Bit of a Schoolgirl Kink?
“Do you want me to just come over?” Jen answered the phone when Ezri had called her back almost immediately after hanging up for the fourth time in a row.
It was almost one o’clock in the morning. Perhaps a bit of snarking was fair. Ezri’d told Lalia to go to bed an hour ago when she realized Lalia would stay up as long as Ezri answered her messages. Clara had stopped answering shortly before. “If you want.”
Neither of them was usually up quite this late. Jen arrived in pajama pants patterned with cats and the omnipresent leather jacket and boots. “If you’re gonna have another moral crisis, I’m gonna drink and go home in the morning.”
“You’re welcome to drink either way.”
Jen examined Ezri's liquor cabinet for several minutes as she usually did, then poured herself the same red wine she always did. That, and coffee.
“Good to mix your uppers and downers,” said Ezri.
“It’s called balance,” said Jen. “And now you’re gonna go off about playing while drunk.”
“No,” said Ezri. “I’ve seen you hit Post-it notes with a six foot bull whip after most of a bottle of wine. If you want to fuck your wife at that point, that’s not my problem. However—”
Jen gave her the I told you so look and Ezri ignored her.
“—I, personally, also try to avoid it outside of long term relationships.”
“You made out with me while drunk.”
“Made out. You.”
Jen shrugged. “So, what moral crisis did you talk yourself into while I was in the car?”
“Is she too young, you think?”
Jen rolled her eyes. “Your darling twenty-two year old is spiritually seventy somehow and has some experience. She’s clearly not too stupid or impressionable. And she's into you."
“She lacks an independent support system.”
“You’ll get her one. She can go be friends with Clara. Pass some kind of slave Bechdel test.”
"Clara wouldn't be an independent support system."
"Asher, then."
"Someone I haven't had sex with."
"Me, then."
"You don't count, either."
"Why not?" Jen pouted.
"You just don't." Ezri ran her hands over her face. Then continued: “She has nonexistent financial resources of her own.”
“She has three jobs and a college degree. Isn't she supposed to be teaching in the fall?"
“I’m getting her involved in something illegal.”
“Nothing you’re not doing yourself. See also: your pet law versus ethics argument.”
Ezri sighed.
“And?”
“And, what?” Ezri asked.
“And you desperately want her anyway, because as bad as it all sounds in your little social justice warrior head, she’s cute and good at sex and does whatever you say.”
“She is adorable. I mean, her hair is so soft, and she’s really mastered the innocent big blue eyes during blowjobs thing, the giggly blushy thing, and she has those like—” She cut herself off.
“Yes, the early 1900s farm girl freckles and braids.”
“Please never tell her I said that.”
Jen grinned at her. “You’re welcome to your type. Anne of Green Gables isn't my thing.”
“Tall, dark, and masochistic?”
“Something like that. I can go for soft hair.” She twisted a strand of Ezri's hair around her fingers.
“It's just—” Ezri sighed again. “She’s too good to be true. I barely have anything to teach her.”
“I don’t think you’re asking for a lot,” said Jen. Ezri opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off. “I mean, okay, your rules are so convoluted you end up having to order someone to break one rule to follow another and get confused yourself, but at the end of the day, you want a cute girl who gives you nice orgasms and nice literary analysis in your nice sex dungeon library.”
Ezri laughed. “Is that all I want?”
“Well, you also want a Golden Retriever, spiritually speaking, and a business partner, but, basically.”
“I was thinking Rough Collie,” Ezri said dryly.
“Lassie dog. Early 1900s, farms.”
“Oh, fuck,” said Ezri in realization. Jen laughed. “No, they’re—herders. I was thinking…” She gestured very vaguely. “The trainees. And Google called them trainable.”
“You Googled it.”
“Fuck. I don’t know. It’s late. I’m so tired. Fuck.”
Jen was still laughing. “Go to bed, Ezria.”
They both did. Funny how that always happened, at least if Clara wasn't there, and sometimes if she was. The warmth and another person breathing nearby was admittedly nice. She was awake long after Jen fell asleep, listless, thinking.
Was it bad to fetishize some more childlike traits? “Bit of a schoolgirl kink, Ezri?” But she was an adult—
Jen tossed and turned and whimpered, lost in a dream, stilled and quieted shortly after Ezri absently took her hand. Support systems, or lack thereof—
“Go the fuck to sleep,” Jen mumbled, maybe not as lost in dreams anymore as thought.
So, she did.