Terms and Specific Conditions - Chapter 18

 

Marco Polio

They’re supposed to be winding down.

Movie credits rolling on mute, lamp on low, his bedroom a soft mess of clothes and books and the glass she left on his nightstand two days ago and never reclaimed. He’s on his back, bare-chested, propped half against the headboard. She’s on her side next to him, wearing one of his shirts and a pair of underwear that keeps trying to ruin his focus.

But she’s quiet.

Not content-quiet. Brain-spiral quiet.

He nudges her with his elbow. “Alright,” he says. “What’s chewing on you.”

“Nothing,” she lies, without even trying.

“Penelope. Come on.”

She makes a face, still looking at the TV. “It’s dumb.”

“Perfect,” he says. “Those are my favorite ones.”

She exhales, cheeks puffing out. “I still don’t know how to be regular about it.”

He goes quiet for a second, thumb drawing slow circles on her hip.

“Regular about what,” he prompts, even though he definitely knows.

“About the drawer being open,” she says flatly. “The thing I used to compartmentalize is just… everywhere now. All the time. Normal world and the world where I’m completely gone for you. I don’t know how to exist in both.”

His mouth twitches. “Both places?”

“And every time something happens now,” she continues, “my brain’s like, ‘hi, what if we made this the hottest thing that’s ever happened.’ And then I spiral like, wow, congrats, you’re a pervert who can’t handle basic existence.”

He snorts. “You’re not a pervert. You’re into me.”

“Same thing,” she mutters.

“Absolutely not the same thing,” he says. “One is creepy. The other is extremely hot and specific and also happening to a guy who told you it was allowed.”

She turns her head to look at him. “You said that in the abstract. Not in the ‘every single time your body does literally anything my brain goes offline’ specific.”

His mouth curves. “So you need help turning the volume down?”

“I need help being normal,” she says. “Or at least pretending to be.”

He goes quiet, feeling that land.

“Okay,” he says. “One: you are absolutely allowed to be wrecked by me doing basic life tasks. That is a service I provide. Two: what if we… play with it on purpose.”

She lifts her head, suspicious. “Play… how?”

“Like—instead of trying to make you less into it, we give you a place where you can be more into it. On purpose. So your brain stops trying to grab it everywhere else.”

Her eyes narrow. “I have no idea where you’re going with this.”

He gives her the look she’s come to recognize as he’s about to propose something unhinged and probably genius.

“I have an idea for a game,” he says. “Minimum risk, maximum chaos, scientifically sound.”

“I already hate it,” she says. “Tell me everything.”

He grins. “Okay. You know how your brain goes into DEFCON 1 any time you get… loud about this.” He gestures vaguely at his lower half. “Because you feel weird, or like you’re going to say the wrong thing, or like I’m going to suddenly grow a conscience and be like, ‘wow, you’re into that?’”

She winces. “Wow, call me out gently, why don’t you.”

He bumps her shoulder. “What if we took the watching out of it. I close my eyes. You get to do whatever you want. I can’t see you, so I can’t watch you watching me. You don’t have to perform being normal about it. You just… get to be into it. Unperceived.”

She goes very still.

“My job,” he continues, “is to try to figure out where you are based on what my body tells me. Your job is to break my brain as much as you want. No guilt, no explanations.”

“You want me to play Marco Polo on your body.”

His grin flashes. “That is, broadly, the concept.”

“You can’t… feel anything down there, though,” she says quietly. “How are you going to… play?”

He lifts a shoulder. “I feel the way the rest of me moves. Pressure on my stomach, my ribs. The way the mattress dips. The way you breathe. The phantom stuff. It’s not nothing. I’d be guessing, yeah. That’s kind of the point.”

“If you hate it, we stop. If you get in your head, we stop. This is a game. And the fact we can only play it because my body’s weird? That’s kind of hot to me.”

Her brain short-circuits on that last bit.

“That’s hot to you,” she repeats.

“Yeah,” he admits. “You being this into the bits I used to apologize for? Obscenely hot. I’m trying to get that voice in your head to shut up for five minutes.”

She swallows. Hard.

“Okay,” she says. Her heart hammers. “Okay. Show me.”

He grins like he’s just won something.

“Alright,” he says. “Prep: lose the shorts.”

She sputters. “Bossy.”

“You love it.”

She does. Begrudgingly.

He shoves the duvet down with both hands, clumsy but efficient, revealing the line of his shorts, his long, still legs. She turns away to slide her underwear down and off, heart banging, and then she’s climbing back onto the bed, onto him, everything inside her screaming and singing at once.

“Here,” he says, patting the flat of his stomach. “Sit facing the foot of the bed. Knees on either side of me. You’re the dragon, I’m the treasure hoard.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she mutters, but she does it.

She swings one leg over, then the other, and settles onto his stomach, thighs bracketing his ribs. He’s warm and solid under her. His legs stretch out beneath her like a slope she could slide down.

“This feels illegal,” she says, staring at the wall. “I feel like I’m about to rob a bank.”

“Perfect,” he says. “Step one: I’m closing my eyes. Step two: for the duration of the game, anything you do is officially allowed. You’re not taking anything from me. You’re giving us data.”

“Data,” she repeats faintly.

He rests his hands lightly on her hips. Not controlling, just there. “You good?” he asks.

She closes her eyes for a second. Breathes.

She’s sitting on the torso of the man she’s stupid for, facing away, with his legs spread loose and still beneath her, and he’s telling her to do what she wants.

“I’m good,” she says. It comes out hoarse.

“Okay,” he says. His voice shifts subtly into something lower, focused. “Game on.”

She stays still for a second, almost shy. Then she reaches back with both hands and just… rests them on his thighs.

She could start lower. She wants to. But she’s easing herself in.

“Alright,” he says. “Input received.”

He goes quiet. She waits.

“Feels like…” he says slowly, “you’re on my legs. Above my knees. I can’t feel your hands, but I can feel the way your weight shifted forward. You went from all on my stomach to… some of you supported. My abs are like, ‘oh thank God, we get a break.’”

She laughs, startled, shoulders shaking. It loosens something in her chest.

“And there’s this weird phantom thing,” he adds. “Like my brain thinks my quads just flexed. Which they did not. Lazy bastards.”

She squeezes her fingers gently, digging into muscle that doesn’t answer.

“How about now,” she says.

He hums, eyes still closed. “Same zone. Above the halfway mark. Closer to my hips than my knees. That’s as precise as it gets.”

She smirks, emboldened.

“Cheating,” she says. “That’s like saying, ‘somewhere in Europe.’”

“Do better crime then,” he says. “Move.”

She does.

This time she reaches down and takes hold of his ankle, lifting his foot slightly off the mattress. His leg is heavier than it looks; there’s no help from him. Pure deadweight. Her brain sparks like a downed powerline.

She adjusts his foot an inch, just to see it move, clumsy and slow, because she made it.

He lets out a sound that’s half breath, half noise.

“Okay,” he says, shaky laugh. “That… was weird. My whole body did a little tilt. I can’t feel where you are, but my brain is screaming ankle. Because it remembers what it felt like when my foot left the ground. It’s… a ghost feeling. Like my calf wants to cramp out of sheer nostalgia.”

She’s gone.

“Ankle,” she confirms, breathless. “You’re freaky.”

“Right back at you,” he says. “You just moved my leg around like it was nothing. Brain status: a little unhinged, not gonna lie.”

She rests his foot back down, gently. Then she slides both hands up, up, up, over his calf, his knee, his thigh, until her fingertips catch the waistband of his shorts bunched slightly higher than it should be. The fabric’s ridden up closer to the low strip of stomach he actually can feel, and he hasn’t noticed.

His breath catches, sharp. His hands tighten on her hips like he’s been dropped from a height.

“Okay,” he says, voice lower now. “There. I can’t feel your hands, but I can feel… edge. That’s the border. That’s where everything else wakes up and goes, ‘oh, hi, we exist.’”

Something in her chest actually aches.

She curls her fingers in the fabric of his waistband, right across that invisible line, and tugs, slow, making the material pull against his skin.

He swears under his breath.

“Right there,” he says. “That feels like… someone just turned up the volume in a very specific strip across my stomach. Like you drew a highlighter line and my nerves were like, ‘copy that.’”

Her whole body pulses.

“And my brain,” he adds, wrecked laugh, “my brain thinks your hand is everywhere. It knows, logically, you’re just at the border. But the level of, ‘she’s on me,’ is… unreasonable.”

She doesn’t realize she’s rocking forward until he groans.

“That,” he says. “That’s cheating.”

“You said do more,” she says, voice high.

“I did,” he says. “I stand by it. Just warning you my commentary might degrade.”

“Good,” she says. “I like when you lose grammar.”

She uses one hand to hitch his shorts up a little on one side—just enough to bare more of his thigh—then lays her palm flat there, below the border, where he can’t feel the contact at all.

Her hand on his bare thigh. No response. No flinch, no muscle twitch. The only reaction is higher up, in the way his stomach tightens, the way his chest rises faster.

“Okay,” he says, voice gone hoarse. “That one… nothing direct. Radio silence below the line. But everything above it is suddenly very interested.”

She swallows hard. “How is that… for you,” she asks, shaky.

He lets out a long breath. “It’s… mental,” he says honestly. “In the best way. Knowing you’re touching something I can’t feel, and my body still tries to join in? That does a lot to me. In my head. And other places that can still RSVP.”

She slides her hand higher, fingers curving up from his thigh toward his lower stomach. His hand on her hip clamps down.

“Higher,” he says immediately, breathless. “Stomach. Close to the line.”

She moves her other hand to join it, one hand spread low across his stomach while the other slides back down his thigh, thumbs pressing in, pulling his legs a little further apart.

He can’t help; there’s no muscle to assist. It’s all her.

His whole upper body reacts.

“Jesus,” he gasps. “Okay—that feels like my legs are in a completely different position than they were five seconds ago and my torso is trying to keep up. My hips aren’t doing anything, but it feels like they’re wide open. Phantom posture. It’s wild.”

Her hands move back and forth between the low line of his stomach and the open spread of his thighs, palms full of him.

“What about now,” she whispers, one hand drifting further in.

He makes a sound that is definitely not language.

“Okay,” he says through his teeth. “That’s… your hand is on my dick, isn’t it.”

Her face flames. “Maybe.”

“I can’t feel that directly. But my whole pelvis is trying to remember itself, and my stomach’s acting like we should be doing something about it.”

“And my head,” he adds, voice breaking, “my head is just stuck on the image of you there. Even though I can’t see it. It’s… so hot. You have no idea.”

She swallows around a noise. “I have some idea,” she says.

“Pen?” he says, voice gone soft under the wreckage.

“Yeah,” she breathes.

“Is it helping?” he asks. “Or is your guilt goblin still chatting.”

She laughs, shaky. “I forgot she existed,” she admits.

“Good,” he says. “I hate her.”

He squeezes her hips, grounding them both.

His hands slide from her hips down to rest on his own thighs. An offering.

“You can do whatever you want,” he says quietly. “I’m just here.”

She takes a breath.

Then she does a horrible, wonderful thing.

Instead of going further on him, she shifts her weight and slides her hands to her own thighs, gripping hard, nails digging in, right where she’s sitting on him.

He sucks in a breath at the sudden press of her weight.

“Okay,” he says, voice sharp. “You just… moved. On me. Hard.”

“Where am I,” she asks, testing him.

“Everywhere,” he says hoarsely. “My stomach just lit up. My ribs, my chest. Feels like you’re… grinding down on my whole torso. Intention levels: off the charts.”

She makes a helpless sound.

“And now,” he says, “I’m also extremely aware that you’re touching yourself and using me as a piece of furniture.”

She squeezes harder, thighs burning under her own hands. “Is that… a problem,” she asks.

“No,” he says, so fast it’s almost a choke. “God, no. That’s… that’s the opposite. That’s—” he laughs once, disbelieving, “—that’s kind of the dream, actually.”

Her vision goes white at the edges.

“Right now,” he says, “my legs are just… there. Completely out of it. My hips aren’t doing anything. But my brain thinks my whole body is under you. That you’re… using it. Like it finally has a job.”

“Fuck,” she breathes.

She leans forward, hands sliding from her thighs back to his, fingers curling around the solid line of his legs again, clenching, releasing.

He groans.

“Pen,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re doing exactly, but whatever it is? Keep doing it. Please.”

That “please” again.

She moves. She doesn’t think, she just does—small shifts, pressure, the kind of dirty improvisation she’d normally be too self-conscious to try. Except he can’t see. He only has the story his body tells him, and the story is that she is wild about him.

He narrates through it, losing words and then finding them again just to give them back to her.

“Feels like you’re… rolling over me,” he pants. “Like a wave. Every time you move my brain thinks, ‘we should go with her.’ And then it remembers my legs forgot how. It’s… infuriating and insane, all at once.”

She laughs, somewhere between shattered and high.

“I can’t feel you on my legs,” he goes on, “but my skin above the line is screaming that you’re there. That you’re using me. That you like it.” He lets out a sound that might be a laugh. “My head keeps trying to call it unfair that I can’t feel all of it and then you—God, whatever you just did—my chest is like, ‘shut up, shut up, shut up, we’re busy.’”

She doesn’t know when she starts shaking.

“Jack,” she gasps, “this is—you have no idea—”

“How much this does to you?” he manages. “Pretty sure I’m getting the picture.”

He keeps talking, and after a point the actual words stop mattering. It’s just his voice, rougher now, and the way every tiny shift seems to light him up everywhere at once—him under her, all that quiet weight and heat and nerve and phantom sensation, his breath breaking every time she moves.

She goes over the edge messy and helpless, thighs clenching around him, one hand braced on his chest, the other still wrapped around his leg like an anchor.

His hand leaves her hip mid-wave and finds its way up her spine, fingers splayed wide, holding her through it.

“I’ve got you,” he says, voice wrecked. “Just—stay with me, okay?”

It tips him too, in its own way—not the same, but close enough. His stomach goes tight under her, breath stuttering, whole body responding to her falling apart on top of him.

Eventually, gravity reasserts itself. She sags back, boneless, breathing like she ran a mile. He’s limp under her, chest heaving, heart battering against his ribs.

They stay like that for a long moment. Her back against his chest, his arm around her waist, both of them wrecked.

There’s a long, humming quiet. The kind that usually makes her brain start building shame castles.

It… doesn’t.

Her thighs are still buzzing, his stomach is still tight under her, and all she can think is I did that. I did that here.

He’s the first to break.

“Okay,” he says, voice thoroughly ruined. “Preliminary notes: ten out of ten, would be used as sex furniture again.”

She chokes on a laugh. “Jesus.”

She tilts her head and lets herself look down his body.

His legs are exactly where she left them. Messy, a little splayed, toes slack. No edits. No apologizing.

Her chest does that stupid hurt-soft thing.

“Also,” he says, “Marco Polio is officially a thing now.”

She lifts her head. “I’m sorry, what.”

“Marco Polio,” he repeats, serene. “That’s what we’re calling it.”

She laughs despite herself. “That’s offensive.”

“It’s efficient.”

“It is terrible.”

“Also it’s not my fault it’s a perfect name for a game where you’re yelling Marco and I’m trying to find you with no sensation.”

Her mouth twitches. She goes quiet, fingers tracing absent shapes on his chest.

“So that’s what we’re calling it now?” she asks, trying to keep her voice casual. “Marco Polo?”

He considers.

“Marco Polo for other people,” he says. “Marco Polio in our extremely messed-up private vocabulary.”

Her face splits into a helpless smile.

“Our extremely messed-up private vocabulary,” she echoes. “God, yeah. We’re… not normal, are we.”

“Not even a little bit,” he says. “And I am having the time of my life.”

She swallows. “You sure?”

He cracks one eye open to look at her. “Penelope,” he says. “If you think I’m not going to be thinking about you climbing onto my stomach and rearranging my ghost map during standup tomorrow, you are profoundly mistaken.”

She groans, embarrassed and pleased all at once. “I’m going to have to sit through sprint planning knowing that’s in your head.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Good luck making eye contact.”

She drops a hand to his thigh again, just to prove to herself she still can. Still allowed. His fingers twitch on her hip in response.

“So…” she says slowly, “Marco Polo is… like a… thing now?”

He pretends to think. “Hmm. I don’t know,” he says. “You tell me. Do you like having an officially sanctioned, no-questions-asked, ‘do whatever you want to my legs and I will narrate my entire nervous system in real time’ game?”

Her whole body answers before her mouth does.

“Yes,” she says, way too fast.

He laughs, delighted. “There it is.”

She groans, hiding her face again. “I hate that you made a sex game that found a way around my entire personality.”

“You’re welcome,” he says. “Accessibility, baby. We love a bespoke accommodation.”

She laughs into his skin, then sobers, fingers curling in the sheet.

“Seriously, though,” she says. “When I… move you. When I do… that. And your brain does the phantom thing. You’re sure it’s—”

“Hot,” he cuts in. “Yes. Very. I will sign an affidavit if you need it.”

“You’re not just saying that because it’s hot for me,” she pushes, needing to be sure.

He shifts under her enough to get his mouth near her ear.

“Pen,” he says quietly, all the joking stripped out, “watching you like the parts I used to hate? Watching you use them and then fall apart, on purpose, because I told you it was allowed? That might actually be the hottest thing on my current record. And the bar is high.”

Her chest caves in a little, in that good, awful way.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Then… yeah. Marco Polo is a thing.”

“Our thing,” he corrects, smug.

“Don’t make it cute,” she says, voice wobbly.

“Too late,” he says. “I’m already planning expansion packs.”

She pulls back just enough to squint at him. “Expansion packs.”

“Mm-hm,” he says. “Shower edition. ‘We’re going to be late for dinner’ edition. ‘We should not be doing this on my mom’s guest bed’ edition.”

She bursts out laughing, horrified. “We are not playing Marco Polo at your mom’s house.”

“Yet,” he says under his breath.

She flicks his forehead. “You’re deranged.”

He winces theatrically. “Ow.”

She grins, rolling her eyes, and then her expression softens.

“Hey, Jack?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Thanks,” she says quietly. “For… making a game out of it. For not letting me drown in my own head about this.”

He kisses her shoulder, slow.

“Anytime.”

She settles back down, feeling his chest rise and fall against her spine, her hand resting over the quiet weight of his thigh.

The guilt gremlin creeps up.

She looks at her hand there, remembers him, flushed and laughing, trying to guess where her hands are from the way her body moved.

And for the first time, it doesn’t have anywhere to land.