“Can we stop,” Taylor snarls, hunched over a craft beer at their local dive on Furback Friday while Rosemary scopes out the tourists and the tailchasers who want that dog in them, just for the night, “calling it Dicksucking Day.”
Roz, in her beat-up boots and beat-up hockey sweater, sitting manspread-style on her barstool and swigging corporate draft swill, licks the corner of her mouth, a quick gleam of pink that signals she’s thinking about something. Roz thinks a lot, for someone who cultivates the appearance of empty-headed jock so hard. “It’s always been Dicksucking Day,” she says reasonably.
Tay snarls again, in her neat pressed chinos and button-down, with her neat polished shoes and her neat gelled hair and her neat posture and her fancy beer. “This is my life,” she says bitterly. “Sitting in a rathole with a crowd of fur-curious twentysomethings on a Friday night—”
“Are you gonna start singing Johnny Cash singing Nine Inch Nails?” Roz says, giving her a cocky bro grin. “What have I become, ba da da da. You can have it all, my empire of glurk glurk glurk—”
Taylor throws a beer mat at her, and Roz laughs and squints sideways and licks the corner of her mouth and says quietly, “Listen—”
“No,” Taylor says, “don’t talk to me about it. I don’t…don’t talk to me about it.”
She looks a little lost, around the eyes. Roz licks the corner of her mouth again, and catches the bartender’s eye, gives a sharp little upward nod to say another round.
Taylor’s three-years-chatting-online ladyfriend visited the city, last weekend, and they had a nice time, a lovely time, and then Taylor’s three-years-chatting-online ladyfriend kissed her goodbye and drove four hours home and chatted to her online and said that Taylor was exactly, exactly the same in person, and wasn’t that great, wasn’t that amazing, Taylor is so great and amazing.
…But, Taylor’s three-years-chatting-online ladyfriend said.
“Listen, bro,” Roz says, manspread knee to knee on the ancient couch in Roz’s basement, threadbare upholstery ripped and stuffing splaying. “You’re exactly who you said you are, and that’s exactly who she said she wanted, and that’s — that’s not your fault. That’s her loss.”
“I told you not to talk to me about it,” Taylor says mutinously, and stomps up to the kitchen to throw her empty into Roz’s recycling with excessive force, and Roz counts ten or so waiting for the sound of Taylor grabbing another craft brew from the beer fridge in her kitchen that mostly holds Taylor’s craft brews, and then pads upstairs to find Taylor standing lost in the middle of the kitchen with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes.
“Buddy,” Roz says softly. “So she wanted you in the streets and — and me in the sheets. That sucks. That sucks that she didn’t tell you. That sucks that she spent three years stringing you along saying you’re perfect, which you are. C’mon, Tay, every Dicksucking Day there’s twenty of me in every bar in town belching and scratching themselves and there’s one of you, just one, and you’re — she’s missing out.”
“She didn’t do this on purpose,” Taylor says, raw and bitter and gentlemanly.
“So maybe she lied to herself for three years that she didn’t just want a dumb dog jock to hump her leg and bark at the postman,” Roz says. “I don’t have to — I don’t forgive her for that, Tay, not when she’s hurt you. You are soft and giving and generous and — and — and that’s everything that makes you better’n me, screw what she wants. Fuck all of ‘em that want a quick hump’n’growl, Tay—”
“You think you know me?” Taylor snarls, hands still over her eyes.
“You’re my best friend,” Roz says, and gives her an awkward, sorrowful bro hip-bump. “Yeah, I do.”
“You don’t know me,” Taylor says, letting her hands fall, glowering out of wetly gleaming eyes. “You don’t know what I’m like in the sack, fuck you—” and shoves Roz a little.
“Hey,” Roz says. “Hey, no. Don’t be mad. The last time you got mad was after your Nonna’s funeral, remember, and nobody will serve you bourbon still after you bit the end of Cobb’s ear off—”
Taylor shoves her again, harder, puts her step by step back across the kitchen, and Roz gives and gives the ground, shaking her head sadly into Taylor’s bared teeth and low throat-growl.
“Tay—” Roz says, and Taylor grabs a twin fistful of hockey shirt and hustles her backwards out of the kitchen, across into the lounge and the polite-company couch that’s intact, shoves her backwards hard. Roz lets herself be thrown down against the couch cushions.
“All think you know me,” Taylor snarls, “Stupid soft Tay who’s good for long walks and holding your hand and romance but just not enough wolf to fuck—”
“Tay,” Roz says, then in a higher octave as Taylor reaches down and unbuttons Roz’s jeans, “Tay—”
“You think I’m too sweet to suck dick?” Taylor snarls.
“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive—” Roz says, trying to bat her hands away, “but I think you’re drunk—” and yelps as Taylor goes to her knees like a predator pouncing and bites the inside of her thigh through denim. Roz’s hips buck, startled, and Taylor yanks her pants down.
“Taylor,” Roz says, then yips high and startled like an underfoot puppy who just got herself trod on, as Taylor’s mouth closes, hot and wet, the lightest deliberate touch of teeth and a slither of tongue.
Fuck you, Taylor growl-hums around Roz, and Roz’s claws audibly puncture upholstery to either side of her.
Roz doesn’t say anything for the next while, nothing except Taylor! and, desperately, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor— with her legs jammed apart by Taylor’s width between them, as far apart as her jeans at her knees will let them go, pinned as thoroughly as the stocks. And Taylor doesn’t say a thing, but she’s loud; slurping and moaning and panting and choking, chin and cheeks slick wet, eyes running, eyes slitted and gleaming and predatory even through it, even as she’s determinedly sinking herself throat-deep and Roz is whimpering high-pitched with her eyes rolled back.
“Taylor, Taylor, I’m gonna — I’m gonna—” She shoves weakly at Taylor’s shoulder, and Taylor growls and smacks her hand away and Roz bites her fist and comes with a long, shuddering whimper.
“Oh god oh fuck,” Roz says finally. “Taylor, I think — I think we should talk maybe?”
Taylor, softly suckling, hums thoughtfully. Roz whimpers again. And then Taylor very deliberately rocks forward, lips stretching around the slow swell of Roz’s knot, and Roz slams her head back, trying to howl from lungs without enough air in them to produce a noise.
“Tay,” she gasps, “Tay, you don’t wanna do that, you don’t — you’re gonna be stuck—” and yips at the soft squeeze of Taylor’s mouth. “Fuck. Tay—”
Tay looks up at her, soft-eyed.
“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,” Roz babbles quietly before finally getting a handle on herself. “Tay. Can you — can you breathe okay?”
“Mhm,” Taylor hums peacefully.
“Oh god.” Roz squeezes her eyes shut. “I can’t — you look — oh god,” and then inhales sharply at Taylor’s inaudible laugh. “Oh don’t do that—”
Taylor gently squeezes Roz’s thighs.
“Are you — are you okay down there?” Roz says, looking determinedly at the ceiling.
“Mhm.”
“Okay,” Roz says, strained, and cards fingers through Taylor’s hair. “Okay.” She swallows. “You know this is gonna be — a while, right?”
Taylor squeezes her thighs again.
“Okay.”
Roz licks the corner of her mouth. Is silent a while. “This is,” she says quietly. “This is weird. I don’t — you’re better at talking than I am. You always — you finish my sentences. So this is. This is. Wow. You can’t — you can’t do any of the talking right now.” She gently scratches at Taylor’s scalp, cradling her head carefully in both hands. “You’re like — you’re like my autocorrect, you know? Only, only there are things that. That autocorrect doesn’t wanna talk about. Like. Some stuff you’re finishing my sentences and it’s all ducking, you know?” She shakily brushes Taylor’s fringe aside, looks down; at Taylor, drool-smeared mouth jammed wide, breathing carefully, eyes almost sleepy-satisfied. Roz hastily looks back up at the ceiling, shivering.
Taylor hums, and Roz twitches with it.
“God damn it, Tay,” she says plaintively. “I’ve — had a thing for you since high school oh my god don’t swallow like that—”
Taylor hums, intense and deliberate, and Roz curses and wraps both her arms helplessly over her face.
