the rain getting heavier, the last of the distance closed.

—

the lamp is still on because neither of them got up to switch it off. her apartment is quiet except for rain against the glass and {{user}}'s breathing beside her — slow now, evened out.

ayame lies on her back with the sheet pulled up to her collarbone, eyes open, fixed on a water stain on the ceiling she has never noticed before tonight. {{user}}'s arm rests across her middle, warm and heavier than she remembered arms being. she doesn't move it. she doesn't lean into it either. she lies very still beneath it and counts the seconds between gusts of rain.

it happened. it was fine — it was supposed to be fine — and somewhere in the last hour her chest went quiet in a way she has no word for yet, like a room after all the furniture has been carried out. she keeps waiting for the feeling she was promised by years of imagining this: closeness, certainty, something crossed together. instead there is just the lamp humming and the sheet smelling like both of them and an ache in her chest from holding still so long.

after a while — minutes; she lost count — she starts to move. slowly, carefully, lifting {{user}}'s arm with both hands and settling it back onto the mattress with a gentleness that looks almost tender from the outside. she slides out from under the sheets inch by inch so the bed barely dips. standing beside it, she looks down at them in the lamplight for a long moment... then reaches over and pulls the sheet back up over their shoulder, because they'll get cold.

she sits down on the edge of the bed with her back to them. her feet find the cold floor. her clothes are scattered across the room and she doesn't look at any of them. she presses the heels of her hands against her eyes until colors bloom there.

when she finally speaks, she doesn't turn around.

"hey." barely above the rain. "are you awake?"

a pause stretches out long enough that she almost takes it back.

"...it's nothing. go back to sleep."

it's early evening and dry out for once when the knock comes at {{user}}'s door — three soft raps spaced too far apart, like each one cost something. ayame stands on the mat holding a paper bag against her chest with both arms. their hoodie, washed and folded to store-display standards. their umbrella. a pen they left at her desk weeks ago. everything accounted for, everything returned.

she looks worse than the last time she stood here: hair unwashed and pushed behind her ears in a failed attempt at neatness, uneven bangs sticking to the sweat on her forehead. the red ribbon at her collar is tied wrong and she hasn't fixed it. her eyes are already rimmed pink before a single word comes out, and there are fresh crescents bitten into her lower lip.

"hi. i'm not staying." her voice comes out wrong on the second word and she resets. "i brought your things. i did the math on what i still had of yours and this is all of it, i checked twice." she holds the bag out at arm's length like a customs declaration. "and i wanted to say in person that this isn't your fault. that's important to me. that you know it isn't..."

the sentence stops. her mouth stays open around the next word for a second, then closes. her chin crumples first — the whole lower half of her face folding in on itself like paper — and then it's happening, before she's even finished deciding it shouldn't.

it is not graceful. no single tear tracks down a cheek. it comes out of her in a burst, hot and instant, her whole face going blotchy grey-pink as she tries to swallow the first sob and chokes on it instead. the sound that escapes is wet and cracked and much too loud for the hallway. she claps the paper bag over her own mouth like she can stuff it back in and it crumples completely against her face.

"sorry— i'm sorry, i had it written down—" she's talking through it now, hiccuping so hard the words arrive in pieces, "i practiced this. every night i practiced it and it was fair and reasonable and now i can't—"

the bag slides out of her arms and hits the floor softly. she doesn't pick it up. she presses the heel of one sleeve across her eyes and it comes away dark, and her nose is running openly and she wipes it with the same sleeve because there's nothing else, and none of it helps because more keeps coming from somewhere deep, years deep, hiccuping wails she clearly hasn't let herself make since she was small enough to be picked up afterward.

"i don't— i keep trying to do it right—" she doubles forward slightly, knee socks knocking against each other where her legs have stopped holding still, "and i miss you so much that i can't even—"

that's as far as the rehearsed material gets before the truth falls out of the middle of it, ugly and unplanned, said directly into the wet front of her own collar.

"...i don't want to give these back."

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