Terms & Specific Conditions - Chapter 38

Low Production Value

They are in bed when Penelope asks.

Not during sex, which is probably why it almost works.

Jack is on his back with one arm under his head, bare-chested, the sheet low over his hips. His chair is beside the bed, angled badly because Penelope had moved it with her foot earlier and he had said, “That is not how parallel parking works,” and then not fixed it.

The room is warm. The lamp is on. Nothing is urgent.

Penelope has her chin on his shoulder, one knee bent over his thigh, not because he can feel it, exactly, but because she has become the sort of person who puts herself there anyway.

She has been quiet for nearly three whole minutes.

Jack says, “I don’t like this.”

She lifts her head. “What.”

“This amount of silence from you.”

“I can be quiet.”

“You can be asleep.”

She ignores that, which confirms the concern.

He turns his head slightly. “Pen.”

“I have a question.”

“There it is.”

“It’s not bad.”

“That’s rarely the category you think it is.”

She props herself up on one elbow. Her hair is messy around her face, her expression already doing too many things at once: curiosity, nerves, amusement, the very specific Penelope look that means she has decided to walk directly into a wall and would like him to admire the form.

Jack waits.

She looks at his mouth first. Then his chest. Then lower, briefly, before she looks back up.

“Can I watch you?”

His face does not change much, but something in him goes still.

“Watch me do what.”

She makes a small frustrated sound, like he has forced her to submit paperwork.

“You know what.”

“I absolutely do not know what.”

“Jack.”

“Penelope.”

She exhales through her nose. Then, because she is brave in the worst possible direction, says, “Can I watch you get yourself off?”

The silence after is not bad.

It is not exactly good, either.

It has edges.

Jack looks at her for a long second. His expression is unreadable in the way it gets when she has found something real by accident. Suddenly he is several feet farther away inside his own head.

Penelope’s stomach drops.

“Or not,” she says quickly. “Obviously not if that’s— I don’t mean like— God. I don’t mean I’m trying to make you perform a circus act in my bedroom.”

“Jesus.”

She blinks.

“What?”

He looks at the ceiling. “Nothing. Continue making it worse.”

“I’m not trying to make it worse.”

“You opened with circus act.”

“I know. I regret that deeply.”

That gets something from him. Not quite a smile. Enough that she sees the door is not closed.

She softens a little, all the joke draining out of her face in the way that usually makes him more nervous than the jokes.

“I just want to know what you look like when it’s only you,” she says. “Not because I’m trying to inspect anything. Not because I think it’s—”

She stops herself before she can say special or different or one of the other words that would make both of them leave their bodies.

“I just want to see you.”

Jack does not answer right away.

His hand is still on his stomach. His fingers have gone a little tense against his skin.

Penelope notices.

She notices everything and then pretends she does not so he can decide whether to hand it to her.

“Is that weird?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Bad weird?”

He turns his head back toward her.

“Historically, that has not stopped you.”

Some of the pressure leaves her chest.

“Okay, but this is different.”

“Yeah.”

A small word. Honest enough that she shuts up.

Jack looks down his own body for a second, checking the shape of the request against the shape of what is actually there.

The narrow hips.

The loose, folded weight of his legs under the sheet.

The part of him that does not wake up just because the room is warm and her mouth is near his shoulder and the request is obscene.

Penelope watches him run the logistics.

He says, “You understand this is not going to be, like, a high-production event.”

“I was hoping for fog machines, but I’ll adapt.”

“And it might not work.”

Her face changes.

He sees it and looks away before she can make too much of it.

“I’m serious,” he says. “Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it sort of does and then changes its mind like a shitty printer.”

Penelope’s mouth twitches.

“That is incredibly hostile toward printers.”

“They know what they did.”

She is smiling now, but carefully. He can tell. The kind of carefully that means she has heard him.

“I don’t need it to work,” she says.

Jack gives her a look.

“I know that sounds fake.”

“It sounds like something people say before making it weird.”

“I mean it.”

He studies her.

Penelope lets him. She does not rush in. She does not add five more sentences to decorate the sincerity until it looks less naked. She just lies there, close enough that her breath touches his arm, and lets the awful little true thing sit between them.

“I want to see you,” she says again, quieter. “Not a result.”

Jack’s jaw shifts.

Then he nods once.

Small.

Permission.

Penelope’s pulse goes stupid immediately.

He moves with the blunt competence she loves, not graceful or ungraceful, just his. He shifts his shoulders against the pillows and uses one hand to push the sheet down. His legs come into view the way they are, not the way her brain still sometimes expects bodies to be. Long and narrow. Hairy. The muscles slack around the bone, thighs falling flat against the mattress, knees slightly out because that is where they have landed.

The room feels different with them uncovered.

More honest.

More dangerous.

Jack does not look at her when he says, “This is where you say something unbearable.”

“I’m actually fighting for my life.”

He huffs once through his nose.

Then he reaches down.

He is soft.

Not emotionally. Not symbolically. Actually soft.

Penelope knew he would be. She knows the rules. She knows the circuitry. She knows arousal does not travel the same road in his body. She knows direct stimulation can make things happen that wanting by itself cannot. She knows all of that.

Knowing does not stop it from hitting her.

Because he is still doing it.

Because he has agreed to let her watch him begin from nothing.

His hand closes around himself overhand, not the easy loose grip her imagination would have supplied if she had been stupider about him. His fingers wrap hard from above, almost utilitarian, his wrist angled downward. The first pull is firm enough that her breath stops.

It looks rough.

It looks almost painful.

It cannot be painful there. Not for him. Not like that.

Which makes something low in her stomach open hot and helpless.

Jack’s eyes flick to her.

He sees it.

His hand pauses.

“What.”

“Nothing.”

“Pen.”

“I’m being normal.”

“You look like you just watched someone break into a pharmacy.”

“I’m having a private medical response.”

“That’s not better.”

He starts again.

Overhand. Tight. A hard pull down and back that bends him in his own grip, not cruelly, not carelessly, but with a force that makes the whole thing look wrong in the most devastating possible way. Like a task. Like a workaround. Like he knows exactly how much pressure it takes because gentleness would be decorative and useless.

Penelope’s thighs press together under the sheet.

Jack’s lips part.

Not from sensation.

From her.

From watching her watch him.

His breathing changes because her face changes. Because she cannot hide the heat moving through her. Because his body is doing something partial and unreliable and blunt, and she is looking at him like he has invented a new form of violence.

He keeps his eyes on her as his hand works.

Soft at first, then not fully hard. Never that clean obvious climb she has seen in other men, not the simple cause and effect she has been taught to expect. He gets heavier in his grip, responsive in pieces, enough for the motion to have shape, not enough to become the familiar version.

That should make it less erotic.

It does not.

Because he keeps going.

Because it is working on her so hard and he can see that, and that is feeding something in him above the line. His chest flushes. His abdomen tightens high, where he can feel himself tense. His free hand spreads against the mattress, fingers wide.

His legs jiggle faintly with the force of his hand.

Penelope’s eyes drop before she can stop them.

The motion travels through him in strange, blunt echoes, force displaced through a body that does not answer back. His hips stay narrow and still against the bed, the bones visible beneath the loose skin and atrophied muscle from hip to knee. His thighs shift only because his hand is working hard enough to move what is not braced.

The sight of it ruins her.

The passivity of his lower body.

The force of his hand.

The fact that he is watching her see all of it.

Jack inhales sharply.

“Fuck.”

Penelope looks back at his face.

His eyes are on her, dark and bright and a little stunned by the scale of what she is giving away.

A breath.

“Penelope.”

She almost says what, but she knows.

She knows because his mouth is open now. Because his breathing has gone shallow. Because he is not looking at himself at all.

He is looking at her.

At the way her lips have parted.

At the way she is trying not to squirm.

At the way her eyes keep dropping to his hand and then his legs and then his face, like every part of the sight is an argument she is losing.

He pulls harder.

Her hand moves before she thinks.

Not down.

Up.

Across his stomach.

Jack’s hand falters.

She stops immediately. “Can I?”

His throat works.

“Where.”

She drags one fingertip lightly above his navel, just above the place where his sensation starts to thin and change.

“Here.”

His jaw tightens.

“Yes.”

So she touches him there.

Carefully at first. Then less carefully when his reaction comes fast and unmistakable, his abdomen tightening under her nails. She drags them slowly across the band where his body changes. Not low enough to vanish into nothing. Not high enough to be ordinary. The liminal strip of him that makes his face go blank for half a second, then ruin itself.

His head tips back.

The groan he lets out is low and rough and completely unprepared.

Penelope’s own body clenches in response.

“Oh my god.”

His eyes open, immediately sharper.

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry, but that was medically significant.”

“It was not medical.”

“It was to me.”

His hand starts again, less steady now. Still overhand. Still too hard. Still not fully hard, still not stopping.

Penelope keeps her nails at the line and watches the whole thing rearrange him.

There.

There is sensation.

His abs flex beneath her fingers. His breath catches when she scratches lightly sideways. His shoulders press into the pillows. The part in his hand responds unevenly, stubbornly, not enough and too much and somehow beside the point.

His eyes stay on her.

Her lips are dry. She licks them without thinking.

Jack sees.

His hand stops for one awful second.

“You’re doing that on purpose.”

“I forgot I had a mouth.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I’m under duress.”

“You’re sitting there doing sex crimes with your face.”

“I have not touched your penis.”

“Your face has.”

Penelope laughs, breathless and startled, and the laugh turns into something else when he starts again.

Because he looks almost angry now.

Not at her.

At this working.

At his own body, partial and stubborn and still somehow capable of making her look like that. At the fact that she is not enduring the difference. She is getting off on it. Visibly. Horrifically. With no dignity at all.

He says, “Tell me.”

Her eyes snap to his.

“What?”

“What you like.”

“Jack.”

“You wanted to watch.” His hand drags down hard, bending himself back into the grip. His breath clips at the end. “So tell me what you like watching.”

Penelope’s brain briefly empties itself into a filing cabinet and locks.

“That is a hostile request.”

“Pen.”

His voice is lower now.

Not teasing.

That does it.

She swallows.

“I like your hand.”

His eyes stay on her.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“What about it.”

She looks down again, helpless.

The overhand grip. The pressure. The bluntness of it. The way his wrist moves like he is solving something, not seducing her. The way his thighs keep trembling slightly with each hard pull, not because he is moving them, but because the force has nowhere else to go.

“It looks…” she starts.

Her eyes stay on his hand.

“Wrong.”

His eyes flick to hers.

Dangerous.

Immediate.

She catches herself.

“Not bad,” she says quickly. “I mean wrong like I can’t make my brain fit around it. Wrong like it’s so hot I can’t think.”

Jack does not move.

His face has changed.

She presses her palm flat against his stomach, above the line, anchoring them both.

“You can’t feel it,” she says, voice rougher now. “Not there. I know that. I know you’re not feeling it the way I would mean feeling it.”

His jaw shifts once.

She keeps going because if she stops now she will sound scared of the truth.

“But you’re doing it anyway. You’re doing it because it works somewhere else. Because you can see me losing my mind and that’s doing something to you. And you’re just—”

Her eyes drop again to his hand.

“You’re going so hard. Like gentle would be stupid. Like you know exactly what it takes.”

A breath.

Her nails press lightly into his abdomen.

“And it’s not even all the way hard and you’re still doing it and I want to climb out a window.”

Jack’s mouth parts.

For a second, neither of them breathes.

Then he says, very quietly, “Keep going.”

Penelope has to grip his stomach to stay where she is.

“With talking or with my hand?”

His eyes do not leave hers.

“Yes.”

A sound comes out of her that is mostly a laugh and mostly not.

She drags her nails over the line again.

His head tips back immediately, throat exposed, chest lifting. The hand around himself tightens. The motion resumes rougher, less controlled at the edge. His legs tremble with it, thighs jostling loose against the bed, narrow knees shifting a fraction under the displaced force.

Penelope watches his face.

She watches the groan catch in his throat.

She watches him watch her watching.

“I like that,” she says.

His eyes are closed now, but she knows he hears her.

“I like when your body does something I don’t expect. I like that I can see what’s working and what isn’t and it doesn’t make me want you less. It makes me want you so much I feel genuinely unwell.”

His mouth curves through the strain.

“That sounds serious.”

“It is. I may need to notify my next of kin.”

“Text Abby.”

“She’ll be unsupportive.”

“She’ll be correct.”

Penelope laughs again, and Jack’s eyes open on the sound.

What gets her most is that he wants her laughing while she looks.

That some part of him is still steering them toward familiar ground even from inside something this private and unedited.

His hand slows.

Not because he is done.

Because he is watching her too closely now.

Because her laughter has faded and she is just looking at him, open and wrecked and gone soft in the worst possible place.

“Don’t do that,” he says.

“What?”

“Look at me like you’re about to be nice.”

“I am nice.”

“You’re a menace.”

She smiles, but her fingers stay pressed to his stomach.

“I love this,” she says before she can lose the nerve.

Jack stills.

The room tightens.

She feels him go guarded under her palm, but not away. Just braced.

So she says it plainer.

“I love seeing this. I love that it’s not easy. I love that you’re letting me watch you do something private and weird and extremely low production value.”

“Callback.”

“I respect structure.”

“You do not.”

“I love that it might not work and you still let me see it.”

His expression shifts.

That one lands differently.

Deeper.

Penelope feels it and does not chase it. She does not say, I love you. She does not make it bigger than the room can hold. She just keeps her hand on the part of him that can feel her clearly and waits.

After a second, Jack catches her wrist with his free hand and keeps her palm where it is.

“Okay,” he says.

It sounds like several things.

Okay, I heard you.

Okay, don’t make me answer that yet.

Okay, stay.

So she stays.

His other hand starts again.

Slower now, but harder. Less like he is trying to finish and more like he is trying to keep her exactly where she is. Watching. Breathing too fast. Her wrist held against his stomach.

His eyes stay on hers most of the time.

When they drop, it is to her mouth.

Her chest.

Her thighs pressed together under the sheet.

Every time he sees another sign of what this is doing to her, his breathing quickens.

Penelope whispers, “Can I touch you?”

“You are touching me.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

His hand keeps moving for another few strokes.

Then he lets out a breath.

“Not yet.”

The words go through her like a command.

“Okay.”

His eyes sharpen at the way she says it.

“Oh,” he says.

“What?”

“You liked that.”

“I’m a feminist.”

“That wasn’t a denial.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

His hand shifts. The grip changes, thumb pressing harder, wrist dragging back with that same brutal efficiency. His lower body jolts faintly with the motion. His abdomen tightens beneath her hand.

Penelope’s nails dig in.

Jack groans.

This time he does not hide it.

The sound breaks something in the room.

He reaches for her wrist again and holds it against his stomach, pinning her touch there, not letting her drift lower, not letting her pull away.

“Here,” he says.

Her breath catches.

“Okay.”

“Keep doing that.”

So she does.

Nails over the line. Palm flat to his upper abdomen. Slow scratches just above where touch becomes strange and thin and unreliable. His whole face changes under it. His eyes go unfocused for half a second, then cut back to hers like he is forcing himself to stay present.

Like watching her is the point.

Like being watched is the point.

Penelope says, barely audible, “You’re going to kill me.”

Jack’s laugh comes out ruined.

“That would be very inconvenient.”

“I know. There’d be paperwork.”

“So much.”

“You’d hate it.”

“I’d be the primary victim.”

She drops her forehead briefly to his shoulder, overwhelmed.

His hand stops immediately.

“Hey.”

She lifts her head.

His expression turns watchful.

“Too much?”

“No.”

“Pen.”

“No,” she says again, more clearly. “Not too much. Just—”

She looks down his body again, because she cannot help it. The hand. The narrow hips. His legs loose and jostled and still. The whole impossible, specific fact of him.

“A lot.”

He watches her process that.

Then, dry as bone:

“Again. Not usually how men hope to be reviewed during this activity.”

She laughs so hard it almost hurts.

The laugh breaks the intensity enough that he smiles, but the smile goes crooked when her fingers move again.

His hand resumes.

His eyes do not leave her.

“Tell me one more,” he says.

“One more what?”

“One more thing you like.”

“That’s greedy.”

“Yeah.”

The honesty of it knocks the joke right out of her.

She looks at him.

Really looks.

At the flush on his chest. The strength in his shoulders. The narrowness below. The hand doing something harsh and specific and not pretty, except it is, because he is. Because he has let her into the private math and stayed there while she learned how to want it this specifically.

“I like that you’re not performing,” she says.

His face stills.

“I like that this is how you actually do it. I like that you didn’t make it prettier for me.”

His breath catches.

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“Yes, you would.”

That lands too.

Because he would.

Because Jack is clever enough to turn almost anything into a controlled presentation if he thinks the room requires it. He could have made jokes until she forgot to look. He could have let her touch him immediately so she would not have to sit with the unfamiliarity. He could have hidden the unreliable part inside her certainty.

He did not.

Penelope leans closer.

“I like that you didn’t.”

For a second, he gives her nothing.

Then his fingers tighten around her wrist.

“Come here.”

She blinks.

“I thought I was watching.”

“You watched.”

“Is this the participation portion?”

“Penelope.”

She moves before he finishes her name.

He releases her wrist only to get his hand into her hair and pull her down to him. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to make the point. His mouth meets hers open and hot, his breath rough against her cheek, his other hand still wrapped around himself between them.

Penelope makes an embarrassing sound into his mouth.

He smiles against her.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “That’s what I thought.”

She laughs, but it falls apart when he kisses her again.

This time he lets her touch him lower.

He lets her join him.

His hand covers hers. He shows her the pressure without explaining it, the angle, the hard overhand pull that makes her shudder even through the shared grip. It is not delicate. It is not symbolic. It is heat and force and the astonishing intimacy of being taught something he would not have said out loud.

His legs jiggle again under the movement.

She feels it against her side.

Sees it.

Does not look away.

Jack notices and breaks the kiss just enough to watch her watching.

His breathing turns shallow.

“That,” he says, rough.

“What?”

“You looking at that.”

Her hand falters.

“Is that okay?”

His eyes hold hers.

“Yes.”

The answer is so immediate she almost comes apart.

So she looks without pretending not to.

At the movement of his hand and the echo of it through his thighs. The slack muscle. The narrow hips. The part of him in both their hands, still not fully hard, still responsive enough, still there.

Jack watches her do it.

His head tips back.

“Fuck.”

Penelope drags her nails over the line again with her free hand.

He groans, louder this time, and his grip clamps down over hers.

The rhythm breaks.

Comes back.

Breaks again.

There is nothing graceful about it now. Nothing cinematic. His hand is too hard. Their hands are awkward together. His lower body is loose beneath the force of it and his upper body is all tension, breath, heat, control slipping by inches.

Then Jack says, “Look at me.”

She does.

His eyes are dark and fixed on hers.

“There,” he says.

She keeps her hand on the line. Keeps the other with his. Keeps looking at him.

Then both his legs spasm.

A hard shudder runs through them, thighs jumping loose against the mattress. His knees jerk outward, settle, then catch again before the first movement has fully gone.

Penelope’s breath disappears.

Jack’s eyes flick down, then back to her. His jaw tightens when he sees her face. He exhales once, sharp through his nose, but his hand keeps moving.

Fuck.

Another uneven jolt runs through both legs beneath them.

When he comes, the spasms are still passing through him, blunt and involuntary beneath everything happening above the line. His abs lock under her palm, shoulders pressed hard into the pillows, his hand crushing hers around himself.

His breath catches, catches again, then breaks into a low sound he cannot make into a joke fast enough.

Penelope stays still through it.

Present.

Watching his face.

Feeling what she can feel.

Not inventing the rest.

Afterward, his hand slowly loosens over hers.

His eyes close.

For once in her life, Penelope does not immediately say something deranged.

She keeps her palm on his stomach until the tension drains out from under it by degrees.

The room goes quiet.

A real quiet this time.

Then Jack says, eyes still closed, “You are never allowed to say low production value again.”

Penelope drops her forehead to his chest and laughs.

“There’s my review embargo.”

“I mean it.”

“I was complimentary.”

“You called my penis a shitty printer.”

“You called your penis a shitty printer.”

“I was vulnerable.”

“You were hostile to office equipment.”

His chest moves under her cheek.

Not quite a laugh.

Almost.

She turns her face and presses her mouth once to his sternum.

His hand comes up after a second and rests in her hair.

She lets the silence stay.

Then, because she cannot leave well enough alone forever, she says, “Was that okay?”

Jack opens his eyes.

The question lands in him. She sees it.

Not because he doubts the answer. Because she asked it cleanly. Because she is not making him take care of her reaction first.

“Yeah,” he says, quiet and dry and a little wrecked. “That was okay.”

She smiles against his chest, small with relief.

“Okay.”

A beat.

“Extremely invasive,” he adds. “But yes.”

“There’s my actual review.”

“Do not put that on a form.”

“You know I love a form.”

“I know. It’s one of the hardest things about you.”

She huffs a laugh into his skin.

His hand moves once in her hair, slow and absent, but his attention stays on her.

“You good?” he asks.

She nods.

Then says, muffled, “I have several follow-up questions.”

His hand stills.

“Of course you do.”

“But not now.”

That makes him look down at her.

She lifts her head.

“Not now,” she repeats. “Now I’m just going to be normal and lie here like a woman of dignity.”

Jack looks down at the state of both of them.

“Sure.”

“I said like.”

“Important distinction.”

She rests her chin on his chest and looks at him, still flushed, still too open, still a little ruined.

He sees that too.

His eyes narrow.

“What.”

“Nothing.”

“Pen.”

“I just really like you.”

The corner of his mouth shifts.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at her for another second, then catches a loose piece of her hair between two fingers and rubs it absently.

“You’re depraved,” he says.

Penelope smiles into his chest.

Beside the bed, his chair is still angled badly. The lamp is still on. The whole room looks exactly as unproduced as he promised.

She is still looking.